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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#811

Post by Dirlewanger »

djoldman wrote: post #327
slibhb wrote: post #301

It has to be made clear that this isn't about legality. It's also not about whether this "technically qualifies" as "banning" or "censorship". It's about what kind of society we want to live in. I want to live in an open society. I want to be able to watch movies and read books that offend people. I want to be my own censor and I want everybody to be their own censor. We're grown-ups, we can make decisions like this…

Not trying to be snarky but there are I believe more than enough stores happy to sell you whatever you want, even though eBay won't allow these books to be listed. I'm confused as to how eBay banning the listing of these books materially impacts people from getting them.

Why are you OK with one of the world's largest marketplaces banning children's books while also allowing the sale of stuff like the Anarchist's Cookbook and all the ingredients to make a nail bomb?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#812

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #652
illirik wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness. A publisher decided to stop publishing some books because they denigrate people, and eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people. We are not talking about an H-bomb - there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.

> The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness No, it's predominantly white-driven top-down (upper 20% income bracket) classism run amok, proping up specialist careers and pretending to be about "caring" and "wokeness". > there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here. Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs,…

[deleted]

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#813

Post by Kaze404 »

lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

You realize this was a publishing company deciding, completely unprompted and out of their own volition, that they don't want to publish these books, right? Whose freedom of speech is being violated here?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#814

Post by yerwhat01010 »

vipa123 wrote: post #10
5tefan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Seems a minority gained too much influence. No idea why they are perceived as influential in the first place? They exhibit horrible behaviour. Letting go of Seuss seems like a small price to pay to get rid of them. But the sum total is censorship.

When a shark gets to taste a drop of blood does it just head home afterwards?

Exactly. The worst thing you can do when dealing with bullies is to give them what they're asking for.

Seuss won't be the last beloved cultural icon they come for. At what point are we going to stand up to these lunatics?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#815

Post by whywhywhywhy »

What I don’t really get is the cancelling of a subset of his work.

If he did the drawings and those are deemed racist enough to cancel his work why are the company still ok with profiting off the rest of his work? He was either racist or he wasn’t and if he’s racist and that’s enough for cancellation then stop the circulation of all his work and stop profiting off it.

Like be consistent with your logic, think if it came down to stop profiting off Seuss at all and removing him from children’s culture entirely people might approach this more rationally but instead it’s “yeah he’s racist but we’re still going to profit off the work where he didn’t draw racist caricatures.”

Just find it interesting the cancellation becomes granular once the property is profitable enough. If the company really cared they’d stop selling all his work entirely.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#816

Post by jtbayly »

Kaze404 wrote: post #813
lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

You realize this was a publishing company deciding, completely unprompted and out of their own volition, that they don't want to publish these books, right? Whose freedom of speech is being violated here?

No. This was eBay, not a publisher. No. This was not completely unprompted.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#817

Post by ceilingcorner »

kstenerud wrote: post #628
wirrbel wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany here, we banned Mein Kampf from being sold (used copyright law to do that). I once stood in a book shop (teenager, time to look at books but not enough money to buy them) and some skindheads wanted to buy it, it wasn't available. They went away. Providing context is good, but frankly also really difficult and why not just provide newer childrens books that are more inclusive.

Upvoted you to counter the downvotes since this actually does add to the discussion. It's important to remember that the power of Mein Kampf lies in its status as a symbol, not its actual contents. Nobody actually reads Mein Kampf, nor have they ever (just like nobody actually reads the Bible unless they're actual preachers). It was (and still is) about the personality cult of a strong man and his message of power vi…

> just like nobody actually reads the Bible unless they're actual preachers

The Bible is the single most influential work of literature in the history of human civilization. Comparing it to a "personality cult of a strong man" and Mein Kampf is perhaps the most uninformed comment I have ever read on this website.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#818

Post by DocTomoe »

kweinber wrote: post #808
lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility when your speech offends someone. Progressives aren’t stopping you from reading racist books to your children.... just don’t expect most people to want to sell them to you or pat you on the back for making the next generation toxic against fellow citizens.

I plan to make my children toxic towards people denying other peoples basic human rights, directly and indirectly (e.g. by limiting access {e.g. by banning or burning} to books).

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#819

Post by CryptoPunk »

kweinber wrote: post #808
lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility when your speech offends someone. Progressives aren’t stopping you from reading racist books to your children.... just don’t expect most people to want to sell them to you or pat you on the back for making the next generation toxic against fellow citizens.

I agree with your point about freedom of speech.

But I don't think any one is getting these books to teach their children to be racist, or that reading children this would have that effect. An image of African tribesmen is not even racist. It was historically accurate as of 1937. Any one reading kids this book would undoubtedly explain the book is 80 years old and a product of its time.

EBay has a right to do any thing it wants, but I think it overreacted because of pressure from people who are uptight and looking for dragons to slay and people to push around.

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