971–980 of 1001 posts
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Amazon have been doing this for a couple of years now. They removed all of Greg Johnson's books for example. VISA and Mastercard have also blacklisted him meaning he can't use any payment processor to sell his books on his counter currents website. He can only accept money orders or cheques. There is nothing illegal in his books.
He can always blog his ... views
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The problem here, as I see it, is that Silicon Valley is becoming increasingly interested in moderating and enforcing social policy. If this doesn't scare you, it should.
What scares me is the implication here that someone should be dictating social policy to companies and people. What are you suggesting? If a company is branded "Silicon Valley" it should no longer be allowed to make their own content decisions? If not them, then *who will make those decisions for them?* A political government board? Talk about scary.
Obviously, the American political system is not in an ideal state (to put it mildly), but at least the sweeping bureaucratic inefficiencies make it hard enough to really change the temperature of the water by more than a few degrees in either direction.
"Silicon Valley" is just shorthand for "massive tech monopolies that have an outsized, inescapable, and pervasive influence on the way that every living person goes about their daily business"; and when you have amoral, profit-driven corporations that can "move fast and break things" - who are incentivized to wield their influence in whatever way serves their immediate interests - the human condition be damned, well... you end up where we are, here, now.
I am suggesting that we are not prepared to regulate companies like FAANG & Friends in a way that keeps them from remaking humanity in their own image as a means to their own ends. I am suggesting that it is horrifying that privately-held companies without any incentive to be responsible for the consequences of their actions against humanity, writ large, are able to effect social policy so much.
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The problem here, as I see it, is that Silicon Valley is becoming increasingly interested in moderating and enforcing social policy. If this doesn't scare you, it should.
Boy do I miss the days when SV was a libertarian paradise. I’d love to read a book or essay describing how we went from cypherpunks to left-wing moral crusaders in less than a generation.
"The Internet" became "social media", which quickly became "the media".
Game, set, match.
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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.
How much further down this path do we have to go before people understand that it's about the principle, not the specific case at hand? It only took two years to go from "it's okay for Big Tech to boot Alex Jones off all their platforms" from "it's okay for Big Tech to decide which books we're allowed to read to our children". How much more power are we going to let these private enterprises accumulate? Where is this…
The line is still where it was the entire time: private individuals and entities are allowed to decide for themselves with whom they want to associate. You seem to have made a huge leap from "eBay decides to stop selling a book on their platform" to "Big Tech is deciding which books we're allowed to read to our children". That simply isn't what is happening here. As always you are free to read whatever you want to your children, and you're free to listen to Alex Jones all day every day. eBay is free to decide what they want to host on their platform. Everyone is free to exercise their own individual freedoms.
This is the marketplace of ideas at work. In the marketplace of ideas, some ideas float to the top, others sink to the bottom. The sinkers and swimmers change over time as the buyers and sellers in the marketplace change. These books had their time, now they are sinking. The same goes for Alex Jones. He got his shot in the marketplace, and his ideas found a home, but they aren't for everyone and that's the choice of individuals in the marketplace.
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To be fair these books ought to live on Archive.org, because they are basically 'classics' at this point. Plenty of problematic and dated books live there. While it has some Dr. Seuss books, it doesn't have the problematic ones, but for at least historical reasons, it should. https://archive.org/details/texts?and%5B%5D=dr+seuss&sin=
To be genuinely fair, the six books we're actually talking about are minor works that no one reads to kids anymore. We're not talking about Green Eggs or the Lorax here. Even absent any controversy about racially insensitive artwork (I mean seriously: there are africans drawn as half-monkeys and a chinese man whose eyes are slanted lines! This is not stuff modern kids should be presented with), these definitely aren'…
Yet.
And it's tiresome and boring to hear people pretend that any reasonable line will be drawn. History is full of racially "insensitive" things. What, are we going to make sure "modern kids" don't see that stuff too? What a nullified and pretentious existence.
>have you tried the library?
I have, and it turns out that the same people who think banning books is fine also run the library. Oh the irony!
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You can support the right to be a Nazi while strongly criticising it. People can say that they really think eBay is doing the wrong thing, and maybe even boycott them, without necessarily saying they should be forced by law to stock children's books that became out of fashion thirty seconds ago.
> You can support the right to be a Nazi while strongly criticising it. You have the luxury of never having seen your country and culture being taken over by Nazis. Never living with the regret of being tolerant of Nazis. I have. It sucks. It's so easy to talk in platitudes like this when you know your own life won't be affected in any way. How about supporting the right of QAnon adherents to spread their poisonous p…
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Thing is there is thin line between moderation/regulation and censorship.
The line is rather stark. eBay choosing not to facilitate the sale of books containing racist caricatures is not in the same ballpark as a government suppressing ideas. It’s not even the same sport.
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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).
who's "basic human rights" are being denied here? Are you saying that the publisher of Dr.Seuss is committing human rights abuses by choosing not to publish some of the books THEY own the rights to? Also, maybe teaching your children to be toxic towards anything won't really improve the world they will have to live in?
these rights are supposed to protect compensation, not as a means of suppression or censorship.
Why should society protect IP for this purpose, or compensate IP owners for which there are no damages?
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I read Mein Kamp when I was younger (in Australia) out of sheer curiosity, and found it to be rambling, poorly written junk, bordering on incoherent. If you came away enlightened, you probably already held very strong Nazi tendencies before you even opened the book.
Nazi and hardcore communist propaganda have appeal to lost people, who have no place in the world, and usually are surrounded by other sources of bad influence. Is the same with people who are attracted to be part of street gangs, and other stuff like that. They are already part of a broken family, and community to end up with this kind of behaviour.
Some people pay attention to the things said by those they aim to control, and then feed that back to them. I could literally feel it tugging at my brain. It was one of the most visceral “I’m dodging a bullet right now” feelings I’ve ever had.
Critical thinking is a critical skill!
Also on the point of gangs, there’s a documentary that shines a great light on how people fall into it, and on the other side of the coin, parts of law enforcement: The House I Live In.