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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

#991

Post by franga2000 »

What is it with all this history-erasing lately? And it seems to be happening on all sides of the political spectrum!

Not too long ago, Diary of A Young Girl (Anne Frank) was removed from our national school curriculum as well as some more local war-time texts, and it seems that every vaguely-objectionable author is getting defacto banned from every place a person could reasonably be expected to look for them.

Socialism is being equated with Fascism, literally anything you do or don't do is considered active opression... I know the horseshoe theory iw a bit of a meme, but this isn't even a horseshoe anymore, it's a fucking möbius strip!

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

#992

Post by dudeinjapan »

Shish2k wrote: post #748
crististm wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

De-platforming for decades?

If a TV station broadcast a daytime TV show containing violence, racism, and a female nipple - which aspect would they get in the most legal trouble for? I’m neither a lawyer nor an American (I assume we’re talking about America here), but my reading and experience would suggest that the first is glorified, the second is tolerated, and the third can result in hundreds of millions of dollars of fines even if it’s a fr…

For America, I was going to say:

- violence: tolerated

- nipple: becoming more accepted, barring antiquated FCC rules that only really impact things like Superbowl. streaming seems to completely allow it.

- dirty words (f-bomb, s-bomb, etc.): roughly same as nipple. Yippie kie-yay Mister Falcon.

- racism: depictions of historical racism, e.g. History Channel are fine. racial slurs, racialized depictions (Apu on Simpsons) risk randomly getting episodes or entire series effectively banned (delisted and never shown again). applies to actors' and producers' personal lives, twitter feeds, etc.

- sexism, other-isms: racism-lite. there is a bigger emphasis on sexism in personal lives vs. racism in the actual show content. Seinfeld wasn't cancelled over Michael Richard's Laugh Factory incident and there are tons of sexist tropes on 80's/90's sitcoms that haven't haven't (yet) resulted in cancellation.

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

#993

Post by Shish2k »

crististm wrote: post #713
Shish2k wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness People (eg, sex workers) have been getting deplatformed (often with the government assisting in - or requiring - the deplatforming!) for decades, and I didn’t hear the free-speech / right-wing types complaining. But now that some private companies don’t want to support racism, it’s a brand new problem we need to fight against? :P (I agree with the overall point that c…

De-platforming for decades?

A new day, a new example - “Utah bill would require activated porn filter on new phones” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26362605

IMO “Government requires a filter” is a waaaay bigger problem than “private company decides to stop selling a thing"

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

#994

Post by tired-dev »

hayd wrote: post #982
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

Compare to Charlie Hebdo. Suppose, after the massacre, retailers "chose" not offer it in stores (because if they didn't there may be fatal consequences). Should that really be celebrated as "freedom to"? Isn't Ebay acting here similarly over a preemptive concern of blowback from a small group of determined activists? Freedom to cower.

Are you actually comparing literal murder by religious extremists to "big corporation doesn't want to sell these racist caricatures"?

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

#995

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

Bostonian wrote: post #3

Why should eBay override the wants of buyers in this way? How many people think the continued sale of Dr. Seuss books is doing harm? I think there are opportunities for less woke companies to gain share.

Maybe they just don't want to? Maybe some employees really abhor the idea of having any part in it?

Personally, I wouldn't necessarily care too much. But these people's opinions are just as valid as the other two participants' to that transaction.

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

#996

Post by LocalH »

avesi wrote: post #892
mc32 wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know lots of people find all kinds of books offensive for all sorts of reasons (see the banned book week). Are you saying your bannings are the true bannings and others are illegitimate bannings? Or should they all be equally banned? Are religious conservatives okay to get their list of bad books banned?

No, because they are not culturally dominant right now.

So basically, "might makes right". How savage that feels.

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

#997

Post by djoldman »

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #803
djoldman wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To what principle are you referring?

Don't you think that the owners of websites should have the right to control what content is on the website?

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

#998

Post by tjalfi »

whitepaint wrote: post #612
mikaeluman wrote: post #570

It’s bad enough that the company self-cancels the books. But now we also can’t even have a secondary market for what already exists. People have severely underestimated the influence these woke people have. In my company, we receive forms from clients asking us to survey our employees for their sexual preferences and racial categories, essentially based on the same nomenclature used in nazi Germany. It is completely…

> In my company, we receive forms from clients asking us to survey our employees for their sexual preferences and racial categories Wait, what? Is this legal?

This is common[0] in the legal industry; most such agreements aren't public.

[0] https://www.diversitylab.com/knowledge-sharing/clients-push-...

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

#999

Post by woko »

john_moscow wrote: post #297

I think, the social mechanics of this process is very simple. Ability to tell others what to do is called power. Some people are more power-hungry than others, so they seek ways to assert themselves over others. That's a perfectly normal human thing to do. What matters is the way you would achieve power in a society. Getting power through building up your name as a notable researcher or author is one thing. Playing f…

I would add that "politics" is all about seizing and exerting power over other people's lives. And a small minority of people can seize the power if they are smart enough, even in a democracy, because the majority of people are apathetic with respect to politics and do not envision the stakes, so it is possible to win them over through propaganda and misinformation.

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

#1000

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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…

> Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant

Wrong. From the third paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

"""Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[4]"""

First, offensive caricatures can fall squarely into "libel" and "slander" and harming someone's dignity.

Second, EBay is not being forced to delist the books by the government.

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