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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

#511

About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.

I dont think anyone who ever said this actually talked to university students

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

#512

Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…

Reasonable minds lost this battle already. Cancel everything, burn all the books, this is the new way.

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

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this doesn't even make sense to me. No one asked eBay to do this. I cringe at racial stereotypes as much as the next guy, but eBay is the flee market of the internet. The whole point is that you can buy/sell anything there as long as it's legal.

three words: corporate virtue signalling

[deleted]

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

#515
post #29

What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet any accusations, and, no matter how ridiculous they look at first, it will lead to a race of who is taking them most seriously. Something definitely is broken. Look at what happened to the "okay". 4chan forced that meme 5 years ago in what they thought is a mi…

> audience gasped in disbelief when one of the sketches included "o"-word

Sorry, what ‘o’ word? I'm seriously asking.

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

#516

It's weird that these books got pulled from circulation in the first place; the offensiveness is relatively mild (especially for the time), and quite a few of these have historical and literary significance (including the very first children's book published under the "Dr. Seuss" pen name). eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies is just icing on the weirdness cake. This is the…

> eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies eBay is not "unilaterally" deciding anything. I can't remember the last time I bought or sold anything on eBay for instance. As I see it, they probably want to avoid the resulting controversy from any of these items, and don't want anything to do with them on their platform. As an immigrant to the US, this is what I don't get. Isn't the…

> Isn't the whole idea of capitalism supposed to be that eBay's delisting is an opportunity for ten other websites specializing in obscure Dr. Seuss books to pop up and eat their business?

It is. And don't get me wrong: eBay's well within their rights to restrict what people can buy and sell on their platform. It's just weird that this is where they draw the line; the message here seems to be "we're totally fine with selling things depicting racist caricatures, except for these old children's books".

That is: eBay having the right to do something does not make them above criticism or scrutiny.

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

#517
Note that at least eBay is not making up the rules on the fly; their "offensive material policy" has existed since at least 2018 and it includes "we don't allow items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance". http://web.archive.org/web/20180705090957/https://www.ebay.c...

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

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets be fair, "If I ran the zoo" is pretty blatantly racist.

Let's be fair, this is just an opinion, and very subjective at that

"helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant" is subjective to you?

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

#519

Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…

The only thing that truly bothers me is the lying and hypocrisy. I don't care what ebay does and doesn't allow. I do care about the ongoing lie that their removals have anything at all to do with offensive or discriminatory material. The Seuss books are being disallowed because eBay decided allowing them would cost more profit than it generated. End of story. They don't give a damn about racism and offensive depictio…

Whatever way eBay's PR/Marketing team may spin it, they are a business and want to protect their bottom line. I don't agree with the depictions in these books, and I think it was the right choice to stop publishing them (also to protect the publisher's bottom line), but also I don't agree with scrubbing existing copies from existence. But eBay is a business and has a right to deny whatever they want on their platform. That's capitalism, baby!

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

#520

Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…

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.
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