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Amazon Pulls Books That Promote Unscientific Autism ‘Cures’

171 points by tareqak 8y ago

alanfranz 8y ago
I don't know whether I agree. The world is full of shitty materials and content. Should Amazon, or other intermediaries, be allowed such interferences? Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold?
- onewhonknocks 8y ago
  Shouldn't a merchant be able to decide for themselves which products they want to carry or not carry on their shelves (both physical and digital)? Is the alternative that a merchant should be forced to carry a product against their will?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    In theory yes but if a private institution has a lot of market power like amazon has they can effectively shape the public discourse with their censorship. Which indicates to me that big operations are dangerous for democracy.
    - tanilama 8y ago
      Then maybe we should cancel big television or news networks. Nowadays, every one of them are not even pretending they are unbiased, how is that better than take down 2 books selling pseudo science? And do we need a democratic process to decide whether certain treatment is acceptable? That smells suspiciously close to the anti-vaxxer argument.
    - lovehashbrowns 8y ago
      Amazon doesn't sell Nazi flags. Is that censorship, and does that keep such flags from public discourse?
  - educationdata 8y ago
    You are making a straw-man argument. Nobody here is claiming Amazon should be forced to sell a Book. The concern is whether it is a right thing for Amazon to do, not whether Amazon has the Right to do it.
    - clucas 8y ago
      Here is what the grandparent comment said: > Should Amazon, or other intermediaries, be allowed such interferences? It's not a strawman to read that, then ask: > Shouldn't a merchant be able to decide for themselves which products they want to carry or not carry on their shelves (both physical and digital)? > Is the alternative that a merchant should be forced to carry a product against their will? edit: formatting
  - mikeq101101 8y ago
    Of course they should be able to, but that's not what OP asked.
    - mikeq101101 8y ago
      Sorry, I misread OP. People treat "should do" and "should be able to do" frequently as the same thing in these cases (Twitter and "free speech" is another such case).
- mc32 8y ago
  Yeah, this is a bit hairy. On the one hand it's dubious information, on the other hand it goes against free speech and Amazon becomes arbiter of what is right and wrong, allowed and disallowed. I don't think this should be Amazon's job. In this case, one can make the case this is the right decision, but the same decision later on may result in the wrong decision. Should they go against conspiracy theorists? JFK, whatever.
- lph 8y ago
  Platforms can censor content however they like. Amazon isn’t a government entity and has no responsibility to provide a platform for free speech. Why would they?
- ashleyn 8y ago
  Private, yes. Government, no. Amazon is courageously admitting that ignorance is still ignorance and that they have the right not to comply with ignorance. Dangerous, anti-science literature was on the top of their own charts, and ignoring that has moral implications. Amazon has decided indulging populist fervor and the "wisdom of crowds" does not rank higher than protecting general welfare where they have an influence.
  - asdffdsa 8y ago
    Should Freud's books be pulled too for being unscientific?
    - mikestew 8y ago
      Your question would be better directed to Amazon's buyers, as it's their store and they get to decide what they do and do not sell.
    - ashleyn 8y ago
      Freud's books aren't currently inflaming a public health crisis. That being said, if Amazon felt as such, they could do it for whatever reason they felt. Or not do it. The point is that if they're not a monopoly, private or public, the argument that populism supercedes their property rights is a very poor one.
      - asdffdsa 8y ago
        Freud's books when they came out were wildly inflammatory. I'm not really arguing against Amazon's right to not publish, I'm trying to figure out when it is acceptable for people to censor ideas so others will not discover them, and on what basis something should be deemed 'ignorant' given the complication that each individual is subject to the ignorance of their time.
        toomanyrichies 8y ago
        > I’m trying to figure out when it is acceptable for people to censor ideas so others will not discover them Perhaps when not doing so would perpetuate the resurgence of a life-threatening disease that, until 20 years ago, was virtually eliminated in the US? > each individual is subject to the ignorance of their time. True. They are also subject to the responsibility to think rationally and use the provable, reproducible evidence at their disposal to make decisions. Especially when those decisions have life-or-death implications not only for their children, but others’ children as well.
- tanilama 8y ago
  I think it is allowed, it is private company anyway. This is not a free speech debate. Amazon can choose not to sell something and it is entirely their rights to not offer service to certain people, as a sellers' platform.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mannykannot 8y ago
  > Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold? No, and it is beside the point. What you are asking for is that the government should order Amazon to sell snake oil.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  If we want to say that companies that have gotten to a size should be regulated like the government, then we should create clear cutoffs for when that is, because the short working memory of the public isn't sufficient to decide these matters. Otherwise, curation is something that I'd definitely pay for, something consumers definitely want.
- imgabe 8y ago
  Back in the days of physical bookstores, it was not possible to offer every available book for sale. Some person at Barnes and Noble or Your Local Bookshop, would have to review which books they would have in the store, and which they would not. They would use a variety of factors, mostly how likely they thought it was the book would sell, but certainly they were free to use their judgement in whatever other way they liked to determine which books they offered for sale. This curation was a part of the value the bookstore provided. Nobody ever demanded that they be forced to sell every single book in existence, or even that they explain why they did or didn't want to sell a particular book. Why should Amazon be any different? If Joe Crackpot wants to sell his book online, he can make a website with a shopping cart and offer it for sale himself. He has no standing to demand Amazon's assistance in selling it. Literally all intermediaries are making these decisions all the time. If I cook up some homemade ketchup in my bathtup, should I be able to force Giant to stock it on their shelves? Does Bloomingdale's have to stock their racks with whatever rags any aspiring fashionista sews together? Should Best Buy be forced to stock my homemade Fitbit that I soldered together in the garage? No, of course not. They have people whose entire job it is to wade through all the available products and find the best ones to sell. There's nothing wrong with that.
- kilo_bravo_3 8y ago
  Amazon sells surgery manuals: https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Manual-Surgery-Lippincott-ebook/dp/B017ACIHZU https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Manual-Surgery-Lippincott-... If they carried a surgery manual that told its readers that the proper procedure for a tonsillectomy involved removing the spleen, it would be wrong to sell it. Refusing to sell a book that tells its readers that autism can be cured by drinking camel milk or bathing in chlorine dioxide is not wrong, it is the correct and moral stance. If they sold a car repair manual that told its readers the proper way to fix a clogged fuel injector was to stuff bananas into the throttle body, I would expect that Amazon would refuse to sell it once it was brought to their attention. I don't understand the cries of "censorship!"
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    What's the measure of harm? They sell a ton of self-help books, ... if the advice isn't scientifically beneficial then do those books get dropped? Drinking camel milk is probably not harming people (unless they have an allergy/intolerance, but that's besides the point). Do people with investing systems have to prove they work? No, I don't want to see people harming themselves or their kids with bad advice.
    - crooked-v 8y ago
      > Drinking camel milk is probably not harming people (unless they have an allergy/intolerance, but that's besides the point). Drinking camel milk with the presumption that it will cure cancer is comparatively harmful, given the end result as contrasted to actually being treated for cancer with medicine. > Do people with investing systems have to prove they work? The analogy in this case would be an investing system that provably does not work under even the most casual inspection, like "set your money on fire and bury the ashes and it will grow a money tree".
- dontbenebby 8y ago
  >Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold? You'd like judges to be able to force merchants to stock specific books?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
I agree with everybody that says that these books are dangerous and removing is probably a net positive in the short term. However, I worry in the long term that we are normalizing censorship of ideas. It is not just simply a case of book stores not having enough shelf space so they had to make editorial choices. Amazon, for all practical purposes has no limits on the number of books it can stock. In addition, successfully getting Amazon to do this will embolden people to pressure other book sellers as well. In addition, there is no appeal to obscenity or legal fraud as the reason. The book is being banned simply because we do not like the ideas it promotes.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I think we are on a very dangerous path if we are giving private institutions vast censorship power they have through their dominant market position. Where will the censorship stop? And if this gets more acceptable they will censor mainly for their own purposes and not for the general good.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >Where will the censorship stop? Believe it or not, not everything is a slippery slope to a boot stomping on a human face forever.
  - ibm5100 8y ago
    Not just run of the mill private institutions either, a company that has a monopoly on the distribution of books. This Atlantic article has their market share of all book sales at 65% in 2014. I wonder if that number has risen since then. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/amazon-has-basically-no-competition-among-online-booksellers/371917/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/amazon-...
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Not really. Order it from a local bookshop, direct from publisher or author. It's still a million miles from the old days when book shops, even the largest could only carry a tiny fraction of what was available. Even then there were fringe shops that sold plenty of conspiracy and alternative views that main publishers, wholesalers and retailers wouldn't touch.
brink 8y ago
I've seen a number of people portraying this censorship (as I had feared) as "proving them right", or making people wonder "what are they hiding?", further fueling the anti-vax fire. You just can't win. Hopefully this is only an initial reaction and will eventually die down. Personally, I don't know how I feel about normalizing censorship. Freedom of information is a large part of how we reached the peak of our current civilization. How long before this goes too far? However, any organization that proliferates plagues should be labeled as a terrorist organization. The anti-vax community is like a terrorist organization with "good" intentions, and they're just regular misinformed people all around us. Very tricky situation indeed..
- mikestew 8y ago
  You just can't win. Nope. You think you just need to win the argument about vaccinations. No, you need to win the argument about how to think like a rational adult, whether you're thinking about breakfast or whether to vaccinate your kids. Personally, I don't know how I feel about normalizing censorship. I know how I feel about stores that refuse to sell what they feel are defective products.
  - brenfrow 8y ago
    > you need to win the argument about how to think like a rational adult I was watching the flat earther special on netflix last night and I was thinking, that although its ridiculous to believe in these things, society needs people who are distrustful and challenge science/popular consensus etc... thats also part of being a rational adult. I use to believe fat was bad for me, I need orthotics for my feet, babies need to be bottle fed in sleep in a separate crib, I need to be on all sorts of medications instead of eating healthy etc... but thats just because I was butt owned by what societies consensus was.
    - everdev 8y ago
      And we used to think Newton knew everything there was to know about gravity until Einstein proposed a new theory. In the marketplace of ideas, some are going to be really, really bad, just like products. But over time they go out of business, just like the idea of witch trials or human sacrifice to appease the gods. It's just that for those of us that don't agree it seems to take forever because we already know it's a bad idea -- what's taking them so long? The real problem is not the bad ideas themselves, but that when people think they know how to pick the good ideas from the bad ones and are OK silencing the bad ideas with force instead of debate. See: Galileo.
ilamont 8y ago
Tip of the iceberg. I just searched Amazon for "cure for cancer" and the first result is "Curing Cancer with Carrots." The cover features a carrot wearing a lab coat and stethoscope, and it has 168 customer reviews, 89% of them 5 star. Almost all of the nonfiction books and videos on the first search result page promote similar "cures," with only one book based on medical research at spot #8 (The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer) and a book about the engineer who invented the universal microscope (The Cancer Cure That Worked: 50 Years of Suppression) People should be able to share their personal stories, but Amazon and other tech companies have a responsibility to society, too. Claims like these can have real life and death outcomes. It's not enough to shrug and blame the algorithm because more people click on a book with a carrot on the front cover.
- educationdata 8y ago
  Exactly. It shows Amazon is making a bad precedent. If Amazon removes books deemed to be unscientific, does this mean books have not been removed are deemed to be scientific? Should Amazon has a science department to validate all medical books?
  - mattigames 8y ago
    Nowhere at all is Amazon saying the books where removed for being unscientific, Amazon only removed them without making a public statemented about it; the word "unscientific" was only brought up by this article and similar ones.
  - toomanyrichies 8y ago
    > If Amazon removes books deemed to be unscientific, does this mean books have not been removed are deemed to be scientific? An allegory: I'm currently using Craigslist to look for an apartment in San Francisco. I frequently encounter posts which are obviously scammy. I disregard them because I know that Craigslist can't possibly have the resources to police all its listings. That said, I still appreciate it when they take the time to remove a scammy post. And I don't by any stretch of the imagination think that the listings I find on Craigslist have been endorsed by Craigslist. Spot-checking and removing garbage posts from Craigslist (or books from Amazon) may be a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole, but it's still better than letting those platforms turn into the Wild West.
ibm5100 8y ago
A private individual raped my wife last night but I can't pursue charges because it wasn't the government.
Pharmakon 8y ago
It’s not censorship, it’s curating a storefront. The laws that protect us from actual censorship also protect Amazon’s right to make choices about what they sell. I don’t like that WalMart refuses to stock anything short of the nebulous American concept of “family friendly” yet I respect their right to make that choice. I have the choice to not do business with them.
- jdsully 8y ago
  It may be curation - but let’s not forget Amazon started with the premise that they could serve the long tail. Bezos used to talk about how terrible it was that a physical book store would have such limited selection. They doubled down on this strategy with their on demand printing service - bypassing traditional publishing gate keepers. When someone dispenses with long-standing policy it is noteworthy.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    You can support the long-tail without facilitating people harming themselves or their children with demonstrable misinformation. There's long tail and long tail. Amazon can still sell books about how to repair and maintain a 1936-era WLW Crosley Radio without also selling books informing the unfortunate gullible about how to "treat" their children's autism by DIY at-home electoconvulsion therapy.
    - jdsully 8y ago
      Sure - but they didn’t have editorial review before. This is a dramatic change of policy for them. Due to a long history - books in particular are seen as a bellweather of a societies attitudes towards censorship.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - tzs 8y ago
    When Bezos talked about the limited selection of physical bookstores, I doubt that he was lamenting them not having enough garbage books available. I assume he was referring to there being way more good books than would fit in a physical bookstore.
sago 8y ago
Before we roll out the censorship talking points, it is worth being clear on a couple of details, I think: 1. Amazon have removed two books out of hundreds (probably orders of magnitude more) of anti-vax books. 2. The books they removed do not seem to be primarily anti-vax, but quack medical advice on treating autism. 3. The only one we have details of recommended bathing your autistic child in industrial bleach. Slippery slope arguments are one thing, but selling books advising how to abuse vulnerable children, is probably a libertarian argument to far for most.
- arghwhat 8y ago
  I suppose it's a matter of specifying your success criteria. If you goal is simply to not have an autistic child, then industrial bleach does wonders. In all seriousness, no punishment is severe enough for those willingly harming innocent children. If only we could force them to experience the pain and terror they caused with their own body.
- grawprog 8y ago
  >3. The only one we have details of recommended bathing your autistic child in industrial bleach. What the fuck? These weren't parody books were they? I just can't believe that was published in a book seriously promoting autism cures...that's so fucked...there's people out there stupid enough to follow that advice...
president 8y ago
Censorship is always touted as an absolute bad thing but in a world where a large segment of the population is ignorant of basic knowledge but has a voice due to the Internet, there doesn't appear to be another option. Like flat-earthers or hardcore religious people, there is no logic in the world that can change their minds. You simply have to block them. Especially, at least, when these things have the ability to harm others.
Someone1234 8y ago
Slight tangent: Could Autism even be curable? Obviously not by scammers/snake oil salesman, I'm talking legitimate science. From my understanding Autism is largely genetic[0], so without the ability to re-write someone's DNA (and the potential ramifications that could have), I don't know if a cure like that could ever exist. Although I guess Epigenetics[1] could be an interesting avenue of study. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_autism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_autism
- astine 8y ago
  Myopia is typically genetic but is can treated or cured (to a large degree) in a number of ways. Just because something is genetic doesn't mean that there is not treatment to effectively 'cure' it. The problem with autism is that we know so little about what causes it on bio-mechanical level that medical treatment is well beyond us. That may change in the future, but for now, there is nothing we can do.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    I'm not sure comparing eyeglasses to problems within formation of the brain is a very strong comparison. We haven't really cured anything like autism that I know of. But I agree we're a very long way away from curing something like autism, particularly if it required altering DNA/gene expression.
    - astine 8y ago
      The comparison is apt to the point I was making: that it is not the genetic nature of autism that makes it difficult to treat but our ignorance of its mechanisms (perhaps also the nature of the mechanisms themselves.) I think that you're confusing the etiology of the thing with the thing itself. Just as there is no reason to suspect that gene therapy would be necessary, there is no reason to suspect that it would be helpful in a person who has already developed autism.
rubyn00bie 8y ago
Everyone talking about free speech and censorship needs to hold the fuck on for a second... because context is about to play a huge part in this: If I was selling arsenic on amazon and labeling it as a cure for cancer would Amazon be in violation of our right to free speech for pulling it? If I was selling mentos, but labeling them birth control, would that be censorship if amazon pulled it? This is supposed to be medicine and it’s fucking lies. This is safety and soundness, it will hurt you or your children. If I’m selling you a cure for something, and that cure is BOTH harmful and does not work, then shutting me down isn’t censorship that’s fucking public safety. It’s even responsible for fuck’s sake.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  There is a well-developed legal system in the US and other countries for dealing with dangerous and fraudulent medical advice. The fact that this book can be legally sold is evidence that it either falls on the right side of the law or else nobody has pursued these legal claims. This is attempting to bypass this system by going straight to centralized censorship.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    An action by Amazon is not centralized to anything. They’re a private company and not a monopoly. They can choose to sell or not sell anything they please. Centralized censorship would be the government or an unavoidable private monopoly decreeing that this book shall be unavailable.
    - reader5000 8y ago
      What if Amazon began censoring authors of color?
      - mcphage 8y ago
        What if Amazon gave every new baby chocolate eclairs?
      - 8y ago
amerkhalid 8y ago
Amazon is private company and they are free to choose what they want to allow on their platform. Apparently they don't allow pornography which is a lot less harmful than these books. Authors are free to sell their snake oil on their own. However, when government forces Amazon to remove these books or force them to sell these book, then we have a serious problem.
Grue3 8y ago
So books that promote unscientific cures are not allowed now? Interesting. "And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up" -- The Holy Bible (James 5:15) http://www.fox8live.com/story/22052729/second-child-dies-after-parents-use-prayer-instead-of-seeking-medical-treatment/ http://www.fox8live.com/story/22052729/second-child-dies-aft...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Think we're overdue some scientific validation of the effectiveness, or otherwise, of this alternative cure. :)
- everdev 8y ago
  I think a reasonable argument can be made that the books they pulled are entirely about unscientific cures and the Bible is about much more than just the line you quoted.
  - Hamuko 8y ago
    Where do you draw the line though?
    - sofal 8y ago
      The comment you responded to literally gave an argument about where the line could be drawn. Do you not agree? I see this "where do you draw the line?" question asked a lot, and it seems that the usual intended purpose of it is to somehow give weight to the idea that it's too hard to draw a line somewhere and therefore we should maybe not even make the attempt. The fact is that there is an entire legal system we have set up to "draw the lines" on a huge number of ethical issues, and on top of that we have a whole world of extralegal organizational policies that can be argued back and forth. If you think there should not be any laws or policies concerning public safety on a particular issue, make an argument for it. Just because it is difficult to write policy or laws that take into account the right balance of freedom and safety doesn't mean we give up entirely.
    - 8y ago
aur09 8y ago
Now that Amazon has begun pulling books, they have set a precedent that dooms them to continue doing so to the potentially many thousands of others with bad information. This is acknowledgement that they have a responsibility as a marketplace for the information contained in the books they sell.
setquk 8y ago
We shouldn’t censor them because that has side effects when any sort of mechanism is introduced. However two laws should be made: 1. Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning. 2. Promoting non NHS / FDA etc approved medical advice should be a criminal offence and ends up with the publisher, author, owners being chucked in jail. The latter covers bullshit like homeopathy and Chinese herbal medicine as well. There’s no place for any of this in 2019. We should actively shame anyone partaking in this.
- steve19 8y ago
  The anti vaxxers would love vaccines mandated by law. It would be the quickest route to an entire population turning anti-vax and setting back humanity by 100 years. But I am all for banning bullshit claims made by ineffectual remedies.
  - llukas 8y ago
    I call bullshit. In my country child vaccination is mandated by law (parent may be cited if they don't do it, citations are handed very reluctantly, sometimes not at all). What recently happened (Nov 2018) was small measles outbreak - MMR vaccine sold out so fast extra emergency shipments were made to pharmacies.
  - setquk 8y ago
    If that happens, it'll be the greatest evolutionary step we have made for hundreds of years.
- everdev 8y ago
  > Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning Great, once you pass that law you'll have drug companies lobbying to get their vaccine listed on your "must inject by age X or get your kids taken away" list. Imagine the revenue for every kid in the country being mandated to inject your vaccine. Usually, our attempt to bring risk to 0 brings tyranny close to 100. The scenes of the government dragging a kid out of their parent's grasp and injecting a needle into their arms is straight out of any stereotypical dystopian novel. Yes, it can be frustrating fighting disinformation, but patience and kindness is almost always better in the long run IMO than force and punishment. I understand the desire to eliminate unnecessary risk, but getting everyone vaccinated and respecting individual freedom is not an easy task. Our country is more vaccinated than it's ever been, but the last few % might take longer than most people would like.
deleted 8y ago
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reader5000 8y ago
This simply opens up a place in the market for uncensored book sales. If I want an honest search of the web I don't go to Google because they heavily censor and bias their search results. If I want to peruse the true set of literature on a particular topic I don't go to Amazon for the same reasons. I really don't see this "safe space" strategy paying off for these major tech brands. The holier-than-thou internet simply makes itself irrelevant. People can tell the difference between an honest retrieval of information versus a heavily censored retrieval of information in accordance with some ideological canon.
- imgabe 8y ago
  If the "ideological canon" is that they only offer information that is consistent with observable reality, I don't have a problem with that.
  - reader5000 8y ago
    "Consensus" particularly in complex empirical areas (e.g. are eggs healthy?) is observably in constant flux with various strategic actors exerting heavy influence. For any question more complex than pure math there is always uncertainty and strategic bias.
    - imgabe 8y ago
      I very much doubt there is any flux around whether or not forcing your child to drink bleach will cure their autism. Personally, I am glad there are strategic actors exerting heavy influence on the "don't force your child to drink bleach" agenda. You can add me to the list: don't force your child to drink bleach. Ok?
      - reader5000 8y ago
        Thats fine but I get to decide if I want to buy a book about drinking bleach to cure autism, Amazon doesn't decide it for me.
hateful 8y ago
This was just mentioned on the Joe Rogan podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodsGp37M50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodsGp37M50 I forget the exact time it was mentioned, but it's in the first half somewhere. The author he's talking to mentions that his book is #20 when you search for autism because the first 19 were of the kind mentioned in this article. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the driver of this.
adeptus 8y ago
This is censorship, and it's a slippery slope. IMHO the right way to go about this, would be for amazon to attach a letter to the cover of the book saying something like: "We're sorry you bought this book, but we do believe in your right to choose what you do with your time and money, so we have not removed this book from our store. FYI, according to (insert number of) scientists and XYZ peered reviewed papers, the vast majority of the content of this book has been certified to be false and you should seriously question the author's recommendations before acting on them, as they may pose health risks. If you require further information, here's some websites & books that provide what is widely considered to be factual information on the matter".
- favorited 8y ago
  Why is it Amazon's responsibility to carry a product they don't want to, then independently supplement that product with their own editorializing? It's a bad product which they don't want to carry. They're a store. It's their prerogative to simply not sell that product.
  - kaybe 8y ago
    When a company gets that big, powerful and influential it can't just do whatever it wants anymore. From a European perspective I'd say this is an issue of freedom for society.
sgeisler 8y ago
Why are people so concerned about autism, aren't there much worse conditions? I know many genius people that would probably fall into the spectrum if ever tested. They are typically obsessed with some field of research and develop deep insight, which is valuable in an increasingly specialized society.
- llukas 8y ago
  Your "typically" is based on media showing few cases of highly functional people with autism. They do not show the rest.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  For every autistic savant you see, there's a dozen that you don't see that have severe communication and other mental issues and will never be able to survive and function as an adult without high levels of living assistance. As offensive as it is, the stereotype you see on reddit and YouTube comments of people with autism yelling "RREEEEEEEE" is sometimes a true one.
ryanmarsh 8y ago
Given the number of wacky yet effective treatments that western medicine has uncovered by accident I’d be more inclined to let people explore the information out there as they desire. Although uncovered under different circumstances Lorenzo’s oil is an interesting case, cannabinoids for cancer patients are another. Everybody thinks modern medicine is like CSI because a few people know how to use CRISPR. The reality for many people with common diseases is that the doctors a taking shots in the dark. In layman’s terms they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. I have far too much personal experience with such things to be blinded by the fancy motion graphics and splashy headlines. Being sick is a total shit show of incompetence.
nickysielicki 8y ago
Banning snake oil is never a part of a free society. People have a right to delude themselves. Imagine having a child with autism, you are overwhelmed by it, you are unwilling to accept what the doctors tell you. Who is Amazon, or anyone, to tell someone that they can't explore every avenue, and read whatever they want to deal with that grief? Think about the cathartic experience of reading this book and getting momentary hope that there's an answer to a problem that you've been told is unsolvable. It's psychologically like playing the lottery.
- CodeMage 8y ago
  It worries me that we seem to equate Amazon with society.
  - nickysielicki 8y ago
    Why is this such a pain point whenever an internet discussion of freedom comes up? Free speech and freedom are principles. These principles inspired the guarantees the Constitution claimed to make. But that does not mean that the government is the sole arbiter of freedom. The fact that Amazon bans a book means that Amazon does not appreciate the value of freedom and free speech, in the same sense that when the government limits speech, it means they do not value free speech and freedom. Freedom isn't just with respect to government. When Amazon filters books you can buy, that does mean we have less freedom, especially when Amazon is a filter through which we are able to purchase most goods. No, your first amendment rights haven't been violated. But yes, we have less freedom.
    - raquo 8y ago
      Seems like you just want your freedoms to trample over Amazon's freedoms. Why? Because they're big? You put your personal interpretation of the general principle of freedom of speech above actual rights and freedoms. Nothing noble about that.
      - nickysielicki 8y ago
exabrial 8y ago
I'm totally fine with this. Sell your books in a store that specializes in conspiracy theories along with the anti-vax, flat-earther, anti-gmo, essential oil and anti-global warming people.
whiddershins 8y ago
I think it is easy to get distracted about whether or not Amazon has "the right" to do this. The argument for private businesses making their own choices is strong, the argument for them being an effective monopoly is strong, I'm sure many other arguments are strong. What occurs to me, and especially after listening to the second Joe Rogan/Jack Dorsey and co interview, is two dimensions of critically important inquiry: - What effect do policies and procedures like this have? How are they perceived? What are the unintended consequences? What are the limits and conditions surround the erection and enforcement of these policies? What is likely to be the next set of things removed? What are the forces that guide the decision making of the organization removing content? - What kind of world do we want to live in? Do these actions move us closer to that world, once all relevant and foreseeable consequences are taken in to account? What ability or mechanism exists to change course if the policy doesn't have the intended effect? Is there a way books can be reinstated? The reality, as I see it, is the policies surrounding content moderation have tremendous future impact potential for culture and human experience. We should make sure there is a broad and deep debate, not arbitrary action that takes its validity merely by existing. That's called "might makes right."
throwawaysea 8y ago
WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations. From Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship), where there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept: > the institution, system, or practice of censoring From Oxford (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship), where again there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept: > The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. We know Amazon is a private corporation. That's irrelevant, as such actions are censorship regardless. So please stop repeating the false claim that this isn't censorship because Amazon can do whatever it wants as a private entity. WHY FREE SPEECH MATTERS Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely valuable to defend, because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability of society. Furthermore, making available ideas that challenge current understanding is necessary if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking society. Free societies are durable over the long term when they protect these rights at all times, for all people, for all ideologies. As a rule of thumb, if the speech in question is not advocating for direct physical violence, it should be permitted. Getting into the business of censoring indirect or non-physical harm (and similarly, judging what is scientific/pseudo-scientific/unscientific) is a huge slippery slope. We could frame virtually any idea as having some downstream negative externality and suggest that it should be disallowed. For example, capitalism, socialism, and communism could all be attacked in this manner. Should books on those topic be dropped? On the topic of health: our current scientific understanding is not bulletproof. It may never fully be. Look at how much our understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet has changed, just over the last 100 years of human existence. During that time, various individuals (e.g. scientists), companies, governments (via agencies like the FDA), and other institutions expressed high-degrees of confidence in beliefs that went on to be disproved over time. It would be a mistake to only allow ideas with broad scientific consensus today. People should be allowed to decide for themselves which institutions and parties and ideas to trust, and to what extent. Large platforms (privately-owned or otherwise) should not get in the way of that access if we want to maintain liquidity of information exchange. WHY PRIVATE PLATFORMS' CENSORSHIP IS CONCERNING Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes. The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.
anigbrowl 8y ago
Relevant to this topic: trolls and bots amplify the online vaccine debate, eg https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.3045...
dbg31415 8y ago
This is censorship. Two wrongs don't make a right.
theNJR 8y ago
This is complicated. Anti-vax, flat earth and other ideologies masked as science have turned into virus', distributed over social. At the same time, people with all sorts of ideologies are shouting down facts they don't agree with. Scientists researching potential behavior and psychological treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome are being targeted on Twitter so aggressively that many are giving up on the research, and some journals are pulling their findings (1). What happens when these people scream until Amazon pulls books about it? A whole field of helpful research could be burried for decades. These ideological battles used to be local. Now they are global and it's causing real harm. We've discussed this previously. (2) “Any information system of sufficient complexity will inevitably become infected with viruses - viruses generated from within itself.” (1) https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/science-socialmedia/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/science-... (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858
mikeash 8y ago
I did a quick search on Amazon for pornography. Nothing. Pretty sure there never has been. Amazon (and pretty much everyone else) has been censoring stuff from the start. This act is not a radical change in policy, it's a tiny shift in where they draw the line. I'm constantly baffled at how upset everyone gets in cases like this. I could see it when, for example, Tumblr started cracking down on stuff. But 99% of these cases involve companies that have always engaged in censorship (or curation or picking and choosing or whatever you want to call it) and are just making some adjustments.
imnotlost 8y ago
Next is getting rid of all the supplements that don't work for anything they're advertised for. That would be all of them.
mitchtbaum 8y ago
> ..chiding the company about the failure of its algorithms to “distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information.” Out of curiosity, what "process or set of rules to be followed in calculations" would give that result? (I hope my asking this doesn't mean I'm deluded too.)
- mitchtbaum 8y ago
  > I hope my asking this doesn't mean I'm deluded too. But if it somehow does, then perhaps more chiding will produce an algorithm which can prove that too.. cause I have doubts.
jelliclesfarm 8y ago
1. A letter went from CA politician Adam Schiff to Jeff Bezos ‘chiding’ him. It’s state interference. The question is..would amazon have pulled those books if Adam Schiff didn’t chide Jeff Bezos? 2. It’s not about Autism. It’s about protecting Vaccines. Every pharmaceutical drug comes with warnings and side effects. But it makes tons of dollars. Placebos don’t. 3. We live in a world where ..thanks to Monsanto..you can find Glyohosate in mother’s breast milk. And that’s ok. Because. Science. I am a woman. The tampons we use contains dioxin. So. Really. Colour me a cynic. The govt doesn’t care. This from CA where homeless people are allowed to live and freeze and shit and shoot up on the streets. And given clean needles to shoot up safely. $600 million dollars and no solution for the problem. Sometimes ‘problems’ are profitable. I see this drama and outrage as protection of Big Pharma. There is a tiny fringe population that accepts these books as gospel. There is nothing you can do to change them. This is merely a dry run for censorship and more of a prep for nanny state installation. I hope this isn’t encouraged.

171 points by tareqak 8y ago

I don't know whether I agree. The world is full of shitty materials and content. Should Amazon, or other intermediaries, be allowed such interferences? Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold?

onewhonknocks 8y ago
Shouldn't a merchant be able to decide for themselves which products they want to carry or not carry on their shelves (both physical and digital)? Is the alternative that a merchant should be forced to carry a product against their will?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  In theory yes but if a private institution has a lot of market power like amazon has they can effectively shape the public discourse with their censorship. Which indicates to me that big operations are dangerous for democracy.
  - tanilama 8y ago
    Then maybe we should cancel big television or news networks. Nowadays, every one of them are not even pretending they are unbiased, how is that better than take down 2 books selling pseudo science? And do we need a democratic process to decide whether certain treatment is acceptable? That smells suspiciously close to the anti-vaxxer argument.
  - lovehashbrowns 8y ago
    Amazon doesn't sell Nazi flags. Is that censorship, and does that keep such flags from public discourse?
- educationdata 8y ago
  You are making a straw-man argument. Nobody here is claiming Amazon should be forced to sell a Book. The concern is whether it is a right thing for Amazon to do, not whether Amazon has the Right to do it.
  - clucas 8y ago
    Here is what the grandparent comment said: > Should Amazon, or other intermediaries, be allowed such interferences? It's not a strawman to read that, then ask: > Shouldn't a merchant be able to decide for themselves which products they want to carry or not carry on their shelves (both physical and digital)? > Is the alternative that a merchant should be forced to carry a product against their will? edit: formatting
- mikeq101101 8y ago
  Of course they should be able to, but that's not what OP asked.
  - mikeq101101 8y ago
    Sorry, I misread OP. People treat "should do" and "should be able to do" frequently as the same thing in these cases (Twitter and "free speech" is another such case).
mc32 8y ago
Yeah, this is a bit hairy. On the one hand it's dubious information, on the other hand it goes against free speech and Amazon becomes arbiter of what is right and wrong, allowed and disallowed. I don't think this should be Amazon's job. In this case, one can make the case this is the right decision, but the same decision later on may result in the wrong decision. Should they go against conspiracy theorists? JFK, whatever.
lph 8y ago
Platforms can censor content however they like. Amazon isn’t a government entity and has no responsibility to provide a platform for free speech. Why would they?
ashleyn 8y ago
Private, yes. Government, no. Amazon is courageously admitting that ignorance is still ignorance and that they have the right not to comply with ignorance. Dangerous, anti-science literature was on the top of their own charts, and ignoring that has moral implications. Amazon has decided indulging populist fervor and the "wisdom of crowds" does not rank higher than protecting general welfare where they have an influence.
- asdffdsa 8y ago
  Should Freud's books be pulled too for being unscientific?
  - mikestew 8y ago
    Your question would be better directed to Amazon's buyers, as it's their store and they get to decide what they do and do not sell.
  - ashleyn 8y ago
    Freud's books aren't currently inflaming a public health crisis. That being said, if Amazon felt as such, they could do it for whatever reason they felt. Or not do it. The point is that if they're not a monopoly, private or public, the argument that populism supercedes their property rights is a very poor one.
    - asdffdsa 8y ago
      Freud's books when they came out were wildly inflammatory. I'm not really arguing against Amazon's right to not publish, I'm trying to figure out when it is acceptable for people to censor ideas so others will not discover them, and on what basis something should be deemed 'ignorant' given the complication that each individual is subject to the ignorance of their time.
      - toomanyrichies 8y ago
        > I’m trying to figure out when it is acceptable for people to censor ideas so others will not discover them Perhaps when not doing so would perpetuate the resurgence of a life-threatening disease that, until 20 years ago, was virtually eliminated in the US? > each individual is subject to the ignorance of their time. True. They are also subject to the responsibility to think rationally and use the provable, reproducible evidence at their disposal to make decisions. Especially when those decisions have life-or-death implications not only for their children, but others’ children as well.
tanilama 8y ago
I think it is allowed, it is private company anyway. This is not a free speech debate. Amazon can choose not to sell something and it is entirely their rights to not offer service to certain people, as a sellers' platform.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mannykannot 8y ago
> Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold? No, and it is beside the point. What you are asking for is that the government should order Amazon to sell snake oil.
threatofrain 8y ago
If we want to say that companies that have gotten to a size should be regulated like the government, then we should create clear cutoffs for when that is, because the short working memory of the public isn't sufficient to decide these matters. Otherwise, curation is something that I'd definitely pay for, something consumers definitely want.
imgabe 8y ago
Back in the days of physical bookstores, it was not possible to offer every available book for sale. Some person at Barnes and Noble or Your Local Bookshop, would have to review which books they would have in the store, and which they would not. They would use a variety of factors, mostly how likely they thought it was the book would sell, but certainly they were free to use their judgement in whatever other way they liked to determine which books they offered for sale. This curation was a part of the value the bookstore provided. Nobody ever demanded that they be forced to sell every single book in existence, or even that they explain why they did or didn't want to sell a particular book. Why should Amazon be any different? If Joe Crackpot wants to sell his book online, he can make a website with a shopping cart and offer it for sale himself. He has no standing to demand Amazon's assistance in selling it. Literally all intermediaries are making these decisions all the time. If I cook up some homemade ketchup in my bathtup, should I be able to force Giant to stock it on their shelves? Does Bloomingdale's have to stock their racks with whatever rags any aspiring fashionista sews together? Should Best Buy be forced to stock my homemade Fitbit that I soldered together in the garage? No, of course not. They have people whose entire job it is to wade through all the available products and find the best ones to sell. There's nothing wrong with that.
kilo_bravo_3 8y ago
Amazon sells surgery manuals: https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Manual-Surgery-Lippincott-ebook/dp/B017ACIHZU https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Manual-Surgery-Lippincott-... If they carried a surgery manual that told its readers that the proper procedure for a tonsillectomy involved removing the spleen, it would be wrong to sell it. Refusing to sell a book that tells its readers that autism can be cured by drinking camel milk or bathing in chlorine dioxide is not wrong, it is the correct and moral stance. If they sold a car repair manual that told its readers the proper way to fix a clogged fuel injector was to stuff bananas into the throttle body, I would expect that Amazon would refuse to sell it once it was brought to their attention. I don't understand the cries of "censorship!"
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  What's the measure of harm? They sell a ton of self-help books, ... if the advice isn't scientifically beneficial then do those books get dropped? Drinking camel milk is probably not harming people (unless they have an allergy/intolerance, but that's besides the point). Do people with investing systems have to prove they work? No, I don't want to see people harming themselves or their kids with bad advice.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    > Drinking camel milk is probably not harming people (unless they have an allergy/intolerance, but that's besides the point). Drinking camel milk with the presumption that it will cure cancer is comparatively harmful, given the end result as contrasted to actually being treated for cancer with medicine. > Do people with investing systems have to prove they work? The analogy in this case would be an investing system that provably does not work under even the most casual inspection, like "set your money on fire and bury the ashes and it will grow a money tree".
dontbenebby 8y ago
>Has any judge ordered such material not to be sold? You'd like judges to be able to force merchants to stock specific books?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

I agree with everybody that says that these books are dangerous and removing is probably a net positive in the short term. However, I worry in the long term that we are normalizing censorship of ideas. It is not just simply a case of book stores not having enough shelf space so they had to make editorial choices. Amazon, for all practical purposes has no limits on the number of books it can stock. In addition, successfully getting Amazon to do this will embolden people to pressure other book sellers as well. In addition, there is no appeal to obscenity or legal fraud as the reason. The book is being banned simply because we do not like the ideas it promotes.

maxxxxx 8y ago
I think we are on a very dangerous path if we are giving private institutions vast censorship power they have through their dominant market position. Where will the censorship stop? And if this gets more acceptable they will censor mainly for their own purposes and not for the general good.
- krapp 8y ago
  >Where will the censorship stop? Believe it or not, not everything is a slippery slope to a boot stomping on a human face forever.
- ibm5100 8y ago
  Not just run of the mill private institutions either, a company that has a monopoly on the distribution of books. This Atlantic article has their market share of all book sales at 65% in 2014. I wonder if that number has risen since then. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/amazon-has-basically-no-competition-among-online-booksellers/371917/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/amazon-...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Not really. Order it from a local bookshop, direct from publisher or author. It's still a million miles from the old days when book shops, even the largest could only carry a tiny fraction of what was available. Even then there were fringe shops that sold plenty of conspiracy and alternative views that main publishers, wholesalers and retailers wouldn't touch.

brink 8y ago

I've seen a number of people portraying this censorship (as I had feared) as "proving them right", or making people wonder "what are they hiding?", further fueling the anti-vax fire. You just can't win. Hopefully this is only an initial reaction and will eventually die down. Personally, I don't know how I feel about normalizing censorship. Freedom of information is a large part of how we reached the peak of our current civilization. How long before this goes too far? However, any organization that proliferates plagues should be labeled as a terrorist organization. The anti-vax community is like a terrorist organization with "good" intentions, and they're just regular misinformed people all around us. Very tricky situation indeed..

mikestew 8y ago
You just can't win. Nope. You think you just need to win the argument about vaccinations. No, you need to win the argument about how to think like a rational adult, whether you're thinking about breakfast or whether to vaccinate your kids. Personally, I don't know how I feel about normalizing censorship. I know how I feel about stores that refuse to sell what they feel are defective products.
- brenfrow 8y ago
  > you need to win the argument about how to think like a rational adult I was watching the flat earther special on netflix last night and I was thinking, that although its ridiculous to believe in these things, society needs people who are distrustful and challenge science/popular consensus etc... thats also part of being a rational adult. I use to believe fat was bad for me, I need orthotics for my feet, babies need to be bottle fed in sleep in a separate crib, I need to be on all sorts of medications instead of eating healthy etc... but thats just because I was butt owned by what societies consensus was.
  - everdev 8y ago
    And we used to think Newton knew everything there was to know about gravity until Einstein proposed a new theory. In the marketplace of ideas, some are going to be really, really bad, just like products. But over time they go out of business, just like the idea of witch trials or human sacrifice to appease the gods. It's just that for those of us that don't agree it seems to take forever because we already know it's a bad idea -- what's taking them so long? The real problem is not the bad ideas themselves, but that when people think they know how to pick the good ideas from the bad ones and are OK silencing the bad ideas with force instead of debate. See: Galileo.

ilamont 8y ago

Tip of the iceberg. I just searched Amazon for "cure for cancer" and the first result is "Curing Cancer with Carrots." The cover features a carrot wearing a lab coat and stethoscope, and it has 168 customer reviews, 89% of them 5 star. Almost all of the nonfiction books and videos on the first search result page promote similar "cures," with only one book based on medical research at spot #8 (The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer) and a book about the engineer who invented the universal microscope (The Cancer Cure That Worked: 50 Years of Suppression) People should be able to share their personal stories, but Amazon and other tech companies have a responsibility to society, too. Claims like these can have real life and death outcomes. It's not enough to shrug and blame the algorithm because more people click on a book with a carrot on the front cover.

educationdata 8y ago
Exactly. It shows Amazon is making a bad precedent. If Amazon removes books deemed to be unscientific, does this mean books have not been removed are deemed to be scientific? Should Amazon has a science department to validate all medical books?
- mattigames 8y ago
  Nowhere at all is Amazon saying the books where removed for being unscientific, Amazon only removed them without making a public statemented about it; the word "unscientific" was only brought up by this article and similar ones.
- toomanyrichies 8y ago
  > If Amazon removes books deemed to be unscientific, does this mean books have not been removed are deemed to be scientific? An allegory: I'm currently using Craigslist to look for an apartment in San Francisco. I frequently encounter posts which are obviously scammy. I disregard them because I know that Craigslist can't possibly have the resources to police all its listings. That said, I still appreciate it when they take the time to remove a scammy post. And I don't by any stretch of the imagination think that the listings I find on Craigslist have been endorsed by Craigslist. Spot-checking and removing garbage posts from Craigslist (or books from Amazon) may be a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole, but it's still better than letting those platforms turn into the Wild West.

ibm5100 8y ago

A private individual raped my wife last night but I can't pursue charges because it wasn't the government.

Pharmakon 8y ago

It’s not censorship, it’s curating a storefront. The laws that protect us from actual censorship also protect Amazon’s right to make choices about what they sell. I don’t like that WalMart refuses to stock anything short of the nebulous American concept of “family friendly” yet I respect their right to make that choice. I have the choice to not do business with them.

jdsully 8y ago
It may be curation - but let’s not forget Amazon started with the premise that they could serve the long tail. Bezos used to talk about how terrible it was that a physical book store would have such limited selection. They doubled down on this strategy with their on demand printing service - bypassing traditional publishing gate keepers. When someone dispenses with long-standing policy it is noteworthy.
- fixermark 8y ago
  You can support the long-tail without facilitating people harming themselves or their children with demonstrable misinformation. There's long tail and long tail. Amazon can still sell books about how to repair and maintain a 1936-era WLW Crosley Radio without also selling books informing the unfortunate gullible about how to "treat" their children's autism by DIY at-home electoconvulsion therapy.
  - jdsully 8y ago
    Sure - but they didn’t have editorial review before. This is a dramatic change of policy for them. Due to a long history - books in particular are seen as a bellweather of a societies attitudes towards censorship.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- tzs 8y ago
  When Bezos talked about the limited selection of physical bookstores, I doubt that he was lamenting them not having enough garbage books available. I assume he was referring to there being way more good books than would fit in a physical bookstore.

sago 8y ago

Before we roll out the censorship talking points, it is worth being clear on a couple of details, I think: 1. Amazon have removed two books out of hundreds (probably orders of magnitude more) of anti-vax books. 2. The books they removed do not seem to be primarily anti-vax, but quack medical advice on treating autism. 3. The only one we have details of recommended bathing your autistic child in industrial bleach. Slippery slope arguments are one thing, but selling books advising how to abuse vulnerable children, is probably a libertarian argument to far for most.

arghwhat 8y ago
I suppose it's a matter of specifying your success criteria. If you goal is simply to not have an autistic child, then industrial bleach does wonders. In all seriousness, no punishment is severe enough for those willingly harming innocent children. If only we could force them to experience the pain and terror they caused with their own body.
grawprog 8y ago
>3. The only one we have details of recommended bathing your autistic child in industrial bleach. What the fuck? These weren't parody books were they? I just can't believe that was published in a book seriously promoting autism cures...that's so fucked...there's people out there stupid enough to follow that advice...

president 8y ago

Censorship is always touted as an absolute bad thing but in a world where a large segment of the population is ignorant of basic knowledge but has a voice due to the Internet, there doesn't appear to be another option. Like flat-earthers or hardcore religious people, there is no logic in the world that can change their minds. You simply have to block them. Especially, at least, when these things have the ability to harm others.

Someone1234 8y ago

Slight tangent: Could Autism even be curable? Obviously not by scammers/snake oil salesman, I'm talking legitimate science. From my understanding Autism is largely genetic[0], so without the ability to re-write someone's DNA (and the potential ramifications that could have), I don't know if a cure like that could ever exist. Although I guess Epigenetics[1] could be an interesting avenue of study. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_autism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_autism

astine 8y ago
Myopia is typically genetic but is can treated or cured (to a large degree) in a number of ways. Just because something is genetic doesn't mean that there is not treatment to effectively 'cure' it. The problem with autism is that we know so little about what causes it on bio-mechanical level that medical treatment is well beyond us. That may change in the future, but for now, there is nothing we can do.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  I'm not sure comparing eyeglasses to problems within formation of the brain is a very strong comparison. We haven't really cured anything like autism that I know of. But I agree we're a very long way away from curing something like autism, particularly if it required altering DNA/gene expression.
  - astine 8y ago
    The comparison is apt to the point I was making: that it is not the genetic nature of autism that makes it difficult to treat but our ignorance of its mechanisms (perhaps also the nature of the mechanisms themselves.) I think that you're confusing the etiology of the thing with the thing itself. Just as there is no reason to suspect that gene therapy would be necessary, there is no reason to suspect that it would be helpful in a person who has already developed autism.

rubyn00bie 8y ago

Everyone talking about free speech and censorship needs to hold the fuck on for a second... because context is about to play a huge part in this: If I was selling arsenic on amazon and labeling it as a cure for cancer would Amazon be in violation of our right to free speech for pulling it? If I was selling mentos, but labeling them birth control, would that be censorship if amazon pulled it? This is supposed to be medicine and it’s fucking lies. This is safety and soundness, it will hurt you or your children. If I’m selling you a cure for something, and that cure is BOTH harmful and does not work, then shutting me down isn’t censorship that’s fucking public safety. It’s even responsible for fuck’s sake.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
There is a well-developed legal system in the US and other countries for dealing with dangerous and fraudulent medical advice. The fact that this book can be legally sold is evidence that it either falls on the right side of the law or else nobody has pursued these legal claims. This is attempting to bypass this system by going straight to centralized censorship.
- code_duck 8y ago
  An action by Amazon is not centralized to anything. They’re a private company and not a monopoly. They can choose to sell or not sell anything they please. Centralized censorship would be the government or an unavoidable private monopoly decreeing that this book shall be unavailable.
  - reader5000 8y ago
    What if Amazon began censoring authors of color?
    - mcphage 8y ago
      What if Amazon gave every new baby chocolate eclairs?
    - 8y ago

amerkhalid 8y ago

Amazon is private company and they are free to choose what they want to allow on their platform. Apparently they don't allow pornography which is a lot less harmful than these books. Authors are free to sell their snake oil on their own. However, when government forces Amazon to remove these books or force them to sell these book, then we have a serious problem.

Grue3 8y ago

So books that promote unscientific cures are not allowed now? Interesting. "And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up" -- The Holy Bible (James 5:15) http://www.fox8live.com/story/22052729/second-child-dies-after-parents-use-prayer-instead-of-seeking-medical-treatment/ http://www.fox8live.com/story/22052729/second-child-dies-aft...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Think we're overdue some scientific validation of the effectiveness, or otherwise, of this alternative cure. :)
everdev 8y ago
I think a reasonable argument can be made that the books they pulled are entirely about unscientific cures and the Bible is about much more than just the line you quoted.
- Hamuko 8y ago
  Where do you draw the line though?
  - sofal 8y ago
    The comment you responded to literally gave an argument about where the line could be drawn. Do you not agree? I see this "where do you draw the line?" question asked a lot, and it seems that the usual intended purpose of it is to somehow give weight to the idea that it's too hard to draw a line somewhere and therefore we should maybe not even make the attempt. The fact is that there is an entire legal system we have set up to "draw the lines" on a huge number of ethical issues, and on top of that we have a whole world of extralegal organizational policies that can be argued back and forth. If you think there should not be any laws or policies concerning public safety on a particular issue, make an argument for it. Just because it is difficult to write policy or laws that take into account the right balance of freedom and safety doesn't mean we give up entirely.
  - 8y ago

aur09 8y ago

Now that Amazon has begun pulling books, they have set a precedent that dooms them to continue doing so to the potentially many thousands of others with bad information. This is acknowledgement that they have a responsibility as a marketplace for the information contained in the books they sell.

setquk 8y ago

We shouldn’t censor them because that has side effects when any sort of mechanism is introduced. However two laws should be made: 1. Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning. 2. Promoting non NHS / FDA etc approved medical advice should be a criminal offence and ends up with the publisher, author, owners being chucked in jail. The latter covers bullshit like homeopathy and Chinese herbal medicine as well. There’s no place for any of this in 2019. We should actively shame anyone partaking in this.

steve19 8y ago
The anti vaxxers would love vaccines mandated by law. It would be the quickest route to an entire population turning anti-vax and setting back humanity by 100 years. But I am all for banning bullshit claims made by ineffectual remedies.
- llukas 8y ago
  I call bullshit. In my country child vaccination is mandated by law (parent may be cited if they don't do it, citations are handed very reluctantly, sometimes not at all). What recently happened (Nov 2018) was small measles outbreak - MMR vaccine sold out so fast extra emergency shipments were made to pharmacies.
- setquk 8y ago
  If that happens, it'll be the greatest evolutionary step we have made for hundreds of years.
everdev 8y ago
> Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning Great, once you pass that law you'll have drug companies lobbying to get their vaccine listed on your "must inject by age X or get your kids taken away" list. Imagine the revenue for every kid in the country being mandated to inject your vaccine. Usually, our attempt to bring risk to 0 brings tyranny close to 100. The scenes of the government dragging a kid out of their parent's grasp and injecting a needle into their arms is straight out of any stereotypical dystopian novel. Yes, it can be frustrating fighting disinformation, but patience and kindness is almost always better in the long run IMO than force and punishment. I understand the desire to eliminate unnecessary risk, but getting everyone vaccinated and respecting individual freedom is not an easy task. Our country is more vaccinated than it's ever been, but the last few % might take longer than most people would like.

deleted 8y ago

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reader5000 8y ago

This simply opens up a place in the market for uncensored book sales. If I want an honest search of the web I don't go to Google because they heavily censor and bias their search results. If I want to peruse the true set of literature on a particular topic I don't go to Amazon for the same reasons. I really don't see this "safe space" strategy paying off for these major tech brands. The holier-than-thou internet simply makes itself irrelevant. People can tell the difference between an honest retrieval of information versus a heavily censored retrieval of information in accordance with some ideological canon.

imgabe 8y ago
If the "ideological canon" is that they only offer information that is consistent with observable reality, I don't have a problem with that.
- reader5000 8y ago
  "Consensus" particularly in complex empirical areas (e.g. are eggs healthy?) is observably in constant flux with various strategic actors exerting heavy influence. For any question more complex than pure math there is always uncertainty and strategic bias.
  - imgabe 8y ago
    I very much doubt there is any flux around whether or not forcing your child to drink bleach will cure their autism. Personally, I am glad there are strategic actors exerting heavy influence on the "don't force your child to drink bleach" agenda. You can add me to the list: don't force your child to drink bleach. Ok?
    - reader5000 8y ago
      Thats fine but I get to decide if I want to buy a book about drinking bleach to cure autism, Amazon doesn't decide it for me.

hateful 8y ago

This was just mentioned on the Joe Rogan podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodsGp37M50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dodsGp37M50 I forget the exact time it was mentioned, but it's in the first half somewhere. The author he's talking to mentions that his book is #20 when you search for autism because the first 19 were of the kind mentioned in this article. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the driver of this.

adeptus 8y ago

This is censorship, and it's a slippery slope. IMHO the right way to go about this, would be for amazon to attach a letter to the cover of the book saying something like: "We're sorry you bought this book, but we do believe in your right to choose what you do with your time and money, so we have not removed this book from our store. FYI, according to (insert number of) scientists and XYZ peered reviewed papers, the vast majority of the content of this book has been certified to be false and you should seriously question the author's recommendations before acting on them, as they may pose health risks. If you require further information, here's some websites & books that provide what is widely considered to be factual information on the matter".

favorited 8y ago
Why is it Amazon's responsibility to carry a product they don't want to, then independently supplement that product with their own editorializing? It's a bad product which they don't want to carry. They're a store. It's their prerogative to simply not sell that product.
- kaybe 8y ago
  When a company gets that big, powerful and influential it can't just do whatever it wants anymore. From a European perspective I'd say this is an issue of freedom for society.

sgeisler 8y ago

Why are people so concerned about autism, aren't there much worse conditions? I know many genius people that would probably fall into the spectrum if ever tested. They are typically obsessed with some field of research and develop deep insight, which is valuable in an increasingly specialized society.

llukas 8y ago
Your "typically" is based on media showing few cases of highly functional people with autism. They do not show the rest.
Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
For every autistic savant you see, there's a dozen that you don't see that have severe communication and other mental issues and will never be able to survive and function as an adult without high levels of living assistance. As offensive as it is, the stereotype you see on reddit and YouTube comments of people with autism yelling "RREEEEEEEE" is sometimes a true one.

ryanmarsh 8y ago

Given the number of wacky yet effective treatments that western medicine has uncovered by accident I’d be more inclined to let people explore the information out there as they desire. Although uncovered under different circumstances Lorenzo’s oil is an interesting case, cannabinoids for cancer patients are another. Everybody thinks modern medicine is like CSI because a few people know how to use CRISPR. The reality for many people with common diseases is that the doctors a taking shots in the dark. In layman’s terms they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. I have far too much personal experience with such things to be blinded by the fancy motion graphics and splashy headlines. Being sick is a total shit show of incompetence.

nickysielicki 8y ago

Banning snake oil is never a part of a free society. People have a right to delude themselves. Imagine having a child with autism, you are overwhelmed by it, you are unwilling to accept what the doctors tell you. Who is Amazon, or anyone, to tell someone that they can't explore every avenue, and read whatever they want to deal with that grief? Think about the cathartic experience of reading this book and getting momentary hope that there's an answer to a problem that you've been told is unsolvable. It's psychologically like playing the lottery.

CodeMage 8y ago
It worries me that we seem to equate Amazon with society.
- nickysielicki 8y ago
  Why is this such a pain point whenever an internet discussion of freedom comes up? Free speech and freedom are principles. These principles inspired the guarantees the Constitution claimed to make. But that does not mean that the government is the sole arbiter of freedom. The fact that Amazon bans a book means that Amazon does not appreciate the value of freedom and free speech, in the same sense that when the government limits speech, it means they do not value free speech and freedom. Freedom isn't just with respect to government. When Amazon filters books you can buy, that does mean we have less freedom, especially when Amazon is a filter through which we are able to purchase most goods. No, your first amendment rights haven't been violated. But yes, we have less freedom.
  - raquo 8y ago
    Seems like you just want your freedoms to trample over Amazon's freedoms. Why? Because they're big? You put your personal interpretation of the general principle of freedom of speech above actual rights and freedoms. Nothing noble about that.
    - nickysielicki 8y ago

exabrial 8y ago

I'm totally fine with this. Sell your books in a store that specializes in conspiracy theories along with the anti-vax, flat-earther, anti-gmo, essential oil and anti-global warming people.

whiddershins 8y ago

I think it is easy to get distracted about whether or not Amazon has "the right" to do this. The argument for private businesses making their own choices is strong, the argument for them being an effective monopoly is strong, I'm sure many other arguments are strong. What occurs to me, and especially after listening to the second Joe Rogan/Jack Dorsey and co interview, is two dimensions of critically important inquiry: - What effect do policies and procedures like this have? How are they perceived? What are the unintended consequences? What are the limits and conditions surround the erection and enforcement of these policies? What is likely to be the next set of things removed? What are the forces that guide the decision making of the organization removing content? - What kind of world do we want to live in? Do these actions move us closer to that world, once all relevant and foreseeable consequences are taken in to account? What ability or mechanism exists to change course if the policy doesn't have the intended effect? Is there a way books can be reinstated? The reality, as I see it, is the policies surrounding content moderation have tremendous future impact potential for culture and human experience. We should make sure there is a broad and deep debate, not arbitrary action that takes its validity merely by existing. That's called "might makes right."

throwawaysea 8y ago

WHY THIS IS CENSORSHIP I am seeing numerous comments claiming this is not censorship when it most definitely is. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship > Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by a government, private institutions, and corporations. From Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship), where there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept: > the institution, system, or practice of censoring From Oxford (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/censorship), where again there is no mention of 'censorship' being a government-specific concept: > The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. We know Amazon is a private corporation. That's irrelevant, as such actions are censorship regardless. So please stop repeating the false claim that this isn't censorship because Amazon can do whatever it wants as a private entity. WHY FREE SPEECH MATTERS Proponents of free speech are pro free speech as a general concept and principle, beyond what protections are afforded under American law today. The idea of free speech predates the existence of the United States. Free speech is hugely valuable to defend, because what society finds acceptable or unacceptable is very much subjective and changes with time/location/culture/setting/leadership/etc. Having an open exchange of ideas is good and necessary for the long-term health and stability of society. Furthermore, making available ideas that challenge current understanding is necessary if we care about being a collectively truth-seeking society. Free societies are durable over the long term when they protect these rights at all times, for all people, for all ideologies. As a rule of thumb, if the speech in question is not advocating for direct physical violence, it should be permitted. Getting into the business of censoring indirect or non-physical harm (and similarly, judging what is scientific/pseudo-scientific/unscientific) is a huge slippery slope. We could frame virtually any idea as having some downstream negative externality and suggest that it should be disallowed. For example, capitalism, socialism, and communism could all be attacked in this manner. Should books on those topic be dropped? On the topic of health: our current scientific understanding is not bulletproof. It may never fully be. Look at how much our understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet has changed, just over the last 100 years of human existence. During that time, various individuals (e.g. scientists), companies, governments (via agencies like the FDA), and other institutions expressed high-degrees of confidence in beliefs that went on to be disproved over time. It would be a mistake to only allow ideas with broad scientific consensus today. People should be allowed to decide for themselves which institutions and parties and ideas to trust, and to what extent. Large platforms (privately-owned or otherwise) should not get in the way of that access if we want to maintain liquidity of information exchange. WHY PRIVATE PLATFORMS' CENSORSHIP IS CONCERNING Large privately-owned platforms carry so much discourse across today's society, that censorship and deplatforming in those spaces has the same impact as governmental censorship, for most intents and purposes. Even if these corporations do not constitute what we might traditionally call a "monopoly", they control a large-enough share of traffic to have significant impact when they take artificial actions. That sizable impact is exactly why they are being targeted (not just on this topic but others) by activists or other agents pushing for deplatforming/censorship favorable to their causes. The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts/risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a thought police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions.

anigbrowl 8y ago

Relevant to this topic: trolls and bots amplify the online vaccine debate, eg https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.3045...

dbg31415 8y ago

This is censorship. Two wrongs don't make a right.

theNJR 8y ago

This is complicated. Anti-vax, flat earth and other ideologies masked as science have turned into virus', distributed over social. At the same time, people with all sorts of ideologies are shouting down facts they don't agree with. Scientists researching potential behavior and psychological treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome are being targeted on Twitter so aggressively that many are giving up on the research, and some journals are pulling their findings (1). What happens when these people scream until Amazon pulls books about it? A whole field of helpful research could be burried for decades. These ideological battles used to be local. Now they are global and it's causing real harm. We've discussed this previously. (2) “Any information system of sufficient complexity will inevitably become infected with viruses - viruses generated from within itself.” (1) https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/science-socialmedia/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/science-... (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280858

mikeash 8y ago

I did a quick search on Amazon for pornography. Nothing. Pretty sure there never has been. Amazon (and pretty much everyone else) has been censoring stuff from the start. This act is not a radical change in policy, it's a tiny shift in where they draw the line. I'm constantly baffled at how upset everyone gets in cases like this. I could see it when, for example, Tumblr started cracking down on stuff. But 99% of these cases involve companies that have always engaged in censorship (or curation or picking and choosing or whatever you want to call it) and are just making some adjustments.

imnotlost 8y ago

Next is getting rid of all the supplements that don't work for anything they're advertised for. That would be all of them.

mitchtbaum 8y ago

> ..chiding the company about the failure of its algorithms to “distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information.” Out of curiosity, what "process or set of rules to be followed in calculations" would give that result? (I hope my asking this doesn't mean I'm deluded too.)

mitchtbaum 8y ago
> I hope my asking this doesn't mean I'm deluded too. But if it somehow does, then perhaps more chiding will produce an algorithm which can prove that too.. cause I have doubts.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

1. A letter went from CA politician Adam Schiff to Jeff Bezos ‘chiding’ him. It’s state interference. The question is..would amazon have pulled those books if Adam Schiff didn’t chide Jeff Bezos? 2. It’s not about Autism. It’s about protecting Vaccines. Every pharmaceutical drug comes with warnings and side effects. But it makes tons of dollars. Placebos don’t. 3. We live in a world where ..thanks to Monsanto..you can find Glyohosate in mother’s breast milk. And that’s ok. Because. Science. I am a woman. The tampons we use contains dioxin. So. Really. Colour me a cynic. The govt doesn’t care. This from CA where homeless people are allowed to live and freeze and shit and shoot up on the streets. And given clean needles to shoot up safely. $600 million dollars and no solution for the problem. Sometimes ‘problems’ are profitable. I see this drama and outrage as protection of Big Pharma. There is a tiny fringe population that accepts these books as gospel. There is nothing you can do to change them. This is merely a dry run for censorship and more of a prep for nanny state installation. I hope this isn’t encouraged.