12 ms·

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 sel

• 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.
    • jdsully 8y ago
      Then why start a self publishing service for people who couldn’t get past the editors of even the trashiest publishers?
      • notahacker 8y ago
        There's a difference between being willing to help people writing stuff too awkward to market to earn them advances find their audience and helping people help other people to die...
      • jbigelow76 8y ago
        Because why have scale if you don't leverage it.
• tomohawk 8y ago
  Amazon has a monopoly. It's censorship. If they were not a monopolist, then they could claim curation. Once you achieve monopoly status, you can't claim to be a simple business anymore.
  • eropple 8y ago
    Flag on the field: assertion without supporting evidence and with obvious counterexamples (Wal-Mart, Alibaba, etc.) close at hand. Ten yard penalty, repeat first down.
    • anigbrowl 8y ago
      Please stop with the football jokes, you can point out a fallacy without trying to get referee status out of it.
  • mlazos 8y ago
    I don’t really think Amazon has a monopoly. They control 5% of all retail, and like 50% of e-commerce. It’s far from a winner take all point too, I think there will be a lot of fragmentation in the next few years with niche sellers like Etsy becoming more popular.
    • tomohawk 8y ago
      This is an article from 2014: 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-... At that time, they controlled 65% plus of the online book market. Do you think it is less now? They basically have no competition. A monopoly does not require 100%. For example, the Sherman Antitrust Act defines it as 75%. But, it's obvious that they are a monopolist in this area.
    • shadowbannedtoo 8y ago
      "And 50% of e-commerce." That sounds like a monopoly. Esty got the kiss of death. Basically, the products are mass produced in China. (I'm hellbanned? Long Dong doesn't like me? I don't know I even bother to post?)
• tomatotomato37 8y ago
  I think the thing that irks people is that they are doing a whole show and dance about how they pulled the books. If they just kept silent and pulled it using the same qualifer it uses for janky cellphone chargers and contaminated dog food, no one would care. The problem is that Amazon's marketing department would very much so prefer that you do care, enough so that you keep using them for toilet paper and HDMI cables.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• _red 8y ago
  Yet, when a bakery wants to "curate" what cakes they bake, thats a civil rights infringement, isn't it?
  • delinka 8y ago
    It's entirely dependent on the reason behind the decision. Here are the limited designs we have: show book - No, we don't allow customization. Not to mention, there's no need, as a customer, to inform the baker the purpose of the cake. Doesn't matter if you're taking it to a wedding, or using it as a prank. They make cake, you want cake.
  • mintplant 8y ago
    If there were an extensive history of phony-Autism-cure-peddlers kicked to death on the pavement by assailants screaming phony-Autism-cure-related slurs into the cold night air, while the responsible authorities looked the other way or even took part in the brutality... then, perhaps, these situations would be comparable.
  • imgabe 8y ago
    That was not what cakes they bake, that was which customers they sell to. They were happy to sell wedding cakes to straight couples. If Amazon started saying "we won't sell these books to gay people" then, yeah that would be a problem.
    • keepmesmall 8y ago
      There's a distinction, the cakes are both custom-made and religiously themed. Say a baker hand-makes dog-shaped cakes, among other cakes. The baker loves dogs. A client comes in and tells him he hates dogs and wants to order a cake for the purpose of ritually defiling it. Would the baker be wrong in refusing to fulfill this order?
      • imgabe 8y ago
        The difference is, "dog-hater" is not a protected class as defined by public accommodation laws, so they would not have any grounds for a lawsuit. Sexual orientation is, at least in some states. Legally, the baker would not be "wrong" in your scenario, though in my opinion they would at least be foolish. Defiling a cake does not harm a dog and once the customer pays for, it is their property to do whatever they want with. How about if your dog-hater were driving late at night, they got tired and pulled over into a motel. They're signing in for a room and the topic of dogs comes up for whatever reason. They mention that they hate dogs and the motel owner says "Get out, we don't allow no dog-haters in here". Are they right to do that? Legally, again, they could, though they couldn't on the basis of sexual orientation (in some states) or race, religion, national origin (everywhere). The Supreme Court has already sided with the baker on the basis of the cake being an artistic expression, so it's a moot point now.
• ameister14 8y ago
  It is definitely censorship. They are making a moral decision about what content they will allow to be sold through their system. If you own movie theaters and decide not to show films linked to Communists, you are censoring. Wal Mart censors people too - if you don't comply with their morals, you can't promote yourself in their stores.
  • SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    While it is the definition of censorship, does that mean it has the negative connotation of the term? I don't see Wal Mart selling any pornography either, and I can't remember the last time I saw a Bollywood film or a 2 man student art film in my local movie theater - are those censorship's negative?
    • ameister14 8y ago
      The Bollywood/2 man student films aren't censorship - they're a lack of perceived audience. If there was an audience for those, the theaters would show them. The pornography thing - maybe? There's an argument to be made that allowing freedom of choice would be a net positive.
    • Mikhail_Edoshin 8y ago
      Definitions are useless, what one needs is a notion: a smallest working model of censorship. If a store doesn't have a particular book, it can be to a multitude of reasons. But what if one removes an existing book from a library? The book is not physically different from others, nor does it carry some unusual associated costs, it could be standing happily there for many more years. So why it's singled out? Because of what it contains? This is where we call it censorship. (Note that what exactly it contains is irrelevant.) In this case the book as a product is not different from a trillion of other Amazon products. What makes it different is its content. So yes, this is censorship.
• 50656E6973 8y ago
  >censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. Friendly reminder that the definition of censorship is not limited to the government. The books they've banned may indeed be misinformation, but lets not push even more misinformation by denying simple dictionary definitions that seem politically unacceptable.
  • imgabe 8y ago
    Then every website in the world censors information by filtering out spam. Why does nobody weep for the poor spammers who just want to sell you cheap Viagra? No doubt Amazon has been "censoring" their reviews in this way since the beginning. Where's the outrage?
    • spaginal 8y ago
      Removing books from a "book" marketplace, that do not break any laws, aren't lewd or pornographic, and simply present alternative information on a subject, is not on the same level as spam. Censorship is censorship. It doesn't need to be a political body to make it so. In the 80's, the idea of the corporate ran dystopian future where a megalomaniac controlled society through his mega corporation was seen as scary future. Now we get the usual boot licking going on every time this topic is brought up as Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google (Alphabet) actually put into practice real censorship and attempt to control the majority of online communication, ideas, and a good piece of all information over the internet. What a turn for the worse we've taken as a society.
      • wlesieutre 8y ago
        > present alternative information Like shouting "fire" in a crowded auditorium that is in fact not on fire? Let's call it what it is: we're talking about lying about things that can and will literally kill people. Why should Amazon be expected to provide a platform for that?
        • 8y ago
• mirimir 8y ago
  IANAL, but I don't believe that there are any US laws that would require Amazon to sell a product. If they sold real estate, or operated restaurants or whatever, they couldn't discriminate over race, gender, religion, etc. But I believe that they could decline to sell products that catered to some protected class.
• CodeMage 8y ago
  Precisely. Maybe we shouldn't be focusing on Amazon's alleged "censorship", but rather on what makes us react to it in a rather similar way as if the government did the same thing. The choice of not doing business with someone ceases to be a meaningful choice when it's the only viable alternative. One could argue that Amazon is not the only viable alternative and that argument is, strictly speaking, correct. However, this isn't a binary situation -- one day we have plenty of equally viable alternatives and the next day it's just Amazon -- but rather a continuum. TL;DR: Amazon pulling stuff from their store is only a bad thing when taken together with not having a meaningful alternative. The latter is a bigger problem than the former.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• rlt 8y ago
  I agree it's not censorship in the First Amendment sense, but as a large corporation approaches monopoly status I think we should be less tolerant of "curation", even if we happen to agree with it in specific cases.
  • bencollier49 8y ago
    I'm with you on this one - Amazon is approaching the status of a public utility, at which point it should be subject to higher standards. As much as I'm pained to be standing up for these anti-vaccination nuts, it's the thin end of the wedge.
• golemotron 8y ago
  > It’s not censorship, it’s curating a storefront. When your storefront is 83% of the market[1], and you restrict choice, it's time for you to be broken up. [1] - https://www.retaildive.com/news/apple-takes-a-page-out-of-amazons-e-book-market-share/516186/ https://www.retaildive.com/news/apple-takes-a-page-out-of-am...
• pjc50 8y ago
  Note that in the UK making false claims about cancer cures is a criminal offence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Act_1939 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Act_1939
• gabbygab 8y ago
  It is censorship. Just not government censorship. I wish people would stop trying to defend censorship with that trope. They have a legal right to sell what they want on their platform but that doesn't mean it's right. Especially when Amazon has turned itself into a near monopoly. And considering their humble and rather "anti-censorship" beginnings, it's rather disappointing to see what amazon has become. Seems like another case of you die a hero or you live long enough to be a villian.