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Boycotting Amazon is completely boneheaded. They have every right to not host Wikileaks content. Regardless of whether this was the result of government pressur

by rpearl 16y ago

Boycotting Amazon is completely boneheaded. They have every right to not host Wikileaks content. Regardless of whether this was the result of government pressure or not is moot. Well, I shouldn't say "boneheaded." You have every right to refuse to buy things from Amazon. I just think expressing moral outrage because they refuse to host content is silly.

cellurl 16y ago
After the Exxon Valdiz oil spill, I and millions of Californians boycotted Exxon. It hurt them and I am glad.
thejoker69 16y ago
>I just think expressing moral outrage because they refuse to host content is silly. Really?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jdp23 16y ago
i'm confused by this attitude. Amazon has done something a lot of people disagree with. why do you think it's silly to react to that?
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Because there's just as big a group on the other side of the fence. The question really comes down to "why didn't Amazon go to bat for my beliefs?", and that does appear to be a silly question. I think this whole thing is blown way out of proportion. As a business, Amazon was going to get a boycott either way - either from the pro-WikiLeaks side for failing to host WikiLeaks, or the anti-WikiLeaks side for doing the opposite. It seems silly to use a business as a battleground of ideologies, especially when as far as anyone knows Amazon acted out of self preservation, not political prejudice. [edit] And for God's sake, can we stop posting about this already unless something actually happens? The level of WikiLeaks moral outrage posts that don't shed any new light on anything is rivaling Reddit. With Reddit at least I can filter stories out for certain keywords, please don't make me do the same to HN. We've already discussed the known information to death, to keep hammering at this dead horse on a forum that is highly liberal and has mostly-aligned opinions on a subject is known as a circlejerk. HN signal-to-noise ratio--;
  - rbarooah 16y ago
    Surely any kind meaningful of dissemination of free speech in the modern world is going to involve business in some way, and in the US, businesses are recognized as legal persons. How can their actions be considered neutral?
  - jdp23 16y ago
    if there's really a big group on the other side of the fence, they should be organizing pro-Amazon and pro-Paypal actions Amazon was in a situation where they had to take a political action. why is it surprising or wrong that they now need to face the consequences?

by rpearl 16y ago

cellurl 16y ago

After the Exxon Valdiz oil spill, I and millions of Californians boycotted Exxon. It hurt them and I am glad.

thejoker69 16y ago

>I just think expressing moral outrage because they refuse to host content is silly. Really?

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jdp23 16y ago

i'm confused by this attitude. Amazon has done something a lot of people disagree with. why do you think it's silly to react to that?

potatolicious 16y ago
Because there's just as big a group on the other side of the fence. The question really comes down to "why didn't Amazon go to bat for my beliefs?", and that does appear to be a silly question. I think this whole thing is blown way out of proportion. As a business, Amazon was going to get a boycott either way - either from the pro-WikiLeaks side for failing to host WikiLeaks, or the anti-WikiLeaks side for doing the opposite. It seems silly to use a business as a battleground of ideologies, especially when as far as anyone knows Amazon acted out of self preservation, not political prejudice. [edit] And for God's sake, can we stop posting about this already unless something actually happens? The level of WikiLeaks moral outrage posts that don't shed any new light on anything is rivaling Reddit. With Reddit at least I can filter stories out for certain keywords, please don't make me do the same to HN. We've already discussed the known information to death, to keep hammering at this dead horse on a forum that is highly liberal and has mostly-aligned opinions on a subject is known as a circlejerk. HN signal-to-noise ratio--;
- rbarooah 16y ago
  Surely any kind meaningful of dissemination of free speech in the modern world is going to involve business in some way, and in the US, businesses are recognized as legal persons. How can their actions be considered neutral?
- jdp23 16y ago
  if there's really a big group on the other side of the fence, they should be organizing pro-Amazon and pro-Paypal actions Amazon was in a situation where they had to take a political action. why is it surprising or wrong that they now need to face the consequences?