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This isn't censorship. Are we going to get mad at a children's book store refusing to carry explicit adult literature? Amazon has put in place publicly know an

This isn't censorship. Are we going to get mad at a children's book store refusing to carry explicit adult literature? Amazon has put in place publicly know and clearly defined policies for a specific and unique situation. This is not a slippery slope. The second they step out of that boundary there will be severe backlash.

jcims 6y ago
Unless it's for another good reason.
- soganess 6y ago
  There is always another good reason.
djsumdog 6y ago
This is a journalist with credentials with a fully sourced and referenced book. It is censorship because of Amazon's absolutely dominance over the market. Their marketshare means they literally control the medium for the majority of people in this world who read e-books. You can say the same thing about Google/Youtube: it's their platform, but when 90% of people in the world go there first for videos, any removal does turn into censorship. Yes, we should all be running our own peer-tube instances and authors running their own sites to distribute DRM free books, but until we actually get there (and we won't because people are sheep and don't like putting in effort when so much is in front of them on their 1984 distraction device), then Google, Amazon and others will continue to be The Ministry of Truth. I wrote about this in 2017: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-...
- JackFr 6y ago
  Anyone can sell the book themselves. Routinely you will see people on HN self publishing technical titles on Leanpub etc. No one is shouting them down or deplatforming them. Amazon is a private company and they can sell what they want. That seems to bother you, because of a de facto monopoly they hold, but that is beside the point. Why do you think it is an author’s right to have any third party sell their book?
zarkov99 6y ago
I do not care what the children's book store owner decides to publish. But Amazon is a near monopoly. Different rules apply.

jcims 6y ago

Unless it's for another good reason.

soganess 6y ago
There is always another good reason.

djsumdog 6y ago

This is a journalist with credentials with a fully sourced and referenced book. It is censorship because of Amazon's absolutely dominance over the market. Their marketshare means they literally control the medium for the majority of people in this world who read e-books. You can say the same thing about Google/Youtube: it's their platform, but when 90% of people in the world go there first for videos, any removal does turn into censorship. Yes, we should all be running our own peer-tube instances and authors running their own sites to distribute DRM free books, but until we actually get there (and we won't because people are sheep and don't like putting in effort when so much is in front of them on their 1984 distraction device), then Google, Amazon and others will continue to be The Ministry of Truth. I wrote about this in 2017: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-...

JackFr 6y ago
Anyone can sell the book themselves. Routinely you will see people on HN self publishing technical titles on Leanpub etc. No one is shouting them down or deplatforming them. Amazon is a private company and they can sell what they want. That seems to bother you, because of a de facto monopoly they hold, but that is beside the point. Why do you think it is an author’s right to have any third party sell their book?

zarkov99 6y ago

I do not care what the children's book store owner decides to publish. But Amazon is a near monopoly. Different rules apply.