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This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “

This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay. From one of the listed items: > This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines: > "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case." > This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.

ipsum2 6y ago
> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars That's a good point. I didn't realize they were annotated by modern scholars.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  The Mein Kampf lie is already halfway around the world. A tremendous amount of misinformation is already out there regarding this story.
stass 6y ago
Communist Manifesto and Lenin's books are allowed without any comments though. There are books by actual terrorists too, like Bill Ayers. Books advocating for segregation. One can go on. This fine example is ok too: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protocols-of-the-Learned-Elders-of-Zion-by-Sergiei-Nilus-Paperback-book/353209171064 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protocols-of-the-Learned-Elders-of-... But Mulberry street is the problem.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  Ok if you think eBay should ban more books then go tell them that! Incidentally this isn’t true: > Books advocating for segregation. Or, rather, if such books are available it is against eBay’s policy and they should be reported. eBay has a specific policy against items that glorify racism or endorse racist stereotypes: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/offensive-material-policy?id=4324 https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite... It does not have a policy against everything morally icky, but it’s quite clear about racism. Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo are both racist and against eBay’s policy.
  - stass 6y ago
    The issue is that they are not just removing racist or hateful content according to some kind of standard. They are going after hot topics of the day, whatever it happens to be. Even worse, hateful and racist content that is ideologically aligned is explicitly allowed. One would be hard-pressed to find anything more blatantly racist than White fragility or works of Dr Kendi, and yet you would not see eBay banning them, up until they fall out of favor.
- o_v_o 6y ago
  Communist Manifesto doesn't really contain hateful content (despite Marx's racism & misogyny)
  - stass 6y ago
    And yet it was used as inspiration to murder 20M+ people by explicitly dehumanizing whole classes of people.
    - Clewza313 6y ago
      If we go down that path, how many deaths is the Bible or the Koran responsible for?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - ggreer 6y ago
        Exactly. Why do those books get a pass? They encourage readers to do abhorrent things such as keep slaves and behead nonbelievers. If we're going to censor books because they cause people to hate others, then major religious texts should be first in line. The fact that censors don't go after these books is evidence that their actual goals differ from their claimed goals.
      - PontifexMinimus 6y ago
        A lot. If one was actually banning books that did harm, those books ought to be at the top of the list. But they are not banned (not should they be IMO). So books that've incited less violence then them ought not be either.
        ojnabieoot 6y ago
        Despite HN regulations I am aware that you are arguing in bad faith and don’t care at all about the facts of the case. But I think it’s important to get the facts out there for other people. Once again: eBay’s policy is not to ban harmful ideas generally or anything that might be morally icky. They have a specific policy against racist items, in any form. That includes the blatant racism in some of Dr. Suess’s books. The policy is reasonable and not that complicated. If you want to buy something racist, there are other websites. eBay is not trying to police everything, they just don’t want racist stuff on their website. That is their perogative as a business and is hardly a meaningful threat to free speech even considering eBay’s market share. Part of the reason this preposterous “debate” keeps raging is that people keep inappropriately elevating the issues to abstractions, since the specifics of the case are really not controversial: - Just as YouTube and Twitch do not allow pornography, eBay does not allow racism. That does not mean that porn and racism are banned under the 1st Amendment. Likewise there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube that’s more immoral than any legal pornography, but YouTube never claimed to ban everything bad. They just don’t want to be associated with porn. Likewise, eBay doesn’t want to be associated with racism. - Some of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books have bigoted depictions of nonwhites, including cartoons black people that resemble “darky iconography,” which anyone in good faith would agree are deeply racist. - Since eBay doesn’t allow racist items (and had good reason to be concerned about racists rushing to buy discontinued Dr. Seuss books), it banned the items from its store. Nobody seriously thinks that YouTube is censoring the porn industry. It is true is that the “buy racist crap to own the libs” industry is much smaller than porn and probably can’t easily survive without eBay’s help. I fail to see how that’s eBay’s problem.
brandonmenc 6y ago
> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay. This seems worse than an outright ban on all copies.
Igelau 6y ago
This is also a terrible idea, because there can be no scholarly analysis if scholars can't get it because everyone has jammed it down the memory hole. (Edit: I'd really like to see some thought out defense on how censorship doesn't injure scholarship. Downvotes are just limp concessions.)
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  Nobody's arguing that, so I'm not sure why anyone would need to defend a position they don't have. "I can't buy an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf from eBay" isn't the same thing as "I'm not allowed to read an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf", the latter isn't true.

ipsum2 6y ago

> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars That's a good point. I didn't realize they were annotated by modern scholars.

UncleMeat 6y ago
The Mein Kampf lie is already halfway around the world. A tremendous amount of misinformation is already out there regarding this story.

stass 6y ago

Communist Manifesto and Lenin's books are allowed without any comments though. There are books by actual terrorists too, like Bill Ayers. Books advocating for segregation. One can go on. This fine example is ok too: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protocols-of-the-Learned-Elders-of-Zion-by-Sergiei-Nilus-Paperback-book/353209171064 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protocols-of-the-Learned-Elders-of-... But Mulberry street is the problem.

ojnabieoot 6y ago
Ok if you think eBay should ban more books then go tell them that! Incidentally this isn’t true: > Books advocating for segregation. Or, rather, if such books are available it is against eBay’s policy and they should be reported. eBay has a specific policy against items that glorify racism or endorse racist stereotypes: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/offensive-material-policy?id=4324 https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite... It does not have a policy against everything morally icky, but it’s quite clear about racism. Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo are both racist and against eBay’s policy.
- stass 6y ago
  The issue is that they are not just removing racist or hateful content according to some kind of standard. They are going after hot topics of the day, whatever it happens to be. Even worse, hateful and racist content that is ideologically aligned is explicitly allowed. One would be hard-pressed to find anything more blatantly racist than White fragility or works of Dr Kendi, and yet you would not see eBay banning them, up until they fall out of favor.
o_v_o 6y ago
Communist Manifesto doesn't really contain hateful content (despite Marx's racism & misogyny)
- stass 6y ago
  And yet it was used as inspiration to murder 20M+ people by explicitly dehumanizing whole classes of people.
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    If we go down that path, how many deaths is the Bible or the Koran responsible for?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ggreer 6y ago
      Exactly. Why do those books get a pass? They encourage readers to do abhorrent things such as keep slaves and behead nonbelievers. If we're going to censor books because they cause people to hate others, then major religious texts should be first in line. The fact that censors don't go after these books is evidence that their actual goals differ from their claimed goals.
    - PontifexMinimus 6y ago
      A lot. If one was actually banning books that did harm, those books ought to be at the top of the list. But they are not banned (not should they be IMO). So books that've incited less violence then them ought not be either.
      - ojnabieoot 6y ago
        Despite HN regulations I am aware that you are arguing in bad faith and don’t care at all about the facts of the case. But I think it’s important to get the facts out there for other people. Once again: eBay’s policy is not to ban harmful ideas generally or anything that might be morally icky. They have a specific policy against racist items, in any form. That includes the blatant racism in some of Dr. Suess’s books. The policy is reasonable and not that complicated. If you want to buy something racist, there are other websites. eBay is not trying to police everything, they just don’t want racist stuff on their website. That is their perogative as a business and is hardly a meaningful threat to free speech even considering eBay’s market share. Part of the reason this preposterous “debate” keeps raging is that people keep inappropriately elevating the issues to abstractions, since the specifics of the case are really not controversial: - Just as YouTube and Twitch do not allow pornography, eBay does not allow racism. That does not mean that porn and racism are banned under the 1st Amendment. Likewise there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube that’s more immoral than any legal pornography, but YouTube never claimed to ban everything bad. They just don’t want to be associated with porn. Likewise, eBay doesn’t want to be associated with racism. - Some of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books have bigoted depictions of nonwhites, including cartoons black people that resemble “darky iconography,” which anyone in good faith would agree are deeply racist. - Since eBay doesn’t allow racist items (and had good reason to be concerned about racists rushing to buy discontinued Dr. Seuss books), it banned the items from its store. Nobody seriously thinks that YouTube is censoring the porn industry. It is true is that the “buy racist crap to own the libs” industry is much smaller than porn and probably can’t easily survive without eBay’s help. I fail to see how that’s eBay’s problem.

brandonmenc 6y ago

> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay. This seems worse than an outright ban on all copies.

Igelau 6y ago

This is also a terrible idea, because there can be no scholarly analysis if scholars can't get it because everyone has jammed it down the memory hole. (Edit: I'd really like to see some thought out defense on how censorship doesn't injure scholarship. Downvotes are just limp concessions.)

RobertKerans 6y ago
Nobody's arguing that, so I'm not sure why anyone would need to defend a position they don't have. "I can't buy an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf from eBay" isn't the same thing as "I'm not allowed to read an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf", the latter isn't true.