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> It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. Ebay is a private merchant. They ca

> It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. Ebay is a private merchant. They can choose what to list too. Maybe this presents a copyright problem with clones, we don't know. I found the books by googling the title and PDF because I was curious about why they were removed. Curiosity satisifed and I still love Dr. Seuss.

caeril 6y ago
The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism. Someone (probably), in 1934 Hacker News: "BASF, Deutsche Bank, Hugo Boss, Bayer, BMW, and Siemens are private merchants. They can choose what to sell, and to whom. Maybe this presents a survival problem for the Jews, we don't know." I guess it's ok since the public-private authoritarianism and book-burning is left-leaning this time?
- api 6y ago
  Conservatives wouldn't complain if private companies were censoring and cancelling left-leaning content. They'd be out there defending private property rights and corporate freedom to act. It's transparently political. BTW: I don't think canceling left-leaning stuff is far fetched. If you think we have cancel culture now, wait until we have a serious "rebooted" labor movement in this country that starts getting traction. The gloves will come off.
  - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
    Bill Maher made this point, that Republicans have lately tried to appropriate "cancel culture" for being correctly rebuked, while what happens to people with his views is insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmXTUSP9a9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmXTUSP9a9M Edit: Am I incorrect?
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      I always go into Maher from these recommendations thinking maybe I'll like his point here. Then halfway through I realize I've been duped again. In this case he laments republicans appropriating the term cancel culture, which he insists is a big deal for other reasons. Then at 4:15 he laughs while sarcastically saying "it's always okay when Trump's the nazi" and I'm like, oh okay. I remember how you like to draw people farther to the right while appearing as if you're anti-alt-right.
      - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
        I think Maher is what the GP commenter would refer to as "transparently political" if he were on another side.
        unityByFreedom 6y ago
        Yes of course the show is politically biased I just think his supposed thesis does not match the conclusions he draws. It is misleading that he presents himself as a centrist while laughing at those who would criticize the alt right. Perhaps his thing is he just wants to criticize everyone and get away with it and if that's the case then I don't get what he stands for. Might be how I feel about conservatism in general which increasingly seems to be just anti-everything that would impose rules on the wealthy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tired-dev 6y ago
    One might even point out that this is an example of karma, as conservatives fighting for the right to deny service for bigoted reasons (gay wedding cakes, anyone?) have put the law squarely on the side of companies that no longer want to carry even vaguely racist material.
  - gwright 6y ago
    > Conservatives wouldn't complain if private companies were censoring and cancelling left-leaning content. They'd be out there defending private property rights and corporate freedom to act. It's transparently political. I think you are confusing two very different things. Criticizing Ebay for banning particular books, or AWS for dropping Parlor, or Twitter for banning various conservatives is not in contradiction with the libertarian/conservative idea that private entities should have the freedom to manage their business as they see fit. Arguing for limited government oversight/power in these situations is orthogonal to criticizing the decisions on their own merits.
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      It's not in contradiction provided you don't encourage people to storm government buildings on the basis of private entities making their own choices. Which did happen.
      - gwright 6y ago
        What are you getting at? This comment seems to be unrelated to anything I'm saying even if I could understand it. And for what it is worth the capitol rioters have been widely condemned by libertarians and conservatives.
        unityByFreedom 6y ago
        Simply that Don Jr criticizing Dr Seuss or eBay for canning books is contradictory to lib/con views on free speech when his base uses such arguments to violently rebel against the government.
  - bjourne 6y ago
    Left-leaning stuff has been cancelled for ages. Try organizing a union in your workplace and see how quickly you'll get cancelled.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  > The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism So make a company yourself that specializes in trading items banned from other shops. It wouldn't be the first and it's completely legal. I bet someone is already capitalizing on the outrage over this news. I don't know how exactly and I don't mean the media. About the companies you list, we study them to look at the rise of Hitler, and we have put anti-discrimination laws in place to hopefully stop someone from abusing their positions like that again. This isn't the state entering your home and burning books. Wrong hill.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    How will you make your business when your banks are cancelling you ?
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      If you make a website selling used Seuss books and your bank cancels you I'll support you. If you make a social media site that organizes domestic terror and your bank cancels you then that's your problem.
      - lenkite 6y ago
        "If you make a social media site that organises domestic terror" You do realise that most of the organisation of the "domestic terror" was done on Facebook right ?
      - zo1 6y ago
        How about making a website selling banned, unpopular or borderline racist literature? And then payment providers cancel services to it. Can I then take orders using cash via letters? Seems like it can work. Hopefully the post office, Fedex and UPS and other mail carriers don't notice and cancel it for some obscure money-laundering law/regulation about mailing money! Must I maybe resort to selling that literature on the street corner, back alley maybe?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Aunche 6y ago
  I don't consider internet company cancellation authoritarian because they're just following the will of the market. It's a symptom, not the cause. If it were solely up to Ebay execs, they would rather people not be overly sensitive because they can make more money that way. The same is true for content platforms like Reddit or Facebook. They were pro-free speech until they started to get bad publicity from it.
  - tester34 6y ago
    But market doesn't care about this, it's just some tiny group of insanely vocal people
    - Aunche 6y ago
      The insanely vocal people will twist the narrative to convince the regular people to go on a morale crusade. The Youtube adpocalypse started because a journalist kept watching Isis videos before they got removed, until they found one with a Coca cola ad.
byset 6y ago
No one fails to make this "hey, it's a private company" point in these discussions. It's always brought up when someone is criticizing a tech behemoth for censorship of some kind, and it's nearly always a non-sequitur. Guess what? It's totally fine and valid to criticize private entities even when their conduct is perfectly lawful. Thought experiment: imagine eBay and Amazon started to promote Neo-Nazi literature on their home pages in the same way that they now promote anti-racist books and such. What would be the appropriate response: outrage, or "bUt iTs a pRiVaTe cOmPaNy!!!"?
- brailsafe 6y ago
  It does feel a bit analogous to criticizing religion, as though somehow a group of people or set of ideas can be exempt from disagreement.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    More analogous to saying if you don't like one religion you're free to try another. I don't expect eBay to cater to my banned Dr Seuss book needs.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      I guess, maybe, but that's untrue for a tremendous amount of people, and is that a sentiment that you'd expect me to get behind?
      - unityByFreedom 6y ago
        You think it's untrue that a lot of people want freedom of religion? I don't follow.
        brailsafe 6y ago
        I feel like we're both reading each other's comments in a completely different way than intended. I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that many people globally don't want freedom of religion, but I was saying that many people currently don't have the freedom to leave theirs, whether legally or for other reasons.
gwright 6y ago
> Ebay is a private merchant That doesn't mean their choices are somehow immune from public criticism. I realize that clarity is in short supply in online discussions, but mostly I think people that are reacting negatively are just asserting that they disagree with the decision and not that a law has been broken or that the government should step in and force the decision to be reversed.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  I respond with this because the people who just stormed the capitol were egged on by those claiming disenfranchisement in public and private sectors. I feel it's important to make the distinction, just as it was to point out there was not widespread voter fraud.
vorpalhex 6y ago
Comcast is a private company, they can choose what sites to allow. Maybe this is a problem with HN. Colorado Power is a private company, they can choose who to sell power to. Maybe this is a problem with that data center.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  They can't choose based on current FCC policy. Private companies have choice within regulations, and that's a good thing for consumers. Everyone needs to play by the same rules and the big players don't get to take advantage of their positions as much.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tjs8rj 6y ago
Maybe a year or two ago I would have completely agreed with the public vs private argument, but the pace of change has clearly accelerated, and when private institutions can easily have just as much impact with their decisions as public institutions, the lines blur. From first principles, the public vs private division is about preserving freedom. When a private company can exercise its freedom to infringe on the freedom of others to such an extent, we act. Private businesses can’t do a lot of things because they harm freedoms (civil rights act and its additions among others).

caeril 6y ago

The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism. Someone (probably), in 1934 Hacker News: "BASF, Deutsche Bank, Hugo Boss, Bayer, BMW, and Siemens are private merchants. They can choose what to sell, and to whom. Maybe this presents a survival problem for the Jews, we don't know." I guess it's ok since the public-private authoritarianism and book-burning is left-leaning this time?

api 6y ago
Conservatives wouldn't complain if private companies were censoring and cancelling left-leaning content. They'd be out there defending private property rights and corporate freedom to act. It's transparently political. BTW: I don't think canceling left-leaning stuff is far fetched. If you think we have cancel culture now, wait until we have a serious "rebooted" labor movement in this country that starts getting traction. The gloves will come off.
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  Bill Maher made this point, that Republicans have lately tried to appropriate "cancel culture" for being correctly rebuked, while what happens to people with his views is insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmXTUSP9a9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmXTUSP9a9M Edit: Am I incorrect?
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    I always go into Maher from these recommendations thinking maybe I'll like his point here. Then halfway through I realize I've been duped again. In this case he laments republicans appropriating the term cancel culture, which he insists is a big deal for other reasons. Then at 4:15 he laughs while sarcastically saying "it's always okay when Trump's the nazi" and I'm like, oh okay. I remember how you like to draw people farther to the right while appearing as if you're anti-alt-right.
    - readflaggedcomm 6y ago
      I think Maher is what the GP commenter would refer to as "transparently political" if he were on another side.
      - unityByFreedom 6y ago
        Yes of course the show is politically biased I just think his supposed thesis does not match the conclusions he draws. It is misleading that he presents himself as a centrist while laughing at those who would criticize the alt right. Perhaps his thing is he just wants to criticize everyone and get away with it and if that's the case then I don't get what he stands for. Might be how I feel about conservatism in general which increasingly seems to be just anti-everything that would impose rules on the wealthy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tired-dev 6y ago
  One might even point out that this is an example of karma, as conservatives fighting for the right to deny service for bigoted reasons (gay wedding cakes, anyone?) have put the law squarely on the side of companies that no longer want to carry even vaguely racist material.
- gwright 6y ago
  > Conservatives wouldn't complain if private companies were censoring and cancelling left-leaning content. They'd be out there defending private property rights and corporate freedom to act. It's transparently political. I think you are confusing two very different things. Criticizing Ebay for banning particular books, or AWS for dropping Parlor, or Twitter for banning various conservatives is not in contradiction with the libertarian/conservative idea that private entities should have the freedom to manage their business as they see fit. Arguing for limited government oversight/power in these situations is orthogonal to criticizing the decisions on their own merits.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    It's not in contradiction provided you don't encourage people to storm government buildings on the basis of private entities making their own choices. Which did happen.
    - gwright 6y ago
      What are you getting at? This comment seems to be unrelated to anything I'm saying even if I could understand it. And for what it is worth the capitol rioters have been widely condemned by libertarians and conservatives.
      - unityByFreedom 6y ago
        Simply that Don Jr criticizing Dr Seuss or eBay for canning books is contradictory to lib/con views on free speech when his base uses such arguments to violently rebel against the government.
- bjourne 6y ago
  Left-leaning stuff has been cancelled for ages. Try organizing a union in your workplace and see how quickly you'll get cancelled.
unityByFreedom 6y ago
> The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism So make a company yourself that specializes in trading items banned from other shops. It wouldn't be the first and it's completely legal. I bet someone is already capitalizing on the outrage over this news. I don't know how exactly and I don't mean the media. About the companies you list, we study them to look at the rise of Hitler, and we have put anti-discrimination laws in place to hopefully stop someone from abusing their positions like that again. This isn't the state entering your home and burning books. Wrong hill.
- lenkite 6y ago
  How will you make your business when your banks are cancelling you ?
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    If you make a website selling used Seuss books and your bank cancels you I'll support you. If you make a social media site that organizes domestic terror and your bank cancels you then that's your problem.
    - lenkite 6y ago
      "If you make a social media site that organises domestic terror" You do realise that most of the organisation of the "domestic terror" was done on Facebook right ?
    - zo1 6y ago
      How about making a website selling banned, unpopular or borderline racist literature? And then payment providers cancel services to it. Can I then take orders using cash via letters? Seems like it can work. Hopefully the post office, Fedex and UPS and other mail carriers don't notice and cancel it for some obscure money-laundering law/regulation about mailing money! Must I maybe resort to selling that literature on the street corner, back alley maybe?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Aunche 6y ago
I don't consider internet company cancellation authoritarian because they're just following the will of the market. It's a symptom, not the cause. If it were solely up to Ebay execs, they would rather people not be overly sensitive because they can make more money that way. The same is true for content platforms like Reddit or Facebook. They were pro-free speech until they started to get bad publicity from it.
- tester34 6y ago
  But market doesn't care about this, it's just some tiny group of insanely vocal people
  - Aunche 6y ago
    The insanely vocal people will twist the narrative to convince the regular people to go on a morale crusade. The Youtube adpocalypse started because a journalist kept watching Isis videos before they got removed, until they found one with a Coca cola ad.

byset 6y ago

No one fails to make this "hey, it's a private company" point in these discussions. It's always brought up when someone is criticizing a tech behemoth for censorship of some kind, and it's nearly always a non-sequitur. Guess what? It's totally fine and valid to criticize private entities even when their conduct is perfectly lawful. Thought experiment: imagine eBay and Amazon started to promote Neo-Nazi literature on their home pages in the same way that they now promote anti-racist books and such. What would be the appropriate response: outrage, or "bUt iTs a pRiVaTe cOmPaNy!!!"?

brailsafe 6y ago
It does feel a bit analogous to criticizing religion, as though somehow a group of people or set of ideas can be exempt from disagreement.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  More analogous to saying if you don't like one religion you're free to try another. I don't expect eBay to cater to my banned Dr Seuss book needs.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    I guess, maybe, but that's untrue for a tremendous amount of people, and is that a sentiment that you'd expect me to get behind?
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      You think it's untrue that a lot of people want freedom of religion? I don't follow.
      - brailsafe 6y ago
        I feel like we're both reading each other's comments in a completely different way than intended. I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that many people globally don't want freedom of religion, but I was saying that many people currently don't have the freedom to leave theirs, whether legally or for other reasons.

gwright 6y ago

> Ebay is a private merchant That doesn't mean their choices are somehow immune from public criticism. I realize that clarity is in short supply in online discussions, but mostly I think people that are reacting negatively are just asserting that they disagree with the decision and not that a law has been broken or that the government should step in and force the decision to be reversed.

unityByFreedom 6y ago
I respond with this because the people who just stormed the capitol were egged on by those claiming disenfranchisement in public and private sectors. I feel it's important to make the distinction, just as it was to point out there was not widespread voter fraud.

vorpalhex 6y ago

Comcast is a private company, they can choose what sites to allow. Maybe this is a problem with HN. Colorado Power is a private company, they can choose who to sell power to. Maybe this is a problem with that data center.

unityByFreedom 6y ago
They can't choose based on current FCC policy. Private companies have choice within regulations, and that's a good thing for consumers. Everyone needs to play by the same rules and the big players don't get to take advantage of their positions as much.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tjs8rj 6y ago

Maybe a year or two ago I would have completely agreed with the public vs private argument, but the pace of change has clearly accelerated, and when private institutions can easily have just as much impact with their decisions as public institutions, the lines blur. From first principles, the public vs private division is about preserving freedom. When a private company can exercise its freedom to infringe on the freedom of others to such an extent, we act. Private businesses can’t do a lot of things because they harm freedoms (civil rights act and its additions among others).