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Freedom speech as defined in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
by m8s 6y ago
Freedom speech as defined in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
What we are seeing here is a consequence of our capitalist society. It is now more profitable for eBay and other companies to pull or ban things that may cause controversy. There's no censorship here. You can find these books at other retailers. In fact, you're likely to see some businesses thrive by specifically carrying the things that other retailers refuse to carry.
- alentist 6y agoCensorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. And the first amendment is not a definition of freedom of speech. Read it again.
- m8s 6y agoI still don't see how stopping the sale of an item on a private company's platform equates to denying freedom of speech. If we were talking about a government banning the sale of a specific book, author, or topic, then I absolutely agree. If we are talking about that same government banning specific books from schools, then I absolutely agree. But I don't agree that eBay's move here is denying freedom of speech. They're just deciding what they do and don't want on their platform.
- roenxi 6y agoIf the free speech argument had anything to do with laws, people would be advocating settling it in court. The kerfuffle is about values and whether moral people have power.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoYou are correct in terms about application of current laws. The issue is more complex though. We tend to associate books with ideas and exchange thereof. Explicit ban of an idea raises all sorts of issues regardless of any other issues that may have been related to it. In simple terms, is it a good idea to ban algebra if a vocal enough community of anti-algebra people convince ebay to not list it?
- m8s 6y agoHow is eBay removing certain books from its marketplace banning an idea?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI am assuming good faith question and I will respond that way. In US, the entire market is divvied up between various oligopolies. You can name an industry and you can usually find 3-4 dominant companies that drive the market. Ebay and Amazon have ridiculous market power and reach ( reinforced by Covid ), which effectively means that if book is not available on their virtual shelves, that book does not exist for the general population. Ergo, removal from Ebay equals removing of an idea from the 'marketplace of ideas'. I am oversimplifying, but not by a lot.
- inglor_cz 6y agoIt is not outright ban, rather banishment to a very inhospitable place, a Siberia of ideas, so to say. (Russia often sent dissenters to live in Siberia.) If eBay was a tiny company, it would be nothing, but you cannot ignore the effects of scale and market dominance here. It is similar to the smartphone world: if Google and Apple block you, in practice you are destroyed.
- notahacker 6y ago> In simple terms, is it a good idea to ban algebra if a vocal enough community of anti-algebra people convince ebay to not list it? Is it OK for them to delist other things like spam and porn if enough people don't want to see them? If not, we're looking at a very different internet If so, we can probably reason about the merits of delisting based on whether we feel algebra might be good and early twentieth century casual racism the rightsholders have disavowed might be bad (or at least, not so good eBay ought to feel compelled to incur reputational damage to continue to distribute it). unlike adult content or spam, casual racism is an idea so important platforms ought not to impede its spread is an argument of course, just not a freedom of speech one.
- michaelt 6y agoI agree it isn't government censorship. But for those of us under pandemic lockdown, all human contact outside the home is over private companies' platforms. Seems to me if you're banned from all the major private platforms that's de factor censorship, if not de jure government censorship. More broadly, this also seems like a gigantic political victory for republicans: A few months ago the most high profile banned-on-all-major-platforms story was about Parler, a site that had literally been used to coordinate an attempt to overthrow democracy. Hardly an argument that a big 'cancel culture' exists or is running out of control! Now, the most high-profile story is about a beloved children's author and famed anti-fascist getting banned? You couldn't ask for better evidence of a 'cancel culture' run amok.
- jimmydorry 6y agoCan you name any time in history where the side burning books was in the right? If as a society we allow companies, that are equal to (if not more powerful than) the government we elect, to pick and choose what parts of public discourse are acceptable or not, we have no one but ourselves to blame when this inevitably goes pear-shaped. Like many other things in the past, what is legal right now may not be ethically and morally correct in the future. You are correct that society as we know it does not cease to function immediately after the giants like amazon, facebook, twitter, ebay, etc. take a specific action like banning a book or banning a user. However, the longer term implications are far more concerning and the time to start contemplating these issues was yesterday (or any other time in the last few years). The next best time is now.
- hef19898 6y agoNobody is burning these books, it is the estate that doesn't want to publish certain books anymore. So the party holding the rights doesn't want new books out.
- foolmeonce 6y agoWhat does a publisher's reversal about their wants have to do with selling books they already printed? I don't think(?) eBay globally banned selling of past copies of Meinkampf while the copyright was cleverly held by a German State. Doing so is pretending copyright is a right that extends to sold property that is a copy, extending a right too far, while banning a class of books like MeinKampf for your own reasons is perfectly valid. If they want to ban racist children's media on their platform then they should. That includes a lot of TinTin, popeye, Tom and Jerry, etc, that has never been classified as racist by some copyright holder. edit- s/published/printed
- hef19898 6y agoI have a DVD of old Tom and Jerry, growing up I only saw the newer clips as I learned by seeing the recsit crap the old ones were. Same for some of the older Tintin, I have them as part of a collection, but my dear are the early ones set in Africa racist. Good as historical pop culture references, but by no means something to read, or watch, for fun or without some context.
- tomdell 6y agoYou’re being downvoted because people here would rather pretend to be heroes standing up to the “woke mob” than acknowledge the reality that nobody is forcing the Seuss estate or even eBay to do anything. No surprise that so many non-white people report problems in tech circles given the moral grandstanding on behalf of some caricatures going on here.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoCensorship is censorship is censorship. The distinction of whether it is done by Ebay, government, bank, w/e is a distinction without meaning to the individual. US is maybe few steps away from China's social credit ( right now mildly distributed, but still with ridiculously big players able to effectively ban you from the market ).
- m8s 6y agoSo is it also censorship that certain posts are flagged and moderated on HN? It's a hard-line stance, anything goes? Dr. Seuss Enterprises stopped printing these books because they decided the books were insensitive and offensive. Should we force them to print more of these books?
- s1artibartfast 6y ago>So is it also censorship that certain posts are flagged and moderated on HN? Yes, it is a form of censorship. It is completely legal. people can still have an opinion if HN should engage in censorship, and if the criteria are appropriate. >Should we force them to print more of these books? Of course not!
- m8s 6y agoShould HN censor or moderate posts and comments?
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
- s1artibartfast 6y agoFree speech is also an ideal that some people find value in outside of a legal context. People obviously care about being told what they can say and think, indepenant of the law. What we are seeing is not an inevitable consequence of capitalism and reducing it to a profit motive misses much of the picture. It may benefit eBay's bottom line, but there other other factors at play. For example, the public expectations of private companies are changing, as more people want them to act as arbiters of morality. Similarly, corporations are increasingly adding social ideals to their objectives. While there is clearly a PR aspect at play, corporate leaders and shareholders can and do balance moral objectives against their bottom line. I think what people are reacting to is the feeling that they are loosing control to corporations over the direction of social change. Just as individuals can feel disempowered in the face of corporate influence in political arena, individuals feel disempowered by corporate influence in field of morality and social change.
- CodeGlitch 6y agoAh yes the old "just build your own internet" argument.
- m8s 6y agoYou can literally buy these books on Amazon right now. https://www.amazon.com/If-Ran-Zoo-Classic-Seuss/dp/0394800818/ https://www.amazon.com/If-Ran-Zoo-Classic-Seuss/dp/039480081... This questionable book that Dr. Seuss Enterprises no longer wishes to publish can be at your front door tomorrow. Enjoy.
- DrSiemer 6y agoHow long do you think it will be before Amazon follows suit? Relegating books to a market outside of the largest sellers basically amounts to erasing them. Sure, in this case people could still find them, because they are from a famous author. But what about unknown writers, with views that don't align with what is approved by the PC crowd? For the record, I have never read a Dr. Seuss book and don't encourage racial stereotyping, but there are other edgy subjects (like the legalization of certain substances) that I can imagine becoming less fashionable at some point in time. I don't want to see books supporting this idea suppressed at some point in the future. We should be very careful with this new self regulating market, that follows the loudest outcry to determine what they allow to be sold.
- dd36 6y agoNew? Isn’t it freedom? The government isn’t involved. Or should it be and it force you to sell everything?
- drdeca 6y agoPeople can complain that something is bad without calling for the government to ban it. They can even explicitly say that the government shouldn’t ban it, while also saying that the people doing it should stop.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y agoAh, yes, "freedom of speech", the concept invented in the USA that only has one authoritative definition in the US Constitution. /s I don't know how often I've had to point this out, but the US constitution is irrelevant here. You might as well refer to your favourite monty python sketch for all I care.