4 ms·

Hey, can I come look through your house to make sure there are no books there that offend me? It would be incredibly rude of you to consume any content that ran

by imgabe 6y ago

Hey, can I come look through your house to make sure there are no books there that offend me? It would be incredibly rude of you to consume any content that random strangers might object to. I'll be over in an hour. This has nothing to do with conscientiousness. Buying a book to read at home by yourself is not the business of anyone else and neither eBay nor anyone else should be dictating what you're allowed to read.

spamizbad 6y ago
Actually you have the property rights angle all wrong: People who control the publishing rights and the intellectual property behind an ecommerce platform to distribute things have both decided they don't want to sell certain works for whatever reason. A stupid one IMO. But it's within their rights as we currently understand corporate power. Perhaps we shouldn't be so willing to indulge liberal market freedoms as they can be a double-edged sword - property owners can "censor" cultural touchstones thanks to powerful intellectual property laws. To fix your analogy: Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. If you want to defeat cancel culture you should advocate for LESS property rights, less market "freedom", and strong labor protections. This whole idea that you can somehow defeat a moral panic with some sort of counter moral panic (or backlash) has been tried for over 40 years - it's not working.
- imgabe 6y ago
  > Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. Not really. It's more like Person A wants to sell a book. Person B wants to buy a book. Persons C through Z, who are not involved, haven't read the book, have no intention of ever having anything to do with the book, but saw a tweet that said it was bad, interject themselves and decide that persons A and B are not allowed to conduct their transaction.
  - op00to 6y ago
    Persons A and B are allowed to conduct their transaction, just not on a particular platform. Put an ad in “dumb racist old books” magazine and find someone to buy your book.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      How about instead you restrict your book buying to a specialty “woke only” bookstore that carefully curates a selection guaranteed not to offend your delicate sensibilities? If you want to live a life of restrictions you are more than free to do so. What you may not do is impose them on others.
      - tired-dev 6y ago
        And who, exactly, is "imposing restrictions" on you? Ebay? It sounds like a more honest analogy would be that you have gone to a "woke only" bookstore and are whining that you don't have the ability to force them to carry the books you want.
  - jeremyjh 6y ago
    Person C operates a marketplace platform. They are very much involved in what is sold in their marketplace. They do not want to be associated with material deemed objectionable. They don't need you to agree it is objectionable. Do you think they should be forced to list anything someone might want to sell that isn't illegal? What kind of freedom is that?
    - imgabe 6y ago
      If you don’t want to be associated with material that might be “objectionable” then don’t position yourself as a platform where arbitrary people can sign up and list whatever they want for sale. Instead hire buyers to vet the merchandise you’re selling and stand behind it and take responsibility for it. You don’t get to have it both ways.
      - 6y ago
- g051051 6y ago
  Not a good analogy either. In this case, the publisher is perfectly within their rights to not offer these works for sale anymore. However, under the First-sale doctrine, they have no right to control resale of the physical copies of the works already out there. eBay delisting them means they are choosing to side with the publisher over the rights of the sellers.
legutierr 6y ago
But you can dictate what eBay must allow its users to sell?
- imgabe 6y ago
  Yes, just like we can dictate that eBay can't make a rule that only white people are allowed to sell on it. Operating a business involves being a part of society and society is justified in imposing rules on your business to ensure that your business is not harmful to the general welfare of the public.
  - growse 6y ago
    There's a difference between discriminating against people's immutable identities (ie black people) and people's choices. I can't kick you out of my bar for being black, but I can kick you out for being loud.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      There is a difference between those things, but that doesn’t mean we should automatically support all discrimination that isn’t based on immutable qualities. If eBay decided to delist all copies of White Fragility we should oppose that too. Ideas need to be freely exchanged and debated not forcibly censored by whoever happens to have power at the moment.
      - growse 6y ago
        In a free society with free markets, you are free to oppose antyhing that a business does that you don't agree with. You have many existing mechanisms for expressing that disagreement, including protest, and starting your own business and competing. If people agree with your values, you will succeed. eBay choosing to delist all copies of a book is eBay exercising their own freedom of expression. Having the government coming along and censoring that freedom seems counter to the idea that "Ideas need to be freely exchanged ... not forcibly censored".

by imgabe 6y ago

spamizbad 6y ago

Actually you have the property rights angle all wrong: People who control the publishing rights and the intellectual property behind an ecommerce platform to distribute things have both decided they don't want to sell certain works for whatever reason. A stupid one IMO. But it's within their rights as we currently understand corporate power. Perhaps we shouldn't be so willing to indulge liberal market freedoms as they can be a double-edged sword - property owners can "censor" cultural touchstones thanks to powerful intellectual property laws. To fix your analogy: Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. If you want to defeat cancel culture you should advocate for LESS property rights, less market "freedom", and strong labor protections. This whole idea that you can somehow defeat a moral panic with some sort of counter moral panic (or backlash) has been tried for over 40 years - it's not working.

imgabe 6y ago
> Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. Not really. It's more like Person A wants to sell a book. Person B wants to buy a book. Persons C through Z, who are not involved, haven't read the book, have no intention of ever having anything to do with the book, but saw a tweet that said it was bad, interject themselves and decide that persons A and B are not allowed to conduct their transaction.
- op00to 6y ago
  Persons A and B are allowed to conduct their transaction, just not on a particular platform. Put an ad in “dumb racist old books” magazine and find someone to buy your book.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    How about instead you restrict your book buying to a specialty “woke only” bookstore that carefully curates a selection guaranteed not to offend your delicate sensibilities? If you want to live a life of restrictions you are more than free to do so. What you may not do is impose them on others.
    - tired-dev 6y ago
      And who, exactly, is "imposing restrictions" on you? Ebay? It sounds like a more honest analogy would be that you have gone to a "woke only" bookstore and are whining that you don't have the ability to force them to carry the books you want.
- jeremyjh 6y ago
  Person C operates a marketplace platform. They are very much involved in what is sold in their marketplace. They do not want to be associated with material deemed objectionable. They don't need you to agree it is objectionable. Do you think they should be forced to list anything someone might want to sell that isn't illegal? What kind of freedom is that?
  - imgabe 6y ago
    If you don’t want to be associated with material that might be “objectionable” then don’t position yourself as a platform where arbitrary people can sign up and list whatever they want for sale. Instead hire buyers to vet the merchandise you’re selling and stand behind it and take responsibility for it. You don’t get to have it both ways.
    - 6y ago
g051051 6y ago
Not a good analogy either. In this case, the publisher is perfectly within their rights to not offer these works for sale anymore. However, under the First-sale doctrine, they have no right to control resale of the physical copies of the works already out there. eBay delisting them means they are choosing to side with the publisher over the rights of the sellers.

legutierr 6y ago

But you can dictate what eBay must allow its users to sell?

imgabe 6y ago
Yes, just like we can dictate that eBay can't make a rule that only white people are allowed to sell on it. Operating a business involves being a part of society and society is justified in imposing rules on your business to ensure that your business is not harmful to the general welfare of the public.
- growse 6y ago
  There's a difference between discriminating against people's immutable identities (ie black people) and people's choices. I can't kick you out of my bar for being black, but I can kick you out for being loud.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    There is a difference between those things, but that doesn’t mean we should automatically support all discrimination that isn’t based on immutable qualities. If eBay decided to delist all copies of White Fragility we should oppose that too. Ideas need to be freely exchanged and debated not forcibly censored by whoever happens to have power at the moment.
    - growse 6y ago
      In a free society with free markets, you are free to oppose antyhing that a business does that you don't agree with. You have many existing mechanisms for expressing that disagreement, including protest, and starting your own business and competing. If people agree with your values, you will succeed. eBay choosing to delist all copies of a book is eBay exercising their own freedom of expression. Having the government coming along and censoring that freedom seems counter to the idea that "Ideas need to be freely exchanged ... not forcibly censored".