Reaching out for other examples, you’ve got an article published by the Chinese Communist Party about Amazon banning a book that you can buy on Amazon right now.
Welp. I’m convinced.
Sounds like they’re doing two things wrong to me.
That’s because you’re a fuckin idiot. The book that the CCP is complaining about is available on Amazon. It sounds like it was briefly listed as out of print due to supply chain issues.
Probably they put it back up after the article was written. I don’t know if there’s a way to check?
More info here, for what it’s worth: Amazon bans book exposing U.S. COVID chaos – Workers World
I don’t know the history of this poster, and this all just seems bonkers to me. What’s the solution, force Amazon to sell a book they don’t want to sell? Must they carry an infinite amount of titles and stock lest they be accused of “censoring”?
Yes, maybe break up the company. That’s a more workable solution, I suppose, but then you’ll have bitching and moaning about it being anti-capitalist and punishing successful businesses or some such happy horseshit.
I’m confused, is DemonTree outing herself as a hardcore socialist in this thread?
The background is there is a lot of ‘soft’ censorship going on right now. Not the government directly banning speech, but putting pressure on tech companies to remove anything they don’t like. No, it’s not practical to force Amazon to stock every book. But they have even banned third party sellers from selling it according to the article, that is going a bit further than not stocking it themselves.
Only by the US definition where anyone vaguely to the left is a socialist.
Really? You didn’t learn a thing from last time you relied on the ‘article’ to be the font of Truth?
Hey, at least I’ve been in one, actually several. I bet you haven’t. You talk as if you’re pulling your opinions out of your ass because you don’t know anything about America.
What the fuck does this even mean? The government isn’t a retailer. It has no free speech rules it has to follow. The First Amendment says that the government can’t restrict the free speech of others, with certain exceptions. Part of the free speech they can’t restrict is what products a private enterprise can sell. Are you really that stupid about America?
No matter how many times you yell “Amazon is evil,” you’re just shouting how ignorant you are about reality. Everything you say has an unbroken record of being wrong. What a legacy.
This is really fucking stupid. If Amazon is broken up, it’ll be broken up into things like “Amazon Video”, “Amazon Cloud Services”, “Amazon Retail” and, wait for it, “Amazon Books”. Do you think that “Amazon Books” would function any different than it currently does? That it would realize some revelation of “oh! Now we have to start publishing all that fucking garbage that we previously weren’t!”? You’re a fucking idiot.
Yeah, I’ve never been in one. Not sure I’ve ever seen one. Okay, tell me why I should care about them I’m listening.
I haven’t ever said Amazon is evil, although their anti-union activity might qualify. I do think it is too big and too powerful.
I already have. You don’t listen too good.
I will note my answer in that thread did not in any way depend on the transphobic aspect, as I hadn’t checked the link prior. You’ve got to give up this idea that people are entitled to a publisher, seller, platform etc. That’s just not how freedom of speech works.
The funny thing is that we were already Pitting DrDeth for the stupidity of this argument. In fact, since I hadn’t clicked your link, I assumed the two of you were talking about the same “banning.” And at least he called it a “soft ban.”
The idea that the one large company everyone knows is the only company in that space is a dumb one. Amazon is not the only seller of books. Not only are there other book-selling sites, but you can sell the book yourself. You can e-publish easily, or get the book printed for you on-demand to sell.
But, again, Amazon, being a business, is only going to not sell a book if it will lose more money selling it than it loses from not selling it. That’s only going to happen if a large majority are against it, which suggests the topic is far more settled than you think.
As for the book itself, the general idea of having stories from people who found transitioning didn’t help isn’t a horrible one. It’s not always a cure. But the description from the book suggests the intent is to try and invalidate all of the many instances where it did help.
And, if my experience with others making such arguments is a guide, it likely contains a lot of factually inaccurate information that could cause harm. If it does, then I can make an argument that the moral thing to do is not to carry the book, same as with gay conversion therapy books, or books on how to make a bomb.
Because they have no opposing viewpoints? Are Christians limited to using those bookstores? Do they have a monopoly in some areas?
That’s one way to do it, but hardly the only way. If the issue is that Amazon has outsized influence over book publishing, it’d be a useless move. Elizabeth Warren’s “Platform Utilities” method is a better model: Amazon becomes, essentially, a utility, and smaller companies have access to the utility. Amazon doesn’t get to make publication decisions.
It’s not exactly a business decision, is it? It’s ideological.
It’s an issue where there is a lot of ignorance. We don’t want to bury our heads in the sand and realise 20 years later we have another scandal like the Satanic Abuse one, or the ‘recovered memories’ scandal. There’s a lot of pressure from activists to tell one story and one story only and that is very dangerous.
Sounds good to me, and in many ways that’s how it already functions.
Are people limited to using only Amazon? Does Amazon have a monopoly in some areas?
The answers, in our reality, are no and no. You lose again.