But if they're banning the sale, which then leads to ownership, that's too far.
We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.
I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
I've not seen any assertions (never mind evidence) that the children's books contained "severe racist overtones". To be clear, I'm pushing back on the "severe" adjective. There clearly have been assertions about racist overtones in the children's books, just not "severe" racist overtones -- at least that is my understanding.
Unfortunately I guess it would be inappropriate to actually post the objectionable material for discussion since it has been made clear lately that there is no "use-mention" distinction permitted on these matters.
We are therefore rapidly finding ourselves in a situation where the most easily offended person wields immense power to shutdown speech and commerce by simply asserting that something offends them and there is no recourse to challenge their opinion, it must be accepted without discussion.
I find this situation appalling and rapidly approaching frightening.
> I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
This is the first link I could find, but I've seen the same content elsewhere: https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/here-are-the-wr...
Two of the books have traditional racist caricatures of Chinese people, and another one has something that seems like a caricature of an Arabian.
However, the other three are kind of a stretch, IMHO. One has "Eskimo fish" with parka-like manes. Another has a group of people in a boat at the North pole, which are being interpreted as being Inuit, but the text doesn't say so and they just look like people in parkas to me. And the last just has a Japanese person in traditional garb next to the nonsense question "How old do you have to be a Japanese?." I guess the sin is just referencing any non-Western ethnicity in any context, which is kinda nuts.
Is it racist to depict a citizen of a country in that country’s traditional national garb? Simplified to cartoon form for children?
I guarantee no actual Chinese are offended by this.
Chinese-born or American-born? My guess is that American-born Chinese would be more likely to be offended, because they've been acculturated to the American culture around this kind of offense, and a lot of it is reasoning by analogy to the black experience (e.g. if similar caricatures of blacks are offensive to them due to centuries of pervasive racism, then other groups should be able to claim offense at caricatures of them)
I remember reading something years ago about an Asian-American frat (I think some pledge died during a hazing ritual). Part of the pledge process was to read a bunch of stuff about anti-Asian racism in order to build a shared identity.
Born in Europe actually, so I don't know where I fall on that spectrum, haha. But probably closer to the US than to China.
https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/here-are-the-wr...
However, I have seen some disagreement among different news sources about what exactly led to the bans.
It all started with the gluten intolerant choosing the lunch location
So while literal gut reaction is serious and exists, people claiming gluten intolerance are much more likely to be confusing something else.
But no, I don’t expect them to sit there and watch. Most restaurants have some gluten-free items so there is something to eat.
But I would expect there to be some fair rotation where every once in a while we go to a special gluten restaurant, and also the bbq guy’s favorite, etc etc
What happened was the veto power of allowing a single person who thinks they are gluten intolerant to have an undue power in selecting the restaurant.
It seems similar here as it’s really someone’s feeling but the response is not proportional. The response to some people feeling gluten intolerant shouldn’t be to never eat at pizza restaurants. Similar to some people feeling sad from reading a Dr Seuss book shouldn’t result in banning Dr Seuss books from ever being bought or sold.
The argument is “well it’s not that bad to avoid gluten” and that’s true. Skipping gluten isn’t the end of the world. It’s not a major problem. Just like missing out on a few Dr Seuss books doesn’t directly ruin ones life.
But it lessons it a little bit and the act of accommodating all these little changes puts culture in a downward spiral where very small groups limit experiences.
The challenge I have is that there are serious social justice needs that must be fought and worked on to make society better. Systemic racism, bias against the poor, systemic poverty, etc.
These kinds of things are thematically similar to this Dr Seuss stuff, but while Dr Seuss isn’t important, systemic injustice is important.
It’s like how health inspections for restaurants are important, but unrelated to gluten in the restaurant. I can be for restaurant hygiene but against banning gluten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Ran_the_Zoo#Criticism
I've owned copies with these pages. It's depressing to me that some people think that we should keep teaching this stuff to kids.
It did provide a lot more insight for me than the superficial coverage I found in most places.
I'm not sure if we'll ever come back to that book (it's part of an anthology) but if we do it'll be when he's old enough to understand a conversation about why it's not okay. And then we'll skip the pages, because the book is better off without them anyway.
Perhaps that is why they sloughed off making the films.
When he does get old enough to watch movies, I can't reasonably expect to keep him from watching or reading things. If he doesn't see them with us, he'll see it at friends' or grandparents' houses, but either way we'll have to talk with him about what he's seeing.
Disney movies are a great example of something a lot of people seem to remember as harmless and fun, but they pretty much all contain at least some problematic and/or scary elements to varying degrees.
The concern is not that people want to continue using I ran the Zoo as a educational tool.
The concern is ebay is weighing in to say they know better than parents how to educate their children. OR that eBay is weighing in that they know better than collectors what books are suitable for purchase.
Some people find it presumptuous, patronizing, and concerning that eBay wants to make these decisions for individuals.
How do you teach a child what's wrong if you can't show them examples and articulate to them why it's wrong?
Do you just not teach them and hope that one of them doesn't grow up to be the next Hitler instead?
Edit, to add: as a comment below notes eBay only allows annotated versions of the book. So maybe they are consistent; I didn’t click through any of the listings when I searched. I also have no idea how you annotate Mein Kampf to not be racist/anti-Semitic propaganda...
It really was not that long ago... like 20 years we knew that all the things we’re seeing now are wrong and even had an idea why they were wrong.
There is going to be a kick back from all of this. I think we all know it, just not what form it will take.
It's the power of peer pressure combined with the apparently human tendancy to encourage others to do things we know are wrong for our own amusement. It's the playground mentality where a bunch of kids stand around goading another kid into doing something terrible chanting "do it, do it". With each success the groups find new levels of perversion to push their members to.
Most people wouldn't call a version with just a disclaimer annotated. I assume annotated versions of Mein Kampf refute Hitler's claims.
I wouldn't be surprised if this started as a copyright issue. Bavaria inherited Hitlers copyright and aggressively banned any sale of Mein Kampf, only annotated versions got around that ban and even that was a legal uphill battle as far as I remember.
Private libraries can do whatever they like. Public ones should be required to carry even the most offensive book.
Given that, libraries shouldn't be required to carry every book, they should optimize their collections for what their local users want to read. If it turns out that old out of print childrens' books aren't popular, then why should they carry them?
Libraries come and go, and should be treated as temporary collections (fair enough re space constraints). To attempt to erase history (“cancel it”?) is to ignore its teachings.
The precedent of books being illegal has already been set in many countries. Now all that is missing is the political will to have them banned (and at the rate things are deteriorating, I expect this will come sooner rather than later).
Edit: In retrospect, this comment reads like I'm dismissing the parent or grandparents' concern, but really I'm just saying that you can definitely buy old stock that's been taken off shelves.
they can surely stop publishing additional copies, but existing copies should not be burned.
were their local readers asked if these books were offensive? Or was this pushed over them?
And beyond that, I don't think you mean what you generally say here, that libraries should have books that are considered controversial by elites. I can think of plenty of books that are controversial to leftist elites and plenty of books that are controversial to right wing elites.
I don't disagree. One thing that I think worth considering is that the seller is clearly making an attempt at a form of profiteering. I don't pretend to know if eBay intends to continue to restrict sales of these titles for all time. I certainly find it in poor taste that the seller wanted to use the moment to make a quick buck.
I just searched 'ebay nazi memorabilia' and found an iron cross. No swastikas. Not sure the extent of their ToS cause I don't use eBay so I'm not reading them.
From the article:
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
Sure, some sports fans were very opposed to changing team names. Childhood memories and nostalgia are even more effective knee-jerk reactionary topics.
Had eBay said that they were temporarily banning the sale of these titles, I think they could have prevented sellers from profiting off a big news story about racism without much negative publicity. They could then quietly lift the ban after the next big thing had refocused everyone's attention and this was forgot.
That said, I'm divided. I'm anti-racist. I prefer free speech and free expression. I believe POS Klansman have a right to say ignorant garbage. But I also support "no shirt, no shoes, no service." Put another way, my business has a right not to peddle your wares.
Is it profiteering? It's still legal to sell the book in other markets, for the time being.
You're also talking about an item that:
1. Is effective immediately, no longer in production
2. Being censored and banned
3. Probably being destroyed, just not in literal book burnings
4. Has clear literal and historical value
If I were a rare book collector I'd be all over these. Even if I were a speculative investor I would consider buying some and waiting a couple of decades for society to regain its wits or burn down.
If the library is publicly funded, then I don't really think this is OK. They might decide to not purchase additional copies of some books they disagree with, but I certainly don't want them to limit lending of what they have.
If the library takes no public money then they can obviously do whatever they want.
"Oh sorry, the ISP is private, so they are allowed to disconnect you if they dont like what you wrote on twitter"
For example yesterday I pointed out everything from the COVID numbers on the CDC website (showing death rates are not as bad as they seem) or that covid vaccines are 100x more dangerous than standard vaccines lol
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D124F787
Frankly, it’s become exhausting posting here. I don’t even want to participate.
HN used to be above this drivel, and actually had thoughtful replies. I hope dang and company push for a less politics focused approach because it's degrading here, rapidly. I have flagged this post, but I doubt it will do much.
Generally, major invasion of freedoms were permitted and discussions were thorough and thoughtful. you can look at the average length of post back then, then compare to this thread, to get a gist of what I mean.
There also wasn’t downvoting analysis of data, there were retorts. Downvoting was typically reserved for poor manners.
All my time here I’ve analyzed points of view from a data perspective and shared my data / results. Only the past year it’s been flagged to oblivion (often not even downvoted). I personally disagree and don’t think this post deserves a flag just because you don’t want to read it. Others do, it’s relevant to all our lives and the “hacker” ethos. On the same token, I do think general politics should be limited and probably off topic here (book burnings are a bit of an extreme breach of freedom).
Personally @dang if you’re listening, we should probably remove flag abusers. This is getting ridiculous
But being an "information libertarian" was part of the hacker spirit for me, to borrow a word from the sibling poster. I find it useful to see these headlines on HN to keep track of where tech companies stand. A recruiter tried to get me into an eBay subsidiary just a month ago! Glad I didn't have time.
Welcome to America.
Consider that the copyright owner, the Dr Seuss Foundation, has made the decision to cease publishing these six works. That is not the case for the other materials you mention.
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
As in, the usual über vague policies that give the interpreter of the rules carte blanche to deem whatever he will a violation of the “rules”, — the typical prætence of rule of law, for what is really rule of men.
> Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
Logic? If ever there will be a consistent thought process, it will be based on analysing profits and on nothing more, not on the actual qualities of the work removed, and most often it is not even about profit, but about gut feeling and arbitrary bandwagons and standards of being offended.
> How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
If ever they become notorious enough that they end up on advertiser's networks blacklists, and thus hurt their profits, then yes.
Consider the situation with TVTropes that implemented it's “content policy” to ban certain content in 2012 for advertisement reasons. The policy itself speaks of content, but in implementation, only matter notorious enough to end up on advertiser's blacklists was removed. So Kodomono Zikan, a work infamous, but actually quite mild when one takes the time to read it, is banned from being mentioned there, but less infamous works such as Prisma Ilya which go far further in serializing minors can freely be featured there, as they never became popular enough to be featured on advertiser's blacklists.
If ever a company have any rational thought process, it shall be in the pursuit of profit; morality is never a rational objective.
Jewelry and monetary equivalents are sold on Ebay, and they get lower transaction fees than most categories.
> The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP.
Also, should eBay really be forced to carry books? Should the Seuss family really be forced to publish? When does the right to speech translate into someone else's obligation to publish?
Among those different views, are included different attitudes about emotional safety(ism), propriety, politeness and so on.
Yes, it’s quite subjective and context-bound. Being intellectually reactionary, being uncharitable, applying stipulative 2020 norms to 1950s work... these are all analytic missteps.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
And for what it is worth the capitol rioters have been widely condemned by libertarians and conservatives.
Edit: Am I incorrect?
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.
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.
If you make a social media site that organizes domestic terror and your bank cancels you then that's your problem.
You do realise that most of the organisation of the "domestic terror" was done on Facebook right ?
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.
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).
Colorado Power is a private company, they can choose who to sell power to. Maybe this is a problem with that data center.
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!!!"?
At what point to we step up and say, these megacorps have as much power over our lives as the government. And in some cases more. The US government would struggle to ban a book world wide but ebay and amazon can do it pretty easily.
I don't expect eBay to cater to my banned Dr Seuss book needs.
Are you saying they don't want freedom of religion because they are happy with no religion or are happy with theirs? That may be true for folks who've never experienced anything different from the way they were raised. I think the majority would like the freedom to choose something different when one thing is not working for them.
Back in the 1950s, Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, decided that he wasn't going to buy any more screenplays from communists, or anybody who had communist friends, or even anybody who'd been accused of having communist friends.
MGM was a private company, so that was perfectly okay.
Right?
Right?
It's also a suggestion that perhaps one might want to think about what could happen should the "cancellation" shoe suddenly be on the other foot, as it well might. These things can change, sometimes faster than people expect them to.
Robespierre was pretty surprised when the mob showed up at his door, you can bet.
Personally, I think the cancel culture stuff will hit a tipping point and go the other way toward some mean. That sort of pendulum swing happens with culture all the time. Just like our society and laws survived the Hollywood Blacklist (and many worse societal upheavals), it'll survive this.
>Listings that promote, perpetuate or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination, including on the grounds of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation, aren't allowed. This includes but is not limited to the following:
...
>Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs
I doubt the books would be banned under this policy alone, but the public uproar about them means they are going to be popular tokens among people who want them specifically because they are now deemed problematic and that group is going to include a lot of racists.
[1] - http://ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/of...
EDIT: Anyone want to explain any downvotes that don't amount to "I don't like eBay's policy"? OP was basically saying that eBay was opening a can of worms and all I did was point to an official eBay policy saying the can was already open.
Also let's not pretend that these moderation policies are foolproof. There are always going to be examples that slip through the cracks. If you want eBay to remove them for sake of consistency, you are free to report those items.
I don't think so: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=%22Mein+Kampf%22
As of this writing, I see three listings, and one appears to have been by someone hired by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry to do an English translation:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Unexpurgated-Edition-of-Hitlers-Mei...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf_in_English#Murphy_t...
Also, all the copies for sale appear to be from just before or just after the start of WWII, which means they'd likely have annotations of little modern scholarly value.
I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to show here. All three listing on eBay are annotated versions. That includes the one you mention that was originally commissioned by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry but the Wikipedia link says wasn't actually endorsed by anyone in the German government.
>Also, all the copies for sale appear to be from just before or just after the start of WWII, which means they'd likely have annotations of little modern scholarly value.
I'm not sure their age makes the annotations worthless. One can even argue that contemporaneous annotations are more valuable as they serve as their own historical documents.
Either way, like I said before you can always reach out to eBay support if you feel like these should also be banned.
It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc).
This falls into the category of taste / political opinions and has gone too far too quickly. Much as I don't like what the silly cartoons are, and of course while I don't think Ebay is a public forum that has any obligations (they can do what they want), I think Ebay is getting in deeper than it should.
Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
I think the other thing that bothers me is that to be protected by such measures, you have to be popular. And it's flimsy. This year it's <x> group, next year that group is forgotten and it's on to <y> group. Woe to the actually wronged group of people who can't garner enough popular support, and who fall by the wayside of laws that are less enforced because people thought the social-media driven justice system took care of it.
Ps. And edit just to add, lest someone discount my opinion as from a privileged position, I am among one of the groups said to be portrayed in a racist way in those books. If only people’s concern about racism in cartoons extended to more important matters as well.