"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."

That is a massive non-sequitur. How do you even know what are the skin colors of individual people who defend the books? Are people of certain colors obliged to have the same values?

Lets not pretend there are hordes of people on Twitter ready to doxx, harass, publicly shame and do god knows what other things if you’re against the woke mob.

They shouldn’t have that freedom?

Law of the jungle; you get someone fired from their job, get their health insurance taken away, your life is forfeit. It's worse than SWATting.

This is going to lead to reverse-dox revenge killings.

Um what? Who lost their job?

Censorship 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 ).

So 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?

Yes, moderation is censorship, but given the size of HN, it has no effect on broader freedom on the Internet. It is similar to having a drop of water leaking onto your floor.

If a dominant player (Amazon, Apple) blacklists you, it is not a drop of water, it is a devastating tsunami.

It is rational to concentrate on tsunamis and ignore mere drops.

It is censorship. We give it a different name as we recognize its value from keeping low value posts at bay. Posts, however, are not books. Different rules apply.

They can stop printing. But it is hard for me to defend Amazon, Ebay, et al with 'they can do what they want on their platform'.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that owning these books should be made illegal though. I am most certainly against that. But if eBay doesn't want their marketplace to be associated with transactions of content they deem inappropriate to their brand, I don't see any reason to force them to do so.

If your argument is that eBay and Amazon are so critical to the fabric of the internet that special rules must apply to them, I wholeheartedly disagree.

They aren't critical to the fabric of the Internet, but they are critical to the online retail sector, which is arguably as important today as railways were in 1900. Its weight has only grown during the pandemic which shuttered their real-world competitors.

I don't have a real proposal in mind and like you I do not think Amazon or Ebay are critical to the stability of the internet.

I do think, however, that the current situation is no longer acceptable. I don't know whether as a society we should consider some sort of limit on influence a given company has, but that is actually what is needed. If Ebay was a corner store, I would not give half a shit that it stopped carrying Seuss. When a publicly traded company does it, it quickly becomes problematic.

This outrage over a private company having the freedom to choose what it sells feels contrived.

They're a publically traded monopoly marketplace with special legal protection from being sued. I would be fine with them being forced to act like what they pretend to be- a commons, a market.

The freedom of a giant, monopolistic company is not aligned with the freedom of humans.

We already have precedents for conpanies being forced to impartiality- utilities. Ebay's a utility, the modern large-scale version of the ground a flea market sits on.

No. Ebay is not a monopoly nor does it have special legal protections.

Section 230

The outrage is over the power imbalance. The fact that this is one of the things that is bringing it to a head is almost inconsequential.

The power imbalance between businesses and their customers?

>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!

>Yes, it is a form of censorship.

Flagging and moderation on HN is not censorship, because the content doesn't disappear. Am I the only one that browses HN with "showdead" enabled?

Should HN censor or moderate posts and comments?

My opinion that they should, and the guidelines used to censor posts are reasonable. All the censorship I have seen has been to stop flamebait. I have had comments removed and in hindsight, respect the reason. I reserve the right to change my mind in the future.

Similarly, I think that eBay's actions are paternalistic, heavy handed, and part of a trend I do not support. I would encourage others who feel this way to let ebay know.

It’s not about whether there is a line at all. It’s about where that line should be.

Should we erase the past?

Selling the past is the only way it gets remembered?

A store should not have the freedom to determine what it sells?

A store, yes. But when a store is as big as eBay they should only interfere very sparingly, preferably only to remove illegal products. Do you trust eBay to judge what is right and what is wrong for you? I sure as hell don't.

The question above can be modified to make it reflect the current argument more accurately to: should HN censor all earlier posts and comments, based on the most recent changes in sensitivities?

Edit: question above, not yours

Ebay isn’t a monopoly.

This canard.

After Charlottesville, the AHA put out a statement making it clear that removing confederate statues from public view was absolutely not “erasing history”. Nobody listened to them. People just kept going on about the left erasing the past. This made it clear that this was just a culture war rather than honest concern.

If you are worried about erasing the past, get the opinion of some historians.

Erasing the past is not the main concern here. We all know history is written by the victors.

What worries me is the voluntary whitewashing and consequent suppression of alternative media by companies whose judgement is solely based on PR.

A publisher choosing not to reprint works that contain questionable content is completely understandable and well within their right. Nobody is arguing they have to print these books. But when the biggest open marketplaces begin to decide what is allowed for resale, that is something else entirely.

It's a slippery slope to let public outcry determine what is easily available and what is not.

> Erasing the past is not the main concern here.

Then why was that the entire content of your post?

> We all know history is written by the victors.

It isn't. All of the history professors I know cringe at this phrase.

My post was a reply to someone making an equally short statement. Please don't take it out of that context.

>than acknowledge the reality that nobody is forcing the Seuss estate or even eBay to do anything.

How do you know this?

Maybe efforts in previous years made them do it now?