There are many gradations between “all companies allow X” and “the government will send men with guns to your home if you do X”. If only the last threshold counts as censorship, then we need a word for when people want to read what you wrote, but every major company decides to block that transaction. I think “censorship” is fine for that, but if you have a better term I’m all ears.
If anyone could open a bank and provide banking services, this would be true, but the ability to grant a customer access to banking is heavily regulated.
No such corresponding thing exists when it comes to "selling stuff on a website".
You'd have done better by pointing out the time Visa and Mastercard both started denying donations to a publisher (simply on request of the state) long before any criminal charges against that publisher were filed or made public.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m...
(Note that the website of said publisher is still up and still publishing.)
Again, however, the issue is that not anyone can just start a bank on a whim. Websites and publishing are not similarly restricted.
> If only the last threshold counts as censorship, then we need a word for when people want to read what you wrote, but every major company decides to block that transaction. I think “censorship” is fine for that, but if you have a better term I’m all ears.
That is indeed censorship. The article is claiming "banned", though, which is inaccurate. I am extremely critical of private organizations engaging in censorship, and think we should engage in activism regarding it, because we actually can.
Once something is actually banned though, activism for it is explicit promotion of illegal activity, which is often itself illegal. It's like calling every protest or riot "terrorism": it begins to mean nothing.
Depends on your definition of monopoly. Monopolistic practices and effects can begin to appear long before 100% domination of a market. I think it's fair to say that Amazon is well within such a range since they have over 80% of the book selling market in the US.
> This is just another case of someone who believes in ideas that are becoming less popular and less acceptable complaining about nonexistent unfairness.
So you think Amazon does nothing unfair? It's good to hear such full throated support for all their decisions.
But perhaps standing up for free speech when seeing it eroded is actually an honourable and decent thing to do. Speech isn't curtailed in one dramatic swoop, it's thousands of little decisions where we fail to stand up and say, this isn't fair, and it isn't the way to treat people we disagree with. If nobody wants to read the book, it will fail of its own accord -- nobody is forced to order it or read it.
I don't know, it's not a good look when you censor someone and say "oh, you're just unpopular".
And then, of course, there is the internet, where anyone can put an .epub up at a public URL.
The author of this piece tips her hand when she veers off into discussion of the content of the book Amazon dropped and engages with its position directly.
This is just another case of someone who believes in ideas that are becoming less popular and less acceptable complaining about nonexistent unfairness.
I become less and less surprised to find (seemingly undercover) right-wing talking points on Substack these days, especially after its founder decided to donate free content to a leading alt-right website/publication by appearing on their podcast. Seeing stuff published on subdomains of substack.com immediately has me default-hyper-critical, which is something that usually only happens to me on OANN, Gab, Parler, msnbc.com, et c.