[imgabe]

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]

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]

> 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.

[jeremyjh]

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]

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.

[jeremyjh]

Where have they positioned themselves as such? They have always had control over what can be listed, they have never said you can sell "whatever you want". No marketplace has ever been what you are describing. Do you have any references that explain this ideology in more depth because I do not understand it.

[imgabe]

Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu4TJ4sBzAg

"Whatever it is, you can get it on eBay". Unless of course it offends someone.

[op00to]

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]

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.

[g051051]

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]

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

[imgabe]

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.

[legutierr]

So you are advocating for some standard according to which marketplaces should be required to sell anything the public brings to them to sell?

Is there a line, in your conception, between what eBay should be forced to sell, and what they are allowed to prohibit? For instance, explicit pornography is legal. Should eBay be forced to sell explicit pornography? If so, is there anything in your mind that they should not be forced to sell on their website?

[imgabe]

Yes! We have this standard. It's called "laws". We elect these people called "representatives" and if we want people to not be able to buy or sell certain things like a kilo of heroin or a machine gun, we have them make a law that prohibits it. This way the public has input on the process and it is not left up to the arbitrary prejudices of any particular corporate drone.

eBay is not selling anything. The users on eBay are selling things and they can choose what to sell or not sell. If Wal-Mart wants to decide not to sell the book, fine. If you purport to offer a marketplace where other people can sell and buy things, you should not be involving yourself in the customers' transactions unless they are illegal.

[AshWolfy]

Ok how about this, should my local farmers market be forced to allow me to set a pornography stand?

[imgabe]

What horrendous, world-ending catastrophe do you think would occur if someone sold pornography at the farmers market?

If the public doesn’t want to buy porn there, they won’t and the stand will go out of business.

If they do want to buy porn there, why do you think the farmers market owners should be allowed to dictate what adults are and are not allowed to buy?

What if you wanted to set up a stand that sold books exclusively by African-American authors and they told you you weren’t allowed to do that. Is that ok?

[legutierr]

Ok, so “racially insensitive” material and explicit pornography are both legal currently. Are you saying that eBay should be forced to allow their users to sell both, or are you saying that we enact a new law that says that eBay should be forced to allow their users to sell “racially insensitive” material, but not explicit pornography?

[imgabe]

I'm saying that if you position your business as a platform or conduit through which people exchange things, whether those are physical goods, IP packets, fragments of text and images, whatever, you should be a "dumb pipe". Such businesses should not be permitted to abuse their privileged position to impose their own will on the general public. Remember Net Neutrality? Same thing. If you want to sell a stack of old Hustlers or a copy of Song of the South it should not be eBay's place to tell you that you can't.

eBay is not the government. They are not arbiters of what we are and are not allowed to do. Many people have sacrificed their lives to ensure that we are not governed by arbitrary tyrants that we have no say in, and it's frankly shocking that people are now like "Well, they paid a lawyer to set up a C-Corp in Delaware so I guess it's fine that they decide what we're allowed to read now".

[jimmygrapes]

I would just like to point out this terminology used:

"forced to allow"

vs.

"prevented from denying"

Think about that difference.

[growse]

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]

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]

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".

[imgabe]

Delisting a book is not an expression. eBay is (should be) a neutral party through which other people are expressing things by buying and selling things. The person offering the book for sale is speaking for themselves, not for eBay. If people decide they don't want to buy the book, that's fine, but it is not eBay's speech.

[UncleMeat]

I doubt the same people would oppose it though. Rights of downtrodden groups are constantly shit on without a peep from the “free speech absolutist” crowd.

[LudwigNagasena]

There is no difference. Whether something is immutable is to a large degree irrelevant.

[growse]

So do you think I should be allowed to kick people out for being black, or that I should be forced to serve everyone no matter their actions?

[LudwigNagasena]

Neither. It depends on the specifics. Should you be allowed to not serve someone who has anger issues? Does it matter if this anger issues are caused by genetic hormonal imbalance?