Posted on 02/24/2021 5:57:34 AM PST by EBH
Consider two events Monday. First, the conservative scholar Ryan Anderson announced that Amazon had purged his 2018 book, “When Harry Became Sally,” from its web store. The book criticizes recent progressive ideas about gender and especially the wisdom of sex-change procedures in children....
Also on Monday, two Congressional Democrats wrote a stern letter to CEO Jeff Bezos about Amazon’s role in politics. If you took seriously the party’s promises to defend “democratic norms,” you might expect Democratic politicians would express concern about the world’s third-largest company by market capitalization trying to suppress a book on a contested political issue.
But the letter is a demand for more ideological censorship. “Our country’s public discourse is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies,” write Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney. They quote a claim that right-wing media is “much more susceptible,” and demand to know why Amazon’s Fire TV carries certain conservative programs...
The letter is also addressed to the CEOs of Apple, Google and cable companies. It’s part of a campaign to engineer a more pliant media through coercion of the corporations that distribute information. That point will be pressed in a Wednesday hearing on “Disinformation and Extremism in the Media”
...The House also released a memorandum ahead of the hearing that appears to give orders to mainstream news sources. “Despite criticism, many traditional media outlets continue to allow for the disinformation in an attempt to follow journalistic standards and present multiple viewpoints on a news story,” the Committee avers. Got that, newspaper editors? Please adjust your coverage to the liking of Congressional Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
You just are not going to have any access to any other thoughts, ideas, opinions very soon. Cracking down like this in the technological realm is going to go unnoticed by many as the echo chamber of progressive ideas gets bigger.
Funny how enablers like the WSJ are now clutching their pearls.
I look at what’s happening on Amazon with the books. Amazon is the biggest seller of books in the marketplace and they are banning books.
Book banning has long been frowned upon in a free and democrat society and yet, we are watching happen under a cabal that claims to be about democracy.
Book banning all under the guise of misinformation?
And the “free market” FReepers will applaud.
I was also told gouging during an emergency is a good thing.
Amazon can legally do it.
Whether they should is a different question.
I used to work as a bookseller.
We stopped selling porn.
Would you have made us sell it anyway?
And there’s an argument to be made for gouging, BTW.
Consult Thomas Sowell’s work.
The image hosting site i used to post images here blocked me on a TOS violation because I posted a Nazi symbol with the tech giant’s names on each leg of the swastika. They said it was hateful.
I have two of his books.
The real world isn’t a book.
People make illogical choices very often.
Some people are sociopathic trash.
The “free market”, which has never existed in the US, depends on a moral people. Otherwise you have anarchy.
Amazon’s making it easier for their competition. Also, banning books makes people want to read them more.
As much as their tiny minds want it, they can’t erase history, in this era. Information is ubiquitous and mediums are everywhere.
They’ve got this technology and think they can use it wield power. They’re just making powerful enemies.
Maybe certain companies should be broken up like Ma Bell.
While government getting involved in most things is a bad idea, we are entering a time of rising monopolistic powers.
I’m not completely sure what is the best way.
I do know America is currently heading in a very bad direction.
Hard copy libraries are treasures. Getting to be Fahrenheit 451 time, boys and girls.
they lost me at “...authoritarian GOP...”
Would you have made us sell it anyway?"
No. I think we have to defend the rights of private companies to sell what they think their market wants.
Is ANYONE suffering from lack of porn books? It's more prevalent and available than EVER.
If there is demand, a market channel will appear. Even if government, or Amazon, bans it.
Yup. Streaming is vapor ware.
I can see books written by authors like Orwell and Solzhenitsyn and others being banned.
I am surprised that this is still available:
https://www.amazon.com/Camp-Saints-Jean-Raspail/dp/1881780074
As a group we could probably put together a pool on which book(s) are next banned.
I banned evil Amazon years ago.
New black market just opened books.
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