Banned Books: Analysis of Censorship on Amazon.com (2024)

That was definitely censorship through government pressure, but as governments change, the pressure goes away.

https://www.amazon.com/When-Harry-Became-Sally-Transgender/d...

Wikipedia:

> In February 2021 the book was the first removed from Amazon.com's store under a new hate speech policy enacted by the company. The move was criticized by the National Coalition Against Censorship, and United States Senator Tom Cotton. On March 12, in response to a letter from four other senators, Amazon clarified that the company has "chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness". Anderson denies that his book describes transgender persons as "mentally ill". On February 2025, Amazon reversed their decision, now allowing the book on their store.

I think you're the fool in that comment, for letting Amazon give you this excuse.

Everyone and every organization has responsibilities to the community. They are parasites if they leave the community, on which they depend 100%, to others. Business depends 100% on a system of laws, freedom, peace, social goods (e.g., education for their workers and customers - who is going to read? - healthcare for them), infrastructure, security, order, prosperity, ......... Try operating a business without those things.

One could argue, successfully I think, that Amazon's business is 99% utilizing community resources and they add only a small bit of their own.

Just because someone frequently lies doesn't mean they're exempt from ever being criticized about it again.

I recently learned that this idea of the responsibility of a business as being to maximize shareholder value is kind of recent, and that in the 50s and 60s, in the US, they actually applied a stakeholder capitalist idea, where the purpose of a business was to maximize not shareholder value, but stakeholder value, which would have been the employees, customers, communities, and society at large.

I think we are all a fool as well to simply accept that the made up institution of "business" has to be about maximizing shareholder value, like anything, this is all a political game, and it is what we agree to make it.

The next iteration of The Anarchist Cookbook going to include a trans protagonist so it becomes unbannable

Agree, but this has nothing to do with the left / working class. I was also more interested in how Amazon may or may not be censoring or, more likely, deprioritizing, books of certain topics in the West. I already know that China bans ye ol' Tank Man of Tiananmen square. It's the first thing everyone brings up when they want to point out how much more morally superior we are in the West. /s It's so old, it's even boring.

I am confused about what subset of books you are referring to. Many expensive books, in the range you mentioned, are collectible editions of books still in print.

I dont think schools should be censoring books, buying precensored books that have the substance yanked out to prevent offending politicians, nor should they be banning books.

I also get super frustrated at Conde Nast for taking a lot of their old shit out of print, causing it to fetch prices in the hundreds.

There is an old joke -- "they call it corruption in asian countries, they call it lobbying in western countries"

Similarly here, they call it banned books in middle eastern countries, they call it anti-semitism in western countries.

These studies like to discuss banned books in middle eastern countries because it helps people here feel good about deporting people for writing op-ed articles: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tufts-student-from-tur...

they can create the image of our civilized world here in the west as compared to the "unfree" world in the middle east

They made their data public so you might get some insight into your question from that.

Unfortunately their data will not tell you which products in general are censored outside the middle east, but if I understood their methodology correctly you could tell how many of the products censored in the middle east are also censored elsewhere.

They could at least inform customers about the censorship and not sweep it under the rug:

> among all of the restricted products identified by this study, none presented a message to the user explaining that the items were unavailable due to regulatory reasons. Instead, each item was communicated as either being “currently unavailable”, “temporarily out of stock”, or that “this item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location”.

They don’t need to use inaccurate keyword matching (“rainbow mentos”) or opaque messaging in order to comply. The problem existing doesn’t mean the solution is good.

If a book distributor is going to be criticised for censorship, we should criticise it for voluntary censorship (where it can legally sell a book but makes a voluntary policy decision not to do so), rather than legally mandated censorship under the laws of whatever country. The principle is you have greater responsibility for decisions you make in full freedom than decisions you make under legal coercion. This analysis misses the mark because all the cases it cites are effectively legally mandated censorship, and it ignores all the cases of voluntary censorship

Why do you think the authors are aiming to produce "news"?

curious, do you have a example or two of these? would love to read more about them

It must be that ideas are powerful, maybe the most powerful things. Ideas can move nations, start wars, create revolutions. They can create widespread hate and widespread compassion.

It's as if we, the public, aren't as helpless as we thought, but that mass manipulation via social media - manipulation of ideas - could be exceptionally powerful.