Book Banning in an Age of Amazon

https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/book-banning-in-an-age-of-amazon

by kenneth • 5 years ago

41 35 5 years ago

abigailshrier.substack.com

sneak6• 5 years ago

A monopoly in book-selling (which Amazon absolutely does not have) still doesn't allow the monopolist to ban a book. As long as people can sell stuff and have access to shipping, publishers can still publish and readers can still buy and read. Popularity and discoverability is still an issue, but that is orthogonal to content or topics being banned.

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.

ttt08• 5 years ago

This is just another case of someone who believes in ideas that are becoming less popular and less acceptable complaining about nonexistent unfairness.

I don't know, it's not a good look when you censor someone and say "oh, you're just unpopular".

ta8645• 5 years ago

A monopoly in book-selling (which Amazon absolutely does not have)

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.

ggreer• 5 years ago

This proves too much. By this argument, it’s fine to arbitrarily deny people access to payment services and banking, since anyone can still mail them precious metals or send them cryptocurrency.

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.

sneak6• 5 years ago

By this argument, it’s fine to arbitrarily deny people access to payment services and banking, since anyone can still mail them precious metals or send them cryptocurrency.

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.

tobobo• 5 years ago

I think it’s important context that this author recently had her book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters” blocked from sale at some outlets. You can decide whether that helps or hurts her argument.

xupybd• 5 years ago

The problem is not that the books are banned by some book stores. That situation is fine, and we can live with it. The problem is that access to those books is now significantly reduced. When a single entity gets too big or an entire industry chooses to ban something we have a problem. I don't know the solution but I do know this goes beyond a private company's right to sell only what they want. That right is now in competition with societies access to published works. It is also restricting authors and publishers from selling works that are legal to sell. This is a problem.

sneak6• 5 years ago

The problem is that access to those books is now significantly reduced.

This is entirely false. The books can still be put up as an .epub at a URL on any of thousands of servers that can be accessed by the entirety of the internet-connected Earth. Such hosting service can be obtained in 5 minutes for a pittance, and will easily serve tens of millions. For slightly less than a pittance you can serve the file to billions.

If Facebook starts censoring posts or private person-to-person DMs with your URL in it, we have another discussion to have, but until that time this is just the normal freedom-of-association choices associated with being unpopular. Amazon sucks for doing this, to be sure, but the TFA is committing a worse offense: claiming inaccurately to have been banned.

There has never been a time where it has been easier or cheaper to publish to literally billions-with-a-b.

ttt08• 5 years ago

If Facebook starts censoring posts or private person-to-person DMs with your URL in it

https://heavy.com/news/2019/05/facebook-bans-infowars/

torstenvl• 5 years ago

And what about when HN disappears the post talking about how Amazon disappeared the book you wrote? This thread is no longer accessible from the first (or second, or third, or...) page.

sneak6• 5 years ago

*slightly more than

EdwardDiego3• 5 years ago

I've always been absolutely opposed to banning books.

...then I got diagnosed with adult ADHD, which, boy howdy, explains a lot about my life, and I'm only somewhat resentful of my parents for pursuing an alternative medicine approach when I was diagnosed as a kid. But anyway, that's just setting the scene.

Then I went to my local library to get some books on adult ADHD, to help my wife understand it better, and they only had one book on adult ADHD (quite a few more on child ADHD, natch), but in the same section, had two books stating unequivocally that ADHD was a made-up condition.

These ones:

Debunking ADHD: 10 Reasons to Stop Drugging Kids for Acting Like Kids - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1475827377/

ADHD Does Not Exist: The Truth About Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder - https://www.amazon.com/ADHD-Does-Not-Exist-Hyperactivity/dp/...

And I guess, now that I had a strong personal stake, I felt rather offended by these books.

I don't want to ban them, but I'd very much prefer that the library filed them under "alternative medicine" rather than under "mental illness > ADHD". Not so much for myself, but for any kids who get diagnosed and have a parent or parents similar to mine looking for a reason to deny the diagnosis.

young_unixer• 5 years ago

(Both links point at the same book)

By the way. If I'm a young adult and think that I might have a mild case of ADHD, do you think it's worth it to try get diagnosed?

EdwardDiego3• 5 years ago

Oops, cheers!

It's definitely worth looking into. In hindsight, I think it severely hampered my life in that I never graduated high school, I failed hard at university, and I did poorly at all my jobs that involved doing routine tasks.

However, the ability to "hyperfocus" is how I taught myself to code - albeit at some cost, staying up until 4am coding has some costs when you have a day job.

And then I lucked into a coding company where there were lots of interesting challenges I could hyperfocus into, even though I was failing at the necessary routines, it was overlooked because I could make the big leaps that transformed things.

If I'd be hired by a "Write the CRUD app using JSF templates and Hibernate for a slightly different client" company, I would've failed hard.

But the biggest issue that the medication has resolved for me is my impulsiveness around drugs and alcohol. Now, I can have two beers and then say "Nah, I don't need another".

Previously, that wasn't possible. With the obvious life impacts that followed.

So if you think it might be present, definitely worth confirming if it is, or if it isn't.

xkcd-sucks• 5 years ago

With psychiatric stuff it's always a bit of a philosophical question especially if one isn't hearing voices or anything similarly. The criteria for diagnosis is basically whether you are worse than average on some metrics and whether you feel like you have an attention problem - but this could just as well be framed as "the way your personality is".

I've been diagnosed with adhd several times as an adult and every time I scored average/slightly above average on the attention+working memory metrics but scored so high on the other metrics that the ADHD ones were considered out of place!

Personally I don't necessarily believe that ADHD "exists" but am willing to say that I do, in order to take advantage of a prescription for dexedrine which I enjoy. I would of course, in practice, attack anyone claiming it doesn't "exist" because it is counter to my own self interest in maintaining a convenient supply of speedy pills.

EdwardDiego3• 5 years ago

Here's the fun bit though - I don't get "speedy" from the medication I'm on. Looking back with hindsight, when I was a teenager and snorting Ritalin with my friends, they got all silly and giggly, while I felt calmer. Was a sign I should've taken seriously. At the time I just thought I'd gotten dud pills.

But yeah, I think a good metaphor is that people with ADHD are starting at -1, people without are starting at 0, and then the pills add a +1 to both.

ryan-allen• 5 years ago

It sounds like you're fortunate to be rather gifted, along with a repeat diagnosis of ADHD as an adult (this is not uncommon), and I have questions.

What had you seek out a diagnosis as an adult? What country were these diagnoses? How old are you?

hindsightbias• 5 years ago

“Amazon gladly carries Mein Kampf”

Is there an equivalent to Godwin’s Law for the literary world?

lsiebert5• 5 years ago

You can still buy this book from the publisher if you really want to.

You shouldn't buy it though, not if you want a real look at the experiences of the majority of transgender people, the views of the majority of the medical community, or the science that disrupts traditional western views about gender and biology.

Nobody chooses to be a transgender person. It just happens sometimes, like being born with 6 fingers on your hands. It might be difficult to fit in, but it's not bad or harmful intrinsically. Some people are different, and sometimes other people treat those who are different as a threat to them, instead of a chance to question their assumptions about what it means to be human and the diversity of human experience.

Unlike a person being transgender, that type of judgment of others is a choice. And sometimes people who make that choice then choose to write books about transgender folks to promote a political agenda, finding anecdotal situations to to justify their views.

Instead of assessing the experiences or actions of the majority of a group, they treat something deeply personal and difficult and subject to discrimination as an intellectual debate and look for ways to justify harmful policies, ignoring the demonstrated psychological benefits of gender affirming treatment for transgender people¹, or the differences in the brains of transgender people².

Sometimes people make a choice not to carry those kind of books. Amazon being huge and the effects of that is an entirely separate issue from their choice not to carry a particular book.

1. https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/study-find... 2. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgend...

ttt08• 5 years ago

Nobody chooses to be a transgender person. It just happens sometimes, like being born with 6 fingers on your hands.

Does that explain the existence of people who regretted it and detransitioned?

lsiebert5• 5 years ago

Do people who transition and later regret it explain transgender folks who are happy to have transitioned?

Not really, because they are different groups.

threatofrain• 5 years ago

It does seem inherently distressful ("bad") because what trans people seem to want isn't an alternative concept of gender. They want to, in fact, switch sex. They are born in psychological tension with their own body.

It would be another matter if trans people simply have an alternative concept of gender.

ttt08• 5 years ago

Regarding gender, there is another thing that confuses me. I was told all this time that gender is a social construct, a set of behaviors for a particular gender that might differ between different cultures, ie. it's not real. But reading the Wikipedia article on gender dysphoria, it says that it's a mismatch between the biological sex and gender, which was supposed to be a social construct. Are children being diagnosed with gender dysphoria just based on the fact that they don't express themselves in a way that we traditionally associate with either males or females? Do I understand it correctly?

Book Banning in an Age of Amazon

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