There is a whole lot of offensive material out in our society that no one is censoring, so why has Amazon taken it upon themselves to censor anything that they find offensive? First of all, who defines offensive? Well, that seems to be the problem.<\/p>\n
Yesterday The Daily Wire<\/a> posted an article about Amazon’s censorship. Amazon has some interesting ideas about what needs to be censored.<\/p>\n The article reports:<\/p>\n For example, a popular documentary on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was banned from their streaming service this past week. Before that move, the company deplatformed conservative Ryan Anderson\u2019s book critical of gender theory, \u201cWhen Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n When Just the News reached out<\/a> to Amazon over the ban on Anderson\u2019s book, the outlet said the company directed them to a page<\/a> outlining their \u201cContent Guidelines for Books.\u201d Under a section labeled \u201cOffensive Content,\u201d Amazon states that they \u201cdon\u2019t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cA review of those policies suggests that sometime in the last few months Amazon made a major change to the ways in which it moderates book content on its servers, imposing a much stricter standard on books than it had previously done,\u201d the report<\/a> said. It appears the company recently added so-called \u201chate speech\u201d to their guidelines on book platforming and is amping up their censorship of the \u201coffensive.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The article notes an observation by Daily Wire podcast host and conservative author Matt Walsh that if Amazon bans conservative books (which is the direction they are going), publishers won’t publish them due to the lack of marketing outlets. This will abolish half of the political debate in America.<\/p>\n The article notes:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a company controls over 83% of the market for books, it begins the process of deleting ideas from a society,\u201d the author argued. \u201cA bookseller can sell whatever it wants. If \u2018Marxist Books\u2019 wants to only sell books that conform to its ideology, OK; that has integrity.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBut this is the \u2018world\u2019s largest bookseller.\u2019 Amazon can basically make books disappear for *all readers* \u2014 and does so on a blatantly dishonest basis. Under guise of removing \u2018inappropriate\u2019 content, they will really be removing ideas they disfavor,\u201d she added.<\/strong><\/p>\n Amazon has not banned books that speak favorably about transgender teenagers. This is not about objectionable material–it is about promoting a particular point of view–politically and socially.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a whole lot of offensive material out in our society that no one is censoring, so why has Amazon taken it upon themselves to censor anything that they find offensive? First of all, who defines offensive? Well, that … Continue reading