It has to be made clear that this isn't about legality. It's also not about whether this "technically qualifies" as "banning" or "censorship".
It's about what kind of society we want to live in. I want to live in an open society. I want to be able to watch movies and read books that offend people. I want to be my own censor and I want everybody to be their own censor. We're grown-ups, we can make decisions like this for ourselves.
Not trying to be snarky but there are I believe more than enough stores happy to sell you whatever you want, even though eBay won't allow these books to be listed.
I'm confused as to how eBay banning the listing of these books materially impacts people from getting them.
I hope this helps the confusion about why people are concerned: It's not about having temporary obstacles right now that are easy to get around, it's about the roadblocks that will be constructed in the future.
This is the "just make your own ${thing}" repeated in the past where ${thing} has progressively moved from: forum, messaging system, website, cloud service, internet platform, ISP provider, ICANN membership etc.
Because it's okay, approved and society thinks its good for one store to stop doing it means that it's okay for other stores, services, provider etc to also do it. It will and does happen as we have seen on Hacker News every week.
I might get angry but I'm fine with the laws that allow them to say it. I'm also fine with the laws that say that eBay can ban whatever products they want from their platform.
People are free to be mad at eBay for removing the books from their platform and eBay will take some hit for it. I suspect that they think the pros outweigh the cons with this decision, however it was calculated. This is just business as usual.
I think it's good you're correctly identifying the group actually making the decision, rather than vaguely blaming "Twitter" or even more broad, "cancel culture".
I wish more folks understood it's the companies themselves who are overreacting. Trying to fix people on the Internet is an unsolvable problem. Demonstrating to companies that outrage is almost always temporary and not business-impacting seems achievable.
How much further down this path do we have to go before people understand that it's about the principle, not the specific case at hand? It only took two years to go from "it's okay for Big Tech to boot Alex Jones off all their platforms" from "it's okay for Big Tech to decide which books we're allowed to read to our children". How much more power are we going to let these private enterprises accumulate? Where is this leading?
> It only took two years to go from "it's okay for Big Tech to boot Alex Jones off all their platforms" from "it's okay for Big Tech to decide which books we're allowed to read to our children". How much more power are we going to let these private enterprises accumulate?
The line is still where it was the entire time: private individuals and entities are allowed to decide for themselves with whom they want to associate. You seem to have made a huge leap from "eBay decides to stop selling a book on their platform" to "Big Tech is deciding which books we're allowed to read to our children". That simply isn't what is happening here. As always you are free to read whatever you want to your children, and you're free to listen to Alex Jones all day every day. eBay is free to decide what they want to host on their platform. Everyone is free to exercise their own individual freedoms.
This is the marketplace of ideas at work. In the marketplace of ideas, some ideas float to the top, others sink to the bottom. The sinkers and swimmers change over time as the buyers and sellers in the marketplace change. These books had their time, now they are sinking. The same goes for Alex Jones. He got his shot in the marketplace, and his ideas found a home, but they aren't for everyone and that's the choice of individuals in the marketplace.
Why are you OK with one of the world's largest marketplaces banning children's books while also allowing the sale of stuff like the Anarchist's Cookbook and all the ingredients to make a nail bomb?
It's about what kind of society we want to live in. I want to live in an open society. I want to be able to watch movies and read books that offend people. I want to be my own censor and I want everybody to be their own censor. We're grown-ups, we can make decisions like this for ourselves.