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What's funny about this situation is that you can still buy copies of Mein Kampf on Ebay but not copies of Dr. Seuss books.

Wherever you stand on the issue of whether or not Ebay can/should be able to ban Dr. Seuss books on their marketplace that fact alone is damn weird.




‘ Plenty of controversial items—including Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and “The Turner Diaries,” a novel popular with white-supremacist groups—were available on eBay as of Wednesday evening. When asked, the spokeswoman said these two books also fell in the “offensive material” category and would be removed. On Thursday afternoon it appeared that “The Turner Diaries” was no longer available on eBay.’

From the article at least, it appears eBay will also remove those books.


It's been a week and Mein Kampf is still available on Ebay.


but this was brought about because of the Seuss ban. not in its own merit. it sounds quite disingenuous.


Ebay has had an "offensive material" policy since at latest 2018 -- that's the earliest that Wayback Machine has a capture of the URL that the present "offensive material" policy is at.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180705090957/https://www.ebay....

The 2018 one probibits "items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views"

I am not sure to what extent or in what ways it has been enforced against what sorts of items. Perhaps it has been enforced unevenly or mostly not? I suspect that nazi memorabilia, at least, has been consistently rejected for a while.

But the policy is not new.

The today one at that URL gets into a lot more specific details than the 2018 one, including prohibiting "Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs"

It looks like those details were there as early as Nov 2020, not sure how long before that. But that predates the current Seuss controversy.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201112030930/https://www.ebay....

In closing, the Internet Archive is doing some really important work. I should go send them some bucks again.


Is Mein Kampf sold as a children's book? I meant it in the context of children's books. Would you think "Marquis de Sade" would be a good book to sell as a children's book?


>Is ...xxxx... sold as a children's book?

"Every book is a children's book, if the kid can read."

Mitch Hedberg

But seriously, is who the book is aimed at relevant?


In other words, "won't somebody please think of the children?"


Are children even allowed to buy stuff on EBay? If no, why does it matter?


Depends on their parents opsec.




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