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Amazon Begins Removing QAnon Goods For Sale (seattletimes.com) 169

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes the Washington Post: Amazon said it will remove merchandise related to QAnon, a discredited conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a potential domestic terrorist threat, just a day after the e-commerce giant suspended the pro-Trump social media site Parler from using its cloud computing technology.

Amazon is beginning to remove QAnon products from its site, a process that could take a few days, spokeswoman Cecilia Fan said Monday afternoon following inquiries from The Washington Post and other media outlets. Third-party merchants that attempt to evade Amazon's systems to list QAnon goods may find their selling privileges revoked, Fan added.

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Amazon Begins Removing QAnon Goods For Sale

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    There's no problem buying Mein Kampf and other controversial items from Amazon.
    • by lister king of smeg ( 2481612 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @09:32PM (#60957472)

      There's no problem buying Mein Kampf and other controversial items from Amazon.

      as that is used in actual history classes and such it should be (its hard to study the causes of the rise of fascism for example if you can't read sources)

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      It's been a while since Mein Kanpf inspired insurrection.

      • You must somehow have missed the German AfD (our N@zi Tea Party equivalent), NSU (basically Schäbe's agents trying to stir up an insurrection, before joining the AfD), etc.

        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          So when did they attempt to sack Berlin?

          • by teg ( 97890 )

            So when did they attempt to sack Berlin?

            If we're leaving the 20s and 30s out of it, some right wing extremists gave it a try last year [dw.com].

            • by sjames ( 1099 )

              The only edition sold in Germany is an academic version with scholarly notes and critique.

              Until 2017 it was kept from print using copyright laws. If indeed the anti-corona restriction nuts did get their ideas from Mein Kanpf, perhaps something should be done about it IN GERMANY.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Jan. 6, the Capitol, maybe you've heard of it?

  • by gacattac ( 7156519 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @09:09PM (#60957358)

    Amazon has listed a "Kill All Republicans" shirt since august 2020:

    https://archive.is/V6dj3 [archive.is]

    Only removed in the last few days, once they needed to dress up in moral clothing, as Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky recommended.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      has listed a "Kill All Republicans" shirt since august 2020

      I know I'm just a dumb foreigner with deficient English, but I used to think that present perfect didn't refer to actions that didn't continue anymore.

    • once they needed to dress up in moral clothing

      You mean, once they realized that incitement to political violence actually has a high chance of leading to violence, and decided to enforce their new policy evenhandedly with regard to incitement from any political party? Yeah, I don't see anything to complain about there.

  • This will likely make believers more adamant that there is some sort of cover up. It might be more effective to fight it by commercializing it so hard it becomes a joke. E.g. Che Guevara T-shirts.
    • Sure. But so far the data seems to be showing the QAnon cult has lost a huge amount of their recruiting power due to these bans.

      I mean ultimately, theres no negotiating with crazy, but that doesn't mean companies ought be participating in the crazy.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The brand has just reached end of life. It was a whole Trump/Republican thing, not very good, somewhat creative, but is has lost it's reason to exist and so the merchandise simply has no value any more, except in discount bin in supermarkets, dependent upon stock levels.

        Pretending the censoring had an impact is as silly as can be, and those doing the censoring and scared a bunch of politicians globally and they are all, kill, kill, kill kind of mental framework, Google, Facebook and Twitter are facing a gl

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The current claim is that on the 20th there will be 10 days of blackout, during which Trump will round up all the Satan worshiping paedophiles and emerge as POTUS again.

          When that doesn't happen hopefully it will be the final nail in the coffin for QAnon. Unfortunately I think it may well just continue, as Trump gets hit by criminal charges and lawsuits. There is a strong possibility of violence on the 20th as well, and not just in Washington.

  • ... the idiots if they don't self-indentify?
  • It's a Good Thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @09:44PM (#60957516) Homepage

    I know plenty of people are going to go all "muh freedums" and claim this is some kind of targeted conspiracy to suppress speech. The thing is, as a society we have seen this sort of thing and done this sort of thing before, and with good reason.

    Go to walmart.com (in the U.S., at least) and do a search for "Mein Kampf". No luck, eh? That's odd. Try a search by author and you'll see that most of the books seem to want to portray that person in a pretty bad light.

    Similarly, although anybody in the world who is dedicated to getting and reading a copy of "The Turner Diaries" can do that, getting a print paperback copy is going to prove challenging, You'll probably have to go to your local fringe political bookstore to find one. Here in California, it would (ironically enough) probably be a socialist action bookstore. But you won't just breeze into Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy. Why? Because they don't carry it.

    We, as a society, have decided that certain political speech is so virulent, damaging, and dangerous that we choose not to allow it to be disseminated widely. I think it's demonstrable that QAnon falls into that category.

    Is it oppression? Repression? Suppression? Probably just the latter. I doubt anyone has ever gone to jail for trying to distribute their press's copies of "Mein Kampf" through Walmart. Walmart just says "thanks but no thanks" and it's that much harder for uneducated people to go down the rabbit hole.

    • There are no copies of "Mein Kampf" that are not infringing on the copyright. The copyright holder is the state of Bavaria, an it doesn't give any permission to make copies available to the general public. Walmart publishing the book would get their arse sued off.
      • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Why? How much money would the state of Bavaria be losing if Walmart sold a book that Bavaria isn't publishing?

        • You don't have to show that you have suffered monetary damages to enforce copyright. All that is necessary is that a) you own the copyright and b) the copier did not have your permission. Although, as I stated earlier, the copyright on Mein Kampf expired a few years back; it's in the pubic domain.

          • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

            Perhaps that depends on which part of the world you are in but if the damages are zero then how much damages do you expect to receive?

            • I don't know of anyplace where it works differently. You would, of course, get no damages. You would get a judgment of a penalty for violating a copyright, but you wouldn't get damages on top of that, which you could expect if you could show a monetary loss.

              • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

                I don't think that's how copyrights work and that's not what they are intended for, copyrights are put in place to protect artists /publishers profits in order to encourage the artists to create works. Copyright was always intended to encourage the creation of more works and those works were supposed to enter the public domain as before copyright there was only public domain.

      • Re:It's a Good Thing (Score:4, Informative)

        by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Monday January 18, 2021 @06:24AM (#60959024)

        Actually, the copyright on "Mein Kampf" expired in 2016. It's now public domain.

  • You know, because it promotes a discredited conspiracy theory about aliens?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • So they're OK with BLM and AntiFa protesters rioting and destroying downtown PDX and shooting one guy?

        • Re:BLM/AntiFa? (Score:5, Informative)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday January 18, 2021 @04:33AM (#60958670)

          Do you equate fighting for you equal rights with attempting to overthrow a democracy because you're a moron or because you're genuinely a bad person?

          Yes, Amazon are okay with it. We should ALL be okay with it. To not be okay with it makes one of the racist fucks that's part of the problem.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Actually yes, they kinda do equate the two. They believe that BLM is just part of the communist/globalist conspiracy, not a genuine issue. In that sense it's actually less legitimate than their struggle against the Satan worshiping paedophiles.

      • Hmmm. playing Devil's advocate here, rather than "They Live" merchandise, how about... are they going to stop selling the Quran? Some fundamentalist Islamic extremists have conducted acts as bad as (or worse than) invading the Capitol building. I've always been taught not to judge an entire group of people based on the acts of a handful of idiots, but it seems you're suggesting we should. Why is it acceptable to ban absolutely anything to do with QAnon based on a relatively small number of Capitol-invading

    • When the buyers of said merch attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government I'm sure they would.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @10:27PM (#60957668) Journal
    My pillow [google.com] is still on sale in Amazon. The owner who features himself prominently in the packaging and advertisements was trying to persuade Trump to declare martial law by invoking insurrection act.

    Some reporter with super high res camera snapped him and was able to read a lot of the notes printed on the papers he was seen carrying into the White House. It went something along the lines of:

    "Egg on your base to attack the Capitol and lynch your Vice President. Then you can cite law and order situation, invoke insurrection act and crown yourself as the King! Then you can appoint me as the Groom of the Stool [wikipedia.org] and I will diligently, completely but softly carry out my primary duty of wiping your butt".

    I am paraphrasing, you can find the original decryption here. [washingtonpost.com]

  • So courageous, Amazon! Have all the brownie points!

    Also: Discredited? Are you implying it had some credit before?
    (Well, ok, the media certainly treated them with the attention that implied that ...)

  • In all of this "deplatforming" there is certainly a case to be made that this is censorship and that people are trying to "shut down" dissonant voices. The other half of the story is that these are commercial entities and they don't want your dangerous bullshit on their platforms because it's dangerous and has the potential to wreck their bottom line. Companies manage their profits in part by managing risk. Trump & Qanon are risky. Hosting extremist garbage is risky. Maybe Jeff Bezos couldn't give a fly

  • Mass murderers like racist Che Guevara and Mao and Stalin are still welcome, however.

  • Let's Check on Che (Score:5, Informative)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday January 18, 2021 @03:14AM (#60958454) Homepage Journal

    Yup, the racist mass-murderer who rounded up homosexuals for execution squads is still just fine by Amazon:

        https://amzn.to/2M1cwBb [amzn.to]

        https://www.humanprogress.org/... [humanprogress.org]

    Q-tards, though... Glad we know where they stand.

  • I get shutting down communication avenues for people wanting to organize an insurrection on inauguration day, but won't de-listing their t-shirts and such just play into the conspiracy theory, potentially encouraging more of their members/believer to participate in some uprising attempt? Why not wait until after Jan 20th to delist, and in the meantime, perhaps provide the authorities where these items are being shipped by Wednesday, in case it's clothing for those who plan something crazy on Wednesday. Or i

    • by whitroth ( 9367 )

      No. Some, at least, of QAnon is small-money funded (as opposed to other elements of it, that have backing by billionaires, [1] and some of the other big-money pushers (like the former VP of Citibank, who was posting from a work account.

      It's a case of follow the money... and if you cut the money, you cut the people *behind* who are pushing the idiocy.

      1. https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]

  • I bet they're too lazy and cheap to hire 1 human being for like a day to look at listings and they'll remove T-shirts that say "Qanon is a lie."

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