Cancel Culture eBay Style
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions
eBay’s thought police are rant-worthy, and an appeal to you, my trusty audience, to regale me with your encounters with the mendacious piggies at eBay. Details:
My first screed today is about the randomness of eBay’s censorship. eBay recently canceled a listing of mine for a 19th century trade card because eBay's censors decided it is offensive. Of course it is offensive, it is a 19th century trade card. I'd say 60% of them are ethnic, racial or gender caricatures that someone would find offensive.
This is the eBay policy, verbatim. No-no’s on eBay are:
“Listings or content that promote, perpetuate or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination, including on the grounds of race, ethnicity, color, religion, disability, national origin, sex, gender and gender identity or sexual orientation, aren't allowed. This includes but is not limited to the following:
Slurs or epithets of any kind
Slavery items, including reproductions, such as tags, shackles, documents, bills of sale, etc.
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
Black Americana items that are discriminatory
Confederate battle flag and related items with its image
Historical Holocaust-related and Nazi-related items, including reproductions
Any item that is anti-Semitic or any item from after 1933 that bears a swastika
Media identified as Nazi propaganda
Listings that imply or promote support of, membership in, or funding of a terrorist organization
The following items may be listed:
Media such as historical photos, magazines, books and art, provided that such material doesn't perpetuate or glorify violence, intolerance or racial stereotyping
Items related to the Civil Rights Movement
Stamps, letters, and envelopes displaying Nazi postmarks
Currency issued by the Nazi Germany government, including military scripts
Historically accurate WWII military model kits that have Nazi symbols
Historical and religious items that bear a swastika if they are made before 1933 and are not related to Nazism
When offering shipping to other countries, make sure to first check our International trading policy to verify that the item is allowed.”
These prohibited things are not nice and I have grave questions about the character of anyone who thinks they are cool, but I presented this list without censorship so you can see the problem I see: Being against these horrors is wonderful, until someone is given plenary authority to decide whether an item will “promote, perpetuate or glorify” one of the forbidden subjects. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Who gets to make that decision and what are the parameters for deciding if a listing is forbidden or acceptable?
As to the parameters of allowed and forbidden, as far as I can tell, there are no standards. Let’s take the “promote, perpetuate or glorify ... violence...” prohibition. When I think of glorifying violence, one of the first movie franchises that pops to mind is Rambo. Over the course of the series Rambo killed so many brown people that in 1985 Saturday Night Live did a parody commercial for a movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris called “Die, Foreigner, Die.”
I ran a search for “Rambo” and found 24,000+ listings including 948 Rambo-style actual knives. No violence glorification there [insert roll eyes emoji]. Among the other items that apparently do not “glorify violence” are toy guns, toy missile launchers, toy assault vehicles, and the aptly named “Skyfire Assault Copter”. I have wracked my brain and I cannot think of something that glorifies violence more efficiently than a child’s toy based on a weapon of war. But not according to eBay.
Now look at the “OK” list. “Items related to the Civil Rights Movement.” That one is a big can of worms. History is context, not ideology. According to eBay, it is forbidden to list an item that exemplifies what the Civil Rights Movement was against, yet it is OK to list one that relates to (presumably supports) the movement. Philosophically, how can we hope to understand good if we refuse to look at evil? And, again, who gets to make this decision and on what parameters as to which evil we will be allowed to see? Is a photo of Emmett Till’s beaten corpse OK to sell? Does it glorify hatred or does it relate to the Civil Rights Movement? I can see both sides of the argument and that is the problem. The well-meaning idiots who created and enforce this policy are akin to the people who want to edit The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it contains the Voldemort of ethnic slurs and somehow it has just become too much for people to be allowed to read the N word in a classic anti-slavery satirical novel of the 19th century. I give most Americans more credit for common sense and good values than that.
But back to the cards. I’ve heard from a few African-American trade card collectors who are very pissed off that they cannot find cards on eBay because of the censorship. They collect images from the Jim Crow era to remember the unique history of their ancestors but are stymied by eBay’s effort not to offend them. Other sellers tell me that they’ve been prevented from listing cards from classic sets like the 1938 Gum, Inc., Horrors of War or the 1936 Sammelwerk Olympics sets because of images of Hitler in them. How ironic that HOW, a set literally created as propaganda against the fascist threat of last century, is sometimes flagged and delisted for promoting fascism. Stupid. I’ve even been unable to find some boxing cards because they were made in conjunction with minstrel shows and minstrel show materials get flagged.
There is actually a far easier, more elegant solution than adopting censorship and trying to enforce it randomly and poorly. I ran a search the other day for a card and somehow got a slew of naked bimbo picture card listings mixed in with the card listings I was trying to find (and no, I don't recall the search terms I used, so please don’t PM asking). You know what crazy thing I did? I ignored them. Same as I do with thousands of other entries for items I don’t want.
At its core, what I object to most is the hypocrisy of eBay’s censorship. If selling toy weapons of war doesn’t “glorify violence”, then what does? Yet, I do not see eBay deleting the thousands and thousands of violent toys from the site. And don’t get me started on video games. My nephew was playing Grand Theft Auto at a Thanksgiving and his mother told him to stop because it wasn’t appropriate…for Thanksgiving. If you are worried about appropriate, don’t give the kid GTA in the first place.
I guess the message eBay is sending is that letting kids play at killing people is just dandy, but making someone feel "icky" is out of bounds? I’m a proud liberal but it makes no fuckin’ sense to me.
Speaking of horseshit eBay practices, recall that a few months ago I had a run-in with eBay over an account security review and funds hold that just happened to coincide with a five-figure sale. My hypothesis was that eBay is pulling this sort of crap to try and get a free loan on funds that are clear and ready to pay out. Well, I heard from someone else who had the same experience: long-time eBayer, makes a big sale, card passes authentication, funds are cleared, then a bogus security review is imposed freezing the funds. I’ve got over 400 subscribers here; how many of you have been forced to give eBay a free loan? Write a comment or send me a PM with your story.
Next time, we go lighter, I promise.