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The Coming “White Listing”
In an excellent post by @brianwatt, It’s Wrong to Support Jordan Peterson or Buy His Vile Book, there is an example of a “black list” in operation at Whitcoulls booksellers in New Zealand. They are declining to sell customers 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Setting aside the merits of the book (which are many) consider how declining to sell a book on any basis other than market demand is the precise example of a “black list.” But there is a coming “white list,” and it is worse.
It has only been in recent years that I have been introduced to the concept of “white listing.” This phenomenon was created to address the deluge of unwanted (sometimes malicious) messages, calls, and advertising that has been facilitated by the internet and robocall technology. Unlike blacklisting, which creates tables of phone numbers or internet addresses to block, white listing is the phone numbers and internet addresses that you have pre-approved to be let through to your phone or computer. It doesn’t take long in contemplating the creativity of annoying or bad actors to realize that white listing is more effective than blacklisting in controlling that to which you pay, or demands, your attention. Once you have gone to the trouble of identifying your circle of “good guys” it takes a lot less effort to stay current than to maintain an effective black list. But there is also an opportunity cost to excluding any previously unknown source of information or service. “White lists” constrain information — both bad and good.
If white listing is a personal decision, then it is all well and good. But if the decision is made for you … well, you can see where this is going.
White listing is already underway. Google and Facebook are shifting from blacklisting to white listing — it will be more difficult to access unapproved content. Algorithms are letting merchandisers focus in on your buying interests and preferences, but their suggestions — be it Amazon, or Netflix — are getting narrower and narrower. Your opportunity to discover new and interesting ideas and products is getting harder and harder.
The ubiquity of the practice portends nothing good. Choice is an illusion when someone else picks the options. This is true in politics as much as in commerce. Remember how amazed visitors from Soviet states were when they saw American supermarkets? The choices and the abundance of goods that capitalism made possible were overwhelming. Our physical and intellectual supermarkets may be just as big in the future, but the shelves will be filled with more units of fewer products. And the process of getting something new on to the “white list” will be tedious and mostly unsuccessful.
Published in General
I have noticed that Home Depot has been placing ads before me that show off tools with which I am completely unfamiliar. I have no idea sometimes what they are to be used for. I have had a bit of fun clicking on the ads and mentally filing them away for the day when I might possibly run into a situation where I need to use them.
I thought, by the post title, it was about the earlier post referring to a university that has dropped all references to white men from its American history course. Sounded like a logical next step.
As far as FB, I have found out about mewe.com, a site that promises to never censor its members. FB routinely shunts me over to a page I did not request, rather than putting me directly on the page I do request. That activity always feels like them slamming a door in my face.
Looks like Whitcoulls has about 60 locations and accounts for 30% of “the market”.
With luck, their decision will boost other stores’ traffic and sales.
So are they publishers or platforms? It seems like it’s easier for them to claim they have no editorial positions when they can plausibly claim the blacklisted sources violated neutral terms of use than when they pre-approve everything you see. Whitelisting might work for ads, but it seems financially and technologically difficult to pre-approve user posts. If the whitelist has the same ideological bias as their application of the blacklist, they could end up on the wrong side of a slam-dunk lawsuit.
I think they are already there.
Books which were present and purchased for years on Amazon are now suddenly gone, effectively banned.
That means from the used Amazon marketplace as well.
Book banning. How American!
Keep giving voting power to Third World norms by favoring endless massive legal immigration and refugee resettlement policies.
Cut your own posterity’s throat in the name of misplaced idealism and socially enforced guilt.
Or don’t.
@freesmith, not challenging your assertion (fully believable), but could you give us examples of the books that have been banned? Inquiring minds…etc.
Sure, @rodin After years and years of being available on the site, Amazon has decided to “disappear” certain books about race and ethnicity. Here are some:
I can verify all of these. I’m sure there are, and will be, more.
China’s social credit scoring system is not so far advanced on us, after all.