The Censorship Czars

As many of my friends know, when I was growing up I had two career aspirations: to be the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal or to be a Broadway musical star. Or both. Little did I know I'd work at a newsletter company, a trade association for architects, and a PR firm for real estate developers on my way to running a book publishing company.

Over the years, as I have mentored other young women, I've often pointed out that there are hundreds of jobs, even industries, you've never heard of, but might offer exciting and fulfilling careers.

But this ain't one of 'em: "Director of Book Content Risk and Quality."

That's a real job. What's worse, it's a job at Amazon, the single biggest retailer of books in the world.

I don't know about you, but I felt like I'd slipped into a George Orwell novel when I read that Amazon's Director of BCRQ... existed. Never mind for the moment that she declared Abigail Shrier's (important and upsetting) book had passed the smell test, but let's focus on the fact that Amazon employs someone to judge "book content risk and quality."

Is that an axis - how much risk can we take before the quality doesn't matter? Or perhaps risk and quality go hand in hand? Unclear.

What is clear, however, is that the dominant, almost monopolistic, source for online purchase of books has an official censorship czar.

"Now hold on," you might say, "doesn't Amazon have the right, like any private sector business, to sell what they want and not sell what they don't want?" Absolutely. "And isn't it a good thing," you might continue, "for companies to have policies that reflect their values and principles -- even if those policies lead to curtailing some (tiny) part of that business?" Another good point.

On the question of businesses having the right to sell or not to sell (to bake or not to bake), I am 100% in support of that right... unless you hold a monopoly in your market. Is Amazon a monopoly? Debatable. We'll leave that to the lawyers to argue; let's just say they are indeed "too big too fail" as far as publishers are concerned, which certainly puts them in a position of power typically held by monopolies.

As for honoring your values, I endorse that as well -- I suspect we agree that this is both commendable and essential for a free society. Even when I disagree with those values -- even when I find those values reprehensible -- I support a company's right to live by them.

My only request is honesty. State your policies clearly, explain how they reflect your values and principles, and then we can all make informed choices.

It's not a big ask, but it seems to be tough to find. When Twitter, YouTube and Facebook (to name just three recent and extremely high-profile examples) invoke their policies as an excuse to deplatform or ghost opinions that contradict their preferred political narrative, that's not principled leadership, it's censorship.

For example, I am convinced the restricted Prager University videos did not violate YouTube's Community Guidelines on hate speech, profanity or violence, as YouTube claimed. Dismissal of Prager's lawsuit on free speech grounds has nothing to do with whether or not YouTube twisted their own policies in pursuit of a political agenda. How many unrestricted profane, misogynistic, violence-laden rap music videos do we have to see to make it clear what YouTube's real objection to Prager was?

What about Twitter? Here is Twitter's official policy:

Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation. Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.

What exactly does "similar types of behavior" mean? Now we're surely sliding down the slippery slope, where vague generalizations can mean, well, anything the director of content risk and quality wants them to mean.

Which brings us back to Amazon, and decisions on which books to sell resting on the judgment of one person (informed by, and I promise I'm not making this up, Amazon's "Books Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team"). Judgment is always subjective, and the more vague the policy, the more subjective those decisions can become. "I know it when I see it" leaves some very important decisions in the eyes of the beholder.

The answer can't be prohibiting companies from having policies, nor scripting what those policies can and cannot cover. It can't be endless lawsuits that benefit no one but the lawyers. Some will argue it's time to treat giant social media platforms and search engines as utilities, and the answer is to regulate the entire industry, not individual companies.

The best answer I can come up with is: transparency. We must demand that companies be transparent about their policies and values, we must call them out when they violate them, we must challenge them to be consistent, we must expose them when they trot out policy infractions as an excuse to violate the very principles they claim to cherish.

The digital age has made it both incredibly easy to find information and incredibly difficult to find truth. As defenders of liberty, as champions of free speech and free thought, we must capitalize on this incredible digital access to promote transparency.

I'm glad Amazon decided that Abigail Shrier's book did not violate their policies. I'm not quite so glad that the world's biggest bookstore has a mechanism for censoring books.