Some employees of a huge corporation demanded it should decide which books are acceptable for customers. They engaged in what’s called a “die-in,” which consists of lying on the ground while issuing demands. They demanded that Amazon decide which books it approves of and not make others available to customers.

This is small stuff, but it’s weird that anyone would demand that a mega-corporation which is the world’s largest bookseller should have an Index of Prohibited Books that it won’t sell. The protesters fantasize that they’ll get to call the shots. They imagine that they’ll decide what’s on the Index; probably they all think they’ll be promoted to the new position that compiles the Index.

For its part, Amazon said, “As a bookseller, we’ve chosen to offer a very broad range of viewpoints, including books that conflict with our company values and corporate positions. We believe that it’s possible to do both – to offer a broad range of viewpoints in our bookstore, and support diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It added that it won’t punish the employees. No sense making martyrs of the fools.

Amazon makes a huge range of books available, including The Anarchist Cookbook and Mein Kampf. It does refuse to carry some kinds of books, though. As a private business, it has that right. According to its content guidelines, it won’t sell “content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.” It has removed Holocaust denial books, presumably on grounds of factual inaccuracy rather than political unacceptability. Pressure from governments that have anti-Holocaust denial laws might be a factor.

Kindle self-publishing lets crackpots and scammers try to push all sorts of trash, and Amazon has to stay on guard against it. A report on the removal of coronavirus books seems to indicate they were removed because of quality issues rather than the position they take. Evaluating the scientific accuracy of books would be a serious rabbit hole. You can easily find creationist books on Amazon.

If book distributors ever start selecting the books they offer based on political acceptability, that will lead to worse cultural divisiveness than we’ve seen in years. Fortunately, most booksellers would rather make money selling books of all kinds.