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twovests OP wrote (edited )

this is a very fair point

my fantasy is bookshops dot org will see this post and have a change of heart

my other fantasy is that there is any good Books Site out there (other than piracy, and my local library,) where i don't have to weigh how much my personal safety would be compromised by using their services

Other book sites I saw, selling the books I'm looking at:

  • feministpress.org: No ToS, no PP, uses SquareSpace, TypeKit, Google, and what looks like Shopify?

  • Barnes and Noble: cmon lol

  • Macmillan: Dozen trackers includes ones from Amazon, at least there's no arbitration clause, but they do sell information including race, ethnicity, religious views, life experiences, sexuality, and gender identity and gender expression.

  • IndieBound: It's just bookshop.org now

  • HarperCollins: Best one I've seen so far, no arbitration in the ToS, and the Privacy Policy is pretty gross but not overtly broad. But some of the books I am looking at, I can't actually buy books from their site, they only have links to Amazon and other big bookstores.

  • Penguin House Random: They do sell information including race, ethnicity, religious or philisophical belief, SSN and other identifiers, financial information, physical location, and union membership. Fucking union membership.

  • Simon and Schuster: Arbitration agreement, broad privacy policy, etc. i'm going to stop giving any of these bookshops my time at this point

And... I don't actually know the "piss bottle" situation about any of these companies. They're worse on almost every metric, and a "maybe" on the metrics like "are their employees peeing in bottles"?

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