Amazon just made sure my account can’t be hacked.
By completely deleting it.
Why?
The initial reason was an infringement on the copyright conditions.
Amazon doesn’t allow you to use Unsplash images, even when you link to the creator in an Ebook. Or images that are widely available on the internet.
I deleted all of the images in my latest Ebook. Then asked the behemoth of content to put my humble store with four books online again.
Things started to get a helluva lot worse.
Learn from my story so you can avoid being cast into exile by Jeff Bezos’s A.I platform and see hundreds of hours of work go up in smoke.
On the copyrights issue
This is what Amazon wrote to me regarding the copy-write issue
We have temporarily suspended your KDP account because you submitted titles which contain content that is freely available on the web. We don’t accept content that is freely available on the web unless you are the exclusive copyright owner of that content — AMAZON email
Fair enough. I should have examined their conditions for using Internet pics and don’t rely on them having the same rules as Medium does.
I immediately deleted all the pics from the Ebook and replied with a statement that I would refrain from future infringements.
I wouldn’t dare. Why risk being banned on this incredible platform?
Without getting cynical, of course, they should hold a strict policy on copyright.
The privacy issue is making things worse
After waiting a week for an answer, I got this;
Hello,
On your reply to an email from us, you copied an email address that’s not associated with your account. To protect your privacy, we only send account information to the email address on file for your account — Amazon response
Thank you.
Right.
This email address is not in use anymore. I simplified my life and threw some email addresses out of the window.
TIP: Realize that deleting email addresses might get you in similar kind of problems.
Again, I give Amazon the benefit of the doubt since, for sure, somebody could be presenting to be me and asking to re-instate the account on their behalf and publish antisemitic fascist stuff or… whatever.
The telephone number as the last lifeline
My last resort of hope of getting my account back is my phone number. The one I have had for 15+ years and receives the Amazon code when they do the 2-factor authentication stuff.
I wrote this to them:
Hello Amazon,
Thank you for you message
The email address connected to my account does no longer exists
…
You can be sure its me
I have this mail address for 20 years, and I am also responding to your mail, that I assume, you have send to xxxxxxx
When you can’t re-open my account due to this ‘security’ thing with email adresses, well, than that’s a sad thing and a lot of hours and work from my side are lost
Are you sure its not about censorship?, since when it is, you can be honest about it. We need more truth in this world, that’s what I write about.
When there is no space on a platform as amazon for honest good faith truth finding, I guess the platform is no longer a valid platform for me to publish my work. I hope I am completely wrong and you really closed my account because of an email issue; for my health and protection, you would say, no?
Well, my protection is in good hands with Amazon, but I friendly ask you to re-open my account within 5 business days or I will see myself forced to move my work of the past 10 years, 4 books, to another more client directed platform ( I am losing money at the moment)
When you do care about me AS A CLIENT, you can call me on the number that is associated to my account and that also hasn’t changed for the last 15 years
+31XXXXXXXXX
thank you,
Lucien Lecarme
OK, to clarify why I threw in the censorship issue
My latest Ebook is titled: 19 blogs to survive the Great Reset and enjoy the ride.
Most of these blogs are from my truth bomb provider Substack.
Guaranteed, there is some content that the fact-checkers at Amazon will make their teeth squeak and make some alarms go off in the central HQs of truth.
Meanwhile, I’m looking for other options.
Somehow I sense this whole confusion is a blessing in disguise.
It confronted me with the multi-polar trap.
I don't like Amazon. They are a content cartel and monopolist, and they’ve killed competition, thus competitive pricing.
Most importantly, they’ve started censoring books. Like Orwell’s 1984.
And these titles:
When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment
Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.
Fascist Voices: Essays from the ‘Fascist Quarterly’ 1936–1940 — Vol 1
A platform deciding for us what to read, yeaks.
This forces me to examine the idea that I have no choice. You know, when you think, “Everybody is using them. Nobody will find me when I move to a 10000x smaller POD like LULU”
When nobody moves from ethical constraints, this situation will remain.
The multi Polar trap is when everybody is aware of the loss of free market mechanisms and the threat of Big Tech Totalitarianism, and still, people stick around because of the vertical power it has acquired and simply the fear of missing out. The monopolist abuses this fear, and that is just plain wrong.
Integrity above all
Somehow their way of dealing with this issue has triggered my integrity check-o-meter.
Why not just send me a kind email asking me to change the Ebook images within five business days while keeping the shop open? I have been a user for over ten years now.
Why this aggression? For my safety and protection? Reminds me of something.
It reinforces my gist they don’t care if they lose one of their 310 million users worldwide. In the all seeing eyes of Amazon, I feel a number, a metadata set, a user, an ant.
That doesn’t feel good. I want to be approached and honoured as Stephen King. Who knows, maybe I will be the next King of Literature, and they orbited me into second-hand choices because of… stupidity?
These are the times we need to choose integrity above profit. Being humane above A.I treating your like a piece of garbage junk data.
Farewell Amazon
I am with almost two legs in Lululand
You have five days
When you read this, Amazon employee, it's not yet too late to keep the future Dostoevsky in your army of content providers you can suck dry.
Or maybe the reason you don’t have many Stephen Kings or Dostoevsky’s on your platform is that they are pure artists with a passion and obsession for the written (free) word and a sense of fairness telling them they should stay miles away from a platform that has now proven to censor truth finders.
Like CJ Hopkins or George Orwell’s 1984.
Don’t forget Amazon hosts a massive trunk of the internet and thus can censor websites too.
Why are you still on Amazon?
I close with CJ Hopkins’s thoughts on his book being unlawfully banned in three European countries:
…I am not OK with living in a world where Amazon and other unaccountable global corporations decide which books we are allowed to read, which films we are allowed to watch, which facts we are allowed to know about. And that is where we are headed, currently. We’re not going to arrive there suddenly, one day. We’re going to arrive there just like this … little step by little step, one little act of corporate censorship at a time.” — CJ Hopkins
When this was all a mistake and not a small step of corporate censorship, I’ll let you know.
Lucien Lecarme
Sorry, can’t offer you to buy my latest SenseMaking Ebook. I am in the process of renovating self publishing options. Meanwhile, it would be great when you support my work by considering a paid subscription here on my Substack. Click the next button to do so.
Follow CJ Hopkin's live open panel discussion on Censorship & Independent Publishing in the New Normal Reich
Amazon Deleted my Account — “For my Privacy”