The largest Dutch web store Bol.com has removed over hundreds of books with antisemitic content from their assortment since October. The web store developed a system that helps find books for potential antisemitic or discriminatory content.
With the newly implemented automatic scanning system, Bol.com is able to analyze book descriptions for discriminating content. According to the Bol.com spokesperson, this has revealed that over ten thousand of the books offered in the webshop have been identified as potentially antisemitic, racist or labeled, reported NU.nl.
Over 10 million books are offered on Bol.com, of which about half a million have been categorized as “potentially controversial.” Despite this, a large number of the books continue to be offered, with over a thousand of them having been flagged with an information label about their potentially discriminating content. Other marked books may be a false alarm, reported NU.nl.
However, because of the system, it could be discovered that “several hundred books have turned out to be so hateful that we no longer offer them,” the spokesperson said.
For National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism (NCAB) Eddo Verdoner, who last year urged Dutch bookstores to sell fewer anti-Semitic books, this is a positive outlook.
“But there is still a lot to do,” Verdoner told NU.nl. “For example, to also fish out books that are harder to identify as anti-Semitic, with covert language or conspiracy theories.”
Even though Bol.com’s spokesperson said the automatic scanning system is getting smarter, however, the web store still relies on people’s tips regarding risk words and controversial contexts. According to the Dutch web store, the system is not yet completely error-free, wrote the Dutch online newspaper.
