Forbes seems to have deleted its controversial article about Amazon replacing libraries

A recent Forbes article has been causing quite a controversy. In it, the author–who is listed as a contributor on the site–argued that libraries should be closed, and Amazon should open bookstores in their place. It’s a very odd neo-free-market analysis, one that didn’t sit well with many people online. As my colleague Michael Grothaus wrote, many people on Twitter decried the article and defended public libraries because, well, public libraries are great.

It looks like the article didn’t sit well with Forbes, either. Currently, if you click through to the original URL for the article, you get a 404 error message. I reached out to Forbes for comment, as well as to confirm that the media company did intend to take down the page. (Update: see below.)

Until then, you can still find the archived version of the bad article.

Update: A Forbes spokesperson has provided me with this statement:

Forbes advocates spirited dialogue on a range of topics, including those that often take a contrarian view. Libraries play an important role in our society. This article was outside of this contributor’s specific area of expertise, and has since been removed.