Posted on 04/22/2022 9:48:37 PM PDT by algore
For years, the digital media service Hoopla has given library patrons access to ebooks, movies, and audiobooks through bulk subscriptions sold to public libraries. But more recently, librarians have started calling for transparency into the company’s practices after realizing its digital ebook collection contains countless low-quality titles promoting far-right conspiracy theories, COVID disinformation, LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, and Holocaust denial.
In February, a group of librarians in Massachusetts identified a number of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic books on Hoopla, including titles like “Debating The Holocaust” and “A New Nobility of Blood and Soil”—the latter referring to the infamous Nazi slogan for nationalist racial purity. After public outcry from library and information professionals, Hoopla removed a handful of titles from its digital collection.
In an email obtained by the Library Freedom Project last month, Hoopla CEO Jeff Jankowski explained that the titles came from the company’s network of more than 18,000 publishers: “[The titles] were added within the most recent twelve months and, unfortunately, they made it through our protocols that include both human and system-driven reviews and screening.”
However, quick Hoopla keyword searches for ebooks about “homosexuality” and “abortion” turn up dozens of top results that contain largely self-published religious texts categorized as “nonfiction,” including several titles like “Can Homosexuality Be Healed” which promote conversion therapy and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. This prompted a group of librarians to start asking how these titles are appearing in public library catalogs and why they are ranked so high.
“If [ebooks containing disinformation] were on the tenth page of results it wouldn’t be as noticeable, but they’re on the first page of results,”
Weird
Treatment for psycho-sexual mental disorders is unhinged conspiracy theory?
Yes, and freedom gives some people the freedom to do a lot of bad things. You can live in a tyranny where only government entities do bad things, or you can live in a free society where citizens may make a choice to break a law or simply be stupid.
Or both. Freedom means you have to deal with it.
Oh my god, this is a true crisis. People reading and saying anything they please? The horror.
Headline:
So what?
My focus zeroes on the nature of “Who?” decides their conspiracy theories.
In the real world libraries are very important.
I am a long time member of https://ailanet.org/
You would not believe the woke pronouns.
Sooo, why are they worried about what people in a public library are reading?
Cause the pen and stuff, you know
“they’re”
Damned autocorrect.
Seems to me that not long ago the professional library associations were quite vocal in their opposition to any form of censorship. Then, of course, they were defending some “progressive” screeds so they were on the side of the angels. This new batch of works doesn’t agree with the prevailing “progressive” orthodoxy so they must go.
Banned in Boston by order of the Watch and Ward Society.
Then librarians can paint themselves as Free Speech Champions fighting medieval Christian witch-hunters.
It's a real bummer when books that librarians hate make it into circulation. Then librarians must drop the pretense and engage in open censorship. They so prefer do their censoring out of public view.
Three muscatels and I tend to stop worrying about three musketeers. On the other hand, I miss print. If Vice was in physical print, I could use it for its true pupose: litterbox liner.
Mainstream TV/radio shows and magazines that cover safe topics (UFOs, Freemasonry, Face on Mars, Moon Landing Hoax, Secrets of the Vatican).
And conspiracy outlets that cover topics that will get you deplatformed or worse.
Art Bell and George Noori fall into the first category.
I see. The woke librarians and pinko journalists must stand in the gap to protect us poor idiots from “disinformation”.
George should not be used in the same sentence as Art
Book burner rationalizations....
I hope they didn’t just read the title
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