With that said -- I'm in Iowa, my fiancé works in public libraries and for the Iowa Library Association and the ALA as a resource for those facing book challenges, and it's a shit show here (and in most red states) right now. It's largely coordinated by conservative groups (e.g. "Moms for Liberty") who band together to canvass the schools with their "think of the children" pleas.
This is only the beginning after the signing of the Senate File mentioned in the story. The same people bitching about social media companies censoring their tweets are now trying to keep books they don't agree with out of the library.
For those who RTFA but didn't RTF (original) A, here's the "scanning":
[A]dministrators first compiled a master list of commonly challenged books, then removed all those challenged for reasons other than sexual content. For those titles within Mason City’s library collections, administrators asked ChatGPT the specific language of Iowa’s new law, “Does [book] contain a description or depiction of a sex act?” “If the answer was yes, the book will be removed from circulation and stored."
So the text isn't being scanned; instead, they're relying (as we've seen before in other domains) on the temperature-dependent output of a stochastic parrot to make censorship decisions, which brings up procedural due process concerns at a minimum.
The bible gives Adam & Eve the dignity of the Fig Leaf
If you look at Christopher Rufos reporting a lot of school libraries are getting graphic novels that are sexually explicit and show penetration
https://youtu.be/S--HBxnCeKM
There's also a whole genre of viral videos which follow this call response pattern
C:This book is inappropriate for our children to read I want this off our school library shelves
R: That's just your opinion lady we're not going to change the status quo
C:Let me read what I found inappropriate in that book onto the record
R:You can't say that at school board meeting that's inappropriate get out get out get out
The Bible is a collection of many different texts written long long ago with no pictures.
Various people have added various pictures to various versions those texts subject to their own cultural norms.
Many cultures have no issues with various levels of undress that would horrify a Mennonite.
> graphic novels that are sexually explicit and show penetration
OMG the horror.
Myself and multitudes of others grew up in rural areas and saw bulls, stallions, rams, put to cows, mares, and ewes from a young age in addition to browsing medical texts that showed similar things wrt both humans and animals.
It's OK, all of the sex in the Bible is straight. Including the incest and rape, and that one time YHWH pulled a Zeus with another man's wife. It's all literally by the book.
The law is what it is, but I thought the response from the district was quite rational:
> “Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books,” Exman told PopSci via email. “At the same time, we do have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law. Our goal here really is a defensible process.”
I cannot read the article. Its a EU thing or because I use Firefox.
However, I am a triggered by reference to 'legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law'. What does that mean? 'Freedom of speech' is very important in the US constitution. Social media is slammed if they apply filtering / censorship. So how come that censorship for books is a 'legal and ethical obligation' but for tweets, Facebook, etc its not?
I'm not a lawyer, and especially not a freedom of speech lawyer, but my understanding is that everyone has an obligation to follow the law whatever it might be (modulo intentional civil disobedience). If the law is unconstitutional then it needs to be challenged in court and struck down that way. AFAICT this law is specific to books in school libraries, which might shelter it from first amendment concerns to some degree.
But again, I'm not a lawyer, and just thought it was cool that the district was like "your law is stupid [implied] and a waste of our time, so we're just gonna throw AI at it so you can't blame us for doing nothing".
I'm honestly not very okay with stupid laws which are nevertheless followed blindly even if by using random means. The end result is like this even worse.
Seems reasonable for grade school children but a wild overreach for high schoolers. If you can be exposed to genitals in the school shower you can exposed to sex in a book.
It's not even reasonable for grade school children. They're not banning porn, they're banning books based on phrases taken with no surrounding context. Some character mentioned once in the book is gay? Banned (one of John Green's books is being banned for exactly this).
FWIW, John Green's book was not banned by AI. It (and many others) were banned by people's reports.
Again, it's not like there's porn or smut in these elementary and middle-school libraries. It's culture war hatred targeted at gay and trans people shrouded in "think about the children."
Governments didn't decide this out of the blue, they're responding to a right-wing moral panic over LGBT content that's the result of the normalization of QAnon's conspiracy theories within the Republican Party. Don't blame government when they do what the people demand, blame the people who come out with their Bibles and pitchforks and demand the heathens be purged.
Does anyone remember Senator Obama in 2007&2008 running on Marriage being between a man and a woman?
https://youtu.be/NbIurm5ou84
That's what he said at Saddleback Church in August of 2008
It took 6 years for candidate Obama's position to be unfeasible as we saw the departure of Brendan Eich from Mozilla in April of 2014.
Don't look at Qanon conspiracies to explain this. Look at commonly Held beliefs 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years ago, and understand a lot of people are not on board with abolishing rent, abolishing the police, or abolishing the electoral college
You can't engage in historical revisionism when the history is still unfolding, that doesn't work. No, this doesn't go back to Obama, this goes back as far as the "groomer" scare which started last year, yes exclusively within the Republican Party, and yes entirely based on QANon. You could even draw a line directly from this to Pizzagate, since the groomer scare is just the more successful iteration on the theme.
And mentioning "abolishing rent, abolishing the police, or abolishing the electoral college" only tipped your hand. You tried to frame your comment as impartial but you couldn't resist the impulse to add the anti-leftist culture war spin.
When a school library features books on how to be a Boy Scout, but does not feature books on how to be a Hitler Youth, would that be considered "Book banning"? I would consider that "Editorial Discretion". The real difference is it's not new books being introduced, the books are already there because of ideologically motivated teachers and lack of accountability. (Who watches the watchmen? the Teachers Unions. Good luck getting a bad apple fired. Good luck preventing someone else's kid from becoming the victim of a pathological teacher)
Well they're asking it if a particular title contains porn/descriptions of sex, and then someone else is deciding whether it should be banned. The AI is not "automatically" banning books, and it's not really reading them either
That doesn't seem accurate either. They're using ChatGPT to provide confirmation on book they have already decided to ban. The books were already flagged, the algorithm is just giving them an comeback for busybodies who ask "Did you read the book before you banned it?"
When people are faced with negative outcomes resulting from things they approve of, they do this passive-aggressive bit where they pretend to have a valid point.
When a book is actually "banned", you get thrown in jail for downloading an illegal copy from libgen or conspiring to distribute photocopied samizdat. Consult the United Kingdom for examples.
Essentially every country in the world aside from the United States (particularly Europe and UK/AU/NZ/CA as I mentioned) actually bans particular books for real, well beyond "you can't buy it with tax dollars, you can buy a copy at any bookstore though".
A library choosing to remove books that don’t meet its criteria is curation. A library having to remove books because someone else told it to is banning.
I don't think that's true. In any case, intent has a lot to do with it. If a library wants to update what they can store on their finite shelves, cool. If a library removes things that people want to read because it thinks people shouldn't be allowed to read them, it's censorship.
I don't really see how we can expect that to scale from policies inherited by adversaries.
We quietly do this kind of censorship all the time -- the government sends fines to public broadcasting channels that use curse words, and limit their stories to those that are generally G or PG rated content.
I am a free speech absolutist, and again, I agree with your position, but I can't find any reason why (ignoring whose list you prefer) a list of preferences that included "family friendliness" would not be just as utile or effective at assisting the surely difficult job of curation as literary value or whatever libraries are using themselves now (which I assume they can still use to exclude books not currently covered by this policy.)
It would be easy to say that the government should have no control over the libraries, but they're public libraries, ergo are functionally just little tendrils off the arms of government already.
I remember when I was twelve or so reading such a list, which included downloads of these books. I was actually quite interested, which twelve year old wouldn't be interested in reading banned books? As it turned out it was obvious fetish material and I felt quite disgusted reading it. Something of a formative experience I guess.
The article indicates that they are actually removing books that are already in libraries. So it's more like I just got kicked out of the party and you're playing ridiculous word games saying I wasn't "banned" because there's a party down the street I can go to.
Also, you didn't answer the question: would Facebook removing my ability to post be considered "banning"?
>The article indicates that they are actually removing books that are already in libraries.
Every library removes books. It is the most normal thing, my library has regular book sales where they let books go. If you want to call distributing books for low prices "banning them" I guess I can not help you.
Do you see a difference between a library choosing to sell old books to make room for new ones, and being forced to remove books for political reasons? If not, then I guess I cannot help you. Good luck out there buddy.
You are the only one here trying to re-define ban, i.e., playing word games.
We are talking about public or school libraries, which are government institutions. When they remove books, based on narrow religious criteria, that is exactly the government prohibiting circulation (your own definition) via those govt-controlled channels of schools and libraries.
Seems pretty slippery to "curate" a collection to never include any mention of homosexuality except as a mortal sin. Or to curate away historical texts that happen to mention that chattel slavery was real and also bad.
If it's done by politicians based on their views of what people should read instead of by librarians based on what they think people want to read, then it's a ban.
It is NOT curation, it is literally banning them from the library
Just because it isn't a 100% ban on sales and possession also does not mean it is not a ban; it is a ban as far as it goes, schools and libraries, which is a significantly broad swath of a book's availability, especially to young readers.
It is also not "curation". Curation is done based on readership, not some narrow criteria of a particular religion. To the degree that a narrow religious criteria is used to "curate" (enforce presence of book X or absence of book Y) the content of a public school or library, it is also a likely of the 1st Amendment clause against establishment of religion — selecting the only allowed books in a govt institution based on one group's narrow interpretation of a particular religion is a strong action to establish that religion using the levers of government. If it was not such a strong action, they wouldn't be putting so much effort into doing it.
In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to "prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."
The difference, which you are falsely attempting to obscure (or are failing to understand), is the REASON and PROCESS behind the banning.
Yes, of course 99.9%+ of all books ever written in history are not included in any given libraries due to space and budget lconstraints. The librarians included the few based on professional criteria and data.
After <0.01% of the books are included on professional librarians' criteria, you now try to claim that efforts to DELIBERATELY REMOVE some books BASED ON NARROW DEMANDS of a few religious bigots is the same.
Bullshirt.
Of course the numerical result is superficially similar.
The results of choosing books based on the criteria of professional librarians or schoolteachers vs religious bigots is obviously different.
If it were not different in important ways, the religious bigots would not bother putting so much effort into replacing professional librarians.
Any claim that these are the same thing is either box-of-rocks-level ignorant, or intentionally disingenuous. There is no third choice.
My opinion on that question is not relevant, just as the opinion of religious bigots who want to overrule the professional judgement of teachers and librarians is also not relevant.
Those decisions are not to be made within constitutional frameworks, not by committees of religious bigots who promote ignorance. Stop carrying the water of religious bigots — you'll give the impression that you are one; you already give a strong impression of willful ignorance, repeatedly making the arguments of a simpleton.
Does the algorithm ban the sex ed textbooks, or does the school only have the abstinence only books?
Also, the list of books that are actually banned is quite eye opening:
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Sold by Patricia McCormick
A Court of Mist and Fury (series) by Sarah J. Maas
Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Looking for Alaska by John Green
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger
Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I'm a bit surprised that Ulysses by James Joyce didn't make the list, but maybe the AI couldn't get through it either.
I'm pretty skeptical of these so-called "book ban" laws, but it's not obvious to me that these books are definitively "age appropriate" for K-6 (which seems to be your implication).
Nobody in K-6 is reading The Handmaid's Tale anyway. These book bans are about High School libraries, at least according to the linked law in the article[1]. The law claims it applies to all "publicly funded schools".
You're misreading the text. The K-6 references are about banning teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity. The parts about "Age appropriate books" are specifically for all school levels K-12 (scroll down in the statute to find the twelfth grade reference). I guarantee you that these books were not on the shelves in K-6 libraries.
Yeah, because there's a difference between pornography and "sex acts." Plenty of YA novels have sex acts in them, because children need to have AT LEAST an academic understanding of the process and social context around it.
To say otherwise invites teenage pregnancy, which unlike moral outrage (which by its very nature is not evidence supported), causes actual serious consequences in the lives of innocent people.
It's especially funny because the places which are enacting reactionary policies like this one are also the ones that don't offer sex-ed :(
It's not inferior if your goal is a large amount of lower class babies growing up with few prospects outside of the military and retail jobs for the rest of their lives.
> Seems like a rational use of technology to ensure compliance with a rational public policy
Seems like a gross overreach of the morality police continuing to press nonsense issues to rile up their voting base, brought to you by exactly the people you'd think would do such a thing.
Age inappropriate according to whom? I can think of all sorts of stuff that’s objectionable in places like Florida but perfectly fine elsewhere. Example: a story with a gay character might flip out Ron Desantis but not raise an eyebrow in Berkeley.
No one wants age inappropriate stuff. We just have some wildly different ideas of what that means.
I listed a title, which is what you asked for. I’m not here to lay out the entire case. Rest assured, it is easily searchable if you are so inclined. If not, that’s fine too. Enjoy your night.
I don't know if you've read the book or not, or heard the arguments against it, but your response sounds exactly like the response someone would give if they only know the title of the book and that others have defended it, but is totally unfamiliar with the content.
There are the usual ones like "My Two Dads and Me" and "My Two Moms and Me". "The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question", LOL? "Hachiko: The True Story of a Loyal Dog", WTF. "Henry Aaron’s Dream", for people who find baseball offensive, I guess. "The Life of Rosa Parks". "Thank You, Jackie Robinson"; more baseball hate. "Unstoppable: How Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team Defeated Army" shows some people hate football, too.
Each of those is appropriate for kids, and I'd love to hear specific reasons why someone believes one isn't.
They obviously have reasons. Without looking at the book, we can't say if it should be in schools or shouldn't. When explaining Racism to Grade 2 students great care must be taken. Imagine being the only black kid in all white classroom. You know you look different. Everyone does, but no one thinks anything of it. And then they tell you that you are systematically oppressed, and that your race, not your character, is the characteristic that will define your life experience. Good Luck kid!
Also, we don't see the list of other civil right books that may be in classrooms.
But the fact that "The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question", a book about God, was rejected suggests that this isn't some conservative conspiracy.
In fact, it sounds like a moral panic from the left.
The problem is the gay character is at a strip show, and nobody in Berkeley is batting an eye at young kids being around as men get money shoved in their under garments at a drag show
These things can be weaponized by changing the definitions so I'm not as inclined to trust a model that could be trained by those with ulterior motives. But to your question: There were books available to me in late grade school and middle school that had sexual acts and they're (rightfully in my opinion) considered classics or at least important reading. Some parents might consider those inappropriate and if they had their way I might not have been exposed to those works until much later when their impact would have been vastly decreased.
This idea that sex or sexual acts are inherently "bad" is puritanical thinking and doesn't really serve anyone's interests who has to participate in the real world where sex is part of the fabric of our existence. If parents want to impose a puritanical mindset on to their children that's their business and maybe a compromise is that they should be able to exclude their kids from reading certain material just like they can excuse them from learning sex ed.
Support for explicit sexual content in public schools is the minority opinion. As such, it is up to supporters to present the case for it's benefits, and the responsibility of parents who hold those views to expose their children to descriptions and depictions of sexual acts.
Support for sexual content in public schools K-6, perhaps. But these bans apply to high school as well.
I'm not going to dance this dance with you though. We both know that there are ulterior motives here that extend well beyond "sexual acts" and are absolutely about shaming or hiding the existence of homosexuals, trans people, etc. from teenagers for as long as possible. You're arguing from the position of their barely disguised pretense and literally no one actually believes that.
I'm not playing this obnoxious game where we all pretend that this pretense is real. I'm not even sure what is gained from playing these games outside of a cable news segment where you're obfuscating things to confuse stupid people. And besides, this was covered in my first comment anyway.
These bans are usually in junior high and high school libraries. Even in public libraries, these books are not shelved in the childrens' section. This is not about six year olds being confronted with pornography, but rather critically acclaimed novels that reflect the actual lives of sixteen year olds. These bans do nothing to protect children. They only remove literature from school libraries.
Lotta kids only find out what they’ve experienced is sex abuse by reading a description of it in a book.
What’s appropriate is cultural and personal, should be decided by some matrix of parents, child themselves, and educators who know them personally.
Trying to universalize mushy concepts like “age appropriate” will end with the removal of potentially anything. Which is exactly the point. I’m sure the architects of this are very grateful for your assistance in normalizing it.
> Are there people who support age inappropriate books, or books with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act in classrooms and school libraries?
yeah sex scenes are fine, unless we are talking erotica kind of writing (which isn't in school programs), so you're getting people to grow into normal, healthy adults and not late-blooming porn-binging incel mass shooters
With that said -- I'm in Iowa, my fiancé works in public libraries and for the Iowa Library Association and the ALA as a resource for those facing book challenges, and it's a shit show here (and in most red states) right now. It's largely coordinated by conservative groups (e.g. "Moms for Liberty") who band together to canvass the schools with their "think of the children" pleas.
This is only the beginning after the signing of the Senate File mentioned in the story. The same people bitching about social media companies censoring their tweets are now trying to keep books they don't agree with out of the library.
It's starting in the schools, but the public libraries are next. https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/5/23711417/republicans-w...