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1. Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:30:40 JST Lia Holland

   If you work in publishing or love books and are wondering what the actual f*** to do right now, I've got a recommendation:

   Get up to speed on reader surveillance and digital book censorship, and organize to resist it.

   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:24 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     We need a new movement for reader privacy, and for the integrity of books. I mean, they're literally purging Martin Luther King from the National Archives under BIDEN.

     Are they invisibly purging racial justice from existing digital books already? We can't know. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/national-archives-history-colleen-shogan-f8512bc3

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:24 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     There's one thing that prevents wholesale purging of history from all the digital books we're about to rely on for the actual historical truth, and that's the ability to own the files.

     Both for individuals and for libraries.

   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:25 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     • Fight for the Future

     Right now, the answer is yes.

     My org @fight GLAAD, Color of Change, and 20+ other major civil society and racial justice orgs called it almost a year ago, right here: https://www.battleforlibraries.com/congress/

     Close this thread if you don't stop and read that letter now.

   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:25 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     • internetarchive

     Since we spoke out, @internetarchive — one of the world's biggest and least surveilled digital libraries — has been forced to delete 500,000 books by a suit from major publishers. It's now facing an existential suit over music preservation from the same law firm: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-archive-major-label-music-lawsuit-1235105273/

   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:25 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     Access to truthful information is shrinking, and the publishing industry's been complicit with big tech to surveil readers—whether it's Amazon's Kindle tracking literally everything you do on it or Elsevier scraping data to sell to data broker sister companies or Overdrive saving reading histories that can easily be subpoenaed.

   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:26 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     With Elon about to be Lord of the Internet here in the US, meaningful AI regulations out the window, slop overtaking search results, and Zuck et all wholesale abandoning content moderation on disinfo, people who want to know the truth are going to turn to books and libraries.

   • Lia Holland (liaholland@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:31:26 JST Lia Holland

     in reply to

     Especially digital books, especially in communities where books on issues like racial justice, abortion, and queer identity are banned.

     But does reading digital books create a honeypot of "enemies" for the new fascist regime?

     And can digital books be edited (read: censored) without our even knowing?