Conservative parents take aim at library apps meant to expand access to books

[ZiprHead]

Some parents now want e-reader apps banned – and they're getting results

Campaigns that started with criticizing school board members and librarians have turned their attention to tech companies such as OverDrive and Epic, which operated for years without drawing much controversy.

www.nbcnews.com

E-reader apps that became lifelines for students during the pandemic are now in the crossfire of a culture war raging over books in schools and public libraries.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.


Some parents want the apps to be banned for their children or even for all students. And they’re getting results.

A school superintendent in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, pulled his system’s e-reader offline for a week last month, cutting access for 40,000 students, after a parent searched the Epic library available on her kindergartner’s laptop and found books supporting LGBTQ pride.

In a rural county northwest of Austin, Texas, county officials cut off access to the OverDrive digital library, which residents had used for a decade to find books to read for pleasure, prompting a federal lawsuit against the county.

So instead of the parents monitoring their own kids digital downloads or just taking the phone away from their snowflake kids, they've got to shut down the systems for everyone.

I don't want to hear anymore bullshit about the left and cancel culture.

 

[Jarhyn]

Some parents now want e-reader apps banned – and they're getting results

Campaigns that started with criticizing school board members and librarians have turned their attention to tech companies such as OverDrive and Epic, which operated for years without drawing much controversy.

www.nbcnews.com

E-reader apps that became lifelines for students during the pandemic are now in the crossfire of a culture war raging over books in schools and public libraries.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.


Some parents want the apps to be banned for their children or even for all students. And they’re getting results.

A school superintendent in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, pulled his system’s e-reader offline for a week last month, cutting access for 40,000 students, after a parent searched the Epic library available on her kindergartner’s laptop and found books supporting LGBTQ pride.

In a rural county northwest of Austin, Texas, county officials cut off access to the OverDrive digital library, which residents had used for a decade to find books to read for pleasure, prompting a federal lawsuit against the county.

So instead of the parents monitoring their own kids digital downloads or just taking the phone away from their snowflake kids, they've got to shut down the systems for everyone.

I don't want to hear anymore bullshit about the left and cancel culture.

Well holy shit. Digital book burning: Book burning for the 21st century!

 

[Elixir]

Well holy shit. Digital book burning: Book burning for the 21st century!

Time for the TrumPutin party to start practicing seizing, censoring and shutting down communications and media channels. A propaganda saturated environment is an essential element of any dictatorship, and they might be ready to launch in just two and a half years.

 

[laughing dog]

Some parents now want e-reader apps banned – and they're getting results

Campaigns that started with criticizing school board members and librarians have turned their attention to tech companies such as OverDrive and Epic, which operated for years without drawing much controversy.

www.nbcnews.com

E-reader apps that became lifelines for students during the pandemic are now in the crossfire of a culture war raging over books in schools and public libraries.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.


Some parents want the apps to be banned for their children or even for all students. And they’re getting results.

A school superintendent in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, pulled his system’s e-reader offline for a week last month, cutting access for 40,000 students, after a parent searched the Epic library available on her kindergartner’s laptop and found books supporting LGBTQ pride.

In a rural county northwest of Austin, Texas, county officials cut off access to the OverDrive digital library, which residents had used for a decade to find books to read for pleasure, prompting a federal lawsuit against the county.

So instead of the parents monitoring their own kids digital downloads or just taking the phone away from their snowflake kids, they've got to shut down the systems for everyone.

I don't want to hear anymore bullshit about the left and cancel culture.

If that mother didn't want her child to have access to that app, she should find a way to disable it. The superintendent should be fired. The county officials should be recalled or fired.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Access to porn online is outrageously easy.

And these parents are worried about their kids reading too much online. This would be hilarious, if not grossly authoritarian and Orwellian.

 

[Gospel]

From what I understand this only applies to public-owned laptops/devices. It's not like the kids can't yoink out their own personal devices and read whatever they want. It's just the schools are protecting themselves from Billy Bob and his wife Rebecca from suing them by curating or flat out removing the services from school-issued devices.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that savvy kids will just use a VPN.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

From what I understand this only applies to public-owned laptops/devices. It's not like the kids can't yoink out their own personal devices and read whatever they want. It's just the schools are protecting themselves from Billy Bob and his wife Rebecca from suing them by curating or flat out removing the services from school-issued devices.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that savvy kids will just use a VPN.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Some are removing the app, some are trying to shutdown the digital program itself. In either case, the idea that the library is the enemy is fascist and should not be tolerated.

 

[Jarhyn]

From what I understand this only applies to public-owned laptops/devices. It's not like the kids can't yoink out their own personal devices and read whatever they want. It's just the schools are protecting themselves from Billy Bob and his wife Rebecca from suing them by curating or flat out removing the services from school-issued devices.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that savvy kids will just use a VPN.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Some are removing the app, some are trying to shutdown the digital program itself. In either case, the idea that the library is the enemy is fascist and should not be tolerated.

I expect there is a deeply buried instinct in the human psyche that in some respect understands that if people around them are more educated, they will not be able to wield their power of operating in bad faith as effectively.

Yes, it ends in fascism but it's not really a direct interest in fascism but merely an evolved self-interest reaction.

The library is their enemy because it breaks the hold of their power over their children's decisions and ideas. They wish to "copy" themselves, not have "the copy" pick up "corruption" from outside ideations.

 

[Gospel]

From what I understand this only applies to public-owned laptops/devices. It's not like the kids can't yoink out their own personal devices and read whatever they want. It's just the schools are protecting themselves from Billy Bob and his wife Rebecca from suing them by curating or flat out removing the services from school-issued devices.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that savvy kids will just use a VPN.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Some are removing the app, some are trying to shutdown the digital program itself. In either case, the idea that the library is the enemy is fascist and should not be tolerated.

Yeah well, the public library is for the public and has nothing to do with what is being taught in the classroom so, that's nuts if that's what they're trying to do.

 

[Jarhyn]

From what I understand this only applies to public-owned laptops/devices. It's not like the kids can't yoink out their own personal devices and read whatever they want. It's just the schools are protecting themselves from Billy Bob and his wife Rebecca from suing them by curating or flat out removing the services from school-issued devices.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that savvy kids will just use a VPN.

In several states, apps and the companies that run them have been targeted by conservative parents who have pushed schools and public libraries to shut down their digital programs, which let users download and read books on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Some are removing the app, some are trying to shutdown the digital program itself. In either case, the idea that the library is the enemy is fascist and should not be tolerated.

Yeah well, the public library is for the public and has nothing to do with what is being taught in the classroom so, that's nuts if that's what they're trying to do.

The thing is, "low effort media" like social and news and entertainment media, even pornography, don't really make impactful, thoughtful, radical differences in thought patterns the way reading books does.

You won't get swayed away from being a faithful parent-copy libertarian reading 180 characters that can only among them assemble a crude riposte against a complicated, layered and self-preserving mental illness.

You also won't move far from where your parents dropped you without reading books growing up in North Minneapolis.

You might, however, rethink such things after reading some Ursula K LeGuin.

Hell, step into the right LeGuin novel and you might even realize that expectations of gender conformity are silly!

And that's just one author I know of! Imagine what would happen if someone reads Bradbury? If someone reads Asimov!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fundamentally, this is just another version of the same old thing of trying to keep their kids from seeing ideas the parents don't like.