Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

which term is being redefined?

it doesn't need to apply globally for something to be banned. it doesn't need to be illegal across the country. something can be banned from a certain place (e.g. a school). it's still correct to say it is banned.

some HNers are so weird when it comes to the word "banned" regarding books, i really dont understand why. its only ever in the context of school/library books. use "ban" in the sense of "banned from the forum" or similar, and no one bats an eye.

why dont people get worked up when tom/dang "ban" someone from HN? they haven't made it illegal for that user to visit HN.

It is a fact that there is a government lead effort in various states to ban books from k-12 libraries. That part of this is not up for debate because it is happening. So they are in fact “banned”. As a society we generally accept that words have more complicated or nuanced meanings when connected to other words, as “banned” is in this case.

We also as a society generally accept that those other words may be implied or require looking at something for more than a minute to understand the context. If you are in a country where a book is actually banned, I would wager that you would likely just say “this book is banned” implying it is banned where you are instead of adding in “this book is banned here in X” since it would be unnecessary to say and would be generally understood.

If you don’t like the word than propose another word.

> I really don't see the issue with local entities like a school board having some say in material that is available in a school.

Then you prefer a low-trust environment. I prefer a high-trust environment. A librarian shouldn't be putting 50 Shades of Grey on a grade school shelf to begin with. If they are, then you should be replacing the librarian, not micromanaging them. Book selection is their job. Let them do their job or don't; don't allow them the authority to only do half their job.

> But a library acting like they are doing some brave act of resistance by putting out a stack of books that are widely available...and saying they are "banned books, this is banned books week, look at all the books that have been banned!" when really they are books that a school board in wisconsin said shouldn't be in an elementary school library because the sex scenes are not appropriate for 7 year olds seems really silly to me.

Again, that's a "replace or reprimand the librarian" problem. It's not meant to be a brave act of resistance, it's information to say "these books have been banned, look at them so you can better understand what books people want to ban and why". And obviously, it's more interesting than "these are books where the 3rd letter in the title is T" and so it garners more attention, but it's no more than that. If they're including one that was banned for dumb reasons as in your example, then that makes it a dumb display (and an inappropriate one if the display is also in a library for 7 year olds.)

Obviously, the OP is not the librarian, and is aiming for an act of resistance, so my argument mostly doesn't apply there. Though the part about choices having the potential of being dumb still does. The set of books that have been banned somewhere or other is quite large, it's not like it would have any meaning to have a display of all or even a random selection of them. That's a strawman. You're going to curate based on some metric.

https://legiscan.com/MS/text/HB1315/id/2767725

> (4) The Attorney General may investigate compliance with this section. The contracting party must report to the Attorney General a provider's failure to comply with subsection (2) of this section no later than thirty (30) days after the contracting party learns of the provider's noncompliance. Such a report shall constitute a public record under the Mississippi Public Records Act.

Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever screams at us the loudest. (from S2 Andor)

The loss of objectivity is one of the greatest losses. People who are online to want their trench to “win” are advocates for loss. People who abuse their position to only proclaim their side is the best, the all-knowing, the superior, or whatever the flavor is of the day, are advocates for loss.

And as we have seen, we are losing a lot by losing objectivity.

But social media is also uniquely good at developing "negative polarization". Some of the counter movement was organic simply because people hated the progressive wins they saw.

If you ban or censor a book, you immediately make the book seem more valuable. Because governments aren't omnipotent and all restrictions can be overcome (see the war on drugs as a particularly recent and pertinent example), you just Streisand-effect yourself.

If, on the other hand, you take away the popularity and social status of those who read that book, branding them as gullible idiots in the popular imagination, people will have an aversion to reading it. You don't need to ban access to the book, in fact you shouldn't do that, just make sure that talking about it will get people to lose all their friends.

Social media are the modern arbiters of popularity. If social media bans a subject, people get angry. If it just quietly deboosts anybody who talks about that subject, "well let's better not do that, we tried and people really didn't like those videos I guess"

I don't think it sounds true. Pre-internet, information distribution required access to specific technical tools, and physical transportation efforts. As one of USSR dissidents noted, risks of distribution grew almost exponentially with amount of pages (and it's about imprisonment, not account deletion). For comparison, emailing so far works even in very repressive countries. And even narrowing the issue to the West, while free speech suffered a lot recently, shadowbanned account is probably still works better than hectograph.

There's an endless source of information if you look for it. Just because social media doesn't stuff them in your face doesn't mean they're censored.

On the other hand, you can shove proof in people's faces and they'll still find reasons to argue against it. Information availability is not the problem. It's more energy consuming to search and filter information so people largely avoid doing it.

There's a trope in movies where the antagonist is secretly recorded and broadcast so regular people finally see the truth and wake up. I've seen journalists risking their carriers to expose corruption only for people to shrug and look the other way.

It is trivial to concoct believable lies as compared to the effort needed to debunk them in a way that is effective at social scale.

Perhaps the only weapon is to teach how to think for oneself. Who is going to invest in that in a scale necessary? Those who have the resources to do that do not have sufficient motivation. Often the motivation to do the opposite is stronger.

“Fighting disinformation” is the banner under which free flow is necessarily interrupted.

I found the strat to go was to spam Scouts for resources, then get that upgrade that gave you Science per deal and spam every cheap deal as soon as you can.

Ask the parents of the Sandy Hook children, they'll tell you.

I shared its optimism and naivete :-(

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

> The arguments for and against freedom of speech

It’s not about freedom of speech but about access to information.

> the definition of truths and lies can change with time and location

This is moral relativism.

It is the choice of the individual to base their project around these "banned books", which invites this discourse.

"Banned" isn't generally universally applied. It may just be banned in the OPs libraries. Or maybe these are simply commonly banned books.

A library can choose what books they stock (especially a school library. Of course they're highly curated.). You don't have to agree with their choices, but the book isn't banned. You can still find it at a county library, an ebook library, or on the Internet.

So it's a bit dramatic to say "I'm fighting the system by hosting banned books!", just because some Tennessee elementary schoolers can't check it out from their school library. Just feels like a joke and a mockery when there's governments that genuinely censor books.

Once the books go out of copyright they will no longer be able to legally prevent anyone else from printing the books, and copyright law doesn't prevent people from legally reselling their already-purchased copies of books. But if you go onto Amazon right now and look at prices, you'll find that a copy of one of the Dr. Seuss books that the rights-holder refuses to print more copies of, such as McElligot's Pool, costs over 100 dollars; whereas a Dr. Seuss book that the rights-holders haven't judged as racist, such as The Cat in the Hat, costs about $5.

Edit: per the other comment's Wikipedia link, the unredacted Operation Dark Heart seems banned in the US because it included classified info

In the article example, to deny this because of a technically or the degree of legal enforcement is foolish since it is rebelling against the act of banning books, the process of banning, which doesn't occur out of thin air, it is an evolution of acts. It is not an absolute and one doesn't have to wait until there is a legally defined ban to start the protest. That would be ridiculous as it would be too late.

I don't think the project is trying to make the Banned Library of Congress either, anyone could put whatever books they want on their server. It is suggesting civil disobedience by circumventing oppression through censorship with creativity, which is awesome.

Are you serious? The UK and Germany are arresting people for social media posts. That is actual impingement of free speech.

There's an alternate reality where white supremacy is mainstream, where queer fiction is impossible to find, and that would be a different world.

Instead, what's being preserved are the books written that celebrate the values that match our broad cultural values, despite a handful of cultural deviants attempting to suppress the parts of the rest of humanity they dislike.

Those of us who paid attention certainly did.

Of course they aren't. But that's no argument for distributing it.

Go on then.

Say what you mean.

But that’s a good ban of course, because Freedom of Speech only matters when it concerns speech I agree with.

>There is one reason someone would do that. You're a white supremacist and a Nazi. There's no in-between here. How about you fuck right off with all that? No tolerance for Nazis and racists.

And good faith is straight out the window. Are you afraid because non-banned books and films told you they were bad, or because the people who produced those were afraid they were right and didn't want you to know that they were right?

You're advocating censorship. The good guys have not once in history ever needed to do that.

And its easy to attack books in k-12 school libraries. The hard conservative christians attack DEI, sexuality, suicide, witchcraft, and other things regularly.

However, we are also seeing direct attacks on funding with public libraries.

https://michiganadvance.com/2025/06/23/local-michigan-librar...

They almost had their funding yanked to keep librarians from putting LGBTQ books on the shelves. These christian nationalists would rather destroy public libraries than allow (gasp!) books on subjects they dont like.

And as far as I can tell, the solution as of May 21 2026, was that the 4 republicans on the board voted to segregate all the aforementioned topics to the adult section. They also voted to remove the ALA's Library Bill of Rights. And who is this "They" who rewote it? "Alliance Defending Freedom", a christian nationalist group known for LGBTQ hatred.

https://thelivingstonpost.com/guest-column-cromaines-mass-re...

And all of this shit is in the name of children and "harmful to minors". (Geeee, where have we seen this using children for terrible shit before? Perhaps age verification?)

Im not always for democrats, as many of them are statist stooges as well. But book banning and threatening to shut down libraries is well within fascist and nazi regimes.