8 ms·

Mississippi libraries ordered to delete research in response to state laws

60 points by Teever 2y ago

atoav 2y ago
It is very curious that the ususally extremely loud "free speech" crowd from the US is so silent when the free speech violations happen now. Banning literal words and then deleting research based on those words? If you needed a sign that you're well on your way into authotarianism, it doesn't get a lot clearer than that. If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  There certainly are people in the US who are very concerned with free speech, and they're generally outraged by stuff like this. When the likes of Elon Musk go on about 'free speech', though, they actually mean ideologically correct speech.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
  “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking. Oh boy, oh boy. I'm so exited to be the bearer of bad news here!! The people who believe in free speech as a matter of principal, not as a means to another political end are saying things like "fucking called it" and "told ya so" and making memes about how the demographics who are currently pissed off about this should have listened to them in years past and not lent political will to equally ham fisted stupidity that paved the way to this. Which is basically the same thing that A LOT of single issue communities are saying right about now.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Tor3 2y ago
Who would've believed that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 would become real. And in the US of all places.
- moomin 2y ago
  I mean, I'm pretty sure Ray Bradbury would have.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  You do realize that Fahrenheit 451 is literally set in the US ? If you’re seriously not aware how close to gleefully indulging in book-burning business certain US states have been and still are, K have some news for you.
mahkeiro 2y ago
Sometimes I wonder what are the fundamental differences between these states and Iran or Afghanistan except that their imaginary friend is slightly different.
- boxed 2y ago
  The slight difference is the difference between throwing gays off of tall buildings and complaining about them getting married.
  - DoingIsLearning 2y ago
    If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time. Given enough time all can degenerate.
    - boxed 2y ago
      > If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time. Due process isn't a part of any religion afaik. And "rule of law" in Christianity and Islam is "suffer not a witch to live" and stuff like that. Not good. > Given enough time all can degenerate. "Degenerate" is a strange word in this context. Islam started as an imperialist death cult. Any movement towards liberalism and sanity is not something I'd call "degenerate". Christianity is hard to pin down where it started because it started small and without power. As soon as it got real power it turned evil real fast.
      - cannonpr 2y ago
        I don’t mean to say Islam is perfect, very little is, but it does have a lot of due process and it hardly started as a death cult… I’d spend some time researching due process in shariah and try to remember that in many ways Islam was highly innovative for its era in combining a legal code with its religion in a very integral manner. Now later Islam in particular othoman Islam was indeed somewhat warped and coupled with an expansionist empire, kinda like Christianity, and is another game altogether.
boxed 2y ago
I think a lot of gender studies and race studies in the US is either bogus, or makes the problem worse. But removing it from being searched also makes it harder to debunk, which is stupid in a totally different way.
- kgwxd 2y ago
  No need to waste time debunking when the base just believes what they’re told, even in the face of constant contradictory personal experience.
DoingIsLearning 2y ago
As a European I feel like I have a lot of safety and guarantees. I also have children and I obviously worry a great deal about what the world will look like when they grow up. Whatever is happening at the moment has been set in motion in the past 15 years in this slow tectonic movement towards a likely repetition of past history. In that context there seems to be a huge information /misinformation/propaganda/psy ops operation happen under our feet. The wake up call for me was during the past US presidential campaign. I heard in my social circle (three separate) under 25 yr old males (all raised and living in social-democratic Central Europe) repeating tiktok/instagram talking points, about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ". In light of past interesting discussion in HN, I ask the question: How can we as citizens contribute to counter this? And how can governance / intelligence counter act something that now appears unstoppable and entrenched?
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ". I wonder how they're taking the current economic news...
- smcin 2y ago
  > "...will be good for 'the economy' " "The economy" in the US does not mean "jobs" or "the general public" or "the middle class" or "workers" or "people who live in your town/city/region" or "the general public's savings/ standard-of-living". It means "the stock holdings and assets of the top ~20(-40)% richest". The top 10% of Americans held 93% * of all stocks, while the bottom 50% only 1%, as of 1/2024. (* It was only 70% back in 2019 [2]. That's a huge 5-year change.) (In 3Q/2024, the bottom 50% of households held $4.8T real estate assets + just $0.3T stocks. The top 1%, by comparison, held over $16T stocks + $6T real estate assets.) [0]: Scott Galloway (Prof G) keeps talking about this distribution of wealth and why it's structurally dangerous to the US. [1]: "The Richest 1 Percent Own a Greater Share of the Stock Market Than Ever Before" (1/2024) https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration/ https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration... [2]: Here's an older USAFacts on 2019 Fed data: https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-americans-own-stock/ https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-americans-o...
rsynnott 2y ago
Double-plus-ungood.
mnw21cam 2y ago
Thankfully the title is slightly clickbaity. The research isn't actually being deleted at source - it is just no longer being offered by these libraries.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  ”Just”
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  I disagree. Extensive compilations of other scientific research are research themselves. I can't help but feel like this is the start of a modern equivalent of what happened to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaf, now masked by procedure and law.
- IAmBroom 2y ago
  That's the EXACT digital equivalent of book-burning: deleting the copies of the data.
  - tmerc 2y ago
    It's the exact digital equivalent of saying "it's not available at this library but you can buy it yourself or get access through another source" Y'all give Mississippi too much credit if you think they hold the only copy of gender studies and race relations academic research.
- relaxing 2y ago
  There’s no possible interpretation of the title where that makes sense.
rs186 2y ago
TIL a Mississippi based media organization can't even properly say "library stopped offering access to academic research" in the title, instead using words that are complete nonsense "delete research". I don't know whether the reporting or the news itself is more disappointing.
- icameron 2y ago
  It sounds like they are deleting the special collections metadata that categorize and index the raw research, which took time to curate. I see your point but also see how someone’s research is being deleted, or at least censored.
  - tmerc 2y ago
    No deletion is happening. They're simply not providing access through a tool they provide. The collection is still available outside of that tool.
nobodyandproud 2y ago
Nothing like swinging between extremes: We go from DEI & cancel culture; to hiding research and pretending
- acdha 2y ago
  “Cancel culture” was a marketing term by people who were simultaneously trying to ban books and restrict speech, we shouldn’t take it at face value when all it ever meant was that right-wing speakers should be free from social consequences.
  - nobodyandproud 2y ago
    And this reaction is different how, exactly?
    - acdha 2y ago
      Banning books or attacking their authors livelihood makes it harder for people to be exposed to their ideas. Criticism does not.
      - nobodyandproud 2y ago
        Okay, but “cancel culture” included people losing their livelihoods. This wasn’t just a marketing term nor just criticism. Both have the outcome of muzzling speech that one doesn’t like. Neither are okay.
        acdha 2y ago
        Which specific people? If you look at most of the cases people mention, the person in question either did not lose their livelihood or did so instead due to serious misconduct. This is why it’s important to define the term so you’re not inadvertently contributing to some sexual harassers’ legal strategy.
        2y ago
im3w1l 2y ago
I haven't made up my thinking about this yet. I think first there is the principal question. Is a library deleting content always a violation of free speech? And I think the answer to that question is no. A library comes with an expectation of quality, so they must do do content curation, keeping quality content in and low-quality content out. Those who are not judged to meet the bar are not silenced, they have other options for getting their opinions and material out. But the harder question is whether this particular material was unfairly singled out or not. If the library is unfairly suppressing quality research then that would be a bad thing. I think what would help me understand the situation in that respect is if someone posted examples of high quality research that was deleted but arguably shouldn't have been.
- throwawayqqq11 2y ago
  Libraries cannot and should not perform such a task. External bodies like peer reviews are meant to assess quality and only if reputation of a publication has plummeted because of it, libraries should intervene and pull the content. The harder (rhetorical) question is, if any solid quality assessment had been made by the executive.
tmerc 2y ago
This headline is incredibly misleading to the point of being an inflammatory lie. MLC (https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/ https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/) is a state body that helps library systems in the state with govt money. They have a tool called MAGNOLIA that gives public libraries, community colleges, and k12 schools access to scholarly databases like ebscohost. This article says that MAGNOLIA no longer provides access to those collections. Larger universities in the state don't use MAGNOLIA as they have (and pay for) their own access. No research is being deleted. Mississippi doesn't have the power to delete research in ebscohost. They're using a feature provided by ebscohost to exclude access to those collections. This is literally 2 bit flips in a database. https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/Content-in-EBSCOhost-Databases-is-Diligently-Selected-by-Subject-Matter-Experts?language=en_US https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/Content-in-EBSCOhost-Dat... However, if you have concerns about the material included in MAGNOLIA, you can request a review of the material on the MLC website: https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/review/ https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/review/

60 points by Teever 2y ago

It is very curious that the ususally extremely loud "free speech" crowd from the US is so silent when the free speech violations happen now. Banning literal words and then deleting research based on those words? If you needed a sign that you're well on your way into authotarianism, it doesn't get a lot clearer than that. If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking.

rsynnott 2y ago
There certainly are people in the US who are very concerned with free speech, and they're generally outraged by stuff like this. When the likes of Elon Musk go on about 'free speech', though, they actually mean ideologically correct speech.
sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
potato3732842 2y ago
>If you are for free speech only it it is for your side, you are not for free spech. In fact, I believe if you uncritically tow any party line, you gave up on critical thinking. Oh boy, oh boy. I'm so exited to be the bearer of bad news here!! The people who believe in free speech as a matter of principal, not as a means to another political end are saying things like "fucking called it" and "told ya so" and making memes about how the demographics who are currently pissed off about this should have listened to them in years past and not lent political will to equally ham fisted stupidity that paved the way to this. Which is basically the same thing that A LOT of single issue communities are saying right about now.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Tor3 2y ago

Who would've believed that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 would become real. And in the US of all places.

moomin 2y ago
I mean, I'm pretty sure Ray Bradbury would have.
Sharlin 2y ago
You do realize that Fahrenheit 451 is literally set in the US ? If you’re seriously not aware how close to gleefully indulging in book-burning business certain US states have been and still are, K have some news for you.

mahkeiro 2y ago

Sometimes I wonder what are the fundamental differences between these states and Iran or Afghanistan except that their imaginary friend is slightly different.

boxed 2y ago
The slight difference is the difference between throwing gays off of tall buildings and complaining about them getting married.
- DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time. Given enough time all can degenerate.
  - boxed 2y ago
    > If rule of law and due process are arbitrarily ignored then the only real difference is time. Due process isn't a part of any religion afaik. And "rule of law" in Christianity and Islam is "suffer not a witch to live" and stuff like that. Not good. > Given enough time all can degenerate. "Degenerate" is a strange word in this context. Islam started as an imperialist death cult. Any movement towards liberalism and sanity is not something I'd call "degenerate". Christianity is hard to pin down where it started because it started small and without power. As soon as it got real power it turned evil real fast.
    - cannonpr 2y ago
      I don’t mean to say Islam is perfect, very little is, but it does have a lot of due process and it hardly started as a death cult… I’d spend some time researching due process in shariah and try to remember that in many ways Islam was highly innovative for its era in combining a legal code with its religion in a very integral manner. Now later Islam in particular othoman Islam was indeed somewhat warped and coupled with an expansionist empire, kinda like Christianity, and is another game altogether.

boxed 2y ago

I think a lot of gender studies and race studies in the US is either bogus, or makes the problem worse. But removing it from being searched also makes it harder to debunk, which is stupid in a totally different way.

kgwxd 2y ago
No need to waste time debunking when the base just believes what they’re told, even in the face of constant contradictory personal experience.

DoingIsLearning 2y ago

As a European I feel like I have a lot of safety and guarantees. I also have children and I obviously worry a great deal about what the world will look like when they grow up. Whatever is happening at the moment has been set in motion in the past 15 years in this slow tectonic movement towards a likely repetition of past history. In that context there seems to be a huge information /misinformation/propaganda/psy ops operation happen under our feet. The wake up call for me was during the past US presidential campaign. I heard in my social circle (three separate) under 25 yr old males (all raised and living in social-democratic Central Europe) repeating tiktok/instagram talking points, about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ". In light of past interesting discussion in HN, I ask the question: How can we as citizens contribute to counter this? And how can governance / intelligence counter act something that now appears unstoppable and entrenched?

rsynnott 2y ago
> about how Trump "...will be good for 'the economy' ". I wonder how they're taking the current economic news...
smcin 2y ago
> "...will be good for 'the economy' " "The economy" in the US does not mean "jobs" or "the general public" or "the middle class" or "workers" or "people who live in your town/city/region" or "the general public's savings/ standard-of-living". It means "the stock holdings and assets of the top ~20(-40)% richest". The top 10% of Americans held 93% * of all stocks, while the bottom 50% only 1%, as of 1/2024. (* It was only 70% back in 2019 [2]. That's a huge 5-year change.) (In 3Q/2024, the bottom 50% of households held $4.8T real estate assets + just $0.3T stocks. The top 1%, by comparison, held over $16T stocks + $6T real estate assets.) [0]: Scott Galloway (Prof G) keeps talking about this distribution of wealth and why it's structurally dangerous to the US. [1]: "The Richest 1 Percent Own a Greater Share of the Stock Market Than Ever Before" (1/2024) https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration/ https://inequality.org/article/stock-ownership-concentration... [2]: Here's an older USAFacts on 2019 Fed data: https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-americans-own-stock/ https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-americans-o...

rsynnott 2y ago

Double-plus-ungood.

mnw21cam 2y ago

Thankfully the title is slightly clickbaity. The research isn't actually being deleted at source - it is just no longer being offered by these libraries.

Sharlin 2y ago
”Just”
jeroenhd 2y ago
I disagree. Extensive compilations of other scientific research are research themselves. I can't help but feel like this is the start of a modern equivalent of what happened to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaf, now masked by procedure and law.
IAmBroom 2y ago
That's the EXACT digital equivalent of book-burning: deleting the copies of the data.
- tmerc 2y ago
  It's the exact digital equivalent of saying "it's not available at this library but you can buy it yourself or get access through another source" Y'all give Mississippi too much credit if you think they hold the only copy of gender studies and race relations academic research.
relaxing 2y ago
There’s no possible interpretation of the title where that makes sense.

rs186 2y ago

TIL a Mississippi based media organization can't even properly say "library stopped offering access to academic research" in the title, instead using words that are complete nonsense "delete research". I don't know whether the reporting or the news itself is more disappointing.

icameron 2y ago
It sounds like they are deleting the special collections metadata that categorize and index the raw research, which took time to curate. I see your point but also see how someone’s research is being deleted, or at least censored.
- tmerc 2y ago
  No deletion is happening. They're simply not providing access through a tool they provide. The collection is still available outside of that tool.

nobodyandproud 2y ago

Nothing like swinging between extremes: We go from DEI & cancel culture; to hiding research and pretending

acdha 2y ago
“Cancel culture” was a marketing term by people who were simultaneously trying to ban books and restrict speech, we shouldn’t take it at face value when all it ever meant was that right-wing speakers should be free from social consequences.
- nobodyandproud 2y ago
  And this reaction is different how, exactly?
  - acdha 2y ago
    Banning books or attacking their authors livelihood makes it harder for people to be exposed to their ideas. Criticism does not.
    - nobodyandproud 2y ago
      Okay, but “cancel culture” included people losing their livelihoods. This wasn’t just a marketing term nor just criticism. Both have the outcome of muzzling speech that one doesn’t like. Neither are okay.
      - acdha 2y ago
        Which specific people? If you look at most of the cases people mention, the person in question either did not lose their livelihood or did so instead due to serious misconduct. This is why it’s important to define the term so you’re not inadvertently contributing to some sexual harassers’ legal strategy.
        2y ago

im3w1l 2y ago

I haven't made up my thinking about this yet. I think first there is the principal question. Is a library deleting content always a violation of free speech? And I think the answer to that question is no. A library comes with an expectation of quality, so they must do do content curation, keeping quality content in and low-quality content out. Those who are not judged to meet the bar are not silenced, they have other options for getting their opinions and material out. But the harder question is whether this particular material was unfairly singled out or not. If the library is unfairly suppressing quality research then that would be a bad thing. I think what would help me understand the situation in that respect is if someone posted examples of high quality research that was deleted but arguably shouldn't have been.

throwawayqqq11 2y ago
Libraries cannot and should not perform such a task. External bodies like peer reviews are meant to assess quality and only if reputation of a publication has plummeted because of it, libraries should intervene and pull the content. The harder (rhetorical) question is, if any solid quality assessment had been made by the executive.

tmerc 2y ago

This headline is incredibly misleading to the point of being an inflammatory lie. MLC (https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/ https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/) is a state body that helps library systems in the state with govt money. They have a tool called MAGNOLIA that gives public libraries, community colleges, and k12 schools access to scholarly databases like ebscohost. This article says that MAGNOLIA no longer provides access to those collections. Larger universities in the state don't use MAGNOLIA as they have (and pay for) their own access. No research is being deleted. Mississippi doesn't have the power to delete research in ebscohost. They're using a feature provided by ebscohost to exclude access to those collections. This is literally 2 bit flips in a database. https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/Content-in-EBSCOhost-Databases-is-Diligently-Selected-by-Subject-Matter-Experts?language=en_US https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/Content-in-EBSCOhost-Dat... However, if you have concerns about the material included in MAGNOLIA, you can request a review of the material on the MLC website: https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/review/ https://www.mlc.lib.ms.us/review/