I’d remove it and whether it’s censorship or not doesn’t really apply because it’s a free library and I can take whatever book I want from it and if I choose to burn it or shred it for use in a hamster cage than I can. I’ll censor those who want to spread hateful or pornographic material in my neighborhood if it’s left in a public book box like that. But personal censorship just means like, yknow doing that or tearing down flyers you don’t want around etc. I guess if a government were to do it it would count as censorship but they’d probably just get rid of the whole free library box under some zoning law or whatever.
This is a really reddit question. Part of my free speech is being able to counter other people’s speech and a way of doing that is physically removing it from public space.
imo removing anything from the little library is censorship but anyone who has a problem with censoring nazi propaganda aimed at children is either actually a nazi sympathiser of some kind or so utterly abstracted from any real consequences of nazi ideology that they feel fine sitting in libertarian subreddits or whatever and complaining that Nazi’s need to have their god given right to incite pogroms
Honest question - Is any curation of these tantamount to censorship? Note that the free libraries are often geared toward kids.
If you operated a free library and someone put Mein Kampf in there, would you leave it or remove it?
How about the Anarchists Cookbook?
Old copies of Penthouse?
I’d remove it and whether it’s censorship or not doesn’t really apply because it’s a free library and I can take whatever book I want from it and if I choose to burn it or shred it for use in a hamster cage than I can. I’ll censor those who want to spread hateful or pornographic material in my neighborhood if it’s left in a public book box like that. But personal censorship just means like, yknow doing that or tearing down flyers you don’t want around etc. I guess if a government were to do it it would count as censorship but they’d probably just get rid of the whole free library box under some zoning law or whatever.
This is a really reddit question. Part of my free speech is being able to counter other people’s speech and a way of doing that is physically removing it from public space.
If I had one I would definitely curate it to general audiences, which means none of the above. But I’m not against censorship on principal so
imo removing anything from the little library is censorship but anyone who has a problem with censoring nazi propaganda aimed at children is either actually a nazi sympathiser of some kind or so utterly abstracted from any real consequences of nazi ideology that they feel fine sitting in libertarian subreddits or whatever and complaining that Nazi’s need to have their god given right to incite pogroms
Depends on how many stains are on the pages. And that goes for the cookbook and penthouse too