Libraries

Hate to be a party pooper but the author is a bit off. From the article:

It’s a place I can get free wifi and where I don’t have to explain myself to anyone in any way.

This is precisely where libraries demonstrate poor governance.

First of all by offering Wi-Fi and not ethernet the library discriminates against people with old hardware, people who oppose the non-FOSS firmware that Wi-Fi cards depend on as well as those who don’t want to expose their traffic to all eavesdroppers in range and those who prefer to avoid spoofed APs and those who would rather be less wasteful with energy. I do not think I’ve encountered any library in the past decade that intentionally offer ethernet. The very few I’ve encountered with open ethernet ports apparently offer it by accident (ports that were likely meant for the libraries own assets but unused and left inadvertently connected).

Even if you are in the included group who are happy to see ethernet users marginalised, among Wi-Fi users are those who are discrimated against because they do not have a mobile phone, thus cannot get past the Wi-Fi captive portal that demands SMS verification. Which also inherently discriminates against people whose devices cannot handle captive portals as well. So libraries are less of a refuge from corporate bullshit than they were in the past.

And that we can do it without a profit motive, simply because we think that’s the way it ought to be.

It’s great that the library itself is non-profit. But that only mitigates part of the problem brought by corporate commercial greed. The library needs to evolve to:

• help people find refuge from tech giants, which means not imposing mobile phones on the public and ideally go as far as offering access to FOSS PCs. It should be mostly FOSS PCs, and perhaps 1 or 2 Windows and MACs for those who have various special needs. Most libraries are 100% MS Windows with Chromium (possibly Firefox as an alternative) and the search engine default is Google. So library visitors are still being immersed in the same exploitive commercial environment that dominates homes and workplaces.
• the library blocks Youtube front-ends like Invidious but not Youtube, which ensures delivering an a profitable audience to Google. I realise the library has to avoid copyright violations, but Invidious is not a clear offender. It’s murky gray area but the library should be fighting for the people considering Invidious nodes are not being shut down which highlights the weakness of Google’s position.
• mention of lending out Rokus is a double-edged sword. Yes it’s keeping pace with the times to get people access to streams but Roku is a smart TV which doubles as spyware designed to enrich corporations. I’m not sure if there is a FOSS alternative. I’m tempted to say Kodi but it would then have to be installed on portable hardware that the library could lend.
• cut ties with all e-book suppliers who lock their books up into Cloudflare’s exclusive walled garden. Cloudflare should not be a gatekeeper for who gets access to e-books.

Our governmental structures and agencies should not be in the service of business,

Indeed. But when a library excludes those without mobile phones, they are serving the telephony industry and undermining the human right to equal access to public services.

The author himself, J.Hill, deployed this blog from a website that is inside an exclusive walled garden that discriminates against some demographis of people. I agree with his push to defend libraries from right-wing assholes and in that sense we are united. But a fight is also needed within the library systems to stop libraries from discriminating against some classes of people. They are outsourcing their technology to tech giants who have made library access exclusive.