flamingos

On Monday, I gave what might have been my first ever fist pump for a House of Lords debate. Lord Watson of Invergowrie asked a question in the chamber about an investigation I published with Index on Censorship, where 53% of the school librarians I surveyed said they had been asked to remove books from their shelves. Even more worryingly, 56% of those librarians then felt forced to actually remove the books in question.

An overwhelming number of the books ripped off school library shelves had LGBTQ+ themes or authors, and the bans were usually in reaction to a single parent complaint – or even school leaders acting in anticipation of causing offence among particular communities. I spoke to librarians who feared for their jobs, and others have been in touch since, telling me about the pressure they are under.

The debate in the House of Lords showed overwhelming support for the freedom to read, and it was heartening to see the Lords sit up and listen.

Fast-forward to Wednesday evening. Just as I was thinking about which picture book to read to my son (which may or may not have had LGBTQ+ themes), a Reform councillor was making plans to raid library collections across Kent.
[…]
Whether books have indeed been banned, or a councillor is simply claiming that books have been banned, this is a dark moment for the freedom to read in the UK. Libraries in Kent have this week been a battleground for culture wars, and I fear they won’t be the last to become so.

There have been rumours of book ban demands happening in other Reform-led councils, but when I’ve asked the library services in question, they’ve denied having received such instructions. This is the first time it’s happened out in the open.

This is the kind of move we’ve already seen in the USA. Book censorship there has spiralled, with right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty and Republican politicians often leading the charge and calling for bans. Librarians have even received death threats and been investigated for holding LGBTQ+ content, as is very well-evidenced in a new film, The Librarians.

Up until this week, I could confidently say that library censorship in the UK was happening behind closed doors (not that that’s any better), and that incidents, whilst concerning, were not necessarily widespread. I can no longer say that. When a councillor publicly seeks to ban children’s books from a children’s section, something has shifted, there is a certain audacity to it. And now, I worry that the UK floodgates have opened. Others will feel emboldened to take similar actions.

Inspired by the lemmy.ca post, I want to discuss if we should follow and defed lemmit ourselves.

For those who don't know, or forgot because they blocked the bot, it's a Reddit reposter instance. It has very low engagement, but posts a lot. About 30% of all posts on feddit.uk are from this bot (838192/2806651 when I did the SQL). It is also by far the most blocked user on the instance, 151 blocks with second being a mere 40.

It also only synchronises with Reddit one way, so if you reply to a post, the person on Reddit won't see it.

If no one has any objections, I'm going to go ahead and defed as I don't think it's worth having around. Especially the way it makes the 'New All' feed useless if you don't have it blocked.

Volume 10 confirmed in early production! We are so fucking back baby!!!

Official art.

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Some video games have been trying to use generative AI for years now, and for the most part people simply have not been having it. Why would we? It's lazy, it's ugly, it's an ethical black hole and it's being driven by an executive class desperate to lay off even more workers. While earlier and more brazen attempts at employing the tech were obvious, lately it's becoming more common for studios to slide a little AI-generated content in without drawing attention to it.

Jurassic World Evolution 3 launched with some AI-generated character portraits, then got bullied into removing them. Clair Obscur, which will be a lot of people's game of the year, appeared to quietly launch with some AI-generated art then just as quietly patch it out. I was going to review the city-building grand strategy game Kaiserpunk until I saw they were using AI-generated images for their dialogue sections, after which I promptly uninstalled it.

The latest culprit is The Alters, which has found to have shipped not only with AI-generated placeholder text in-game, but also employed AI-generated translations in some of its side content as well. None of this was disclosed prior to the game's release; it was all discovered later, by players, and has prompted an explanation of sorts from the developers which tries to calm everyone down, but which has just made things worse, because if it took people discovering these specific instances to find that 11 Bit had used AI-generated content in the game's development, how do we know there's not more of it?

Live reporting of the second reading of the infamous welfare bill.

The Work and Pensions Minister Sir Stephen Timms is expected to tell MPs that the timing of the eligibility changes to the personal independence payment (Pip) will now take account of the findings of the review that Timms is to lead.

MPs have expressed concerns over the last 24 hours that the planned scheduling of the Timms review was too close to the planned changes to Pip eligibility, that are due to come into affect in November of next year - and so its conclusions wouldn’t be able to be acted upon.

The government will seek to reassure MPs that this issue will now be resolved.

The New South Wales tenants union has called for nationwide reforms to crack down on misleading rental advertisements after the state government introduced new laws in response to the growing use of artificial intelligence in real estate.

The legislation, announced on Sunday, will require mandatory disclosure when images in rental advertisements have been altered to conceal faults and mislead rental applicants.

The state government cited examples of real estate agents using artificially generated furniture that showed a double bed in a bedroom that was only large enough to fit a single in listings, or digitally modifying photos to obscure property damage.

Bluesky