Katherine Stewart: The #Librarians, Our Unlikely Heroes. In a #documentary airing soon on #PBS, we meet people who risked their jobs and their safety to resist the wave of reactionary book-burners.

#film #review #TheContrarian #Libraries #censorship #fascism
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-librarians-our-unlikely-heroes

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-librarians/

Katherine Stewart: The #Librarians, Our Unlikely Heroes. In a #documentary airing soon on #PBS, we meet people who risked their jobs and their safety to resist the wave of reactionary book-burners.

#film #review #TheContrarian #Libraries #censorship #fascism
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-librarians-our-unlikely-heroes

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-librarians/

“'When they say faculty aren’t allowed to advocate for something, what we read that as is, they aren’t allowed to mention it,'” said one academic adviser, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliatory discipline."

The conflation of advocacy & teaching, which are fundamentally different, & which sometimes overlap & sometimes don't, is a key tool of the movement to demolish academic freedom & destroy universities.

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/04/texas-tech-race-gender-sexuality-review-creighton/

#Education #Censorship #AcademicFreedom #Universities

“'When they say faculty aren’t allowed to advocate for something, what we read that as is, they aren’t allowed to mention it,'” said one academic adviser, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliatory discipline."

The conflation of advocacy & teaching, which are fundamentally different, & which sometimes overlap & sometimes don't, is a key tool of the movement to demolish academic freedom & destroy universities.

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/04/texas-tech-race-gender-sexuality-review-creighton/

#Education #Censorship #AcademicFreedom #Universities

"Late last month, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to spin off the platform’s US operations into a new, majority US-owned company.

Within 48 hours of the takeover, users began to experience problems. Many top creators saw their reach plummet and reported that their videos related to controversial topics like criticizing ICE and advocating for Palestine were being throttled by the algorithm. Some US users could not type the word “Epstein” in direct messages. Bisan Owda, an award-winning Gaza-based journalist, reported that her account was banned, prompting outcry.

TikTok said most of these issues were attributable to a data center power outage, and that the Epstein problem was a technical glitch. The company also said that Owda’s account was flagged due to an impersonation issue from last September, which has since been resolved. The account is back up.

Amidst this chaos, however, a clip of Adam Presser, TikTok US’s new CEO, speaking at an event organized by the World Jewish Congress last year, began to spread. He spoke about the platform’s moderation policies, saying, “We made a change to designate the use of the term ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for a protected attribute as hate speech. So if somebody were to use ‘Zionist,’ of course, you can use it in that sense, you’re a proud Zionist, but if you’re using it in a context degrading someone, calling somebody a Zionist as a dirty name, then that gets designated as hate speech to be moderated against.”"

https://zeteo.com/p/trump-tiktok-disastrous-rollout-warning-social-media

#SocialMedia #TikTok #USA #Censorship #Zionism #Palestine

"Late last month, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to spin off the platform’s US operations into a new, majority US-owned company.

Within 48 hours of the takeover, users began to experience problems. Many top creators saw their reach plummet and reported that their videos related to controversial topics like criticizing ICE and advocating for Palestine were being throttled by the algorithm. Some US users could not type the word “Epstein” in direct messages. Bisan Owda, an award-winning Gaza-based journalist, reported that her account was banned, prompting outcry.

TikTok said most of these issues were attributable to a data center power outage, and that the Epstein problem was a technical glitch. The company also said that Owda’s account was flagged due to an impersonation issue from last September, which has since been resolved. The account is back up.

Amidst this chaos, however, a clip of Adam Presser, TikTok US’s new CEO, speaking at an event organized by the World Jewish Congress last year, began to spread. He spoke about the platform’s moderation policies, saying, “We made a change to designate the use of the term ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for a protected attribute as hate speech. So if somebody were to use ‘Zionist,’ of course, you can use it in that sense, you’re a proud Zionist, but if you’re using it in a context degrading someone, calling somebody a Zionist as a dirty name, then that gets designated as hate speech to be moderated against.”"

https://zeteo.com/p/trump-tiktok-disastrous-rollout-warning-social-media

#SocialMedia #TikTok #USA #Censorship #Zionism #Palestine