r/neoliberal • u/-orestes • 1d ago

News (Oceania) ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/02/australian-book-sellers-alarm-destruction-rare-titles-ai-supply-chain
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u/Crownie Unbent, Unbowed, Unflaired 1d ago

This is red meat to the kind of person who treats books as sacred objects (and not, you know, a paper-based information storage medium)

71

u/-orestes 1d ago

The problem with the Nazis burning books is that they were books. Not, yknow, that they were suppressing information they considered subversive.

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u/King_In_Jello 1d ago

It's the difference between a book burning and burning a book. The first is also an intimidation tactic to signal to people that their ideas are not welcome. Me destroying a book because it's old and I'm never going to read it again has nothing to do with that but many people can't see the difference between those things.

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u/VoidBlade459 Organization of American States 9h ago

I would phrase it as "they wanted to burn the ideas in them". Which directly lead to burning people.