Libraries

from the article:

Younger generations tend to be more values driven than older ones, and libraries’ ethos of sharing seems to resonate with Gen Zers and millennials – as does a space that’s free from the insipid creep of commercialism. At the library, there are no ads and no fees – well, provided you return your books on time – and no cookies tracking and selling your behavior.

Actually we need to work on that.

Libraries do little to nothing to make browsers defensive w.r.t the intrusive web and some libraries even block Tor, which enables ad surveillance corps to monetize your data. PCs are usually all Windows (which has some baked-in surveillance) and often the systems are hardened so users cannot deploy¹ any kind of self-defense tools. Network users are sometimes blocked from using egress Tor traffic (iow, nothing that threatens the library itself). Library patrons are distrusted more than the surveillance advertisers on the other end. So patrons have to contend with both a spammy web and having their hands tied by excessive nannying.

I was unable to fetch the Debian OS at the library because the ISOs are no longer on the official mirror sites. Someone had to setup a server on a non-standard port. One particular library branch decided it was a good idea to arbitrarily block uncommon ports (WTF). And because the security was outsourced without support, the librarians were helpless.

Although to some extent these barriers might not put off millennials because they never experienced the free, open, and ad-free internet we had ~2—3 decades ago.

1. sure it would be a recipe for disaster to let users install anything willy-nilly, but patrons should be able to lodge a ticket requesting a tool config they need.