Almost the entire article is about turning a light bulb into a Wi-Fi hotspot/web server, and your takeaway was, well actually, _The Color Purple_ is not technically banned.
Unless I missed something I only spotted two book examples since that wasn't the focus of the article.
It's just tech enthusiasts being socially inept. There is literally no discourse to be had from this comment, infact it only serves to detract from the main point of the article
“Banned books” is just a safe term to use for something whose real purpose would be to facilitate sharing warez, snuff films, child porn, whistleblowing… etc. Get a grip.
It's a needed comment since the first word in the title is 'Banned' and in typical online discourse the comments go down-hill into a rant against ideology/politics.
The book Nineteen Eighty-four contains sexual content. An authoritarian interested in reducing access to such literature about totalitarianism simply needs to get some parents worked up over sex.
Which is understandable, but only to a point - the problem was that a lot of banned books were also frequently anti-establishment or critical of the regime.
If it was just explicit material then the bible would also need to be banned. But as always, it was never about protecting the children.
The cynical side of me wonders if some books might be "banned" on purpose to have the distinction of being a banned book. Probably few books are actually that way, but these days it seems like a shortcut to notoriety
It definitely gets used as a tool to get attention, but let’s be real, nobody is getting rich selling cheap paperbacks in 2026. If you’ve ever been around a school district targeted by the moms for liberty or whatever, it’s a very real thing.
When I was growing up in the early 90s, a local crazy preacher guy got a bunch of people riled up and angry about Goosebumps, Huckleberry Finn and to Kill a Mockingbird. These were the same types of folks playing metal music backwards to find satanic instructions.
It was a simpler time without the internet to keep stupid people riled up for extended periods. Now idiocy is a social movement.
To be fair to the folks playing metal backwards, some 80s bands did include backward encoded messages about satan. It was likely publicity stunts to rile people up though. Include something controversial for marketing.
But on a fun sidenote: When Life of Brian was initially banned in Norway, its distributor in Sweden started marketing it as "a movie so funny it's banned in Norway" :-)
Whenever I hear about "banned books" they're usually so banned that Barnes & Noble has a prominent "banned books" display selling them at the store entrance. It's all marketing.
Unless I missed something I only spotted two book examples since that wasn't the focus of the article.