[malfist]

This is really dishonest framing, unless you really, honestly can't tell a difference between pulping a mass market paperback romance novel that there's 3 million of in circulation, and shredding an 18th century botanical text that there's only 2 copies of in existence.

[dwedge]

You call of dishonest framing, but you're begging the question twice.

Once that AI companies are really shredding 200 year old rare books, and once that libraries are only weeding mass market pulp fiction.

[malfist]

That is literally what this article is about.

[streetfighter64]

The "article" in question is a tweet. The "rare botanical text" is just an example the author of the tweet made up in order to generate sympathy.

[malfist]

The tweet is about a 404 Media article about the practice. It's linked elsewhere here.

[dwedge]

Does the 404media article mention that rare botanical book? I saw an excerpt here elsewhere of their examples and it wasn't in that list.

Also I had a family member work in libraries. They got rid of books for very small prices based on how many people checked them out. Not how easy they were to replace. One example was a 100 year old gold leafed book they sold for £5 to someone who removed every page to sell separately.