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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Publicly funded but not for the public.
And before anyone makes a comment about the unhoused probably not paying taxes ... neither do any of the children or retirees who use the service every single day of the year.
We've pretty much just abandoned any concept of citizenship or civic responsibility...
It's only getting turned off at night, not completely disallowing them from using it. I don't see what the problem is. I can't go and take out a book at 1am, I shouldn't also be allowed to use their WiFi.
I can. My library has online services like ebook rentals that can be accessed 24/7.
I live in a rural area without broadband access. Any quality broadband access. During the pandemic, kids sat in their parents' cars (typically after they got home from work) to do their remote-learning homework in front of the public library to get free access to decent connection speeds AND access the library files electronically (for California check here https://www.library.ca.gov/services/to-libraries/ebooks-for-all/ - every state has an equivalent ). People, including kids, check out books (and periodicals) electronically 24/7.
It was shocking to me just how prevalent lack of broadband is. I moved in with my in-laws in norcal midway through the pandemic and the only internet service choices were a 600Kbps DSL line or Verizon mobile hotspots at 3-5Mbps (which is a massive blessing in comparison). I worked remotely and would frequently have to drive to Target or a coffee shop in town to download anything. They aren't even in that rural an area - there were houses about half a mile away with gigabit cable. The cable company wanted nearly $70,000 to build out a line.
Not exactly the same but similar... There's 4 major providers who service my area, but only one of them extends down my block. So I can choose from DSL (which to be fair goes up to like 35 Mbps), but if I want higher, I'm vendor locked to Xfinity, who charges at least 2x the price of the local companies.
Ive asked several times, but they quote hundreds of thousands of dollars to trench fiber down my street, and it's just not worth it.
Except, you know, there's already fiber from Xfinity... They just wont share.
The physical cabling needs to be government owned and rented out to the companies, not exclusively owned by one single company. We'll never have competitive pricing unless it's nationalized infrastructure
Nearest Target to me is an hour away. I really thought our one local bank surely had wifi (no, of course a bank doesn't have wifi, silly, security too big a risk, duh). It's our little teeny 1930s public library or nothing. So this San Francisco story hit me square in the chops as something like that here would take away our only free access point. Why would anybody do that?!?
Good lord. The pandemic shutdowns sucked for me (I have two kids myself), but the more I hear about other people's experiences, the more I realize I really lucked out.
you could check out an ebook using their services if you had access to wifi
Exactly this. A housed, or unhoused person, can’t use the library 24/7, so why should there be an exception for Wi-Fi at night?
because it costs $0 and unhoused people deserve access to education and resources at night same as those who are housed and have their own wifi?
this isnt about the wifi anyway, it's an attempt to chase homeless people out of populated areas bc rich people are scared to be confronted with the human cost of their actions.
you're fucking disgusting. i wish you the worst things.
Not the person you are replying to, but that's really uncalled for. It's a difference of opinion and none of us are in the position of decision making for the San Francisco Public Library.
A better policy would be for the city to provide universal Wi-Fi access across the city, instead of putting the burden on one public entity in one part of the city.
To be fair, several of these responses have been pretty disgusting in their disregard for homeless people. Also, why is it "unhoused" now and not "homeless". Seems like the semantics are something George Carlin would have fun with.
what people call you and how you're referred to affects how you're treated, directly. this is why propaganda works. i'd like to think carlin would understand that fucking around with marginalized groups trying to better their perception and situation is probably not super cool, and that it'd be much more chill to go after the powerful assholes doing the marginalizing. but who knows.
the word homeless has stigma attached thanks to movies, tv, politicians, news. unhoused drops alot of that stigma. removing that stigma is important in the interest of allowing people to feel empathy for those affected rather than fear. i still slip every now and again but the rationale makes sense and i'm trying to do better.
I'm guessing you've never seen the bit where Carlin goes from Shell Shocked -> Battle Fatigued -> Operational Exhaustion -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The whole thing about changing these terms is it tends to undermine the seriousness of the issues being discussed. And the marginalized people that are effected.
The reason the library isn't open 24/7 is that it's expensive to keep paying people to staff it for so many more hours, plus those are hours you'd have to pay even more because working at night sucks. The WiFi access point doesn't have those issues. You can leave it on and help people for almost no money.
Right, they don’t close the library at night because they have some moral objection to people checking out books at 1AM, it’s just a question of how to allocate their resources. I believe some public libraries, such as Salt Lake City, are experimenting with staying open 24/7.
Why not? It cost them next to nothing to leave it on. It actually is more work to turn off and on the router every day. I don’t see why not being to check out books had to do with internet. Why does it have to be all or nothing?
I would guess all commercial routers and access points hae the option to automate something like that. So you only have to set it up once and it's not really much work (unless something breaks)