I plugged into ethernet (as wifi w/captive portal does not work for me). I think clearnet worked but I have no interest in that. Egress Tor traffic was blocked and so was VPN. I’m not interested in editing all my scripts and configs to use clearnet, so the library’s internet is useless to me (unless I bother to try a tor bridge).
I was packing my laptop and a librarian spotted me unplugging my ethernet cable and approached me with big wide open eyes and pannicked angry voice (as if to be addressing a child that did something naughty), and said “you can’t do that!”
I have a lot of reasons for favoring ethernet, like not carrying a mobile phone that can facilitate the SMS verify that the library’s captive portal imposes, not to mention I’m not eager to share my mobile number willy nilly. The reason I actually gave her was that that I run a free software based system and the wifi drivers or firmware are proprietary so my wifi card doesn’t work¹. She was also worried that I was stealing an ethernet cable and I had to explain that I carry an ethernet cable with me, which she struggled to believe for a moment. When I said it didn’t work, she was like “good, I’m not surprised”, or something like that.
¹ In reality, I have whatever proprietary garbage my wifi NIC needs, but have a principled objection to a service financed by public money forcing people to install and execute proprietary non-free software on their own hardware. But there’s little hope for getting through to a librarian in the situation at hand, whereby I might as well have been caught disassembling their PCs.
You need to really, deeply consider what your stance is when you’re painting libraries and librarians as the bad guys.
You’ll have to quote me on that because I do not recall calling them baddies. I have spotlighted an irresponsible policy and flawed implementation. It’s more likely a competency issue and unlikely a case of malice (as it’s unclear whether the administration is even aware that they are excluding people).
If they are knowingly and willfully discriminating against people without mobile phones, then it could be malice. But we don’t know that so they of course have the benefit of any doubt. They likely operate on the erroneous assumption that every single patron has a mobile phone and functional wifi.
You have, throughout your comments, repeatedly spoken down toward librarians and libraries. You might not be painting them as malicious, but you’re certainly not painting them as “trying their best” or “worth having an adult conversation with instead of misrepresenting my situation intentionally”.
Again, you’re not quoting. You’ve already been told it’s not the case. You need to quote. You replied to the wrong message.
There are many librarians with varying degrees of motivation. I spoke to one yesterday that genuinely made an effort to the best of their ability. I cannot say the same for all librarians. When I describe a problem of being unable to connect, some librarians cannot be bothered to reach out to tech support, or even so much as report upstream that someone was unable to connect.
This is a matter of being able to read people. I don’t just bluntly blurt out a request. I start the conversation with baby steps (borderline small talk) describing the issue to assess from their words, mood, and body language the degree to which they are likely to be accommodating whatever request I am building up to. Different people get a different conversation depending on the vibe I get from them. Even the day of week is a factor. People tend to be in their best mood on Fridays and far from that on Mondays.
I’m not writing a research paper, if you’re unable to identify the things you’ve said which align with the things I’ve described then that’s fair enough and perhaps we can end this interaction here.