Anna's Blog: AI companies destroy physical books — let’s scan rare books before it’s too late

2026-08-05 19:29 UTC

TL;DR: AI companies are secretly buying, scanning, and destroying millions of physical books to train their models, permanently locking human knowledge inside private corporate servers. Anna’s Archive is urgently calling on volunteers worldwide to scan and upload books before this cultural heritage disappears forever.

Replies (5)

@jlow@slrpnk.net 2026-08-05 20:21

And don’t destroy the physical copies?!

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@cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 2026-08-05 21:28

ooh reminds me it’s time to reup my donation for the month

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@Tim_Bisley@piefed.social 2026-08-05 22:03

For me if it is not possible to scan something non-destructively then it is acceptable to destroy one copy to share with many. It is not acceptable to destroy a book for non-preservation purposes. Also they are probably destroying many copies of the same books over and over.

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@alapakala@quokk.au 2026-08-06 07:00

fyi, they’ve been doing this for at least a year, if not more. I believe this social issue cannot be fix without an actual bloody revolution.😔

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@Apytele@sh.itjust.works 2026-08-06 11:17

This reminds me of a book I read recently. I get like 30 $1 paperbacks at the library used book sale every spring / fall. When I’m done reading them they go on the unit book cart for the patients unless theyre wildly objectionable (and it takes a lot for me, I recently put out some only mildly tasteful furry badger shapeshifter smut). Anyway this year I got something called “the king’s hounds” where the back summary sounded lit but it turned out to be super rapey (like Sean Connery bond just keep doing it until they shut up rapey). And it’s been sitting on my coffee table collecting dust since I finished it because it feels wrong to just throw it away but I’m definitely not giving it to my patients (who like, ALL have rape PTSD for some reason).

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