In a Feb. 28 social media post, Florida Pastor Tom Ascol, a longtime Logos user, wrote that he was “deeply concerned” about some content available through Logos. He said he appreciated the company’s “prompt response to my inquiry,” which noted that the offending materials “were added to our digital catalog inadvertently and will be removed shortly.”
“Spoke with a [developer] who said they have been improving their scanning process for how to block raunchy content when they’re mass ingesting back catalogs,” a commenter to that post wrote. “Obviously, they need to set things much more tightly on the front end and revisit for things they may have blocked unnecessarily.”
ChurchLeaders reached out to Logos Bible Software for any additional comment. Matthew Bennett, vice president of content product, shared details he recently posted to a Logos community forum:
Some of you have noticed recently an influx of titles on the Logos platform that aren’t related to Bible study. One of our company priorities is bringing you new books faster so Logos can be your one-stop shop for ebooks of all kinds. We’ve gotten feedback in the past that users want to consolidate all their ebooks in Logos, but we have a ways to go before we can serve users in this way.
However, as many of you have noted, a difficulty in broadening the content available on logos.com is that we rely on publishers to provide relevant, helpful content that doesn’t violate our standards of containing erotic/graphic language or inciting violence. (You can read our entire distribution philosophy here.) Many Bible-focused, respected publishers add books to the Logos platform using an automated feed. Some of these publishers have imprints that publish books which sometimes violate our standards—and these imprints also send books to the Logos platform using the automated feed. We’ve always used BISAC codes to filter out as many of these books as we can and we take down individual titles as we find them.
- We have turned off the automatic feed for publishers and publishing imprints with multiple titles that violate our distribution philosophy. This means that titles from these publishers will be reviewed to ensure nothing erotic/graphic or violent makes it to our website.
- Our team will review titles flagged by users like you within one business day. If a title violates our standards against erotic, graphic, or violent language, we will remove it ASAP. You can send questionable titles to titlereview@logos.com to be reviewed by someone at Logos.
We apologize for the resources that have bypassed our filtering system in the past. Thank you to those who have brought them to our attention so we could immediately remove them, and thank you for continuing to trust Logos to help you go deeper in your study of Scripture.
This article has been updated with more information from Logos.
