Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Bossware
Most recents (12)
If you've followed me a long time, you've seen my transition from a "#linkblogger" (5-15 short hits/day) to an "essay-#blogger" (5-7 articles/week). I'm loving the new mode but returning to linkblogging is also intensely, unexpectedly gratifying:
pluralistic.net/2023/05/02/wun…
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pluralistic.net/2023/05/02/wun…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/05/13/fou…
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pluralistic.net/2023/05/13/fou…
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My last #linkblogging foray was so great - and my link-backlog is so large - that I'm doing another one.
Link the first: "Siphon," @xkcd's delightful, whimsical "#physics-how-the-fuck-does-it-work" one-shot (visit the link, the tooltip is great):
xkcd.com/2775/
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Link the first: "Siphon," @xkcd's delightful, whimsical "#physics-how-the-fuck-does-it-work" one-shot (visit the link, the tooltip is great):
xkcd.com/2775/
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My latest @locusmag column is "The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have A Point," about all the ways that I agree with the Right's paranoid fringe, whom I mostly *disagree* with:
locusmag.com/2023/05/commen…
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locusmag.com/2023/05/commen…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/05/03/par…
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pluralistic.net/2023/05/03/par…
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The impetus for the article was a widely reported, bizarre protest against the plan to create a #15MinuteCity in Oxford, England.
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#Enshittification is platforms devouring themselves: first they tempt users with goodies. Once users are locked in, goodies are withdrawn and dangled before businesses. Once business customers are stuck, all value is claimed for platform shareholders:
pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/pot…
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pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/pot…
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/alg…
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pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/alg…
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Enshittification isn't just another way of saying "fraud" or "price gouging" or "wage theft." Enshittification is intrinsically digital, because moving all those goodies around requires the flexibility that only comes with a *digital* businesses.
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*Red Team Blues* is my next novel, a #PostCyberpunk anti-finance finance #thriller; it's a major title for my publishers @torbooks and @HoZ_Books, and it's swept the trade press with starred reviews all 'round. Despite all that, #Audible will not sell the #audiobook. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/ant… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/ant… 2/
In fact, Audible won't sell *any* of my audiobooks. Instead, I have to independently produce them and sell them through @Kickstarter:
kickstarter.com/projects/docto… 3/
kickstarter.com/projects/docto… 3/
This week on my #podcast, I read my @Medium column, "#GigWork Is the Opposite of #Steampunk," about the worst-of-all-worlds of #bossware, where an app is your boss, and you live at work because your home and/or car is a branch office of the factory:
doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-th… 1/
doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-th… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/lov… 2/
pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/lov… 2/
As with so much of my work these days, the column opens with a reference to the #Luddites, and to @bcmerchant's superb, forthcoming history of the Luddite uprisings, "Blood in the Machine":
littlebrown.com/titles/brian-m… 3/
littlebrown.com/titles/brian-m… 3/
The original sin of tech boosters and critics is an undue focus on what a technology *does*, rather than who it does it *to* and who it does it *for*. When it comes to technology's effect on our daily lives, the social arrangements matter much more than the feature-sets. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not… 2/
This is the premise behind my idea of the #ShittyTechnologyAdoptionCurve: if you want to do something horrible to people with technology, you must first inflict it on people without social power. 3/
If you want to do something terrible with tech, you can't just use it on people with money and status. They'll complain and your idea will tank. Successful shitty tech rollouts start with prisoners, kids, migrants and others who can be abused with impunity. 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/gre…
Then they work their way up the privilege gradient. 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/gre…
Then they work their way up the privilege gradient. 2/
I call it the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve.
The point of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve is to normalize technological oppression, one group at a time. 3/
The point of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve is to normalize technological oppression, one group at a time. 3/
This week on my podcast, I read my @Medium column, "Revenge Of the Chickenized Reverse Centaurs," proposing a theory of the relationship between algorithms, interoperability and worker power (happy #MayDay!).
onezero.medium.com/revenge-of-the… 1/
onezero.medium.com/revenge-of-the… 1/
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/05/02/rev… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/05/02/rev… 2/
Let's break it down. Start with "#chickenization": this is a labor economics term referring to industries that follow the model of the American poultry industry. 3/
As Biden lays out ambitious plans to stimulate the US economy and fight inequality with new money creation (spending) and money destruction (higher taxes on corporations, capital gains and the right), a firing squad of economists assembled to issue dire inflation warnings.
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(If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:)
pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/may…
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pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/may…
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They're repeating the economic doctrine of the pasty 40 years, an austerity doctrine that focuses on the inflationary risks of "deficit spending" (when governments don't tax as much money out of the economy as they inject in the same year).
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"Cancel culture" - the prospect of permanent exclusion from your chosen profession due to some flaw - has been a fixture in blue-collar labor since the 1930s, as @nathansnewman writes in @TheProspect.
prospect.org/labor/how-work…
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prospect.org/labor/how-work…
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In the 1930s, employers who wanted to keep labor "agitators" out of their shops adapted the WWI recruitment screening tools to identify "disgruntled" applicants who might organize their co-workers and form a union.
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Over the years, this developed into an phrenological-industrial complex, with a huge industry of personality test companies that help employers - especially large employers of low-waged workers - exclude those they judged likely to demand better working conditions.
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Just as the Texas blackouts were a payday for energy companies that profit from human misery, the pandemic is a gold-rush for the #bossware companies that spy on workers required to convert their homes to rent-free office space to their employers.
pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bos…
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pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bos…
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Bossware's origins are Taylorism, the time-motion/scientific management fad of the late 19th century, when charlatans dressed up in science-coats and micromanaged skilled tradespeople with humiliatingly detailed proscriptions.
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The digital age is a fantastic boon to bosses who want to spy on and punish working people, and following the shitty technology adoption curve, they tried bossware first on the low-waged, precarious workers who lack the social power to push back against it.
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Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power is @ddayen's new book about the concentration of industry in America and around the world; one interesting implication of monopolies is that they are intensely individual phenomena.
thenewpress.com/books/monopoli…
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thenewpress.com/books/monopoli…
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That is, despite being driven by vast social forces, monopolies have monopolists: named, well-known individuals whose personal choices directly lead to misery, hardship and death for millions.
People like Warren Buffett, America's folksiest monopolist.
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People like Warren Buffett, America's folksiest monopolist.
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Buffett isn't shy about this. His whole deal is backing companies with "moats" - that is to say, companies that don't have to worry about competition (cue Peter Thiel, saying the quiet part aloud: "Competition is for losers").
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