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25 Nov, 20 tweets, 14 min read
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Tech in SF; Office 365 spies on employees for bosses; A state-owned Amazon; Random Penguin to buy Simon & Schuster; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the…

#Pluralistic

1/
On Monday, Nov 30, I'm giving a talk based on my short book "HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM" as part of McGill University's Beaverbrook Lectures; it's a counterpoint to a lecture delivered by Shoshanna Zuboff last Monday. It's free to attend:

mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/…

2/
Tech in SF: Annalee Newitz and Ken Liu in the final Attack Surface Lecture.



3/
Office 365 spies on employees for bosses: It looks like you're creating a technological dystopia. Would you like some help with that?



4/
A state-owned Amazon: Notes on Argentina's Correo Compras.



5/
Random Penguin to buy Simon & Schuster: And then there were four.



6/
#10yrsago London police brutally kettle children marching for education newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-p…

#1yrago After Katrina, neoliberals replaced New Orleans’ schools with charters, which are now failing nola.com/news/education…

7/
#1yrago Networked authoritarianism may contain the seeds of its own undoing crookedtimber.org/2019/11/25/see…

#1yrago Leaked documents document China’s plan for mass arrests and concentration-camp internment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang icij.org/investigations…

8/
#1yrago Library Socialism: a utopian vision of a sustaniable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance memex.craphound.com/2019/11/25/lib…

9/
Yesterday's threads: Sci-Fi Genre; Saudi Aramco is gushing debt; Emailifaction is digital carcinization; Cheap Chinese routers riddled with backdoors; Talking interop on EFF's podcast; and more!



10/
My latest novel is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books. @washingtonpost called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance."

Get signed books from @darkdel: darkdel.com/store/p1840/Av…

11/
I have a (free) new book out! "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is an anti-monopolist critique of Big Tech that connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies and proposes a way to deal with both:

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

12/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

craphound.com/shop/

13/
Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote, Cybersummit 2020, Nov 26 cybera.ca/cyber-summit-2…

* Keynote, Cologne Futures, Nov 27 medienpolitik.eu

* Beaverbrook Lecture: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Nov 30, mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/…

14/
Recent appearances:

* Nerdcanon Podcast:
nerdcanon.com/episode-25-cor…

* Plutopia Podcast:
plutopia.io/2020/11/23/cor…

* Talkingheadz Podcast:
talkingpointz.com/talkingheadz-w…

15/
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

16/
You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the…

17/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🐮". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

Subscribe here: pluralistic.net/plura-list

18/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at @pluralistic@mamot.fr.

Here's today's edition: mamot.fr/@pluralistic/1…

19/
Today's top sources: ACAB For Cutie (twitter.com/RamaTheVoice), Naked Capitalism (nakedcapitalism.com), Slashdot (slashdot.org).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture
26 Nov
Follow Us to Walt Disney World (1984) adventurelandia.tumblr.com/post/635810395…
Follow Us to Walt Disney World (1984) adventurelandia.tumblr.com/post/635810395…
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Read 5 tweets
Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture
25 Nov
Publishing is dominated by just five giant players: Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Harpercollins and Macmillan.

1/
Within that five-company oligarchy, one company stands out as a true monopolist: Penguin Random House, the megafirm created when Random House's owner, Bertelsmann, executed a merger-to-monopoly by buying Penguin in 2013.

2/
Now, Penguin is about to effect another monopolistic merger, by acquiring Simon & Schuster from Viacom, which bought the company in 1994. The acquisition was always a bad fit: it was driven by a desire to create a vertical monopoly.

3/
Read 11 tweets
Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture
25 Nov
POSTCARDS FROM NIGHT CITY wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/635780171…
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Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture
25 Nov
In most of the world, the lockdown has destroyed small businesses while increasing the profits of Big Tech intermediaries like Amazon, who control access to customers on one side, and access to merchants on the other.

1/
The government of Argentina is trying to avert this fate. Their postal service is launching a "state-owned Amazon" called Correo Compras, which will offer low-cost ecommerce listings to businesses, and do fulfilment through postal workers.

correocompras.com.ar

2/
Correo Compras competes directly with Mercadolibre, a latinamerican ecommerce titan with a well-deserved reputation for squeezing suppliers and workers - its deliveries are made by precarious gig economy drivers.

opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/…

3/
Read 18 tweets
Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture
25 Nov
The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve describes the process by which oppressive technology is normalized and distributed through all levels of society. The more privilege someone has, the harder it is to coerce them to use dehumanizing tech, so it starts with marginalized people.

1/
Asylum seekers, prisoners and overseas sweatshop workers get the first version. Its roughest edges are sanded off against their tenderest places, and once it's been normalized a little, we inflict it on students, mental patients, and blue collar workers.

2/
Lather, rinse, repeat: before long, everyone's been ropted in. If your meals were observed by a remote-monitored CCTV 20 years ago, it was because you were in a supermax prison. Today, it's because you bought a home video surveillance system from Google/Apple/Amazon.

3/
Read 18 tweets
Cory Doctorow #BLM Profile picture
25 Nov
Today in the final instalment of the Attack Surface Lectures (panels exploring themes from the third Little Brother book, hosted by @torbooks and 8 indie bookstores): Tech in SF, with @annaleen and @kyliu99 recorded on Oct 20 at @interabangbooks.



1/
You can watch it without Youtube's surveillance courtesy of the @internetarchive:

archive.org/details/asl-te…

Or get the audio as an MP3:

archive.org/download/asl-t…

2/
Earlier instalments in the series:

I. Politics and Protest (with @evacide and @rondeibert, hosted by @strandbookstore):

craphound.com/attacksurface/…

II. Cross-Media Sci-Fi (with @amber_benson and @jonrog1 hosted by the @booksmithtweets):

craphound.com/attacksurface/…

3/
Read 7 tweets

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