Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 2, 2021 21 tweets 17 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: NYC's driver-owned Uber alternative; Amazon running scared from arbitration at scale; How the Dutch helped CBS cheat on its taxes; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arb…

#Pluralistic

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This Friday, Jun 4, I'm appearing with @DDayen in the Second Life Book Club!

draxtor.com/sl-book-club-c…

And next Monday, Jun 7, I'm helping @TKMiles launch his debut novel RABBITS:

eventbrite.com/e/terry-miles-…

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NYC's driver-owned Uber alternative: Platform cooperativism needs interoperability, though.



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Amazon running scared from arbitration at scale: The right kind of automation.



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How the Dutch helped CBS cheat on its taxes: Onshore-offshore and the IP shell-game.



5/
#15yrsago JPEG patent invalidated pubpat.org/Chen672Rejecte…

#15yrsago Canadian copyright agency launches kids’ propaganda campaign web.archive.org/web/2006060204…

6/
#10yrsago The Red Market: book on the criminal trade in orphans, organs, bones, skin, eggs, hair, and other human flesh memex.craphound.com/2011/05/31/the…

#5yrsago Ronald Reagan was Donald Trump, until he was president nymag.com/intelligencer/…

7/
#5yrsago Every Heart a Doorway: @SeananMcGuire’s subversive, gorgeous tale of rejects from the realms of faerie memex.craphound.com/2016/06/02/eve…

#5yrsago Class action: publishers paid writers “sale” royalties on ebooks whose fine-print says they’re “licensed” copylaw.org/2016/05/simon-…

8/
#1yrago Big Tech distorts our discourse pluralistic.net/2020/05/29/min…

#1yrago Teardown of an "anti-5g" USB stick pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/hol…

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Yesterday threads: Canadian telco monopolists run the show; Google cheats on location privacy; The antitrust case against Prime; and more!



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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…

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My book "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is a critique of Big Tech connecting conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies (proposing a way to deal with both) is now out in paperback:

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

Signed copies here:
darkdel.com/store/p2024/Av…

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/

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Upcoming appearances:

* In conversation with @DDayen (Second Life Book Club), Jun 4, draxtor.com/sl-book-club-c…

* Book launch for @TKMiles's Rabbits (@BookSoup), Jun 7, eventbrite.com/e/terry-miles-…

14/
Recent appearances:

* Get Your News On With Ron/@RonPlacone:


* Seize the Means of Computation, Consensus 2021
coindesk.com/cory-doctorow-…

* How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (@RyersonCFE):
cfe.ryerson.ca/key-resources/…

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 @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

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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/2021/06/02/arb…

17/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

18/
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

19/
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…

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Today's top sources: Slashdot (slashdot.org).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

May 13
"Understood: Who Broke the Internet?" is my new podcast for CBC about the enshittogenic policy decisions that gave rise to enshittification. Episode two just dropped: "ctrl-ctrl-ctrl":



1/ cbc.ca/listen/cbc-pod…The logo for 'Who Broke the Internet' - a shattered hard-drive with the CBC logomark.
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/2025/05/13/ctr…

2/
The thesis of the show is straightforward: the internet wasn't killed by ideological failings like "greed," nor by economic concepts like "network effects," nor by some cyclic force of history that drives towards "re-intermediation."

3/
Read 49 tweets
May 2
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.

Inside: AI and the fatfinger economy; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpi…A leg-hold trap whose trigger disc has been replaced with the hostile, glaring eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' A giant man's finger enters the frame from one corner, aimed at the trigger.  Image: Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Index_finger_%3D_to_attention.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in NEW ZEALAND at UNITY BOOKS in WELLINGTON TODAY (May 3, 3PM):

unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-event…

More tour dates (PDX, Pittsburgh, London, Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

2/ Image
AI and the fatfinger economy: Every slip of the finger in money in the bank.



3/  Image: Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Index_finger_%3D_to_attention.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Read 24 tweets
Apr 24
Patrick "patio11" McKenzie is a fantastic explainer, the kind of person who breaks topics down in ways that stay with you, and creep into your understanding of other subjects, too. Take his 2022 essay, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero":



1/ bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optima…A rainforest in Chiapas, green and intergrown.
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/2025/04/24/her…

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It's a very well-argued piece, and here's the nut of it:

> The marginal return of permitting fraud against you is plausibly greater than zero, and therefore, you should welcome greater than zero fraud.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Apr 22
Astrophysicist Adam Becker knows a bit about science and tech - enough to show, in his book *More Everything Forever* that claims tech bros make about space colonies, mind uploading, and other skiffy subjects are nonsense dressed up as prediction:



1/ hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-be…The Basic Books cover for Adam Becker's 'More Everything Faster.'
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/2025/04/22/vin…

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Becker investigates the personalities, the ideologies, the coalitions, the histories, and crucially, the *grifts* behind various science fictional pursuits.

3/
Read 24 tweets
Apr 21
Have you heard that tariffs are going to drive prices up? Me too. There's a good reason we're hearing a lot of talk about tariffs prices: tariffs are a tax that is ultimately paid by consumers.

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/2025/04/21/tru…

2/
Trump plans to raise $6t in tariffs, making them the largest tax increase in US history:



But that $6t is just for starters.

3/ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/04/03/as-…
Read 42 tweets
Apr 18
It's damned hard to prove an antitrust case: so often, the prosecution has to prove that the company *intended* to crush competition, and/or that they raised prices or reduced quality because they knew they didn't have to fear competitors.

1/ A naked, sexless pull-string talking doll with a speaker grille set into its chest. It has the head of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar, and a pull string extending from its back. A hand - again, from a Zuckerberg metaverse avatar - is pulling back the string. The doll towers over a courtroom.
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/2025/04/18/cha…

2/
It's a lot easier to prove *what* a corporation did than it is to prove *why* they did it. What am I, a mind-reader? But imagine for a second that the corporation in the dock is a global multinational.

3/
Read 64 tweets

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