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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Jul 29, 2021 • 31 tweets • 29 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Bankruptcy and elite impunity; Stories from Black women's customer service hell; Tracking you with accelerometer signatures; Unauthorized cups; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/imp…

#Pluralistic

1/
Bankruptcy and elite impunity: The Sacklers offer billions of reasons to overthrow the system.



2/
Stories from Black women's customer service hell: The women who answer the phone when you call Disney, Airbnb, Carnival and others.



3/
Tracking you with accelerometer signatures: Yet another latent unique identifier with horrifying consequences.



4/
Unauthorized cups: RFID-equipped disposable cups deny water to homeless people.



5/
#20yrsago How to help someone use a computer pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/h…

#20yrsago Declines in advertising in major magazines in the first six months of 2001 web.archive.org/web/2001071410…

#15yrsago Cingular threatens Consumerist over “how to discriminate” docs consumerist.com/consumer/cd/ci…

6/
#10yrsago Batman logo in equation form reddit.com/r/pics/comment…

#10yrsago Bill Nye explains to Fox News why lunar volcanoes don’t disprove anthropogenic global warming web.archive.org/web/2011092418…

7/
#10yrsago House Committee passes bill requiring your ISP to spy on every click and keystroke you make online and retain for 12 months eff.org/deeplinks/2011…

8/
#10yrsago Vindictive WalMart erroneously accuses couple of shoplifting, has husband deported, wife fired, costs them house and car web.archive.org/web/2011100210…

9/
#10yrsago Man with camera in park who fled angry parent sought by police (turns out he was taking pix of his grandson) web.archive.org/web/2011082905…

#10yrsago Copyright extortionist ripped off his competitor’s threatening material torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-la…

10/
#10yrsago US ISP/copyright deal: a one-sided private law for corporations, without public interest eff.org/deeplinks/2011…

#10yrsago Why they call the Tories “the nasty party” theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/28…

12/
#5yrsago The Ice Bucket Challenge did not fund a breakthrough in ALS treatment healthnewsreview.org/2016/07/ice-bu…

#5yrsago Silicon Valley banks offer tech giants’ new hires 100% mortgages on 24 hours’ notice bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

13/
#5yrsago RIP, MAD Magazines’s Jack Davis bbc.com/news/entertain…

#5yrsago Laurie Penny at the DNC: “Dissent will not be tolerated. Protest will not be permitted.” medium.com/welcome-to-the…

14/
#5yrsago North Carolina’s voter suppression law struck down as “racist” cnn.com/2016/07/29/pol…

#5yrsago Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls Apple’s tax strategy a “fraud” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

15/
#5yrsago Trump campaign frisks, then blocks ticketed Washington Post reporter at Pence rally washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/w…

#5yrsago Pregnancy-tracking app was riddled with vulnerabilities, exposing extremely sensitive personal information consumerreports.org/mobile-securit…

16/
#1yrago Bitcoin is not a socialist's ally pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

#1yrago No consequences for police violence at BLM actions pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

#1yrago Let's force Big Tech to interoperate pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

#1yrago Break 'Em Up pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

17/
#1yrago Police "unions" are not unions pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

#1yrago Snowden's Little Brother intro pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

#1yrago Audible Exclusives pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

#1yrago Mexican copyright crushes free speech pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

18/
#1yrago Afterland pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

19/
Tuesday's threads: What would a live concert album sound like with all the songs taken out?; The infosec apocalypse is nigh; and more!



20/
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…

21/
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…

22/
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/

23/
Upcoming appearances:

* Privacy Without Monopoly, @Defcon 29, Aug 7
defcon.org/html/defcon-29…

* Keynote speaker, The Quills Conference, Aug 12-15
quillsconference.com

* From Wayback to Way Forward: The @InternetArchive turns 25, Oct 21
eventbrite.com/e/from-wayback…

24/
Recent appearances:

Reset the Internet? (Project Syndicate)
project-syndicate.org/podcasts/reset…

* Trustbusting (@NicoleSandler)


* Launch for @UnshavedMouse's When the Sparrow Falls (@MystGalaxyBooks):
crowdcast.io/e/virtual-even…

25/
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 @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

26/
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/2021/07/29/imp…

27/
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.

28/
My latest @Medium column is "Now you’ve got two problems," part three of a series on themepark design, queing theory, immersive entertainment, and load-balancing.

doctorow.medium.com/now-youve-got-…

29/
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

30/
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…

31/
Today's top sources: @NakedCapitalism (nakedcapitalism.com), @GlennF, @Sophpsych, @TheBekku, @SeamusBellamy, @hipsterelectron and @aggrowill.

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 6
Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities.

1/ A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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/2026/01/06/100…

2/
AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:



Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets.

3/pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/eco…
Read 48 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 16, 2025
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
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/2025/12/16/k-s…

2/
When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

3/
Read 86 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 13, 2025
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
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/2025/12/13/unc…

2/
It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

3/
Read 68 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 9, 2025
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 20, 2025
Well, this fucking *sucks*. A federal judge has decided that Meta is not a monopolist, and that its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were not an illegal bid to secure and maintain a monopoly:



1/ gizmodo.com/meta-learns-th…The classic Puck Magazine editorial cartoon entitled 'The King of All Commodities,' depicting John D Rockefeller as a man with grotesquely tiny body and a gigantic head, wearing a crown emblazoned with the names of the industrial concerns he owned. Rockefeller's head has been replaced with that of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar. The names of the industrial concerns have been replaced with the wordmarks for Scale AI, Instagram, Oculus and Whatsapp. The dollar-sign at the crown's pinnacle has been replaced with the Facebook 'f' logo. The chain around Rockefeller's neck sports the charm th...
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/2025/11/20/if-…

2/
This is particularly galling because Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly, explicitly declared that these mergers were undertaken *to reduce competition*, which is the only circumstance in which pro-monopoly economists and lawyers say that mergers should be blocked.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 18, 2025
Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called *Who Censored Roger Rabbit?* which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*

1/ The final scene of Disneyland's 'Roger Rabbit's Toontown Spin,' in which Roger Rabbit is deploying a pair of portable holes; the holes have been replaced with copyright symbols, which are partially cropped. Image: Ken Lund (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/16775732643/ CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
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/2025/11/18/im-…

2/
But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length sequels.

3/
Read 52 tweets

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