Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 20, 2021 22 tweets 17 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Copyleft lawsuit against Vizio will allow anyone to defend the commons; The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/viz…

#Pluralistic

1/
The paperback for Attack Surface - a standalone Little Brother book for adults - is out!

us.macmillan.com/books/97812507…

Signed copies:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co…

One-month only audiobook sale with Little Brother and Homeland:

sowl.co/uqT2G

2/
Copyleft lawsuit against Vizio will allow anyone to defend the commons: Software Freedom Conservancy realizes the dream of "Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement."



3/
The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars: The victory condition isn't highest profits, it's market dominance.



4/
#15yrsago Boy Scouts shill for MPAA with copyright merit badge web.archive.org/web/2006111006…

#10yrsago Canadian Tories admit that Canadians don’t want DRM rules, push for them anyway hollywoodreporter.com/business/busin…

5/
#5yrsago Turing’s law: UK to retroactively pardon thousands of men prosecuted for having sex with men bbc.com/news/uk-377115…

#5yrsago By stealing from innocents, Chicago PD amassed tens of millions in a secret black budget for surveillance gear chicagoreader.com/news-politics/…

6/
#5yrsago Turkish court fines bystander/tourist who sued police for shooting out his eye hurriyetdailynews.com/kyrgyz-tourist…

#5yrsago Montana judge unrepentant after sentencing man to 60 days for repeatedly raping his own 12 year old daughter edition.cnn.com/2016/10/19/us/…

7/
#1yrago Cadillac perfects the murdermobile pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the…

#1yrago Feds gouge states, subsidize corporations pluralistic.net/2020/10/20/the…

8/
Yesterday's threads: The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin; and more!



9/
My latest book is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books, now in paperback, wherever books are sold.

Signed copies at @darkdel:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co…

One-month, $30 audiobook bundle with all three Little Brother books:

sowl.co/uqT2G

10/
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…

11/
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/

12/
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Lessons from the First Internet Ages (@KnightFndn Nov 2-3
blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2021/…

* Keynote for @SeaGL 2021, Nov 5-6
seagl.org/news/2021/06/0…

13/
Recent appearances:

* Reconciling Social Media & Democracy, Tech Policy Press
techpolicy.press/podcast/

* Internet Archive:


* Trom:
videos.trom.tf/w/2vBxVQTa4hfC…

* This Week in Google
open.spotify.com/show/0lTcKFcbc…

14/
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…

15/
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/2021/10/20/viz…

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/2021/10/20/viz…

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/
My latest @Medium column is "Against the great forces of history," What @AdaPalmer’s University of Chicago Papal election LARP can teach us about our own future

medium.com/@doctorow/agai…

19/
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

20/
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…

21/
Today's top sources: @Slashdot (slashdot.org), Economics From the Top Down (economicsfromthetopdown.com).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jul 1
If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

1/ A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.   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/2025/06/30/acc…

2/
Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jun 28
In 2014, I read a political science paper that nearly convinced me to quit my lifelong career as an activist: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," published in *Perspectives on Politics*:



1/ cambridge.org/core/journals/…An inflatable pig balloon against a blue sky, bearing the Zohran for Mayor logo. The Chrysler Building sits to one side.  Image: Frank Vincentz (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geeste_-_Biener_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_Speicherbecken_-_Drachenfest_38_ies.jpg  Petri Krohn https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_building-_top.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/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/2025/06/28/mam…

2/
The paper's authors are Martin Gilens, a UCLA professor of Public Policy; and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, a professor of Decision Making. Gilens and Page studied a representative sample of 1,779 policy issues.

3/
Read 49 tweets
Jun 24
When a company sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they're revaluing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy's.

1/ A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light.  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/2025/06/24/pri…

2/
Economists praise "price discrimination" as "efficient." That's when a company charges different customers different amounts based on inferences about their willingness to pay.

3/
Read 50 tweets
Jun 20
Private equity firms are the demon princes of the hellspace that is the imploding, life-destroying, plutocrat-generating American economy.

1/ A billionaire in a tuxedo with dollar-sign cufflinks, stands at a podium, yanking a lever shaped like a gilded dollar sign with one gloved hand. From the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a bloody corpse. His head has been replaced with the head of a doctor in a surgeon's blue cap, with red, glaring eyes. The background is the text of Oregon's new Corporate Practice of Medicine law, in blown-out, red type.
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/2025/06/20/the…

2/
Their favorite scam, the "leveraged buyout" is a mafia bustout dressed up in respectable clothes, and if you mourn a beloved, failed business, chances are that an LBO was the murder weapon, and PE was the killer:



3/pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spi…
Read 44 tweets
May 27
On a recent This Machine Kills episode, guest Hagen Blix described the ultimate form of "AI therapy" with a "human in the loop":



1/ soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…A magnified image of the inside of an automated backup tape library, with gleaming racks of silver tape drives receding into the distance. In the foreground is a pile of dirt being shoveled by three figures in prisoner's stripes. Two of the figures' heads have been replaced with cliche hacker-in-hoodie heads, from which shine yellow, inverted Amazon 'smile' logos, such that the smile is a frown. The remaining figure's head has been replaced with a horse's head. Behind the figure is an impatiently posed man in a sharp business suit, frowning at his watch. His head has been replaced with the ...
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/2025/05/27/ran…

2/
> One actual therapist is just having ten chat GPT windows open where they just like have five seconds to interrupt the chatGPT. They have to scan them all and see if it says something really inappropriate. That's your job, to stop it.

3/
Read 98 tweets

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