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

Inside: Aspiration's comprehensively deceptive greenwashing; Live Nation is to blame for the Astroworld deaths; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-…

#Pluralistic 1/
Tomorrow (Thu), I'll be appearing on @Article19org's EU webinar on the Digital Services Act and interop (0830PT):

zoom.us/webinar/regist…

And hosting the launch for @happierman and J9andIf's "You Feel It Just Below the Ribs" (1200PT):

keplers.org/upcoming-event… 2/
Aspiration's comprehensively deceptive greenwashing: It's "do well" OR "do good."

3/
Live Nation is to blame for the Astroworld deaths: Monopoly kills fandom, literally.

4/
#15yrsago Ballmer: Linux users are patent-crooks web.archive.org/web/2006112123…

#15yrsago Paramount/MPAA: it’s illegal to put DVDs on iPods web.archive.org/web/2006111911… 5/
#10yrsago Sustainable Materials: indispensable, impartial popular engineering book on the future of our built and made world memex.craphound.com/2011/11/17/sus… 6/
#10yrsago New Zealand Prime Minister sends police to raid major news outlets over covert recording of negotiations with far-right party rnz.co.nz/news/election-… 7/
#10yrsago Wire creator to atty gen’l: “Thanks for your interest in another season; end the war on drugs and we’ll talk” web.archive.org/web/2014013106…

#5yrsago Iphones secretly send your call history to Apple’s cloud, even after you tell them not to theintercept.com/2016/11/17/iph… 8/
#5yrsago Superstar academic economists charge $1000+/hr to defend disastrous corporate megamergers propublica.org/article/these-… 9/
Yesterday's threads: What Police Get When They Get Your Phone; and more!

10/
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… 11/
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/ 13/
Upcoming appearances:

* Alternative recommender systems in the DSA: How to protect free expression, create competition and empower users all at once (@Article19org), Nov 18
zoom.us/webinar/regist… 14/
Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for @happierman and J9andIf's "You Feel It Just Below the Ribs" (@Keplers), Nov 18
keplers.org/upcoming-event…

* The Kids Are (Kinda) All Right (San Diego @Comic_Con), Nov 28
eventeny.com/events/comicco… 15/
Upcoming appearances:

* @intgovforum (Warsaw), Dec 10
intgovforum.org/en/schedule/20… 16/
Recent appearances:

* Move Fast and Fix Things (AaronSwartzDay)


* @BridgeTales:
buzzsprout.com/1795352/9527530

* Seize the Means of Computation (@InternetArchive):
17/
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… 18/
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/2021/11/17/do-… 19/
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.

My latest Medium column is Jam To-Day: Liberating Big Tech's hostages on day one"

medium.com/@doctorow/jam-… 20/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, (ad-/tracker-free, and utterly unadorned save a single emoji). Today's is "🤯". Suggestions solicited for future emojis! Thanks to Michael Downey for today's!

pluralistic.net/plura-list 21/
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… 22/

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More from @doctorow

Mar 13
My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:



1/ pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the…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 poised man in a sharp business suit, glaring 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/2025/03/13/ele…

2/
When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when *they* complain, they get results.

3/
Read 71 tweets
Mar 12
Let me tell you how I became a proud science denier, and how it saved my life.

1/ A cross-section of the head of a man who is wide-eyed and screaming. The head is elongated and is being sucked into a black hole.
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/2025/03/12/epi…

2/
It was about 15 years ago. I was living in London, and my wife's job came with a private health insurance buff that let us use private doctors instead of the NHS.

3/
Read 58 tweets
Mar 10
Inflation has many complex causes and dynamics, but this much should be obvious: when prices go up, and the *profits* go up, the price rise - the "inflation" is in part the result of greed - it's greedflation.

1/ A 'stonks' meme, featuring a 3d modeled head atop the body of a man in a business suit, arms folded, standing before a stylized stock-chart with an orange arrow pointing up and to the right. The word 'stonks' has been replaced with 'eggs.' A cartoon drawing of a shattered, crying Humpty Dumpty is in the bottom left corner.
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/2025/03/10/dem…

2/
Orthodox economists insist that greedflation is impossible. Sure, companies would *prefer* to jack up prices, but if they do, other companies would rush inn to sell more cheaply.

3/
Read 53 tweets
Mar 5
You guys, I don't want to bum you out or anything, but I think there's a good chance than some self-described capitalists *aren't really into capitalism*.

Sorry.

1/ A giant, complicated, mechanical printing press. Looming over it is an 18th-century demon from the Compendium Rarissimum Totius Artis Magicae; it is a eating severed human leg, and waving another leg in the air. In the background rise dark red flames. The printer has a Brother logo.
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/2025/03/05/pri…

2/
Take incentives: Charlie Munger, capitalism's quippiest pitchman, famously said, "Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome."

3/
Read 50 tweets
Mar 3
I get a special pleasure from citing Milton Friedman. I like to imagine that as I do, he groans around the red-hot spit protruding from his jaws, prompting howls of laughter from the demons who pelt him with molten faeces for all eternity.

1/ Oil derricks superimposed against a 'code waterfall' as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the foreground is Trump's hair.
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/2025/03/03/fri…

2/
If you're lucky enough not to know about Friedman, here's the short version. Friedman was a kind of court sorcerer to Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Augusto Pinochet, and other assorted authoritarian, hard-right leaders who set us on the path to the hellscape we inhabit today.

3/
Read 56 tweets
Feb 20
The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between - they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

1/   A towering figure with the head of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' surmounted by Trump's hair, wearing a tailcoat with a Google logo lapel pin. It peers through a magnifying glass at a distressed, tiny Uncle Sam figure perched in its monstrous palm.   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/2025/02/20/pri…

2/
Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:



3/pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the…
Read 41 tweets

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