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Cory Doctorow

Feb 8 • 19 tweets • 16 min read

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Pixels of You; Wall Street's landlord business is turning every rental into a slum; UK Tories want a national database of porn-viewing habits; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wal…

#Pluralistic 1/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1490863270533779460

Pixels of You: A illustrated tale of love and photos.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1490863270533779460

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1491094864204812293

Wall Street's landlord business is turning every rental into a slum: And they're using public money to do it.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1491094864204812293

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1491101468845387780

UK Tories want a national database of porn-viewing habits: Oh fuck not this bullshit again.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1491101468845387780

#20yrsago BT claims patent over hyperlinks newscientist.com/article/dn1905…

#10yrsago Debunking the record industry shill who said that his amendments to Canada’s proposed copyright law are no big deal web.archive.org/web/2012021018… 5/

#10yrsago Facebook’s funny accounting has “active users” who never use Facebook dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/tho…

#10yrsago English plainclothes police officer follows himself for 20 minutes telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/cr… 6/

#5yrsago Internal TSA files reveal that they have no evidence the $1B “behavioral detection” program works theintercept.com/2017/02/08/tsa…

#5yrsago Congress reintroduces YODA, a bipartisan bill that protects your right to treat devices as your property eff.org/deeplinks/2017… 7/

#5yrsago Enterprise firewalls are man-in-the-middling HTTPS sessions like crazy, and weakening security jhalderm.com/pub/papers/int…

#1yrago The grand conclusion of my Someone Comes to Town podcast pluralistic.net/2021/02/08/som… 8/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1490730009853583361

Yesterday's threads: Podcasting part one of "The Internet Heist"; and more!

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1490730009853583361

@darkdel

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… 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/

@torbooks

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/

@boskonenews

Upcoming appearances:

* @boskonenews 59 (Feb 18-20)
boskone.org/program/schedu…

* Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical SF, 1950 to 1985 (@CityLightsBooks), Feb 27
citylights.com/events/dangero…

* Emerging Technologies For the Enterprise, Apr 19-20
2022.phillyemergingtech.com 13/

@TheWarOnCars

Recent appearances:

* The End of Uber (@TheWarOnCars)
thewaroncars.org/2022/01/26/the…

* Moral Panic (@Drug_Science Podcast)
drugscience.org.uk/podcast/53-mor…

* @HappenHerePod
iheart.com/podcast/1119-i… 14/

@MCRockefeller

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… 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/2022/02/08/wal… 16/

@Medium

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 "Crypto + Copyright = 🤡💩"

doctorow.medium.com/crypto-copyrig… 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/

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Cory Doctorow

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Feb 9

Early in the 19th century, philosophers like Bentham railed against #champerty, whereby "unscrupulous nobles and officials lent their names to bolster the credibility of doubtful and fraudulent claims in return for a share of the property recovered."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty… 1/

On its face, the practice of inviting investors to back litigation against deep-pocketed, corrupt parties sounds pretty good. 2/

Large corporations and wealthy individuals have enormous litigation warchests that allow them to abuse people with impunity, using their cash to draw out lawsuits until their victims run out of money for lawyers. 3/

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@KyleKulinski

Hey @KyleKulinski! I'd love a chance to talk with you about a better alternative to turning platforms into regulated utilities (which will just give them more power - that's the strategy that led to AT&T surviving intact for 68 years after its initial antitrust investigation)

Rather than deputizing the wildly imperfect and unperfectable platforms as arms of the state - with powerful stakeholders in the national security blob who will defend their continued bad acts - we could make them weaker.

Key to this is increasing interoperability with Big Tech, so new platforms - co-ops, nonprofits, hobby projects AND startups - can offer their users more tailored moderation policies, better privacy guarantees, etc.

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Feb 8

UK PM Boris Johnson has built a career out of running across rivers on the backs of alligators, always moving fast enough that he escapes their jaws. His career is a long string of outrageous scandals: lying, fraud, infidelity, abuse, all escaped with impunity. 1/

If you'd like an unrolled 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/2022/02/08/wal… 2/

Like any self-respecting posh sociopath, Boris knows how to fail up. But eventually, even the nimblest of gator-racers loses a step and finds a set of jaws clamped around his leg. 3/

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Feb 8

Shelter is a human right and a necessity for human thriving. The choice to turn speculation on our homes into a path to social mobility inevitably led to the crash of 2008 and 3.7 million US foreclosures.

gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-… 1/

In the Great Financial Crisis, Obama administration bailed out banks, not borrowers, giving banks capital to buy those foreclosed homes in bulk. This was only accelerated by the Trump covid bailot, which sent trillions into the finance industry.

pluralistic.net/2022/01/27/ext… 2/

Wall Street landlords are the worst. There's a Wall St landlord playbook: deep cuts to maintenance that leave homes all but uninhabitable; scorching rent-hikes; and mass evictions any time a tenant balks at either measure.

memex.craphound.com/2018/07/30/wal… 3/

Read 33 tweets