Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Feb 17, 2022 22 tweets 17 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The last days of Myspace; The child labor story hidden by the Great Resignation; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/02/17/liv…

#Pluralistic 1/  Image: Beatrice Murch (modified) https://flickr.com/photos/
This coming weekend (Feb 18-20) I'm a (virtual) guest at the @boskonenews sf convention. I'm doing several panels and my first-ever reading from *Red Team Blues,* my forthcoming novel from @TorBooks.

schedule.boskone.org/people/29740 2/
The last days of Myspace: Facebook is following the steep decline playbook.

3/  Image: Beatrice Murch (modified) https://flickr.com/photos/
The child labor story hidden by the Great Resignation: Bosses want to turn kids into scabs.

4/
#10yrsago Newspaper claims Vikileaks Twitter account traced back to House of Commons web.archive.org/web/2012022003…

#10yrsago Dan Kaminsky on the RSA key-vulnerability dankaminsky.com/2012/02/17/pri… 5/
#10yrsago WSJ: Google caught circumventing iPhone security, tracking users who opted out of third-party cookies eff.org/deeplinks/2012… 6/
#5yrsago Irish women call for a nationwide strike if they don’t get a referendum on the country’s brutal abortion ban themarysue.com/feminism-aroun…

#5yrsago American airbase personnel sent erroneous “Missile inbound — seek shelter” warning stripes.com/news/incoming-… 7/
#5yrsago City of Paris deploys “anti-refugee boulders” to prevent camping while waiting for space at a humanitarian center lexpress.fr/actualite/soci…

#5yrsago Millions of lead-filled CRTs have been abandoned in warehouses across America vice.com/en/article/z4g… 8/
#5yrsago Hereditary Samsung chieftain arrested for bribing disgraced president’s “Shamanic” cult leader arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#1yrago Reverse centaurs and the failure of AI pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/rev… 9/
Yesterday's threads: The extremely shady "educational integrity" industry; Oh great, there's DRM in printer PAPER now; and more!

10/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
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:

* @boskonenews 59 (Feb 18-20)
schedule.boskone.org/people/29740

* The Policy Implications of Web3/@StanfordCyber, Feb 22:
cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/events/policy-…

* Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical SF, 1950 to 1985 (@CityLightsBooks), Feb 27
citylights.com/events/dangero… 14/
Recent appearances:

* Bringing Back Luddites (@OhNoPodcast)
ohnopodcast.com/investigations…

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

* Moral Panic (@Drug_Science Podcast)
drugscience.org.uk/podcast/53-mor… 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 Matt @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe… 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/2022/02/17/liv… 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: "An Open Letter to Pixsy CEO Kain Jones, Who Keeps Sending Me Legal Threats"

doctorow.medium.com/an-open-letter… 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: @yvessmith (nakedcapitalism.com). 22/

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More from @doctorow

Dec 16
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
Dec 13
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
Dec 9
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
Nov 20
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
Nov 18
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
Nov 8
A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal documents that reveal that: 10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because...

1/ A tuxedoed figure dramatically shoveing greenish pigs into a tube, from whose other end vomits forth a torrent of packaged goods. He has the head of Mark Zuckerberg's 'metaverse' avatar. He stands upon an endless field of gold coins. The background is the intaglioed upper face of the engraving of Benjamin Franklin on a US$100 bill, roughed up to a dark and sinister hue.
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/2025/11/08/fae…

2/
...The fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users' lives:



3/reuters.com/investigations…
Read 59 tweets

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