Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 8, 2022 22 tweets 19 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: How and why to break up Big Tech; The Dawn of Everything; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/03/08/thr…

#Pluralistic 1/ Image: Macmillan https://us...
Thursday (Mar 10), I'm on a #RightToRepair panel in honor of the special "War on Repair" issue of @make: magazine:

makezine.com/2022/03/07/vol… 2/
How and why to break up Big Tech: My new Locus column, "Vertically Challenged."

3/ Image: Anthony Quintano (mo...
The Dawn of Everything: An essential reminder that we are in charge of our own destiny.

4/  Image: Macmillan https://u...
#15yrsago EFF Pioneer Award winners: Schneier, Benkler, me web.archive.org/web/2007030915…

#10yrsago ACLU sues school district for student’s social media free speech rights web.archive.org/web/2012030702…

#10yrsago HOWTO get metal through a TSA full-body scanner professional-troublemaker.com/2012/03/06/1b-… 5/ Image
#10yrsago Danish trade minister and ACTA booster apologise for bogus piracy numbers techdirt.com/2012/03/07/dan…

#10yrsago Maher Arar on Canada’s pro-torture policy web.archive.org/web/2012061209… 6/ Image
#5yrsago In Russia, where wife-beating is legal, socialists celebrate Women’s Day with feminist guerrilla “ads” globalvoices.org/2017/03/08/rus…

#5yrsago SXSW will remove contractual immigration threats for international artists who play the show sxsw.com/sxsw-statement… 7/ Image
#5yrsago What will the 25th century call the 21st century? torforgeblog.com/2017/03/06/wha…

#5yrsago Radio Shack is bankrupt. Again. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Russian dissident warns that the anti-Trump movement’s Russian conspiracy theories are a distraction nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/…

#5yrsago Who is immigration policy for: “taxpayers,” “ordinary people” or all citizens? legalresearch.blogs.bris.ac.uk/2017/03/the-uk… 9/ Image
#5yrsago How the GOP’s simplified Border Adjustment Tax will be instantly riddled with loopholes bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… 10/ Image
Yesterday's threads: "All (Broadband) Politics Are Local"; and more!

11/ Image: EFF (modified) https...
Hey look at this

* Why Social Media Needs Mandatory Interoperability techpolicy.press/why-social-med…

* Socialist Modernism in Former Yugoslavia (800 copy limited edition) urbanicagroup.ro/ushop/publicat…

* March 10 tweetstorm to end Canadian fossil fuel subsidies docs.google.com/document/d/1II… 12/ Image
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… 13/
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… 14/ Image
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/ 15/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* @make Vol 80 launch party (Mar 10)
makezine.com/2022/03/07/vol…

* Competition & Regulation in Disrupted Times (@News_CRA/Brussels), Mar 31
cra-brusselsconference.com

* Emerging Technologies For the Enterprise, Apr 19-20
2022.phillyemergingtech.com 16/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Safety Orange (@TWiT)
twit.tv/shows/this-wee…

* Seize the Means of Computation (Boston Computation Club)

castro.fm/episode/cBq9TF

* Policy Implications of Web3 (@StanfordCyber)
17/ Image
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/ Image
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/2022/03/08/thr… 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: "What is 'Peak Indifference?'"

doctorow.medium.com/what-is-peak-i… 20/
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 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

Jan 26
The best summary of Trump's trade "philosophy" comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all.

1/ A detail from a US $100 bill. The bill has been tinted orange. Ben Franklin's face has been replaced with an indistinct blur surmounted by Trump's hair. The lettering in the scrollwork beneath the portrait reads 'TRUMP.' The '100's have been turned into '000's. The writing 'ONE HUNDRED' now reads 'NONE HUNDRED.' The series issue has been changed to '47.' The Secretary of the Treasury's signature has been replaced with Trump's.
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/2026/01/26/i-d…

2/
After all, the global system of trade was designed and enforced by American officials, especially the US Trade Representative.

3/
Read 84 tweets
Jan 17
Ireland is a tax haven. In the 1970s and 1980s, life in the civil-war wracked country was hard - between poverty, scarce employment and civil unrest, the country hemorrhaged its best and brightest. As the saying went, "Ireland's top export is the Irish."

1/ A green Irish pillarbox, standing before a verdant, rolling Irish countryside. The pillarbox is emblazoned with the poop emoji from the cover of 'Enshittification,' with angry eyebrows and a grawlix-scrawled black bar over its mouth.  Image: Stuart Caie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_aperture_Irish_pillar_box_in_Dublin_2008.jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en  --  Sourabh.biswas003 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PXL_20231216_105219694-Ballygalley_Larne_UK-_Irish_Countryside-Northern_Ireland_06.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 ht...
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/2026/01/17/eri…

2/
In desperation, Ireland's political class hit on a wild gambit: they would weaponize Ireland's sovereignty in service to corporate tax evasion.

3/
Read 35 tweets
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
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
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
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

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