Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
May 9, 2022 26 tweets 24 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: At the FTC, a quiet, profound shift on antitrust; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/res…

#Pluralistic 1/ Norman Rockwell's WPA painting 'Freedom of Speech,' depictin
This Thursday (May 12), I'm participating in an @imaginationASU workshop called "The Sci-Fi Feedback Loop: Mapping Fiction’s Influence on Real-World Tech"

asu.zoom.us/webinar/regist… 2/
At the FTC, a quiet, profound shift on antitrust: Listening to "those who have experienced firsthand the effects of mergers and acquisitions beyond antitrust experts."

3/
Hey look at this

* Ben Franklin’s Abortion Recipe slate.com/news-and-polit… ("deeply rooted" h/t @yvessmith)

* Fuck Nfts Shirt tiotee.com/product/fuck-n…

* Why I, As a Libertarian, Think You’re Silly To Worry About Your So-Called Abortion Rights edroso.substack.com/p/why-i-as-a-l… 4/
#20yrsago Virus infects worm web.archive.org/web/2002080320…

#20yrsago Why Freenet? Why now? web.archive.org/web/2002080416…

#20yrsago Why secrecy sucks (digital TV DRM edition) web.archive.org/web/2002060516… 5/
#20yrsago Roll-your-own consensus and defeat the Hollyweird conspiracy memex.craphound.com/2002/05/09/rol…

#15yrsago Spider Robinson’s Hugo-winning “Melancholy Elephants” online spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelep…

#15yrsago AT&T whistle-blower interview wired.com/2007/05/spying… 6/
#15yrsago Giant coalition opposes Broadcast Treaty keionline.org/misc-docs/Stmt…

#15yrsago India trying to save the world from yoga patentshttps://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/opinion/07mehta.html

#15yrago BBC recruits Microsoft DRM exec web.archive.org/web/2007052309… 7/
#10yrsago RIP, Maurice Sendak theguardian.com/books/2012/may…

#10yrsago Welcome to your 2012 election season, let the suppression of political debate begin. eff.org/deeplinks/2012…

#10yrsago German Pirate Party wins seats in a third regional election techdirt.com/2012/05/07/pir… 8/
#10yrsago Why Tech Review is ditching its iPad edition web.archive.org/web/2012051003…

#10yrsago Geekdad on Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow wired.com/2012/05/cory-d… 9/
#10yrsago Buying DVDs just got worse thanks to obnoxious new anti-piracy warnings (pirating movies remains unchanged) wired.com/2012/05/anti-p…

#10yrsago Leaked DHS memo: Pornoscanners don’t work wired.com/2012/05/body-s… 10/
#10yrsago @NeilHimself on Maurice Sendak wired.com/2012/05/mauric…

#5yrsago Intel declared war on general purpose computing and lost, so now all our computers are broken memex.craphound.com/2017/05/09/int… 11/
#5yrsago John Oliver’s amazing new Net Neutrality video crashed the FCC’s website vice.com/en/article/3dx…

#1yrago How copyright filters lead to wage-theft pluralistic.net/2021/05/08/cop… 12/
Friday's threads: Safegraph follows people into abortion clinics and then sells the data; and more!

13/ Image: Paul Sableman (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photo
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… 14/
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… 15/
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/ 16/
Upcoming appearances:

* Sci-Fi Feedback Loop: Mapping Fiction’s Influence on Real-World Tech (@imaginationASU), May 12
asu.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

* @openjsf Keynote (Austin), Jun 8
events.linuxfoundation.org/openjs-world/p… 17/
Upcoming appearances:

* @CMAgovUK Data Technology/Analytics (London), Jun 15-16
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-tec…

* A New @HOPEconf (NYC), Jul 24
hope.net 18/
Recent appearances:

* Revolutionizing Activism — The Power of Utopia (@theC4AA)


* A Little Patience and a Lot of Tape (@TWIT)
twit.tv/shows/this-wee…

* Blockchain, Crypto & Web3 (@forlifeitself podcast)
19/
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… 20/
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/2022/05/09/res… 21/
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. 22/
My latest @Medium column is "About those kill-switched Ukrainian tractors: What John Deere did to Russian looters, anyone can do to farmers, anywhere"

doctorow.medium.com/about-those-ki… 23/
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 24/
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… 25/
Today's top sources: Lee Tien. 26/

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

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

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(