Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 23, 2022 23 tweets 22 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Daycare apps are insecure surveillance dumpster-fires; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/06/23/pee…

#Pluralistic 1/ A Black baby playing with alphabet blocks; the blocks have c
Sponsor me for the @ClarionUCSD Write-A-Thon! I'm writing 10,000 words on my prison-tech thriller "Some Men Rob You With a Fountain Pen" and raising scholarship money for the Clarion SF/F workshop, which I graduated from in 1992.

clarionwriteathon.com/members/profil… 2/
Daycare apps are insecure surveillance dumpster-fires: Apps are like software, only worse.

3/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
Hey look at this

* The Jovian Duck: LaMDA and the Mirror Test rifters.com/crawl/?p=10269

* Taking the 6th edition of Car Wars for a test drive boingboing.net/2022/06/21/tak…

* Agnes Giberne's The Story of the Sun, Moon, and Stars (1898) publicdomainreview.org/collection/sto… 4/
#15yrsago Open Source Consortium to regulators: Stop the BBC’s DRM! web.archive.org/web/2007021006…

#15yrsago Broadcast Treaty wounded and dying! web.archive.org/web/2007062610…

#15yrsago Podcasting @BruceS's "Hacker Crackdown" craphound.com/news/2007/06/2… 5/
#10yrsago St Colin and the Dragon: great torn paper kids’ comic memex.craphound.com/2012/06/22/st-…

#10yrsago EFF joins the defense in Charles Carreon v. The Whole Goddamned Internet eff.org/press/releases…

#10yrsago @BruceS interviewed about the New Aesthetic web.archive.org/web/2012062607… 6/
#10yrsago Top US drug cop can’t tell the difference between marijuana and heroin web.archive.org/web/2012062413…

#10yrsago Science fiction in Africa bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00…

#5yrsago A Chinese vitamin MLM cult is replacing healthcare for poor Ugandans web.archive.org/web/2020092511… 7/
#5yrsago For the first time, Jeremy Corbyn overtakes Theresa May in UK polls independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

#5yrsago US Copyright Office recommends sweeping, welcome changes to America’s DRM laws vice.com/en/article/d3z… 8/
#5yrsago Crowdfunding a pro-vaccination bus to follow the anti-vaxxer bus gofundme.com/f/craigs-prova…

#5yrsago Canada: Trump shows us what happens when “good” politicians demand surveillance powers cbc.ca/2017/what-happ… 9/
#5yrsago A DRM-locked, $400 tea-brewing machine from the Internet of Shit timeline gizmodo.com/a-400-smart-te…

#5yrsago John Oliver dared a coal exec to sue him, and now he’s being sued washingtonpost.com/news/morning-m… 10/
#5yrsago Tumblr is now owned by a phone company, so it’s stopped fighting for Network Neutrality theverge.com/2017/6/21/1581…

#5yrsago A history of artist Anish Kapoor and his assholic mission to own the color black wired.com/story/vantabla… 11/
#1yrago Peloton bricks its treadmills pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vap…

#1yrago Juul's junk science pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vap…

#1yrago Improving the #ACCESSAct: Six ways to make the most important tech law of the legislative season even better pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vap… 12/
Monday's threads: The sex industry isn't technophilic; Schroedinger's streaming service just died; and more!

13/ Image: Come As You Are Co-operative https://commons.wikimedi
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:

* A New @HOPEconf (NYC), Jul 24
hope.net 17/
Recent appearances:

* Supp-Lie Demand (Bad Faith podcast with @briebriejoy):
patreon.com/posts/67550669

* The Sci-Fi Feedback Loop: Mapping Fiction’s Influence on Real-World Tech
csi.asu.edu/calendar/event…

* Privacy is the New Celebrity
buzzsprout.com/1806101/106430… 18/
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… 19/
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/2022/06/23/pee… 20/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

My latest column is "Reasonable Agreements: On the Crapification of Literary Contracts"

doctorow.medium.com/reasonable-agr… 21/
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 22/
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… 23/

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More from @doctorow

Jul 30
Delta's announced new surveillance pricing: they're feeding an AI your nonconsensually harvested personal info that data-brokers and credit bureaux hold to predict the maximum you're willing to pay, and then price their tickets accordingly:



1/ fortune.com/2025/07/16/del…Hieronymus Bosch's 'The Conjurer,' which depicts a sleight-of-hand artist doing a cup-and-balls routine for a group of amazed yokels. It has been altered. The head of the conjurer has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' He wears a Delta Airlines logo over his breast. The table on which the cup-and-balls game is playing out sports a crashed jet in Delta livery, smoke rising from the wreckage.   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/2025/07/30/eff…

2/
Data-brokers sell all kinds of data, from the "legitimate" info about everywhere your car's been, to everywhere place the Bluetooth radios on your phone and headphones has been, to everything you've bought, to every sit you've visited and every search you've performed.

3/
Read 61 tweets
Jul 22
Ever notice how many right wing influencers are on the grift?

1/ A carny barker at a podium, gesticulating with a MAGA cap. He wears a Klan hood, and his podium features products from Nu-skin, Amway and Herbalife. Behind him is an oil-painted scene of a steamship with a Trump Tower logo, at a pier in flames.
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/2025/07/22/all…

2/
Like Alex Jones - that guy is basically Gwyneth Paltrow for conservative bros, selling the same "wellness" crap to a male audience (and not for nothing, Paltrow's victims are reliable boosters for RFK Jr's MAHA movement):



3/theweek.com/speedreads/709…
Read 66 tweets
Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jul 1
If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

1/ A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.   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/2025/06/30/acc…

2/
Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jun 28
In 2014, I read a political science paper that nearly convinced me to quit my lifelong career as an activist: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," published in *Perspectives on Politics*:



1/ cambridge.org/core/journals/…An inflatable pig balloon against a blue sky, bearing the Zohran for Mayor logo. The Chrysler Building sits to one side.  Image: Frank Vincentz (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geeste_-_Biener_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_Speicherbecken_-_Drachenfest_38_ies.jpg  Petri Krohn https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_building-_top.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/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/2025/06/28/mam…

2/
The paper's authors are Martin Gilens, a UCLA professor of Public Policy; and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, a professor of Decision Making. Gilens and Page studied a representative sample of 1,779 policy issues.

3/
Read 49 tweets
Jun 24
When a company sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they're revaluing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy's.

1/ A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light.  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/2025/06/24/pri…

2/
Economists praise "price discrimination" as "efficient." That's when a company charges different customers different amounts based on inferences about their willingness to pay.

3/
Read 50 tweets

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