Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 7, 2022 23 tweets 20 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: How Audible steals from creators (an Audible exclusive); and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/aud…

#Pluralistic 1/ The cover for 'Chokepoint C...
I'm Kickstarting a DRM-free audiobook of Chokepoint Capitalism, the book @rgibli and I wrote about how tech- and entertainment monopolies rip off artists, and how to unrig those terrible labor markets:

kickstarter.com/projects/docto…

("This book really gets it" - @stephenfry) 2/
How Audible steals from creators (an Audible exclusive): The only part of "Chokepoint Capitalism" available on Audible.

3/ Image
Hey look at this

* SF Sewer Map sfgis-portal.sfgov.org/arcgis/apps/we… (h/t @nelson)

* Americans experience false social reality, underestimate climate policy support by half nature.com/articles/s4146…

* After self-hosting email for 23 years I gave up cfenollosa.com/blog/after-sel… (h/t @hackaday) 4/ Image
#10yrsago @cstross and me at Makerbot, talking Rapture of the Nerds

#10yrsago Radio circuit board laid out like the London tube map designboom.com/technology/yur… 5/ Image
#10yrsago Wells Fargo mistakenly forecloses on the wrong house, destroys elderly couple’s entire lifetime’s worth of possessions cbsnews.com/losangeles/new… 6/ Image
#5yrsago Judge tosses out Hulk Hogan lawyer’s suit against Techdirt over that guy who claimed he invented email techdirt.com/articles/20170…

#5yrsago Florida management company bans tenants from using storm shutters as Hurricane Irma approaches wptv.com/news/region-c-… 7/ Image
#5yrsago Ugandan ethics chief boasts of his new magic South Korean pornography filter and its efficacy against “homos” techdirt.com/2017/09/08/uga…

#5yrsago Broward County GOP secretary split a female classmate’s skull with over 40 claw-hammer blows miamiherald.com/entertainment/… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Case study of LAPD and Palantir’s predictive policing tool: same corruption; new, empirical respectability journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117… 9/ Image
#5yrsago In an engineering paper, @bunniestudios and Ed @Snowden describe a malware-resistant hardware Iphone privacy overlay tjoe.org/pub/direct-rad… 10/ Image
#5yrsago Epipen: Mylan and Pfizer let people die while jacking up prices on defective devices, says FDA arstechnica.com/science/2017/0…

#5yrsago Equifax waited 5 weeks to admit it had doxed 44% of America, did nothing to help us while its execs sold stock arstechnica.com/information-te… 11/ Image
#5yrsago Brexit: UK Tories propose changing thousands of laws in secret, without Parliamentary oversight independent.co.uk/voices/great-r… 12/ Image
August 24th's threads: Trump gave Moderna all the patent-waivers it needed to make a vaccine; and more!

13/ 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… 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/ 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/ 16/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* Canadians Connected (Ottawa), 9/15
member.cira.ca/Events/Canadia…

* #UnfinishedLive (NYC), 9/21-24
live.unfinished.com

* Chokepoint Capitalism, @BookSoup (LA), 9/27
booksoup.com/event/cory-doc…

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 17/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Crypto and the Left (@TBSocialist)
theblockchainsocialist.com/crypto-and-the…

* The Wondrous World of the Early Internet & How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (@curaffairs) patreon.com/posts/cory-doc…

* DRM Secretly Polices You (@dtnsshow)
dailytechnewsshow.com/2022/07/29/drm… 18/ 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… 19/ 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/2022/09/07/aud… 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 Medium column is "Parenting and Phones, an Empowering Approach"

doctorow.medium.com/parenting-and-… 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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