Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 1, 2022 28 tweets 29 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: How Palantir will steal the NHS; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the…

#Pluralistic 1/ Image
Next Monday (Oct 3) at 9hPT, I'm on a panel ("Regulatory Requirements and Necessary Standards") for #OnlinePublicSphere2022:

globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/events/regulat… 2/
How Palantir will steal the NHS: Stealth privatisation was always the endgame for public-private-partnerships.

3/ Image: Gage Skidmore (modif...
Hey look at this

* hark ye oakland county mcmansionhell.com/post/696589275…

* HDD Clicker retrokits.de/index.php/hdd-… (h/t @slashdot)

* ‘We can continue Pratchett’s efforts’: the gamers keeping Discworld alive theguardian.com/games/2022/sep… (h/t Waxy) 4/ Image
#20yrsago Record industry defends practices to Senate web.archive.org/web/2002101816…

#20yrsago @dangillmor responds to Jack Valenti web.archive.org/web/2002101222…

#20yrsago 2000+ year old Greek computer reinterpreted economist.com/science-and-te… 6/ Image
#15yrsago Keep Your Copyrights: helping creators beat abusive contracts web.law.columbia.edu/kernochan/keep…

#15yrsago Disney kills its spy-on-your-kids phones web.archive.org/web/2007101915…

#15yrsago Nokia taunts Apple lockware phone with posters for “open” N-series forums.macrumors.com/threads/timely… 7/ Image
#15yrsago Archibishop of Mozambique: condoms and HIV cocktails will give you AIDS news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/70…

#15yrsago @rudytheelder’s Postsingular: Wheenk! memex.craphound.com/2007/10/01/rud…

#15yrsago Things you shouldn’t do in science fiction/fantasy writing eeknight.livejournal.com/283350.html 8/ Image
#15yrsago Guerrilla librarians free the $86k Library of Congress copyright database web.archive.org/web/2007101100…

#15yrsago @ScottWesterfeld’s Extras – a superb volume in the Uglies series memex.craphound.com/2007/09/30/sco… 9/ Image
#10yrsago Quant: leaving finance made me happy, you should try it mathbabe.org/2012/09/30/tel…

#10yrsago How Frederik Pohl became a pulp literary agent, and saved himself 8¢ per story in postage web.archive.org/web/2012100501… 10/ Image
#10yrsago Replacement ear grown on an arm cbsnews.com/baltimore/news…

#5yrsago Troops fire rubber bullets to prevent Catalan independence vote, injure at least 465 theguardian.com/world/live/201… 11/ Image
#5yrsago Equifax blames hack on state actors, but breach followed spat with security contractor bloomberg.com/news/features/…

#5yrsago China’s massive property bubble creates mad scramble to take on decades of debt scmp.com/news/china/eco… 12/ Image
#5yrsago Republican Senator caught making up fake news about fake news doubles down web.archive.org/web/2017093021…

#5yrsago Hamilton: the My Little Pony edition 13/ Image
#5yrsago DRM could kill game emulators and erase the history of an artform techdirt.com/2017/09/29/how…

#1yrago Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation": They'd rather be evil than incompetent pluralistic.net/2021/09/30/don… 14/ Image
Thursday's threads: Porn on Tumblr is a complicated subject; and more!

15/
My latest book is Chokepoint Capitalism (with @rgibli), nonfiction about monopoly and fairness in creative labor markets.

chokepointcapitalism.com

Signed copies available from @BookSoup:

booksoup.com/book/978080700… 16/ Image
My latest novel 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… 17/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, @BeaconPressBks et al) 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/ 18/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* #OnlinePublicSphere2022, 10/3
globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/events/regulat…

* Chokepoint Capitalism event, @BooksandBooks (Miami), 10/12
booksandbooks.com/event/in-perso…

* Reboot Conference, @JoinLincoln (Miami), 10/13
eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-… 19/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @LibraryJournal Day of Dialog (Zoom), 10/20
libraryjournal.com/event/library-…

* Surviving Apocalyptic Economics, with @rushkoff and @rgibli, Ottawa @Writersfest, 10/24
writersfestival.org/events/fall-20…

* @WEDF_forum, 10/26-28
worldethicaldataforum.org/registration 20/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 21/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Triangulation: Chokepoint Capitalism
twit.tv/shows/twit-eve…

* Cultural Capture by Chokepoint Capitalism (@machinekillspod)
soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…

* Billionaires As Policy Failure Factories (@CheeseMacro)
realprogressives.org/podcast_episod… 22/ Image
Happy #SpookySeason! My picture book "Poesy the Monster Slayer" is the perfect read for your little monsters: it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by @mcrockefeller.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe… 23/ 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/2022/10/01/the… 24/
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. 25/
My latest @Medium column is "Oil is Bankrupt (If We Want It): Alberta’s Oil Companies Are the Walking Dead"

doctorow.medium.com/oil-is-bankrup… 26/
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 27/
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… 28/

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Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

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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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