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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Oct 7, 2022 • 38 tweets • 40 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: "Don't spy on a privacy lab" (and other career advice for university provosts); and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/10/07/sen…

#Pluralistic 1/
I'm coming to #Miami!

Tues (Oct 12): event for "Chokepoint Capitalism" @BooksandBooks (@rgibli's and my new book about creative labor markets and monopoly power)

booksandbooks.com/event/in-perso…

Weds (Oct 13): @JoinLincoln's Reboot Conference:

eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-… 2/
"Don't spy on a privacy lab" (and other career advice for university provosts): Northeastern grad student vs surveillance-driven austerity.

3/
Hey look at this

* Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins (h/t @Metafilter)

* The Onion's first Supreme Court amicus brief supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/2…

* Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew perform Remain in Light (h/t Xtrasilky) 4/
#20yrsago @neilhimself kicks McFarlane’s ass in court icv2.com/articles/comic…

#20yrsago Homeless Guy blog web.archive.org/web/2002092315…

#20yrsago 9/11, war in Iraq threaten Disney parks latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

#20yrsago 1Mb/s through mud web.archive.org/web/2002120511… 5/
#20yrsago @StevenLevy’s wireless neighbors newsweek.com/i-was-wi-fi-fr…

#15yrsago Modern phrenologists “predict” terrorism with biometrics sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/…

#15yrsago Great firewall of China blocks RSS arstechnica.com/uncategorized/… 6/
#15yrsago @cmdrtaco on 10 years of Slashdot web.archive.org/web/2007101011…

#15yrsago HMG orders Heathrow to fix its security queues theguardian.com/business/2007/…

#15yrsago Canadian mint: We own the words “one cent” and Toronto can’t use them tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/1… 7/
#15yrsago Revolution in Jesusland: building bridges between progressives and born-agains web.archive.org/web/2007101102…

#15yrsago Unlocking an iPhone is legal slate.com/technology/200… 8/
#10yrsago 68,000 Texans no longer have to prove they’re not dead in order to vote loweringthebar.net/2012/10/texas-…

#10yrsago Maine GOP attack-flier condemns Democratic candidate for playing an orc rogue in online game arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 9/
#10yrsago UN’s copyright agency won’t let the Pirate Party in web.archive.org/web/2012100704… (ha ha only serious)ppi-blocked-from-becoming-observer-members-of-wipo/

#10yrsago Sailor Twain: don’t fall in love with the mermaid of the Hudson valley memex.craphound.com/2012/10/04/sai… 10/
#10yrsago Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium: @JonStewart and @BillOReilly’s debate kicked ass theguardian.com/world/2012/oct…

#10yrsago Supreme Court case will decide whether you own your stuff marketwatch.com/story/your-rig… 11/
#5yrsago After massive breach Equifax gets $7.25m no-bid IRS contract to “prevent fraud” consumerist.com/2017/10/04/irs…

#5yrsago Analysis of 22 million FCC comments show that humans love Net Neutrality and bots really, really hate it gravwell.io/blog/discoveri… 12/
#5yrsago Average Fortune 500 CEO gets a pension of $253,088 every month until they die latimes.com/business/lazar…

#5yrsago Disgraced Equifax CEO blames 145.5 million-record breach on a single forgetful flunky engadget.com/2017-10-03-for… 13/
#5yrsago Hackers hack hackers to steal their hacking tools and deflect blame theintercept.com/2017/10/04/mas…

#5yrsago “Court guardians” kidnap old people, sell all their stuff, doom victims to pharmaceutical oblivion in institutions newyorker.com/magazine/2017/… 14/
#5yrsago Theresa May coughs through a catastrophic party conference speech plagued by pranks and a crumbling set cnn.com/2017/10/04/eur…

#5yrsago Lifelong Kindergarten: how to learn like a kid, by the co-creator of Scratch memex.craphound.com/2017/10/04/lif… 15/
#5yrsago @Slashdot is 20 meta.slashdot.org/story/17/10/03…

#5yrsago Canary claws back cloud features from its IoT camera, starts charging $10/month theverge.com/circuitbreaker… 16/
#5yrsago Prisoners sent to Christian “rehab” diversion programs find themselves in forced-labor camps revealnews.org/article/they-t…

#5yrsago Seattle’s Nazi tech-bros’ plan: infiltrate tech industry, hire white supremacists thestranger.com/news/2017/10/0… 17/
#5yrsago Equifax will make hundreds of millions in extra profits from its apocalyptic breach (forever) fortune.com/2017/10/04/equ…

#5yrsago Georgia Sheriff and deputies indicted for repeatedly touching the junk of 900 students at local high-school techdirt.com/2017/10/06/she… 18/
#5yrsago JP Morgan-Chase paid its billions in fines for mortgage fraud by committing billions in mortgage fraud web.archive.org/web/2017100513… 19/
#5yrsago Corporations form coalition to ask a court to ban coalitions (of people the corporations have screwed over) theintercept.com/2017/10/06/con…

#1yrago We paid to develop Merck's covid pill: And now they're charging us a 4,000% markup on it pluralistic.net/2021/10/06/mer… 20/
#1yrago Dave Eggers' "The Every": A tragicomic look at Big Tech, following from "The Circle" pluralistic.net/2021/10/05/mas…

#1yrago USPS pilots postal banking pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avo…

#1yrago The Pandora Papers pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avo… 21/
#1yrago Savage Love A-Z: A bestiary of good sex pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avo…

#1yrago Scottish Limited Partnerships are still laundering criminal millions: Offshore is actually onshore pluralistic.net/2021/10/07/mar… 22/
#1yrago "Inclusive Access" allows textbook monopolists to permanently consolidate their gains: Universities are auto-billing students for high-priced, self-destructing textbooks they can't loan or sell pluralistic.net/2021/10/07/mar… 23/
#1yrago DoS a federal agency, then charge for access: Enq carries on a tradition of genuinely terrible startup ideas pluralistic.net/2021/10/07/mar… 24/
Monday's threads: An antitrust murder whodunnit; and more!

25/
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… 26/
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… 27/
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/ 28/
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Reboot Conference, @JoinLincoln (Miami), 10/13
eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-…

* @LibraryJournal Day of Dialog (Zoom), 10/20
libraryjournal.com/event/library-… 29/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Chokepoint Capitalism Event, @ArgoBookshop (Montreal), Oct 23
eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctoro…

* Surviving Apocalyptic Economics, with @Rushkoff and @rgibli, Ottawa @Writersfest, 10/24
writersfestival.org/events/fall-20… 30/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @WEDF_forum, 10/26-28
worldethicaldataforum.org/registration

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 31/
Recent appearances:

* Regulating the Online Public Sphere (@ColumbiaGFoE)


* Canadians Connected 2022 with @AmberMac:


* Amazon Billing Amazon for Amazon (@trashfuturepod)
trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/amazon-billi… 32/
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… 33/
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/2022/10/07/sen… 34/
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 "The True Genius of Tech Leaders"

doctorow.medium.com/the-true-geniu… 35/
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 36/
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… 37/
Today's top sources: Max von Hippel (@maxvonhippel). 38/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 8
This was the plan: America would stop making things and instead make *recipes*, the "IP" that could be sent to other countries to turn into actual *stuff*.

1/ An organ grinder with a monkey. The organ grinder's head has been replaced with a Gilded Age caricature of a sneering millionaire. The monkey's head has been replaced with the head of a miserable child coal miner. The background is a blurred, halftoned view of a vast square in Beijing with a giant official building in the background, and a Chinese flag on a flagpole. On the organ is a blurred portrait of John Philip Sousa.
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/2025/09/08/pro…

2/
This would happen in distant lands without the pesky environmental and labor rules that forced businesses accept reduced profits because they weren't allowed to maim their workers and poison the land, air and water.

3/
Read 77 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 6
Trump's doing a lot of oligarch shit, and while some of it very visible and obvious, other moves, like throwing the door open to "stock buybacks" are technical and obscure.

1/ An old-timey carny barker, waving a cane and shouting. He is standing in front of a vintage photo of the NYSE trading floor.
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/2025/09/06/com…

2/
But it's worth paying attention to this, because this form of stock swindle stands to make billionaires a lot richer (and thus more powerful).

3/
Read 48 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 20
Forget surveillance capitalism - let's talk about *surveillance infantalism*: the drive by the wealthy to spy on you in order to pursue the toddler's goals of getting everything they want from the people around them, without any reciprocal obligations.

1/ Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse avatar's head atop the body of a figure from a earth 20th century editorial cartoon; the figure wears a suit, holds a long fork, and stares into the eyepiece of a microscope. The microscope is attached to a sinister scientific apparatus. The microscope is trained on a tiny human figure, limned in red, who shouts through a megaphone back up into the microscope's lens. The background is a 1980s NASA oil painting of the red, rocky surface of Venus.
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/2025/08/20/bil…

2/
After the Snowden revelations, I started to wonder about something fundamental: why spy at all?



3/theguardian.com/technology/201…
Read 40 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 18
When Elon Musk disagrees with someone, he calls them an "NPC" (non-player character). In video-games, an NPC is a machine-puppeted sprite that engages in predictable movements (e.g. Pac-Man ghosts) and utters some scripted (or AI-generated) dialog:



1/ futurism.com/elon-musk-inte…Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar, perched on a legless nude Ken doll body; its eyes are psychedelic pinwheels. Behind the figure is a group shot of child laborer miners from the 1910s, glitched out, blue tinted, and covered with scan lines. The background is a psychedelic swirl of moody colors. They stand atop a filthy checkerboard floor that stretches off to infinity.
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/2025/08/18/see…

2/
Seeing people as automata is probably a side-effect of sitting in the command-center of a big online service, in which you primarily interact with users as statistical aggregates in an analytics dashboard.

3/
Read 30 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 16
When LLM users describe their experience with their chatbots, the results are so divergent that it can sound like they're describing two completely different products.

1/ A vintage photo of two men in front of a slot machine. The men's heads have been replaced by the heads of hooded figures wearing Guy Fawkes mask. The image is sepia toned: the only color is the pay-line of the slot-machine, which is showing three glaring red eyes of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The slot machine has a sign over the rotor-window that displays the Openai logo and wordmark. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Frank Schwichtenberg (modified...
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/2025/08/16/jac…

2/
Previously, I've hypothesized that this is because there are two distinct groups of *users*: "centaurs" (people who are assisted by a machine - in this case, people who get to decide when, whether and how to integrate an LLM into their work)...

3/
Read 27 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 13
It's not just that Texas DA Gocha Ramirez charged a woman with murder for having an abortion (not t allowed even in Texas). It's that Ramirez paid for his mistress's abortion, after he impregnated her while having an affair with her *and* her sister:



1/ archive.is/20250812192203…A red, angry mushroom cloud. Sitting atop it, surrounded by blue skies and fluffy clouds, is a smirking business-suited man reclining in an armchair. He wears a MAGA hat and reads a magazine turned to a page showing Donald Trump's face.
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/2025/08/13/the…

2/
This is perfect Magaism, as captured by Wilhoit's Law:

> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.



3/crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/lib…
Read 52 tweets

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