Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 11, 2022 25 tweets 23 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Undetectable, undefendable back-doors for machine learning; Shelter in place; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/10/11/ren…

#Pluralistic 1/  Image: in0_m0x0 (modified)...
I'm coming to #Miami!

Tomorrow (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…

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

eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-… 2/
Undetectable, undefendable back-doors for machine learning: IMPNet will give your model hallucination and you can't stop it.

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Shelter in place: Prison for homelessness and lock-ins for home owners.

4/  Image: in0_m0x0 (modified)...
Hey look at this

* I've worked on a number of high-profile failures

* The X of Generation X culture.ghost.io/the-x-of-gen-x/ (h/t @philgyford)

* Can data portability happen on video-sharing platforms? brookings.edu/blog/techtank/… 5/ Image
#20yrsago Camping out for Eldred onlisareinsradar.com/archives/00059…

#10yrsago Cheating F1 team wins the right to deduct its fines from its taxes terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/201… 6/ Image
#10yrsago Australian Attorney General says that public scrutiny of spying bill would not be in the public interest delimiter.com.au/2012/10/10/gov…

#10yrsago Anti-choice Tea Party Congressman pressured pregnant mistress to get an abortion dailykos.com/stories/2012/1… 7/ Image
#10yrsago Pratchett’s Dodger: Dickens by way of Discworld memex.craphound.com/2012/10/11/pra…

#5yrsago Court tells Trump that he can’t demand details and data on everyone who talked about protesting his inauguration arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 8/ Image
#5yrsago The “mom and pop” business owner who loves Trump’s tax plan is a lobbyist for Oracle who will save billions theintercept.com/2017/10/11/tax…

#5yrsago Equifax: we doxed 400k Britons, erm, make that 700k, erm, we mean 15.2 million bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/… 9/ Image
#5yrsago Volk: a sinister, Lovecraftian tale of eugenics, Naziism, and “radiant abomination” memex.craphound.com/2017/10/11/vol… 10/ Image
Yesterday's threads: Antitrust is - and always has been - about fairness; and more!

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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… 12/
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… 13/
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/ 14/ Image
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-… 15/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Copyright Evidence: Synthesis and Futures – @copyrightcentre (Glasgow), Oct 17
create.ac.uk/copyright-evid…

* @LibraryJournal Day of Dialog (Zoom), 10/20
libraryjournal.com/event/library-… 16/ Image
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… 17/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 18/ Image
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… 19/ 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… 20/ 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/2022/10/11/ren… 21/
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 "Bankruptcy protects fake people, brutalizes real ones"

doctorow.medium.com/bankruptcy-pro… 22/
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 23/
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… 24/
Today's top sources: @yvessmith (nakedcapitalism.com), /r/LateStageCapitalism (reddit.com/r/LateStageCap…), Bruce Schneier (schneier.com/blog/). 25/ Image

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More from @doctorow

Mar 5
You guys, I don't want to bum you out or anything, but I think there's a good chance than some self-described capitalists *aren't really into capitalism*.

Sorry.

1/ A giant, complicated, mechanical printing press. Looming over it is an 18th-century demon from the Compendium Rarissimum Totius Artis Magicae; it is a eating severed human leg, and waving another leg in the air. In the background rise dark red flames. The printer has a Brother logo.
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/2025/03/05/pri…

2/
Take incentives: Charlie Munger, capitalism's quippiest pitchman, famously said, "Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome."

3/
Read 50 tweets
Mar 3
I get a special pleasure from citing Milton Friedman. I like to imagine that as I do, he groans around the red-hot spit protruding from his jaws, prompting howls of laughter from the demons who pelt him with molten faeces for all eternity.

1/ Oil derricks superimposed against a 'code waterfall' as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the foreground is Trump's hair.
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/2025/03/03/fri…

2/
If you're lucky enough not to know about Friedman, here's the short version. Friedman was a kind of court sorcerer to Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Augusto Pinochet, and other assorted authoritarian, hard-right leaders who set us on the path to the hellscape we inhabit today.

3/
Read 56 tweets
Feb 20
The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between - they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

1/   A towering figure with the head of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' surmounted by Trump's hair, wearing a tailcoat with a Google logo lapel pin. It peers through a magnifying glass at a distressed, tiny Uncle Sam figure perched in its monstrous palm.   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/2025/02/20/pri…

2/
Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:



3/pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the…
Read 41 tweets
Feb 18
In 2013, Thomas Piketty had an unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) *Capital in the 21st Century*.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a frowning Uncle Sam giving a blood transfusion to a gargantuan business-man whose waistcoat is labeled 'protected monopolies.' The businessman's head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background has been replaced with a halftoned EU flag whose blue field is covered in circuit-board traceries. The floor beneath the figures is an abstract, pinkish pattern.  Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed....
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/2025/02/18/pik…

2/
It offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:



3/memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/tho…
Read 62 tweets
Feb 17
Theory-free inference is a hell of a drug. For years, Big Data advocates - the larval form of today's AI weirdos - have insisted that if you have enough data, you can infer causal relationships between complex phenomena without ever having to understand how x causes y.

1/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine   A phrenological illustration of a man's face in profile, with his skull divided up into sections with illustrations of what each area is meant to govern, e.g., appetite, artistic aptitude, aggression, ardor. A pair of gleaming silver calipers, wielded by the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' measures the figure's skull.   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/2025/02/17/cal…

2/
Thus, we can slay the dread "correlation is not causation" beast. This is cousin to Milton Friedman's famous economic catechism:



3/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in…
Read 36 tweets
Feb 12
Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

1/ An official portrait of the US Supreme Court, with the justices sitting and standing before a red velvet curtain. Their faces have been replaced with the green 'Mr Yuck' logo. Floating in the middle of the image, obscuring several judges, is the Tiktok logo, with Trump's hair.
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/2025/02/12/you…

2/
No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will.

3/
Read 39 tweets

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