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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Nov 11, 2022 • 23 tweets • 22 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Apple's business model made Chinese oppression inevitable; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/for…

#Pluralistic 1/ A Chinese revolutionary poster depicting a marching army of
Hey #DC! There's a *very special* invite-only book party for "Chokepoint Capitalism" on Nov 17 and while it's not a public event, there's a limited number of spaces I can distribute on a first come/first serve basis. If you'd like to come, email doctorow@craphound.com! 2/
Tomorrow (11/12), I'm at @WaterstonesOxf:
eventbrite.co.uk/e/chokepoint-c…

Sun (11/13), I'm presenting at @AaronSwartzDay:
aaronswartzday.org/asd-2022-lives…

11/16, I'm in DC for the Arthur C Clarke Award:
clarkefoundation.org/2022-awards-ev… 3/
Apple's business model made Chinese oppression inevitable: A photon torpedo on the bridge in Act I will go off by Act III.

4/
Hey look at this

* Tools for the great Twitter migration ianbrown.tech/2022/11/03/the…

* Classic Computers Papercraft Collection archive.org/details/amiga-… Computer Papercrafts/Amstrad-CPC-264-Papercraft-Ver-2/ (h/t Ars Technica) 5/
#20yrsago AIs ate my economy web.archive.org/web/2002112706…

#20yrsago How Karl Rove used a Blackberry to put W in office web.archive.org/web/2002111215…

#20yrsago Fast-forwarding is not a crime! latimes.com/archives/la-xp… 6/
#15yrsago Democrats: Colleges must do copyright surveillance, or else scoopsmangum.blogspot.com/2007/11/democr…

#15yrsago @DBtodomundo considers IKEA as a video game web.archive.org/web/2007110822…

#15yrsago Top US spook officially redefines "privacy" to mean "surveillance" web.archive.org/web/2007111307… 7/
#10yrsago TSA inspectors get a larger annual clothing allowance than Marine lieutenants get through their whole careers washingtonexaminer.com/tsa-uniform-pe…

#10yrsago Intel to Boy Scouts: no more donations if you don’t drop anti-gay policy oregonlive.com/silicon-forest… 8/
#5yrsago Excellent, plain-language explainer on corporate and 1 percenter tax evasion, with a simple solution nytimes.com/interactive/20…

#5yrsago Paradise Papers reveal cozy relationship between Stubhub and Canadian botmaster/tout kingpin cbc.ca/news/business/… 9/
#5yrsago Equifax’s CEO isn’t sure whether they’ve finally started encrypting their servers yet techtarget.com/searchsecurity… 10/
Yesterday's threads: Amazon and Apple have an illegal price-fixing conspiracy; and more!

11/ Image: Andrés Moreira (modified) https://www.flickr.com/pho
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/
Upcoming appearances:

* Chokepoint Capitalism at @WaterstonesOxf, Nov 12:
eventbrite.co.uk/e/chokepoint-c…

* @AaronSwartzDay and International Hackathon, Nov 13:
aaronswartzday.org/asd-2022-lives…

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
clarkefoundation.org/2022-awards-ev… 15/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @library_futures Webinar, 11/17
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

* Chokepoint Capitalism at @ThePeale Museum (Baltimore), 11/18:
thepeale.org/event/book-tal…

* Big Ideas Live (London), 11/19
news.sky.com/bigideaslive 16/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Conversation with @Superwuster, #Informed22/@knightfdn (Miami), 11/30:
informed22.interkinnect.com

* @Aus_Digital Copyright Forum (Canberra), 2/17:
digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doc… 17/
Recent appearances:

* Surviving Apocalyptic Economics (@teamhumanshow)
teamhuman.fm/episodes/survi…

* @PitchforkEcon
pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/chokep…

* Why Patients Should Hack Med Tech (@Defcon 30)
18/
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/2022/11/11/for… 19/
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 End of the Road to Serfdom"

doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the… 20/
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 21/
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… 22/
Today's top sources: @Slashdot (slashdot.org). 23/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 7
While I formulated the idea of enshittification to refer to digital platforms and their specific technical characteristics, economics and history, I am very excited to see other theorists extend the idea of enshittification beyond tech and into wider policy realms.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon depicting a muscular worker and a corpulent millionaire squaring off for a fight; the millionaire's head has been replaced with the poop emoji from the cover of 'Enshittification,' its mouth covered in a grawlix-scrawled black bar.
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/2025/11/07/pos…

2/
There's an easy, loose way to do this, which is using "enshittification" to refer to "things generally getting worse." To be clear, I am *fine* with this:



3/pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pea…
Read 89 tweets

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