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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Nov 23, 2022 • 20 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Citizens United and the FTX meltdown; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/23/inc…

#Pluralistic 1/ A vintage trustbuster cartoon depicting John D Rockefeller h
My publisher @TorBooks and @Goodreads are drawing for a giveaway of advance copies of my next novel, "Red Team Blues," a Silicon Valley forensic accounting thriller about a cryptocurrency heist - If you're in the US or Canada, enter here to win a copy:

goodreads.com/giveaway/show/… 2/
Citizens United and the FTX meltdown: The Keating Five were amateurs.

3/ Image: Cointelegraph (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.or
Hey look at this

* Displaying the Dead publicdomainreview.org/essay/musee-du…

* UK Regulators Want Apple to Open its App Store Doors to Cloud Gaming gizmodo.com/apple-google-u…

* @EFF 2021 annual report annualreport.eff.org 4/
#10yrsago Hacker’s ad for a Yahoo email-stealing exploit, up for sale at $700 krebsonsecurity.com/2012/11/yahoo-…

#10yrsago Saudi Arabian women tracked at the border with system that SMSes their husbands when they leave the country english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012%… 5/
#10yrsago Staffers for millionaire/wrestling magnate/failed GOP Senate candidate say they were stiffed, got bad checks and condoms: “you’re screwed” web.archive.org/web/2012112717… 6/
#5yrsago Blame the US Retail Apocalypse on hedge funds and financialization, not Amazon and Walmart bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-…

#5yrsago Women are fleeing Donald Trump’s Republican party in droves, and the GOP has no idea what to do about it theatlantic.com/politics/archi… 7/
#1yrago The definitive answers to Disney's pernicious queueing debates pluralistic.net/2021/11/23/jum… 8/
Yesterday's threads: Tax prep services send sensitive financial info to Facebook; and more!

9/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wi
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… 10/
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… 11/
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/ 12/
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Library Learning Experience/@ALALibrary (New Orleans), 1/27-30
2023.alaliblearnx.org/cory-doctorow 13/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy (Brussels), Mar 2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 14/
Recent appearances:

* @NewBooksNetwork
newbooksnetwork.com/chokepoint-cap…

* @bizwithoutbs
open.spotify.com/episode/04GWer…

* @teamhumanshow interview
teamhuman.fm/episodes/229-c… 15/
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/2022/11/23/inc… 16/
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. 17/
My latest @Medium column is "Anything That Can’t Go On Forever Will Eventually Stop: Ticketmaster and Ideas Lying Around"

doctorow.medium.com/anything-that-… 18/
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 19/
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… 20/

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More from @doctorow

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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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

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