Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 28, 2022 45 tweets 45 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: How monopoly enshittified Amazon; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/ens…

#Pluralistic 1/ Jean-Leon Gerome's painting...
This Weds (Nov 30), @superwuster and I are appearing in conversation to discuss monopoly and creative labor markets at the @knightfdn's #Informed22 conference in #Miami:

informed22.interkinnect.com 2/
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/… 3/ Image
How monopoly enshittified Amazon: Chokepoint Capitalism ruins everything.

4/ Image
Hey look at this

* When Bosses Were Terrorists jacobin.com/2022/11/bosses…

* Who will control the computerised machines b2fxxx.blogspot.com/2022/11/who-wi…

* ooh.directory ooh.directory 5/ Image
#20yrsago @dangillmor: The dotcom bubble was a Big Con web.archive.org/web/2002121515…

#20yrsago GW Bush parodies can't air on UK TV without his permission nytimes.com/2002/11/28/wor…

#20yrsago @EdFelten’s radical technology agenda web.archive.org/web/2002112714… 6/ Image
#20yrsago Harry Potter/Luke Skywalker/Frodo Baggins craphound.com/images/frodoha…

#20yrsago What is Moblogging? links.net/share/write/th…

#20yrsago Imagineeringland: the busiest place on Earth wired.com/2002/12/rebuil…

#20yrsago Me (13) with @cdelint, 1984 craphound.com/images/de_Lint… 7/ Image
#15yrsago French law proposal will force ISPs to spy on users and terminate downloaders without trial arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#15yrsago DHS to firefighters: snoop on emergency victims for evidence of terrorism web.archive.org/web/2007112714… 8/ ImageImage
#15yrsago How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook web.archive.org/web/2007112803…

#15yrsago Facebook privacy meltdown: company removed opt-out prior to launch web.archive.org/web/2008120215… 9/
#15yrsago Voice of the London Underground canned for blogging funny fake announcement audio metafilter.com/66883/The-Voic…

#15yrsago Mr Splashy Pants in the lead for Greenpeace whale-naming competition web.archive.org/web/2007112116… 10/ Image
#15yrsago Universal Music CEO: Record industry can’t tell when geeks are lying to us about technology vulture.com/2007/11/univer…

#15yrsago Time’s Joe Klein shoves his foot in his gob on NSA wiretapping wired.com/2007/11/time-c… 11/ Image
#15yrsago Canada’s coming DMCA will be the worst copyright yet memex.craphound.com/2007/11/27/can…

#15yrsago Google says spammers are giving up wired.com/2007/11/spamme…

#15yrsago BBC’s iPlayer sold us out — and then failed theguardian.com/technology/200… 12/ Image
#10yrsago In Finland, piracy fines are orders of magnitude higher than fines for rape, torture and murder web.archive.org/web/2012080100…

#10yrsago Letter from Alabama AG to KKK Grand Wizard: “Kiss my ass” lettersofnote.com/2012/11/26/kis… 13/ Image
#10yrsago Hotel break-ins blamed on flaw in keycard system forbes.com/sites/andygree…

#10yrsago Collaborative critical study of one-line BASIC program written for the Commodore 64 10print.org

#10yrsago Toronto mayor Rob Ford is out cbc.ca/news/canada/to… 14/ Image
#10yrsago Internet of the Dead: the net’s collision course with death locusmag.com/2012/11/cory-d…

#10yrsago Coding Freedom: an anthropologist understands hacker culture memex.craphound.com/2012/11/25/cod… 15/ Image
#10yrsago What Disneyland’s “awkward transitions” teach us about signaling changes with physical cues passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-aw…

#5yrsago Once you have a student’s name, birthday and SSN, the US Department of Education will give you EVERYTHING else krebsonsecurity.com/2017/11/namedo… 16/ Image
#5yrsago Spam was nearly dead, then it became an essential tool for crime and came roaring back theoutline.com/post/2498/spam… 17/ Image
#5yrago Roy Moore is still in the running because “values voters” would support Satan himself if he was anti-abortion and homophobic fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-v… 18/ Image
#5yrsago Citing Trump, Philippines dictator declares himself to be a “fascist” and vows to persecute peaceful left-wing opposition groups telesurenglish.net/analysis/-Dute…

#5yrsago Jeremy Corbyn tears into the Tories over incoherent Brexit bumbling theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 19/ Image
#5yrsago Researchers craft Android app that reveals menagerie of hidden spyware; legally barred from doing the same with iOS theintercept.com/2017/11/24/sta…

#5yrsago Reverse-engineering a connected Furby toy, revealing its disturbing security defects web.archive.org/web/2017112413… 20/ Image
#5yrsago Rightscorp finished Sept 2017 with $3,147 in the bank, warns investors it will likely have to shut down without more cash torrentfreak.com/rightscorp-rev… 21/ Image
#5yrsago Arrogant overreach: Ajit Pai’s plan to totally destroy net neutrality may doom him in court nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opi…"> 22/ Image
#5yrsago A generation after American “libertarians” helped with mass disappearances, torture and murder of left-wing activists, Frente Amplio surge in Chilean elections bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 23/ Image
#5yrsago Investigators claim that Oxbridge and other top UK universities are operating a massive, illegal surveillance dragnet aimed at students/alumni and their friends and families qz.com/1133808/univer… 24/ Image
#5yrsago For the next year, TV, newspapers, and the web will run massive ads from tobacco companies admitting that their products kill people, that they were engineered to be addictive, and that they covered this up abc.net.au/news/2017-11-2… 25/ Image
#5yrsago Melt a Nazi with the Major Toht candle web.archive.org/web/2017120403…

#5yrsago One of the net’s most important freedom canaries died the day the W3C greenlit web-wide DRM; what can we learn from the fight? eff.org/deeplinks/2017… 26/ Image
#5yrsago Trump appointed a loan-shark fixer as an assistant Attorney General, who then wrote a controversial memo justifying the neutering of the consumer finance watchdog theintercept.com/2017/11/27/whi… 27/ Image
#5yrsago Comcast spams social media with Net Neutrality promises, hopes you won’t notice that they used to promise a LOT more arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 28/ Image
#5yrsago Religious fanatics go to the Supreme Court for the First Amendment right to trick women into bearing unwanted children theintercept.com/2017/11/27/the… 29/ Image
#5yrsago How an influential economics paper used imaginary environmental overregulation to spur low-density luxury housing dissentmagazine.org/online_article…

#5yrsago Wells Fargo execs sealed their bonuses by gouging the bank’s business customers thehill.com/policy/finance… 30/ Image
#1yrago The Cuban vaccines pluralistic.net/2021/11/28/som…

#1yrago UK ICO: surveillance advertising is dead pluralistic.net/2021/11/26/ico…

#1yrago McKinsey taught Big Pharma how to price-gouge pluralistic.net/2021/11/25/str… 31/ Image
#1yrago Unions are finally fighting two-tier contracts pluralistic.net/2021/11/25/str…

#1yrago The Tesla-financial complex: When your financial instruments are better than your cars pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-…

#1yrago Spaniards fight Wall Street landlords pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-… 32/ Image
Friday's threads: Citizens United and the FTX meltdown; and more!

33/  Image: Cointelegraph (modi...
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… 34/
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… 35/
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/ 36/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Chokepoint Capitalism: A Conversation/@Northeastern/@BurnesCenter/@NU_CAMD (Boston/webcast), 12/5
northeastern.zoom.us/webinar/regist… 37/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Library Learning Experience/@ALALibrary (NOLA), 1/27-30
2023.alaliblearnx.org/cory-doctorow

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

* Antitrust, Regulation and PolEconomy (Brussels), Mar 2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 38/ 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/2022/11/28/ens… 40/
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. 41/
My latest @Medium column is "Poe vs. Property: A detective story of shifting rationalizations"

doctorow.medium.com/poe-vs-propert… 42/
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 43/
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… 44/
Today's top sources: @slashdot (slashdot.org). 45/ Image

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More from @doctorow

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
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
Oct 29
Amazon made $35b profit last year. They're celebrating by firing 14k workers (a number they say will rise to 30k). It's the kind of thing Wall St loves. It comes after a string of pronouncements from Andy Jassy about how AI is going to let him fire *tons* of workers.

1/ A black and white image of an armed overseer supervising several chain-gang prisoners in stripes doing forced labor. The overseer's head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The prisoners' heads have been replaced with hackers' hoodies.   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/2025/10/29/wor…

2/
That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative.

3/
Read 45 tweets
Oct 11
I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a climate activist. I used to be - I even used to ring strangers' doorbells on behalf of Greenpeace.

1/ A field of utility scale solar. Behind the mountains on the horizon line loom two logos: the original EFF 'clenched fist and lightning bolt' logo and the first Earth Day logo. They are reflected in the solar panels. Behind them roils hellish red-shot smoke.
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/2025/10/11/cyb…

2/
But a quarter of a century ago, I fell in with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and became a lifelong digital rights activist, and switched to cheering on environmental activists from the sidelines of their fight:



3/eff.org
Read 53 tweets

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