Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 29, 2022 28 tweets 24 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The Big Four accounting firms are one (more) scandal away from collapse; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/29/gre…

#Pluralistic 1/ Two business-suited male fi...
Tomorrow (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
The Big Four accounting firms are one (more) scandal away from collapse: Mutually assured destruction at the heart of the economy.

4/  Image: Vectorportal.com (m...
Hey look at this

* The Consequences of Radical Patent-Regime Change papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

* Jansen's Linkage youtube.com/shorts/PBuOBGf… (h/t Hackaday)

* The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler vulture.com/article/octavi… (h/t @nelson) 5/ Image
#15yrsago Science Fiction Writers of America reinstates E-Piracy Committee — new name, same chairman memex.craphound.com/2007/11/29/sci…

#15yrsago Universal Music CEO’s fears illustrated in funny webcomic web.archive.org/web/2007113002… 6/ Image
#10yrsago America’s “Six Strike” copyright punishment system on hold until 2013 torrentfreak.com/six-strikes-an…

#10yrsago Big Tobacco will have to run a national advertising campaign apologizing for lying about health risks from smoking web.archive.org/web/2013103115… 7/ Image
#10yrsago Bill O’Reilly-watching climate-change-denier is moved to tears by polar melting documentary

#10yrsago Grey Album remastered by golden-eared engineer forbes.com/sites/leorgali… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Net Neutrality is just for starters: municipal networks are the path to paradise wired.com/story/net-neut…

#5yrsago Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren introduce a bill to provide $146B in aid to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands theintercept.com/2017/11/28/ber… 9/ Image
#5yrsago Incentives matter: America’s for-profit medical industry thrives on massive wastage, unnecessary procedures, overbilling and overtreating propublica.org/article/a-hosp… 10/ Image
#5yrsago US Army doxes itself, reveals $100 million NSA spy program that got flushed before it was ever used ibtimes.com/army-spent-100…

#5yrsago Student debt: more people, paying more money, and mounting year on year jacobin.com/2017/11/studen… 11/ Image
#5yrsago Mass incarceration and disenfranchisement of brown people was the key to GOP control in Alabama, but thanks to criminal justice reform, black people can vote against child-molester Roy Moore salon.com/2017/11/29/roy… 12/ Image
#5yrsago Morgan Stanley, with a long rapsheet for corporate crimes, says Jeremy Corbyn holding them to account would hurt them worse than the worst Brexit theguardian.com/politics/2017/…"> 13/ Image
#5yrsago Comcast flushed its 3 year old net neutrality promise down the memory hole the instant the FCC announced its plan to allow network discrimination arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 14/ Image
#1yrago The once and future mass-resignation and what it means for working people pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ord… 15/ Image
Yesterday's threads: How monopoly enshittified Amazon; and more!

16/ Image
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… 17/
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… 18/
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/ 19/ 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… 20/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* @Aus_Digital Copyright Forum (Canberra), 2/17:
digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doc… 21/ 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/2022/11/29/gre… 23/
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. 24/
My latest @Medium column is "Poe vs. Property: A detective story of shifting rationalizations"

doctorow.medium.com/poe-vs-propert… 25/
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 26/
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… 27/
Today's top sources: @yvessmith (nakedcapitalism.com). 28/ Image

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More from @doctorow

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
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
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
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
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
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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