#NewYorkers! The state legislature has passed landmark #RightToRepair legislation, but @GovHochul hasn't signed it and it might die. Visit eff.org/rtr to help tell the Governor that we can't afford to wait (and tell your friends in New York, too!). 2/
Better failure for social media: The right of exit, freedom of reach, and technological self-determination.
#10yrsago Point of Sale skimmer that prints out real-seeming receipts 10/
#10yrsago If you’re suspected of drug involvement, America takes your house; HSBC admits to laundering cartel billions, loses five weeks’ income and execs have to partially defer bonuses web.archive.org/web/2012122101… 11/
#5yrsago Rich people in Bristol install anti-bird spikes in trees to keep shit off their cars, rendering trees “literally uninhabitable” by local wildlife independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n… 13/
#5yrsago CBD is a non-psychoactive compound in marijuana that shows promise in epilepsy and pain therapy, so the DEA wants to class it with heroin arstechnica.com/science/2017/1… 18/
#5yrsago@EFF to US Copyright Office: fix the DRM rules that stop us from fixing our stuff, make fair use, and make IoT gadgets work the way we want eff.org/press/releases…
#5yrsago The Tea Party’s baseless claims of IRS discrimination left the agency on life-support, unable to police dark money gushing through “charities” washingtonpost.com/investigations… 21/
#5yrsago Anatomy of how crooks use financial secrecy in the UK and New Zealand to rip off international investors with impunity interest.co.nz/business/91250… 22/
#5yrsago When Justin Trudeau was in opposition, he voted for Canada’s PATRIOT Act but promised to fix it; instead he’s making it much, much worse citizenlab.ca/2017/12/citize… 23/
#5yrsago As climate deniers claim credit for killing Net Neutrality, the FCC’s internal auditor reveals that Neutracide was based on a lie vice.com/en/article/vby… 24/
#5yrsago EPA employees who spoke out about Trump are having their emails ransacked, and the EPA’s new “monitoring” firm is linked to a GOP oppo research firm nytimes.com/2017/12/17/us/… 25/
#5yrsago China will collect the DNA of every adult in Xinjiang province, where Uyghur people are systematically oppressed techdirt.com/2017/12/18/chi…
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."
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 "'Metaverse' means 'pivot to video'"
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!
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? You can read my work elsewhere, but it is now a #TwitterCrime to tell you how. Please visit my site, pluralistic.net, for links to find me on less-unhinged places (I can only imagine that my days here are numbered). 37/
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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:
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:
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.
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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?*
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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:
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...
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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:
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.
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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:
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:
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.
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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:
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.
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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:
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: