Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 16, 2023 25 tweets 26 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: 1,000,000 stranded Southwest passengers deserved better from Pete Buttigieg; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/01/16/for…

#Pluralistic 1/ The La Brea tar-pits. A Southwest jet is nose-down in the ta
This Thu (1/16) at 1530hPT, I'm joining my co-author @rgibli and our host, @BradStone, for an @InternetArchive/@Coil livecast about our book #ChokepointCapitalism:

youtube.com/coilhq 2/
1,000,000 stranded Southwest passengers deserved better from Pete Buttigieg: The worst US aviation failure in history was a long time coming, and could have been averted.

3/  Image: Tomás Del Coro (modified) https://www.flickr.com/ph
Hey look at this

* "In retrospect this period will be understood as an Indian summer of the old world" people.well.com/conf/inkwell.v…

* Web Hackers vs The Auto Industry samcurry.net/web-hackers-vs…

* World’s biggest PR firm claims to be an expert on trust–is it? theguardian.com/business/2023/… 4/
#20yrsago @Lessig: Whither the Supremes’ Constitutional commitment? web.archive.org/web/2003020111…

#20yrsago Melancholy Elephants: infinite copyright = infocalypse baen.com/chapters/W2000…

#20yrsago WiFi-SciFi: My open spectrum fiction on Salon salon.com/2003/01/16/lib… 5/
#20yrsago Supreme Court rules against Eldred, Alexandria burns en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v.…

#15yrsago @BruceS’s Kiosk: geniunely 21st century science fiction web.archive.org/web/2008011508… 6/
#15yrsago Fair use for the 21st century: if it adds value, it’s fair; if it substitutes, it’s not archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nyt…

#10yrsago “Aaron’s Law” introduced, would change computer law so violating Terms of Service isn’t a felony reddit.com/r/technology/c… 7/
#10yrsago Meet Zack Kopplin, the 19-year-old who started winning battles against teaching creationism in Louisiana public schools when he was 14 web.archive.org/web/2013011601… 8/
#10yrsago @Superwuster: what if we’d treated Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak the way we treated Aaron Swartz? newyorker.com/news/news-desk…

#10yrsago Free Freedom of Information Requests, in honor of @AaronSw muckrock.com/news/archives/… 9/
#5yrsago #MLK: anti-capitalist activist rawstory.com/2017/01/11-mos…

#5yrsago Marriott fires employee for “willfully liking” a tweet in support of Tibetan independence scmp.com/news/china/soc… 10/
#5yrsago Playing low frequency noise to disrupt hard-drives: denial of service for CCTVs, data-centers, and other computing environments arxiv.org/pdf/1712.07816… 11/
#5yrsago Trump’s new assistant Drug Czar: a 24-year-old campaign volunteer with no experience, in charge of billions to end the opioid epidemic washingtonpost.com/investigations… 12/
#5yrsago Inmate, denied health care in an Arizona private prison, chews his own fingers off newsweek.com/prison-health-… 13/
Saturday's threads: Kate Beaton's "Ducks"; and more!

14/
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… 15/
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… 16/
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/ 17/
Upcoming appearances:

* @InternetArchive livecast on #ChokepointCapitalism with @rgibli and @bradstone, Jan 19, 1530hPT
youtube.com/coilhq

* Library Learning Experience/@ALALibrary (#NewOrleans), 1/27-30
2023.alaliblearnx.org/cory-doctorow 18/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Chokepoint Capitalism: Can It Be Defeated? (@UCLLaws), 2/1
ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/20…

* Future of Arts/Culture/Tech, @ACMI, (#Melbourne), 2/14
acmi.net.au/whats-on/in-co… 19/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* ANU/@canberratimes Meet The Author (#Canberra), 2/16
anu.edu.au/events/in-conv…

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

* #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy (#Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 20/
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/2023/01/16/for… 22/
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 "Normalize Dark Corners!"

doctorow.medium.com/normalize-dark… 23/
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 24/
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). 25/

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More from @doctorow

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
Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jul 1
If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

1/ A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.   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/2025/06/30/acc…

2/
Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jun 28
In 2014, I read a political science paper that nearly convinced me to quit my lifelong career as an activist: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," published in *Perspectives on Politics*:



1/ cambridge.org/core/journals/…An inflatable pig balloon against a blue sky, bearing the Zohran for Mayor logo. The Chrysler Building sits to one side.  Image: Frank Vincentz (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geeste_-_Biener_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_Speicherbecken_-_Drachenfest_38_ies.jpg  Petri Krohn https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_building-_top.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/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/2025/06/28/mam…

2/
The paper's authors are Martin Gilens, a UCLA professor of Public Policy; and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, a professor of Decision Making. Gilens and Page studied a representative sample of 1,779 policy issues.

3/
Read 49 tweets
Jun 24
When a company sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they're revaluing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy's.

1/ A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light.  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/2025/06/24/pri…

2/
Economists praise "price discrimination" as "efficient." That's when a company charges different customers different amounts based on inferences about their willingness to pay.

3/
Read 50 tweets

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