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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Jan 21, 2023 • 27 tweets • 30 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Tiktok's enshittification; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/pot…

#Pluralistic 1/
Tiktok's enshittification: The company manually allocates surplus to creators, and they can take it away again, too.

2/
Hey look at this

* Rethinking Tech Regulation and Creative Labor eff.org/deeplinks/2023…

* OGL Will Be 'Irrevocable' @CreativeCommons license gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of…

* AA Promises Flight Attendants Free Bowl Of Chili If They Don't Picket viewfromthewing.com/american-airli… 3/
#20yrsago Recording industry needs collaborative filtering web.archive.org/web/2003041021…

#20yrsago Origin of spam templetons.com/brad/spamterm.…

#15yrsago Joel Johnson puts AT&T on the spot over copyright spying plan web.archive.org/web/2008012208… 4/
#20yrsago SBC’s patent-shakedown: website navigation web.archive.org/web/2003020706…

#15yrsago Congress moving forward with plan to scare colleges into supporting RIAA measures eff.org/deeplinks/2008… 5/
#15yrsago @PrivacyPrivee rejects #DRM: don’t give spyware legal protection! web.archive.org/web/2008012201…

#10yrsago Guerrilla indie feature film shot at #WaltDisneyWorld web.archive.org/web/2013012002… 6/
#10yrsago Designing for the factory: makers, machines, China, and industrial design bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2790

#10yrsago @jonathancoulton: @gleeofficial plagiarized my arrangement of “Baby Got Back” techdirt.com/2013/01/18/jon… 7/
#10yrsago More plagiarism from Glee

#10yrsago Podcast of my memorial for @AaronSw, and the afterword he wrote for Homeland craphound.com/news/2013/01/2…

#10yrago @EdwardTufte on Aaron Swartz and his own hacking career danwin.com/2013/01/edward… 8/
#10yrsago Montreal comp sci student reports massive bug, is expelled and threatened with arrest for checking to see if it had been fixed theregister.com/2013/01/21/daw… 9/
#10yrsago Pennsylvania kindergartener uses #HelloKitty bubble-gun at school, suspended for “terrorist threat” abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline…

#10yrsago Guy re-creates a #VIARail car, in his basement, down to the most minute detail 10/
#5yrsago Apple, Google add 45 minutes to commuter-bus run to avoid 280 highway, where the buses’ windows keep getting smashed fortune.com/2018/01/18/app… 11/
#5yrsago Racist authoritarians insisted that ending #StopAndFrisk would increase violent crime, but the opposite just happened propublica.org/article/in-new…

#5yrsago Comic-strip contracts, so no one argues they’re too confusing to be enforceable theconversation.com/comic-contract… 12/
#5yrsago City of #Sarajevo bans unsanctioned utterances of its name, threatens Facebook groups web.archive.org/web/2018012200…

#5yrsago To keep their bond-ratings, hedge-funds have to publicly demonstrate that they are the most ruthless of landlords ourfinancialsecurity.org/2018/01/afr-re… 13/
#5yrsago Self-destructing thumb drives with smoke loads, glowing elements, tiny explosives medium.com/@_MG_/mr-self-… 14/
Thursday's threads: Why the Fed wants to crush workers; and more!

15/
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… 16/
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… 17/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon and others) 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/ 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/
Upcoming appearances:

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

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

* Avid Reader (#Brisbane), 2/8
avidreader.com.au/pages/6834-Cho… 20/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Future of Arts/Culture/Tech, @ACMI, (#Melbourne), 2/14
acmi.net.au/whats-on/in-co…

* @statelibrarynsw (#Sydney), 2/15
sl.nsw.gov.au/events/chokepo…

* ANU/@canberratimes Meet The Author (#Canberra), 2/16
anu.edu.au/events/in-conv… 21/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy (#Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 22/
Recent appearances:

* The Way the Music Died (@Canadaland Commons):
canadaland.com/podcast/monopo…

* @majorityfm with @SamSeder
majorityreportradio.com/2023/01/09/1-9…

* @DecoderPod:
open.spotify.com/episode/6pVSj7…

* @plutopia
plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-… 23/
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/2023/01/21/pot… 24/
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… 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? 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). 27/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 26
The best summary of Trump's trade "philosophy" comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all.

1/ A detail from a US $100 bill. The bill has been tinted orange. Ben Franklin's face has been replaced with an indistinct blur surmounted by Trump's hair. The lettering in the scrollwork beneath the portrait reads 'TRUMP.' The '100's have been turned into '000's. The writing 'ONE HUNDRED' now reads 'NONE HUNDRED.' The series issue has been changed to '47.' The Secretary of the Treasury's signature has been replaced with Trump's.
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/2026/01/26/i-d…

2/
After all, the global system of trade was designed and enforced by American officials, especially the US Trade Representative.

3/
Read 84 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 17
Ireland is a tax haven. In the 1970s and 1980s, life in the civil-war wracked country was hard - between poverty, scarce employment and civil unrest, the country hemorrhaged its best and brightest. As the saying went, "Ireland's top export is the Irish."

1/ A green Irish pillarbox, standing before a verdant, rolling Irish countryside. The pillarbox is emblazoned with the poop emoji from the cover of 'Enshittification,' with angry eyebrows and a grawlix-scrawled black bar over its mouth. Image: Stuart Caie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_aperture_Irish_pillar_box_in_Dublin_2008.jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en -- Sourabh.biswas003 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PXL_20231216_105219694-Ballygalley_Larne_UK-_Irish_Countryside-Northern_Ireland_06.jpg CC BY-SA 3.0 ht...
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/2026/01/17/eri…

2/
In desperation, Ireland's political class hit on a wild gambit: they would weaponize Ireland's sovereignty in service to corporate tax evasion.

3/
Read 35 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 6
Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities.

1/ A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' 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/2026/01/06/100…

2/
AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:



Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets.

3/pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/eco…
Read 48 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 16, 2025
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
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/2025/12/16/k-s…

2/
When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

3/
Read 86 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 13, 2025
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
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/2025/12/13/unc…

2/
It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

3/
Read 68 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 9, 2025
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets

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