Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Feb 1, 2023 27 tweets 28 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Johnson and Johnson's bankruptcy gambit fails; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-a…

#Pluralistic 1/ A picture of a white-out dust storm at Burning Man. A giant
From Feb 8-17, I'll be in #Australia, touring my book #ChokepointCapitalism with my co-author, @rgibli. We'll be in #Brisbane, #Melbourne, #Sydney and #Canberra, and I hope to see you!

pluralistic.net/2023/01/30/i-c… 2/
Johnson and Johnson's bankruptcy gambit fails: A key defeat in J&J's War On Vulvas.

3/  Image: James Wagstaff (modified) https://www.flickr.com/pho
Hey look at this

* Setting the Record Straight: @EFF Statement in Support of FCC Nominee @GigiNSohn eff.org/deeplinks/2023… 4/
#20yrsago #DVDs rot over time smh.com.au/national/a-bad…

#20yrsago Record exec argues for file-sharing salon.com/2003/02/01/fil…

#15yrsago Sony kills #DRM stores — your DRM music will only last until your next upgrade memex.craphound.com/2008/02/01/son… 5/
#15yrsago Amazon’s anti-DRM tee memex.craphound.com/2008/02/01/ama…

#15yrsago Chinese dissident’s “Rear Window” video of the cops keeping him under house arrest theguardian.com/news/video/200…

#10yrsago Dial-up handshaking illustrated windytan.com/2012/11/the-so… 6/
#10yrsago #RIAA bigwig who architected anti-technology lawsuits is now #2 at the #CopyrightOffice techdirt.com/2013/01/31/for… 7/
#10yrsago #Magic, #copyright, and internal enforcement mechanisms web.archive.org/web/2013020708… S Moorad Sports Law Journal/~/media/academics/journals/sportsandentertainmentlawjournal/docs/191/VLS_191_103.ashx 8/
#10yrsago Why can’t Americans look up their own case-law for free? sunlightfoundation.com/2013/02/01/ope…

#5yrsago LA’s soaring #homelessness is distorting the national statistics latimes.com/local/lanow/la… 9/
#5yrsago Teen Bo$$: a magazine advising tweens on how to get rich by being “social media brands” fashionista.com/2017/06/teen-b…

#5yrsago America’s school systems serve unencrypted web resources that are riddled with ad-tech trackers edtechstrategies.com/tracking-edu/ 10/
#5yrsago The latest #IoT #botnet displays evidence of a halfway clever botmaster technologyreview.com/2018/01/31/145…

#5yrsago The Germans have a word for all your hard-to-process Trump emotions web.archive.org/web/2018013109… 11/
#5yrsago An incredibly important paper on whether data can ever be “anonymized” and how we should handle release of large data-sets cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publi… 12/
#5yrsago GOP candidate Rick Saccone hates government waste, bills the public purse indiscriminately for his own personal expenses, which totalled $435,172 theintercept.com/2018/02/01/ric… 13/
#5yrsago Australia put an algorithm in charge of its benefits fraud detection and plunged the nation into chaos logicmag.io/justice/auster…

#1yrago The Mafia hires good accountants pluralistic.net/2022/02/01/col… 14/
Yesterday's threads: Canada's privatised shadow civil service; and more!

15/  Image: Sam (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi
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 @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/ 18/
Upcoming appearances:

* 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…

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

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

* 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… 20/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy (#Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 21/
Recent appearances:

* @davidpakmanshow


* TikTok Isn’t For Creators Anymore (@Slate ICMY)
slate.com/podcasts/icymi…

* Lunch on Laotian food (Eating the Fantastic)
scottedelman.com/2023/01/27/cor… 22/
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/2023/02/01/j-a… 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.

My latest Medium column is "'Conversational' AI Is Really Bad At Conversations"

doctorow.medium.com/conversational… 24/
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 25/
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). 26/
Today's top sources: @jstruan (superpunch.net). 27/

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Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

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More from @doctorow

Feb 20
The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between - they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

1/   A towering figure with the head of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' surmounted by Trump's hair, wearing a tailcoat with a Google logo lapel pin. It peers through a magnifying glass at a distressed, tiny Uncle Sam figure perched in its monstrous palm.   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/2025/02/20/pri…

2/
Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:



3/pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the…
Read 41 tweets
Feb 18
In 2013, Thomas Piketty had an unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) *Capital in the 21st Century*.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a frowning Uncle Sam giving a blood transfusion to a gargantuan business-man whose waistcoat is labeled 'protected monopolies.' The businessman's head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background has been replaced with a halftoned EU flag whose blue field is covered in circuit-board traceries. The floor beneath the figures is an abstract, pinkish pattern.  Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed....
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/2025/02/18/pik…

2/
It offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:



3/memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/tho…
Read 62 tweets
Feb 17
Theory-free inference is a hell of a drug. For years, Big Data advocates - the larval form of today's AI weirdos - have insisted that if you have enough data, you can infer causal relationships between complex phenomena without ever having to understand how x causes y.

1/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine   A phrenological illustration of a man's face in profile, with his skull divided up into sections with illustrations of what each area is meant to govern, e.g., appetite, artistic aptitude, aggression, ardor. A pair of gleaming silver calipers, wielded by the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' measures the figure's skull.   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/2025/02/17/cal…

2/
Thus, we can slay the dread "correlation is not causation" beast. This is cousin to Milton Friedman's famous economic catechism:



3/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in…
Read 36 tweets
Feb 12
Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

1/ An official portrait of the US Supreme Court, with the justices sitting and standing before a red velvet curtain. Their faces have been replaced with the green 'Mr Yuck' logo. Floating in the middle of the image, obscuring several judges, is the Tiktok logo, with Trump's hair.
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/2025/02/12/you…

2/
No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will.

3/
Read 39 tweets
Feb 11
Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year.

1/ A halftoned 2025 IRS 1040 form. To the left is a bloated billionaire figure in top hat, white gloves and tux, with the pouting face of Elon Musk. With one hand, he is yanking on a lever made out of a gilded dollar-sign. With the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a street urchin. The podium to which the lever is attached bears the Turbotax logo, a white checkmark in a red circle. To the left is a cascade of gold coins, falling out of an upended sack.   Image: Wcamp9 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_March_28,_2024_%28cropped%29.jpg  CC BY 4.0 https://creative...
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/2025/02/11/dou…

2/
It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.

Not *paying* your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine.

3/
Read 29 tweets
Feb 5
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.

Inside: MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/02/04/pow…A vintage ad for Amway Nutrilite supplements; the illustration in the center of the ad has been replaced with a WPA mural depicting trade unionists rising up against capitalism.
This week, Barnes and Noble are offering a 25% discount on pre-order of my next novel, *Picks and Shovels* (use code PREORDERS):



2/ barnesandnoble.com/w/picks-and-sh…Image
MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing: In the mirror world, community organizers are community predators.



3/ Image
Read 29 tweets

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