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

May 27
On a recent This Machine Kills episode, guest Hagen Blix described the ultimate form of "AI therapy" with a "human in the loop":



1/ soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…A magnified image of the inside of an automated backup tape library, with gleaming racks of silver tape drives receding into the distance. In the foreground is a pile of dirt being shoveled by three figures in prisoner's stripes. Two of the figures' heads have been replaced with cliche hacker-in-hoodie heads, from which shine yellow, inverted Amazon 'smile' logos, such that the smile is a frown. The remaining figure's head has been replaced with a horse's head. Behind the figure is an impatiently posed man in a sharp business suit, frowning at his watch. His head has been replaced with the ...
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/2025/05/27/ran…

2/
> One actual therapist is just having ten chat GPT windows open where they just like have five seconds to interrupt the chatGPT. They have to scan them all and see if it says something really inappropriate. That's your job, to stop it.

3/
Read 98 tweets
May 21
My latest *Locus Magazine* column is "Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives," about the secret engine of sweeping political upheavals (like Trumpism) and their inherent fragility:



1/ locusmag.com/2025/05/commen…A Renaissance oil-painting of the assassination of Julius Caesar, modified to give Caesar Trump's hair and turn his skin orange, to make the knives glow, and to emboss a Heritage Foundation logo on the wall behind the scene.
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/2025/05/21/et-…

2/
Stories about major change usually focus on a *group*, but groups rarely achieve big, ambitious goals. Think about all the goal-oriented groups in your orbit, with missions like alleviating hunger, or beautifying your neighborhood, or changing the health-care system.

3/
Read 40 tweets
May 14
Something's very different in tech. Once upon a time, every bad choice by tech companies - taking away features, locking out mods or plugins, nerfing the API - was countered, nearly instantaneously, by someone writing a program that overrode that choice.

1/ A 19th century engraving of fiendishly complex machine composed of thousands of interlocking gears and frames (originally an image of a printing press, but modified so that it's just all gears and things), colored dark blue. It bears Woody Guthrie's guitar sticker, 'This machine KILLS fascists. To one side of it stands an image of Ned Ludd, taken from an infamous 19th century Luddite handbill, waving troops into battle. King Ludd's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie, the face within lost in shadow.
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/2025/05/14/pre…

2/
Bad clients would be muscled aside by third-party clients. Locked bootloaders would be hacked and replaced. Code that confirmed you were using OEM parts, consumables or adapters would be found and nuked from orbit.

3/
Read 51 tweets
May 13
"Understood: Who Broke the Internet?" is my new podcast for CBC about the enshittogenic policy decisions that gave rise to enshittification. Episode two just dropped: "ctrl-ctrl-ctrl":



1/ cbc.ca/listen/cbc-pod…The logo for 'Who Broke the Internet' - a shattered hard-drive with the CBC logomark.
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/2025/05/13/ctr…

2/
The thesis of the show is straightforward: the internet wasn't killed by ideological failings like "greed," nor by economic concepts like "network effects," nor by some cyclic force of history that drives towards "re-intermediation."

3/
Read 49 tweets
May 2
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

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

Inside: AI and the fatfinger economy; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpi…A leg-hold trap whose trigger disc has been replaced with the hostile, glaring eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' A giant man's finger enters the frame from one corner, aimed at the trigger.  Image: Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Index_finger_%3D_to_attention.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in NEW ZEALAND at UNITY BOOKS in WELLINGTON TODAY (May 3, 3PM):

unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-event…

More tour dates (PDX, Pittsburgh, London, Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

2/ Image
AI and the fatfinger economy: Every slip of the finger in money in the bank.



3/  Image: Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Index_finger_%3D_to_attention.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Read 24 tweets
Apr 24
Patrick "patio11" McKenzie is a fantastic explainer, the kind of person who breaks topics down in ways that stay with you, and creep into your understanding of other subjects, too. Take his 2022 essay, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero":



1/ bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optima…A rainforest in Chiapas, green and intergrown.
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/2025/04/24/her…

2/
It's a very well-argued piece, and here's the nut of it:

> The marginal return of permitting fraud against you is plausibly greater than zero, and therefore, you should welcome greater than zero fraud.

3/
Read 55 tweets

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