Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 21, 2023 26 tweets 25 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Mass tech worker layoffs and the soft landing; Hey look at this; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/tec…

#Pluralistic 1/ A group of firefighters holding a safety net under a buildin
Tomorrow (Mar 22), I'm doing a remote talk for the @IFTF's "Changing the Register" series:

iftf.zoom.us/webinar/regist… 2/
Mass tech worker layoffs and the soft landing: Finally, the non-tech sector can hire technical workers.

3/  Image: University of North Texas Libraries (modified) https
Hey look at this

* The venture capitalist's dilemma newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-venture-…

* The Incredible Tantrum Venture Capitalists Threw Over #SiliconValleyBank slate.com/technology/202…

* The hierarchy of excuses crookedtimber.org/2023/03/20/the… 4/
#20yrsago #TalkRadio is the province of lying demagogues, bigots and fools web.archive.org/web/2003040213…

#10yrsago @BruceS’s closing SXSW keynote: disruption and destruction soundcloud.com/officialsxsw/b… 5/
#10yrsago How the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct punishes people with disabilities slate.com/technology/201…

#10yrsago Supercut of all the alternate endings to the #Animaniacs theme 6/
#10yrsago @EFF blasts plans to build #DRM into #HTML5 eff.org/deeplinks/2013…

#10yrsago You know who does creepier stuff with your data than #CambridgeAnalytica? Your ISP techdirt.com/2018/03/21/if-… 7/
#5yrsago Police say the #AustinBomber killed himself as they closed in on him web.archive.org/web/2018032108…

#5yrsago To save the Earth, stack humans in green cities and leave the wilderness for other animals theguardian.com/cities/2018/ma… 8/
#5yrsago Teen’s devastating bug-report on a “tamper-proof” cryptocurrency wallet shows why companies can’t be left in charge of bad news about their products saleemrashid.com/2018/03/20/bre… 9/
#5yrsago In Chicago primaries, a string of defeats for the Democratic establishment at the hands of progressive Democrats theintercept.com/2018/03/20/fri…

#1yrago #Brazil's "#RemunerationRight" will strengthen Big Tech and Big Media pluralistic.net/2022/03/21/jef… 10/
#1yrago To make Big Tech better, make it smaller pluralistic.net/2022/03/21/jef… 11/
Yesterday's threads: Podcasting "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk"; and more!

12/
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… 13/
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… 14/
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/ 15/
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/ 16/
Upcoming appearances:

* @IFTF Changing the Register, 3/22
iftf.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

* Antitrust and Competition Conference - Beyond the Consumer Welfare Standard (#Chicago), 4/20-21
chicagobooth.edu/research/stigl… 17/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues at @MystGalaxyBooks (#SanDiego), 4/25
mystgalaxy.com/event/42523Doc…

* Red Team Blues at @WordfestTweets (#Calgary), 5/11
wordfest.com/2023/event/wor… 18/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues event with @TimHarford (#Oxford), 5/29
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro…

* @uclcs Peter Kirstein Lecture, 6/1 (#London):
eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirste… 19/
Recent appearances:

* @RuBlackListNET Privacy Day


* Factually With @adamconover:
stitcher.com/show/factually…

* Making Big Tech Better vs Making it Smaller (@BruxConf2023):
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/2023/03/21/tec… 21/
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. 22/
My latest @Medium column is "Culture War Bullshit Stole Your Broadband: Your internet sucks because telco monopolists kept Gigi Sohn off the FCC"

doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bu… 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/
Today's top sources: @Slashdot (slashdot.org). 26/

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Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

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More from @doctorow

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
Jun 20
Private equity firms are the demon princes of the hellspace that is the imploding, life-destroying, plutocrat-generating American economy.

1/ A billionaire in a tuxedo with dollar-sign cufflinks, stands at a podium, yanking a lever shaped like a gilded dollar sign with one gloved hand. From the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a bloody corpse. His head has been replaced with the head of a doctor in a surgeon's blue cap, with red, glaring eyes. The background is the text of Oregon's new Corporate Practice of Medicine law, in blown-out, red type.
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/2025/06/20/the…

2/
Their favorite scam, the "leveraged buyout" is a mafia bustout dressed up in respectable clothes, and if you mourn a beloved, failed business, chances are that an LBO was the murder weapon, and PE was the killer:



3/pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spi…
Read 44 tweets

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