Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 25, 2023 30 tweets 36 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The Golden Rule (them what has the gold makes the rules); and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/con…

#Pluralistic 1/ A kraken strangling a coin-operated judge automata whose rob
I'm kickstarting the #audiobook for my next novel, an anti-finance finance thriller about #SiliconValley scams called *Red Team Blues*. #Amazon's #Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're #DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible:

kickstarter.com/projects/docto… 2/
The Golden Rule (them what has the gold makes the rules): Dobbs, SVB, the Internet Archive, antitrust and the law's foundation in norms, not consistency.

3/
Hey look at this

* #Hachette v. @internetarchive Liveblog controlleddigitallending.org/2023/03/20/hac…

* @FrameworkPuter's 16" Modular Gamer Laptop gizmodo.com/framework-modu…

* Utah parent says the Bible contains porn and should be removed from school libraries sltrib.com/news/education… 4/
#15yrsago #Walmart infection-spread timelapse video web.archive.org/web/2008032308…

#15yrsago @CShirky’s Harvard talk: Here Comes Everybody web.archive.org/web/2016122603…

#15yrsago New US #CyberSecurity Czar has no cyber-security experience washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content… 6/
#15yrsago How @CBC torrented a TV show last100.com/2008/03/26/ins…

#15yrsago #Mugabe opponents forced to eat campaign posters theguardian.com/world/2008/mar…

#10yrsago Why architects should stop drawing trees on top of skyscrapers archdaily.com/346374/can-we-… 7/
#10yrsago Your WiFi-enabled camera might be spying on you helpnetsecurity.com/2013/03/25/dig…

#10yrsago Store wants $5 browsing fee to deter “#showrooming” by online shoppers consumerist.com/2013/03/25/sto…

#10yrsago RPG inside an #Excel workbook carywalkin.ca/2013/03/17/are… 8/
#10yrsago #Toronto Mayor #RobFord’s long history of public drunkenness and brawling thestar.com/news/city_hall…

#10yrsago Summary of experimentally verified pricing heuristics cxl.com/blog/pricing-e… 9/
#5yrsago Cyber-arms-dealer #GreyHeron really, really doesn’t want you to know about the connections between them and the disgraced #HackingTeam vice.com/en/article/bjp…

#5yrsago Women (but not men) with high GPAs are less likely to get job offers journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… 10/
#5yrsago A patchwork of state “incompetence” laws cost tens of thousands of Americans their vote every year pewtrusts.org/en/research-an… 11/
#5yrsago Rail barons and the new gilded age: one-percenters travel in style by hitching private “super-luxe” railcars to #Amtrak trains wsj.com/articles/wealt… 12/
#5yrsago Poll: #Facebook is the least trusted custodian of private information, majority of Americans do not trust it reuters.com/article/us-usa…

#5yrsago #ICE uses Facebook’s backend to hunt their prey, with help from #Palantir theintercept.com/2018/03/26/fac… 13/
#5yrsago Invisible, targeted infrared light can fool facial recognition software into thinking anyone is anyone else arxiv.org/pdf/1803.04683… 14/
#5yrsago London police finally admit they fed intel to UK construction cartel to build illegal #blacklist of #labour organisers theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/m…

#5yrsago Services that deliver the same functions as Facebook, for after you #DeleteFacebook wired.com/story/facebook… 15/
#5yrsago Republicans and Trump kill anti-#WageTheft rule, will funnel your taxes to companies that rob and endanger workers chicagotribune.com/business/ct-tr…

#5yrsago UK Information Commissioner’s Office raids #CambridgeAnalytica’s London office dw.com/en/british-aut… 16/
Thursday's threads: The "small nonprofit school" saved in the SVB bailout charges more than Harvard; and more!

17/
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… 18/
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… 19/
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/ 20/
Upcoming appearances:

* Antitrust and Competition Conference - Beyond the Consumer Welfare Standard (#Chicago), 4/20-21
chicagobooth.edu/research/stigl…

* Red Team Blues at @MystGalaxyBooks (#SanDiego), 4/25
mystgalaxy.com/event/42523Doc… 21/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @baybookfest (#Berkeley/#BABF2023), 5/6-7
baybookfest.org/session/cory-d…

* Red Team Blues at @WordfestTweets (#Calgary), 5/11
wordfest.com/2023/event/wor… 22/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* Red Team Blues event with @cubicgarden (Manchester), 5/31
waterstones.com/events/in-conv… 23/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @uclcs Peter Kirstein Lecture, 6/1 (#London):
eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirste… 24/
Recent appearances:

* @culturejourno: What is chokepoint capitalism?
theculturejournalist.substack.com/p/chokepoint-c…

* Techtonic with @markhurst | @WFMU
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cor…

* @RuBlackListNET Privacy Day
25/
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/2023/03/25/con… 26/
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. 27/
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… 28/
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 29/
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). 30/

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More from @doctorow

Feb 9
It's hard to talk about the Epstein class without thinking about "The Economy" (in the sense of a mystical, free-floating entity whose health or sickness determines the outcomes for all of us, whom we must make sacrifices to if we are to prosper).

1/ A detail of a US $100 bill. Jeffrey Epstein's mugshot has been overlaid over Benjamin Franklin's portrait. Peter Theil's portrait has been swapped for the US Dept of Treasury seal. Trump's signature has been swapped for the US Treasurer's signature. The line of zeroes after the 100, top and bottom, has been extended to the edge of the image. The image has been roughed up and recolored in a hellish mix of reds and yellows.  Image: Gage Skidmore (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Thiel_(51876609719).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/2026/02/09/slo…

2/
As nebulous as "The Economy" is as an entity, there's an economic priesthood that claims it can measure and even alter the course of the economy using complex mathematics. We probably won't ever understand their methods, but we can at least follow an indicator or two.

3/
Read 31 tweets
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
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
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
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
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

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