Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 30, 2023 27 tweets 29 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: We should ban TikTok('s surveillance); and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik…

#Pluralistic 1/ A modified vintage editorial cartoon. Uncle Sam peeks out ov
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:

redteamblues.com 2/
We should ban TikTok('s surveillance): And Google's, Apple's, and Facebook's surveillance, too.

3/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
Hey look at this

* The Three-Legged Stool: A Manifesto for a Smaller, Denser Internet publicinfrastructure.org/2023/03/29/the…

* A misleading open letter about sci-fi #AI dangers ignores the real risks aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/a-misleading… 4/
#20yrsago @Weezer’s symbolic value web.archive.org/web/2019051902…

#15yrsago Griefers deface #epilepsy message-board with seizure-inducing animations wired.com/2008/03/hacker… 5/
#15yrsago London’s #Spitalfields market: shoot the architecture, we take away your camera memex.craphound.com/2008/03/30/rem…

#15yrsago Remixed generic thrift-store clothes memex.craphound.com/2008/03/30/rem… 6/
#10yrsago Embarrassingly obvious undercover cops take to Twitter looking for #HouseShows slate.com/news-and-polit…

#10yrsago Mr Unpronounceable Adventures, spectacularly weird graphic novel in a Lovecraftian/Burroughsian vein memex.craphound.com/2013/03/30/mr-… 7/
#10yrsago Group whose #Wikipedia entry was deleted for non-notability threatens lawsuit against Wikipedian who participated in the discussion mako.cc/copyrighteous/…

#5yrsago Georgia criminalizes routine #SecurityResearch eff.org/deeplinks/2018… 8/
#5yrsago Trump administration will require every visitor to the USA to divulge all social media identities bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

#5yrsago Facebook deathwatch: a decade ago, it was impossible to imagine the fall of #Myspace memex.craphound.com/2018/03/30/fac… 9/
#5yrsago #Oklahoma #teachers walk out, sensing weakness from GOP legislators who caved on taxing the oil industry jacobin.com/2018/03/oklaho…

#5yrsago #Referendums and low-engagement voters produce catastrophic outcomes (but what about corruption?) timharford.com/2018/03/how-re… 10/
#5yrsago Five years after Google conquered and abandoned #RSS, the news-reader ecosystem is showing green shoots wired.com/story/rss-read…

#5yrsago “Kingpin: The Hunt for El Chapo”: Game designers review the #CIA’s declassified tabletop training game vice.com/en/article/3kj… 11/
#1yrago Hackers' code-free exploit: pretend to be cops pluralistic.net/2022/03/30/law… 12/
Yesterday's threads: Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy; and more!

13/
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… 14/
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… 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:

* 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… 17/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues at @darkdel (#Burbank), Apr 26
darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

* @baybookfest (#Berkeley/#BABF2023), 5/6-7
baybookfest.org/session/cory-d… 18/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #OSSummit (#Vancouver), 5/10
events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-su…

* Red Team Blues at @WordfestTweets (#Calgary), 5/11
wordfest.com/2023/event/wor… 19/
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… 20/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @uclcs Peter Kirstein Lecture, 6/1 (#London):
eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirste… 21/
Recent appearances:

* Is Copyright Good For Authors? (@TWiT)


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

* Techtonic with @markhurst | @WFMU
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/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/2023/03/30/tik… 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. 24/
My latest @Medium column is "Silicon Valley Noir: Red Team Blues and the Role of Bitterness in Technothrillers"

doctorow.medium.com/silicon-valley… 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

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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