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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Apr 12, 2023 • 31 tweets • 36 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in wage-stealing Skinner boxes; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/alg…

#Pluralistic A complex mandala of knobs ...
There's 5 days left in the @Kickstarter for the audiobook of my upcoming anti-finance finance thriller about #SiliconValley scams, *Red Team Blues*. #Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're #DRM free. Crowdfunding makes them possible!

redteamblues.com

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Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in wage-stealing Skinner boxes: Twiddled to death through algorithmic wage discrimination.



3/ Image: Stephen Drake (mod...
Hey look at this

* The Beltway’s Favorite Bogus Budget Model prospect.org/economy/2023-0…

* The brilliant @OhJoySexToy is 10 - they're having a pledgedrive (I backed it!) ohjoysextoy.com/pledgedrive202…

* #AlJaffee, King of the #MadMagazine Fold-In, Dies at 102 nytimes.com/2023/04/10/art…

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#15yrsago Countering the FUD about the “#OrphanWorks” copyright bill (that doesn’t exist) maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html

#15yrsago Cities making #RedLightCameras more profitable by making them less safe web.archive.org/web/2008041501…

5/ Image
#15yrsago EU forced to release list of objects you’re not allowed to take on planes nytimes.com/2008/04/10/bus…

#10yrsago Ordered list of credible fictions wired.com/2013/04/design…

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#10yrsago WA grants MSFT $1.5B tax amnesty, resorts to taxing dance-clubs to make up shortfall jeffreifman.com/2013/04/12/sea…

#5yrsago #Parkland teacher who was open to the idea of arming teachers forgets his loaded Glock in a public bathroom bbc.com/news/world-us-…

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#5yrsago Zuck to Congress: “I’ll get back to you” (42 times) wired.com/story/mark-zuc…

#5yrsago Peak Zuck: “What’s a #ShadowProfile?” techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/fac…

#5yrsago American banks’ secret #subprime exposure stretches into the billions wolfstreet.com/2018/04/11/how…

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#5yrsago Wisconsin clears the way for #Foxconn by bulldozing working peoples’ homes and paying them pennies on the dollar beltmag.com/blighted-by-fo…

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#5yrsago Between Trump, @AjitPai and a GOP Congress, there’s never been a better time for a terrible Sprint/T-Mobile merger techdirt.com/2018/04/11/com…

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#5yrsago @evictionlab: a comprehensive database of every eviction proceeding in America for the past 16 years evictionlab.org

#5yrsago Cities’ emergency sirens will play anything you send them over an unencrypted radio protocol wired.com/story/this-rad…

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#5yrsago #JohnBoehner pledged eternal support for imprisoning marijuana users, now he’s in the #LegalWeed business bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

#5yrsago We won’t have @SpeakerRyan to kick around anymore cnn.com/2018/04/11/pol…

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#5yrsago MIT students create and circulate open source, covert #RFID rings to subvert campus tracking system boingboing.net/wp-content/upl…

#5yrsago More DRM-bustin’ stuff for the #CatalogOfMissingDevices, courtesy of @EFF supporters eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

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#5yrsago How abusive bosses and #Slack led software engineers to #unionize and demand justice jacobin.com/2018/04/laneti…

#1yrago The "#algospeak" dialect pluralistic.net/2022/04/11/coe…

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#1yrago When Automation Becomes Enforcement pluralistic.net/2022/04/11/coe…

#1yrago @DanielPinkwater's "Crazy in Poughkeepsie" pluralistic.net/2022/04/12/klo…

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Monday's threads: Alissa Quart's 'Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream'; and more!



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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…

17/
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…

18/
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/
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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…

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues at @DarkDel (#Burbank), 4/26
darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

* Red Team Blues at @SFPublicLibrary with @Annaleen (#SanFrancisco), 4/30
sfpl.org/events/2023/04…

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

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* @MassyArts Red Team Blues event with @seancranbury (#Vancouver), 5/10
eventbrite.ca/e/red-team-blu…

* Red Team Blues at @WordfestTweets (#Calgary), 5/11
wordfest.com/2023/event/wor…

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @GburgBookFest, 5/20
gaithersburgbookfestival.org/featured_autho…

* 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…

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

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Recent appearances:

* The "Enshittification" of Online Life (@CulturallyDet)
shows.acast.com/6204030b185070…

* @Mindplex_AI


* @HackerRadioShow (@2600)
2600.com/offthehook/202…

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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/2023/04/12/alg…

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 "How To Make a Child-Safe TikTok: Have you tried not spying on kids?"

doctorow.medium.com/how-to-make-a-…

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: mail.flarn.com/mailman/listin…

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/
Today's top sources: @jstruan (superpunch.net). Image

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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

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