Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Apr 12, 2023 31 tweets 36 min read Read on X
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

2/ Image
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…

4/ Image
#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…

6/ Image
#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-…

7/ Image
#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…

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

9/ Image
#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…

10/ Image
#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…

11/ Image
#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…

12/ Image
#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…

13/ Image
#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…

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

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

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



16/ Image
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/
19/ Image
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…

20/ Image
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…

21/ Image
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…

22/ Image
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…

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

24/ Image
Recent appearances:

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

* @Mindplex_AI


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

25/ Image
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

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

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

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(