Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Apr 15, 2023 24 tweets 28 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: SVB bailouts for everyone - except affordable housing projects; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/04/15/soc…

#Pluralistic

1/ A glass-and-steel, high-tec...
There's just TWO DAYS left in the @Kickstarter for the audiobook of my anti-finance finance thriller about #SiliconValley scams, *Red Team Blues*. #Audible won't carry my audiobooks because they're #DRM free. Crowdfunding makes them possible!

redteamblues.com

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SVB bailouts for everyone - except affordable housing projects: Even the shareholders got billions.



3/  Image: Lydia (modified) ht...
Hey look at this

* Why Interoperability Would Boost Digital Competition | Chicago Policy Review chicagopolicyreview.org/2023/04/12/cor…

* Ripping Off the Invisible Straitjacket prospect.org/economy/2023-0…

* #Enshittification, accounting… and email? rinesi.substack.com/p/enshittifica…

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#20yrsago @GM apologizes for “freaks and weirdos ride the bus” ads craphound.com/GMresponse.pdf

#20yrsago How #GM destroyed America’s public transit trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.…

#15yrsago Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can’t publish them memex.craphound.com/2008/04/15/ore…

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#15yrsago #RonaldSearle’s original dark, weird and hilarious St Trinian’s comics memex.craphound.com/2008/04/15/ron…

#10yrsago Cops in Somerville, MA: “It would endanger the public to tell you what guns we have” muckrock.com/news/archives/…

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#5yrsago When your dental insurer sends you a “free” #InternetOfShit toothbrush wolfstreet.com/2018/04/14/our…

#5yrsago The US workforce is the most productive, best educated in history and unemployment is at an all-time low, but wages are stagnant theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

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Yesterday's threads: Is antitrust anti-labor? 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…

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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…

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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):

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

* Red Team Blues event with @christreilly (#Nottingham), 5/30
waterstones.com/events/an-even…

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues event with @cubicgarden (Manchester), 5/31
waterstones.com/events/in-conv…

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

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Recent appearances:

* Examining capitalism's chokepoints (@changelog)
changelog.com/podcast/535

* Cory Doctorow knows why monopolies are killing art (@CANADALAND)
canadaland.com/podcast/bonus-…

* Against Enshittification (@trashfuturepod):
trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/against-ensh…

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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/2023/04/15/soc…

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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.

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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-…

21/
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…

22/
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).

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Today's top sources: @davidsirota (twitter.com/davidsirota/).

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More from @doctorow

Nov 18
Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called *Who Censored Roger Rabbit?* which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*

1/ The final scene of Disneyland's 'Roger Rabbit's Toontown Spin,' in which Roger Rabbit is deploying a pair of portable holes; the holes have been replaced with copyright symbols, which are partially cropped.  Image: Ken Lund (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/16775732643/  CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/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/2025/11/18/im-…

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But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length sequels.

3/
Read 52 tweets
Nov 8
A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal documents that reveal that: 10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because...

1/ A tuxedoed figure dramatically shoveing greenish pigs into a tube, from whose other end vomits forth a torrent of packaged goods. He has the head of Mark Zuckerberg's 'metaverse' avatar. He stands upon an endless field of gold coins. The background is the intaglioed upper face of the engraving of Benjamin Franklin on a US$100 bill, roughed up to a dark and sinister hue.
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/2025/11/08/fae…

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...The fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users' lives:



3/reuters.com/investigations…
Read 59 tweets
Nov 7
While I formulated the idea of enshittification to refer to digital platforms and their specific technical characteristics, economics and history, I am very excited to see other theorists extend the idea of enshittification beyond tech and into wider policy realms.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon depicting a muscular worker and a corpulent millionaire squaring off for a fight; the millionaire's head has been replaced with the poop emoji from the cover of 'Enshittification,' its mouth covered in a grawlix-scrawled black bar.
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/2025/11/07/pos…

2/
There's an easy, loose way to do this, which is using "enshittification" to refer to "things generally getting worse." To be clear, I am *fine* with this:



3/pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pea…
Read 89 tweets
Oct 29
Amazon made $35b profit last year. They're celebrating by firing 14k workers (a number they say will rise to 30k). It's the kind of thing Wall St loves. It comes after a string of pronouncements from Andy Jassy about how AI is going to let him fire *tons* of workers.

1/ A black and white image of an armed overseer supervising several chain-gang prisoners in stripes doing forced labor. The overseer's head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The prisoners' heads have been replaced with hackers' hoodies.   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/2025/10/29/wor…

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That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative.

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Read 45 tweets
Oct 11
I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a climate activist. I used to be - I even used to ring strangers' doorbells on behalf of Greenpeace.

1/ A field of utility scale solar. Behind the mountains on the horizon line loom two logos: the original EFF 'clenched fist and lightning bolt' logo and the first Earth Day logo. They are reflected in the solar panels. Behind them roils hellish red-shot smoke.
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/2025/10/11/cyb…

2/
But a quarter of a century ago, I fell in with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and became a lifelong digital rights activist, and switched to cheering on environmental activists from the sidelines of their fight:



3/eff.org
Read 53 tweets
Sep 27
Like you, I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about AI. Like you, I keep getting dragged into AI discussions. Unlike you‡, I spent the summer writing a book on why I'm sick of AI⹋, which @fsgbooks will publish in 2026.

‡probably

⹋"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI"

1/ A Zimbabwean one hundred trillion dollar bill; the bill's iconography have been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' and a stylized, engraving-style portrait of Sam Altman.  Image: TechCrunch https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Altman_-_TechCrunch_Disrupt_SF_2017_(36522988343).jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/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
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/2025/09/27/eco…

2/
A week ago, I turned that book into a speech, which I delivered as the annual Nordlander Memorial Lecture at Cornell, where I'm an AD White Professor-at-Large.

3/
Read 52 tweets

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