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!
#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!
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."
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?"
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!
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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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?*
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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:
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...
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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:
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.
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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:
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:
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.
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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:
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.
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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:
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:
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"
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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:
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.
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