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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
May 1, 2023 • 34 tweets • 43 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: When you hear "fintech," think "unlicensed bank"; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usu…

#Pluralistic

1/ A stately, columnated bank ...
Tomorrow (May 2) at 7PM, I'll be at the Cedar Hills Crossing (#PDX) @Powells with @waxy:

powells.com/book/red-team-…

2/ Image
When you hear "fintech," think "unlicensed bank": "...with a computer."



3/ Image: Andre Carrotflower ...
Hey look at this

* Fuck the Monarchy antipope.org/charlie/blog-s…

* Punctuation Personified (1824) publicdomainreview.org/collection/pun…

* Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues: a refreshingly hopeful finance thriller about cryptocurrency boingboing.net/2023/04/27/cor…

4/ Image
#20yrsago Corporate lobbyists get US into treaties that ban #DMCA reform web.archive.org/web/2003123103…

#15yrsago Musicians tricked into appearing in anti-piracy propaganda movie theage.com.au/technology/mus…

5/ Image
#15yrsago HOWTO keep your laptop from being searched at the border (it’s hard) eff.org/deeplinks/2008…

#15yrsago EFF and security experts to Congress: We need hearings on Customs #LaptopSeizures and snooping eff.org/press/archives…

6/ Image
#10yrsago @mozilla to #FinSpy: stop disguising your “lawful interception” spyware as Firefox wired.com/2013/04/finfis…

#10yrsago @EFF challenges bogus #3DPrinting patents eff.org/deeplinks/2013…

#10yrsago How Congress flies bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

7/ Image
#10yrsago Necessary Evil – a triumphant end to the Milkweed Triptych where Nazi X-Men fight English warlocks memex.craphound.com/2013/04/30/nec…

#10yrsago What’s big, corrupt, terrifying and worse than #ACTA? #TPP. Here we go again! memex.craphound.com/2013/04/30/wha…

8/ Image
#10yrsago Teaching TCP/IP headers with #legos righteousit.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/pra…

#10yrsago Future Tense: @nealstephenson and @superwuster talk future, sf and tech slate.com/articles/podca…

9/ Image
#10yrsago #SOPA’s daddy is now in charge of government science funding, and he hates peer-review science.org/content/articl…

#5yrsago @hopelarson’s “All Summer Long,” lively YA graphic novel about tween friendships, rock and roll, and being yourself memex.craphound.com/2018/05/01/hop…

10/ Image
#5yrsago Speaking in my professional capacity as a dystopian science fiction writer… memex.craphound.com/2018/05/01/spe…

#5yrsago It’s back! British Conservative politicians’ habitual “go ahead, kick me in the balls, I can take it” pose theguardian.com/politics/2018/…

11/ Image
#5yrsago McDonald’s workers across the UK are striking theguardian.com/business/2018/…

#5yrsago #GeorgeMason economics department admits it sold hiring control to anonymous, super-rich donors crookedtimber.org/2018/05/01/the…

12/ Image
#5yrsago Thousands of prominent AI researchers tell Nature they won’t have anything to do with its new paywalled journal openaccess.engineering.oregonstate.edu

#5yrsago Parliament to Zuck: show up or else theverge.com/2018/5/1/17306…

13/ Image
#5yrsago Right wing snowflakes moaning about #MichelleWolf’s hilarious White House Press Corps monologue show us real “PC” currentaffairs.org/2018/04/what-b…`

14/ Image
#5yrsago The UK is finally cracking down on its Russian money-laundry, but hasn’t hired people to do the job heraldscotland.com/news/16192718.…

15/ Image
#5yrsago The UK’s surveillance regulator changed names and dropped its domain, which is now squatted by a premature ejaculation scammer vice.com/en/article/ywx…

#5yrsago In just 7 months, the US #PublicDomain will get its first infusion since 1998 theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

16/ Image
#5yrsago Debullshitifying Microsoft’s smear campaign against the recycler it helped send to prison techcrunch.com/2018/04/27/mic…

#5yrsago A #LaTeX mod to draw coffee cup rings on your technical papers legacy.hanno-rein.de/hanno-rein.de/…

17/ Image
#5yrsago For $4k/year, Moscow cyber-arms-dealer Gleg will sell you 25 0-day bugs for attacking hospitals vice.com/en/article/j5a…

#1yrago Disney's writer #WageTheft, a year on pluralistic.net/2022/04/30/dis…

18/ Image
Saturday's threads: The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets; and more!



19/ Image
My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

20/
My latest nonfiction 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…

21/
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/

22/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* Red Team Blues at @Powells with @waxy (#PDX/Cedar Hills Crossing), 5/2
powells.com/book/red-team-…

* Red Team Blues at @BooksIncStores with @mkapor (#MountainView), 5/5
booksinc.net/event/cory-doc…

23/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

24/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* @GburgBookFest, (#Gaithersburg) 5/20
gaithersburgbookfestival.org/featured_autho…

* @publicknowledge Emerging Tech keynote (#DC), 5/22
eventbrite.com/e/emerging-tec…

25/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #WEPFest with @RonDeibert, @hockeyesque and @DrNancyOlivieri (#Toronto), 5/23
westendphoenix.com/shop/wepfest-s…

* @HTLGIFestival (#Hay), 5/28
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-ai-…

* @HTLGIFestival (#Hay), 5/29
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-dan…

26/ Image
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…

27/ Image
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…

* @CymeraF, 6/3 (#Edinburgh)
cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-event…

28/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues with @Marthalanefox at the @bl, 6/5 (#London):
bl.uk/events/an-even…

* @republica keynote, 6/7 (#Berlin)
re-publica.com/de/news/rp23-k…

29/ Image
Recent appearances:

* The Next Chapter/CBC
cbc.ca/player/play/21…

* @mediadeathcult


* Slingshot
thesling.org/video/slingsho…

30/ 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/2023/05/01/usu…

31/
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.

My latest Medium column is "Weak Institutions: It's not a fair fight"

doctorow.medium.com/weak-instituti…

32/
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…

33/
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).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 9
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 20
Well, this fucking *sucks*. A federal judge has decided that Meta is not a monopolist, and that its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were not an illegal bid to secure and maintain a monopoly:



1/ gizmodo.com/meta-learns-th…The classic Puck Magazine editorial cartoon entitled 'The King of All Commodities,' depicting John D Rockefeller as a man with grotesquely tiny body and a gigantic head, wearing a crown emblazoned with the names of the industrial concerns he owned. Rockefeller's head has been replaced with that of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar. The names of the industrial concerns have been replaced with the wordmarks for Scale AI, Instagram, Oculus and Whatsapp. The dollar-sign at the crown's pinnacle has been replaced with the Facebook 'f' logo. The chain around Rockefeller's neck sports the charm th...
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/2025/11/20/if-…

2/
This is particularly galling because Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly, explicitly declared that these mergers were undertaken *to reduce competition*, which is the only circumstance in which pro-monopoly economists and lawyers say that mergers should be blocked.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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-…

2/
But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length sequels.

3/
Read 52 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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…

2/
...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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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…

2/
That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative.

3/
Read 45 tweets

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