Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
May 8, 2023 35 tweets 49 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: California to smash prison e-profiteers; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/08/cap…

#Pluralistic

1/ A prison cell. Behind the b...
This Weds (May 10), I'm in #Vancouver for a keynote at the #OSSummit:

events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-su…

And a book event at #HeritageHall:

eventbrite.ca/e/red-team-blu…

On Thu (May 11), I'm in #Calgary for @WordfestTweets:

wordfest.com/2023/event/wor…

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California to smash prison e-profiteers: The Public Utility Commission to the rescue!



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Hey look at this

* The Cult of the Founders crookedtimber.org/2023/05/06/the…

* #TurboTax to begin payouts after it ‘cheated’ customers, New York AG says msn.com/en-us/news/us/…

* Cory Doctorow Explains Why Big Tech Is Making the Internet Terrible jacobin.com/2023/05/cory-d…

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#20yrsago #LinkedIn: #Friendster without the gonad-centrism memex.craphound.com/2003/05/07/lin…

#20yrsago @future_of_music coalition open letter on media consolidation web.archive.org/web/2003050402…

#20yrsago The Web makes writing better web.archive.org/web/2003050922…

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#20yrsago A (dangerous) primer on #HardwareHacking hackingthexbox.com

#15yrsago House passes bill that will let the @RIAA take away your home for downloading music govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BI…

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#15yrsago Using a record-cutter to turn old CDs into 45RPM singles web.archive.org/web/2008050202…

#15yrsago @BBC sends legal threat over fan’s #DoctorWho knitting patterns openrightsgroup.org/blog/bbc-remov…

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#15yrsago Band “shoots” video by sending #DataProtectionAct requests to #CCTVs that caught them performing web.archive.org/web/2008051019…

#15yrsago RIAA says #DRM is coming back — in the future, you won’t own music arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

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#15yrsago UK blacklist of “suspicious” store clerks includes people never charged or convicted news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/m…

#15yrsago HOWTO detect hidden video cameras instructables.com/How-to-locate-…

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#10yrsago #PrendaLaw judge says porno #CopyrightTrolls are frauds, identity thieves; $80K in fines and disbarment pending arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#10yrago @TheOnion gets hacked by Syrian propagandists, responds with funny article theonion.com/syrian-electro…

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#10yrsago @superwuster and I talk networks, policy and the future slate.com/articles/podca…

#10yrsago Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong: YA graphic novel about robots, romance and school elections memex.craphound.com/2013/05/07/not…

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#10yrsago Content barons are the richest CEOs nytimes.com/2013/05/06/bus…

#10yrsago Hedge fund managers suck at making money (for you) cnbc.com/id/100718881

#10yrsago HOWTO build a working digital computer out of paperclips (and stuff) memex.craphound.com/2013/05/08/how…

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#10yrsago #Disney files trademark application for “Dia de Los Muertos” web.archive.org/web/2013050821…

#10yrsago Faced with excommunication threat, Irish PM explains #SeparationOfChurchAndState to Cardinal irishtimes.com/news/politicia…

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#5yrsago Georgia’s governor has vetoed #SB315, the state’s catastrophically stupid cybersecurity law eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

#5yrsago @Equifax finally publishes a tally of what got breached when it left 146.6 million credit files unsecured arstechnica.com/information-te…

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#5yrsago Over 55,000 security camera DVRs are vulnerable to an exploit so simple it fits in a tweet bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/…

#5yrsago #JeffSessions tells border guards to separate children from their parents alternet.org/2018/05/jeff-s…

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#5yrsago An upcoming Supreme Court ruling could force all workers into #ForcedArbitration, deprived of the right to class lawsuits epi.org/blog/the-supre…

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#5yrsago Welsh police deployed #FacialRecognition tech with a 92% false positive rate, but they’re sure it’s fine arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#5yrsago Should I use an algorithm here? @EFF’s 5-point checklist eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

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#5yrsago Google announces ad-ban for sleazy #BailBonds companies arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#5yrsago AT&T to the Supreme Court: “Fuck the FTC” arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#5yrsago Here’s why everyone in the world just emailed you a new privacy policy eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

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#5yrsago #DonaldTrump is a pathogen evolved to thrive in an attention-maximization ecosystem locusmag.com/2018/05/cory-d…

#5yrsago The BBC on #Afrofuturism bbc.com/news/newsbeat-…

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#5yrsago Torturer and coverup artist #GinaHaspel tried to bow out of CIA Directorship to avoid Senate questioning washingtonpost.com/politics/gina-…

#1yrago #Safegraph follows people into #abortion clinics and then sells the data: And then they lie about it pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/saf…

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Saturday's threads: Hollywood is the single best example of mature labor power in America; On the Media on the enshittification (pt 1); and more!



22/  Image: LA Times https://co...
My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

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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…

24/
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 (cont'd):

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

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

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

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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…

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Recent appearances:

* @MarkTLive


* Enshittification Part 1: Why Every Platform Goes Bad (@onthemedia)
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…

* Author Talk: Cory Doctorow and @Annaleen in Conversation/@SFPublicLibrary


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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/2023/05/08/cap…

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If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - and previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

My latest Medium column is "Don’t Curb Your Enthusiasm: Marcus Yallow + 50 Years = Marty Hench?"

doctorow.medium.com/dont-curb-your…

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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…

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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

Dec 16
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
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/2025/12/16/k-s…

2/
When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

3/
Read 86 tweets
Dec 13
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
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/2025/12/13/unc…

2/
It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

3/
Read 68 tweets
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
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
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
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

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