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…

33/
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…

34/
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

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

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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

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