Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
May 15, 2023 36 tweets 45 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Ireland's privacy regulator is a gamekeeper-turned-poacher; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/fin…

#Pluralistic

1/ A toddler playing with toy ...
Ireland's privacy regulator is a gamekeeper-turned-poacher: Dublin is a made town.



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

* Behold! My next book, "The Lost Cause," (11/23)

* #HP disables customers’ printers if they use rivals ink telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer… (h/t @slashdot)

* Can a #WritersStrike Save Hollywood from #Monopoly? mattstoller.substack.com/p/can-a-writer…

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#15yrsago Canada’s #DMCA Minister weasels and fumbles when asked about his copyright plans

#15yrsago HOWTO keep your laptop’s data out of customs’ hands theguardian.com/technology/200…

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#15yrsago #UniversalMusic: when we get hit with copyright damages, that’s “unconstitutionally excessive” arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#10yrsago Inside the world’s largest #GhostMall, America finds schadenfreude and comfort for its fears of Chinese century edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2…

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#10yrsago #Osaka’s fascist mayor defends WWII policy of sexual enslavement: “a #ComfortWomen system is necessary. Anyone can understand that.” bbc.com/news/world-asi…

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#10yrsago Highest-paid state employees: usually a school sports coach, sometimes a med school dean deadspin.com/infographic-is…

#10yrsago Canadian govt turns the national science agenda over to incumbent big businesses theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/…

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#10yrsago Abusive restaurateurs stage spectacular social media meltdown buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/…

#10yrsago #PirateBay co-founder #PeterSunde is a candidate for #PirateParty MEP in Finland torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-cof…

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#10yrsago Canadian anti-piracy bounty hunters ripped off photos for their website vice.com/en/article/ppq…

#10yrsago #PrinceCharles’s housing charity gets into bed with torturing Bahraini dictatorship theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/14…

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#10yrsago Rich New Yorkers hire disabled “guides” to #DisneyWorld in order to skip lines nypost.com/2013/05/14/ric…

#10yrsago Odd Duck: great picture book about eccentricity and ducks memex.craphound.com/2013/05/15/odd…

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#5yrsago @scalzi wrote a science fiction story about the #DMCA to help @EFF’s #RightToRepair campaign eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

#5yrsago A dozen googlers quit over Google’s military #drone contract arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/0…

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#5yrsago Kansas finally bans cops from having sex with detainees, people undergoing questioning, witnesses, and people they pull over during traffic stops kansas.com/news/politics-…

#5yrsago EFF has comprehensively killed the bullshit #PodcastingPatent eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

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#5yrsago Judge to Facebook: stop deliberately misinterpreting my privacy rulings bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

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#5yrsago How the “global super-rich” have honeycombed London’s posh neighbourhoods with sub-basements, sub-sub-basements, and sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-basements theguardian.com/money/2018/may…

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#5yrsago #Efail: researchers reveal worrying, unpatched vulnerabilities in encrypted email efail.de/#faq

#5yrsago UK government will deputise newsagents to collect and retain identity documents from the nation’s pornography viewers independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

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#5yrsago London cops are using an unregulated, 98% inaccurate #FacialRecognition tech independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

#5yrsago A vital guide to the Canadian encryption debate citizenlab.ca/wp-content/upl…

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#5yrsago Realtor claims #Uber and #Lyft erode the premium homebuyers pay for good public transit links businessinsider.com/uber-and-lyft-…

#5yrsago The CIA is psyopsing America to help torturer #GinaHaspel get the job of #CIA boss nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/…

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#5yrsago To understand the future sainthood of Donald J Trump, just look at George W Bush washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl…

#5yrsago Profiles of #FlatEarthers: report from the front lines of weaponized media literacy vice.com/en/article/zm8…

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#5yrsago Exit West: beautifully wrought novel about refugees, mobility and borders memex.craphound.com/2018/05/14/exi…

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Saturday's threads: 'Revenge of the Linkdumps; and more!

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/1…

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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…

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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 (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…

* Otherland event for Red Team Blues, 6/8 (#Berlin)
otherland-berlin.de/de/event-detai…

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Recent appearances:

* Chokepoint Capitalism's Arts Stranglehold (@USNewsBeat)
radiopublic.com/news-beat-GKkd…

* Enshittification 2: The Mechanisms That Curdled Big Tech (@onthemedia)
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…

* Slurry W/The Turd On Top (@JordanJesseGo)
maximumfun.org/episodes/jorda…

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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/2023/05/15/fin…

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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.

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My latest @Medium column is "Google's AI Hype Circle: We have to do Bard because everyone else is doing AI; everyone else is doing AI because we're doing Bard"

doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hyp…

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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).

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

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More from @doctorow

Feb 9
It's hard to talk about the Epstein class without thinking about "The Economy" (in the sense of a mystical, free-floating entity whose health or sickness determines the outcomes for all of us, whom we must make sacrifices to if we are to prosper).

1/ A detail of a US $100 bill. Jeffrey Epstein's mugshot has been overlaid over Benjamin Franklin's portrait. Peter Theil's portrait has been swapped for the US Dept of Treasury seal. Trump's signature has been swapped for the US Treasurer's signature. The line of zeroes after the 100, top and bottom, has been extended to the edge of the image. The image has been roughed up and recolored in a hellish mix of reds and yellows.  Image: Gage Skidmore (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Thiel_(51876609719).jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/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/2026/02/09/slo…

2/
As nebulous as "The Economy" is as an entity, there's an economic priesthood that claims it can measure and even alter the course of the economy using complex mathematics. We probably won't ever understand their methods, but we can at least follow an indicator or two.

3/
Read 31 tweets
Jan 26
The best summary of Trump's trade "philosophy" comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all.

1/ A detail from a US $100 bill. The bill has been tinted orange. Ben Franklin's face has been replaced with an indistinct blur surmounted by Trump's hair. The lettering in the scrollwork beneath the portrait reads 'TRUMP.' The '100's have been turned into '000's. The writing 'ONE HUNDRED' now reads 'NONE HUNDRED.' The series issue has been changed to '47.' The Secretary of the Treasury's signature has been replaced with Trump's.
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/2026/01/26/i-d…

2/
After all, the global system of trade was designed and enforced by American officials, especially the US Trade Representative.

3/
Read 84 tweets
Jan 17
Ireland is a tax haven. In the 1970s and 1980s, life in the civil-war wracked country was hard - between poverty, scarce employment and civil unrest, the country hemorrhaged its best and brightest. As the saying went, "Ireland's top export is the Irish."

1/ A green Irish pillarbox, standing before a verdant, rolling Irish countryside. The pillarbox is emblazoned with the poop emoji from the cover of 'Enshittification,' with angry eyebrows and a grawlix-scrawled black bar over its mouth.  Image: Stuart Caie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_aperture_Irish_pillar_box_in_Dublin_2008.jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en  --  Sourabh.biswas003 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PXL_20231216_105219694-Ballygalley_Larne_UK-_Irish_Countryside-Northern_Ireland_06.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 ht...
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/2026/01/17/eri…

2/
In desperation, Ireland's political class hit on a wild gambit: they would weaponize Ireland's sovereignty in service to corporate tax evasion.

3/
Read 35 tweets
Jan 6
Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities.

1/ A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'  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/2026/01/06/100…

2/
AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:



Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets.

3/pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/eco…
Read 48 tweets
Dec 16, 2025
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, 2025
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

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