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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
May 25, 2023 • 35 tweets • 47 min read • Read on X
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Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: To save the news, shatter ad-tech; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/str…

#Pluralistic

1/ EFF's banner for the save n...
I'm at @HTLGIFestival in #HayOnWye:

28/5 1130h: The AI Enigma
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-ai-…

29/5 12h: Danger and Desire at the Frontier
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-dan…

Next, #Oxford!

29/5: @blackwelloxford's 1930h w/@TimHarford:
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro…

2/ Image
To save the news, shatter ad-tech: Structural separation will help the news claim their fair share.



3/ Image: EFF https://www.eff....
Hey look at this

* There's No Antitrust Exception to Statutory Interpretation promarket.org/2023/05/19/the…

* @Bandcamp workers have voted to unionize bandcampunited.org/updates

* Glorious new @foliosociety edition of Hitchhiker's Guide gizmodo.com/hitchhikers-gu…

4/ Image
#20yrsago Turn a floppy into a Klingon ship memex.craphound.com/2003/05/25/tur…

#20yrsago “Facts” about printing and book-design nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ar…

#20yrsago Dear Hollywood: neener neener web.archive.org/web/2003052417…

5/ Image
#20yrsago @EFF on #TotalInformationAwareness web.archive.org/web/2003052823…

#15yrsago Villagers from three continents will confront @Chevron execs at annual meeting web.archive.org/web/2008052012…

#15yrsago Former @RIAA CEO is the @HuffPost’s new political director wired.com/2008/05/the-hu…

6/ Image
#15yrsago Canadian spooks think punk band “#SuicidePilots” are terrorists web.archive.org/web/2008053002…

#15yrsago #Punk House: communal homes of the anarcho-syndicalist lifestyle web.archive.org/web/2008052617…

#10yrsago Laptop w/thermite self-destruct mechanism hackaday.com/2013/05/23/lap…

7/ Image
#10yrsago 3D-printable model of the cover of #JoyDivision’s “#UnknownPleasures” web.archive.org/web/2013060716…

#10yrsago Game designer creates a never-played-by-humans titanium boardgame and buries it for play in 2700 years polygon.com/2013/3/28/4157…

8/ Image
#10yrsago Hardwood #Escher tesselated interlocking lizard tiles evolulignum.blogspot.com/2011/02/diseno…

#10yrsago How London cops use social media to spy on protest movements itnews.com.au/news/police-ta…

#10yrsago Vermont passes anti-#PatentTroll law cbc.ca/news/business/…

9/ Image
#10yrsago #RIAA losing money, firing employees, giving execs raises torrentfreak.com/riaa-makes-dra…

#10yrsago Forging £1 coins is apparently profitable bbc.com/news/uk-englan…

10/ Image
#10yrsago Globe and Mail: Toronto Mayor #RobFord’s family are, variously, a drug kingpin, a gangster, and affiliated with the KKK theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/g…

#10yrsago Lamps made from cassette tapes cassetteisnotdead.com

11/ Image
#5yrsago A guide to the valuable electronics inside #Bird’s illegal-in-San Francisco scooters jwz.org/blog/2018/05/l…

#5yrsago #Facebook is worth much less to its users than search and email, but it keeps a larger share of the value timharford.com/2018/05/how-mu…

12/ Image
#5yrsago The paleocomputing miracle of the 76477 #SpaceInvaders sound effects chip righto.com/2018/05/inside…

#5yrsago Texas high-school principal fires award-winning, nationally famous journalism teacher to rein in critical student newspaper reporting splc.org/2018/05/0522pr…

13/ Image
#5yrsago 500,000 home routers have been infected with #VPNFilter, malware that steals data and bricks devices arstechnica.com/information-te…

#5yrsago The #FBI’s mountain of uncrackable #crimephones was nearly entirely imaginary emptywheel.net/2018/05/23/did…

14/ Image
#5yrsago A free internet is a configurable internet oreilly.com/content/cory-d…

#5yrsago The Democratic candidate for the Georgia governorship is a Black woman running on an “unapologetic progressive” platform web.archive.org/web/2018052306…

15/ Image
#5yrsago A hard look at the wastefulness of “#ProofOfWork,” the idea at the core of the blockchain davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/201…

#5yrsago @cstross on the “soft genocide” of eugenics-tainted, alt-right climate dystopia antipope.org/charlie/blog-s…

16/ Image
#5yrsago @ComputerHistory Museum just published the sourcecode for #Eudora computerhistory.org/blog/the-eudor…

#5yrsago The company that made #GrenfellTower’s flammable, poisonous insulation used dangerous lies to make hundreds of sales independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

17/ Image
#5yrsago Court rules that Trump can’t block people on Twitter eff.org/press/releases…

#5yrsago @comcast’s $1.2b/year #ModemRental scam picks your pocket, then exposes you to hackers, stalkers and identity thieves vice.com/en/article/mbk…

18/ Image
#5yrsago Cable industry attains the impossible: makes Americans hate it even more vice.com/en/article/7xm…

#5yrsago Mining the #PanamaPapers and other leaks to reveal the hidden looting of West Africa by its corrupt elite icij.org/investigations…

19/ Image
#5yrsago Why “#leftism” is parting ways with “liberalism” and what it means for the future of American politics nymag.com/intelligencer/…

#5yrsago Debugging #AI is a “hard problem” ai.stanford.edu/~zayd/why-is-m…

20/ Image
#5yrsago FBI sinkholes a key domain used by the malware that infected 500,000 home routers, declares partial victory and Russian attribution thedailybeast.com/exclusive-fbi-…

#5yrsago Thoughtful, devastating critique of #JordanPeterson’s “12 Rules for Life” web.archive.org/web/2021031013…

21/
#1yrago @HSBC: "Who cares if Miami is underwater?" pluralistic.net/2022/05/24/mor…

#1yrago #SPACs were hugely successful (for banks) pluralistic.net/2022/05/23/you…

#1yrago #KimStanleyRobinson's "The High Sierra" pluralistic.net/2022/05/25/the…

23/ Image
#1yrago Talking with Kim Stanley Robinson about "The High Sierra" pluralistic.net/2022/05/25/the…

24/ Image
Monday's threads: Justice Warriors; and more!



25/ Image
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…

26/
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/

27/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

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

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

* Red Team Blues event with @TimHarford (#Oxford), 5/29
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro…

28/ Image
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…

29/ 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…

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

30/ Image
Recent appearances:

* @machinekillspod
soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…

* How Big Tech Captured Culture (@TheAgenda)


* Enshittification Part 3: Saving The Internet (@onthemedia)
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…

31/ 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/2023/05/25/str…

32/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - and previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

33/
My latest @Medium column is "Rich People's Gain is Worth Less Than Poor People's Pain: A new way to think about utilitarianism, courtesy of the Office of Management and Budget"

doctorow.medium.com/rich-peoples-g…

34/
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…

35/
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
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 11
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.

1/ A field of utility scale solar. Behind the mountains on the horizon line loom two logos: the original EFF 'clenched fist and lightning bolt' logo and the first Earth Day logo. They are reflected in the solar panels. Behind them roils hellish red-shot smoke.
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/2025/10/11/cyb…

2/
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:



3/eff.org
Read 53 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 27
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"

1/ A Zimbabwean one hundred trillion dollar bill; the bill's iconography have been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' and a stylized, engraving-style portrait of Sam Altman. Image: TechCrunch https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Altman_-_TechCrunch_Disrupt_SF_2017_(36522988343).jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/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
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/2025/09/27/eco…

2/
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.

3/
Read 52 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 24
Billionaires don't think we're real. How could they? How could you inflict the vast misery that generates billions while still feeling even a twinge of empathy for the sufferer in your extractive enterprise. No wonder Elon Musk calls us "NPCs":



1/ pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/see… An oil painting of a French king atop a throne, draped in sumptuous robes. His head has been replaced with a screaming, toothless man wearing a top-hat. Over his shoulder looms 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/2025/09/24/rob…

2/
Ever notice how people get palpably stupider as they gain riches and power? Musk went from a cringe doofus to a world-class credulous dolt, and it seems like he loses five IQ points for every $10b that's added to his net worth.

3/
Read 26 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 23
I'm only a few chapters into Bill McKibben's stupendous new book *Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization* and I already know it's going to change my outlook forever:



1/ billmckibben.com/books/here-com…A rooftop solar installation. Behind the roof rages a blazing forest fire. Reflected in the solar panels is the poop emoji from the cover of my book 'Enshittification,' which has angry eyebrows and a black, grawlix-filled bar across its mouth." Image: Bastique (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Panels_on_Church_Roof_full.jpg CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/2025/09/23/our…

2/
McKibben is one of our preeminent climate writers and activists, noteworthy for his informed and brilliant explanations of the technical limits - and possibilities - of various climate interventions, and for his lifelong organizing work.

3/
Read 80 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 22
One of the dumbest, shrewdest tricks corporate America ever pulled was teaching us all to reflexively say, "If a corporation blocks your speech, that doesn't violate the First Amendment and therefore it's not censorship":



1/ pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes…Two figures in royal robes seated back to back atop a pile of gold bars. One wears a tophat, the other, a crown in the form of a gilded crown. A forest of angled broadcast towers sits behind them. The sky is overshadowed by thunderheads.
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/2025/09/22/one…

2/
Censorship isn't limited to government action: it's the act of preventing a message from a willing speaker from reaching a willing listener. The fact that it's censorship doesn't (necessarily) mean that it's illegitimate or bad.

3/
Read 62 tweets

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