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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
May 31, 2023 • 25 tweets • 31 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: To save the news, ban surveillance ads; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/31/con…

#Pluralistic

1/ EFF's banner for the save n...
Tonight (31/5, 1830h) I'm at #Manchester @WaterstonesMCR with *Red Team Blues*, hosted by @cubicgarden:

waterstones.com/events/in-conv…

On 1/6, it's #London for @uclcs's #PeterKirstein Lecture:

eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirste…

Next: #Edinburgh, #London & #Berlin!

redteamblues.com
2/ Image
To save the news, ban surveillance ads: No publisher will ever beat ad-tech at spying, but no tech company will ever understand a publisher's content better than they do.



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

* Neo-#Luddites and #BigTech ft.com/content/f312c9…

* 'Catastrophe Exposure': State Farm Stops Selling Insurance in California gizmodo.com/climate-change…

* Judge Makes History, Holding #BorderSearches of Cell Phones Require a Warrant eff.org/deeplinks/2023…

4/ Image
#20yrsago #Everquest social networks need the Mafia web.archive.org/web/2003030100…

#20yrsago #Streisand suing environmentalists over California Coastline project californiacoastline.org/streisand/laws…

5/ Image
#15yrsago English nurseries fingerprinting parents “for security” news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e…

#15yrsago Happy #FirstSale day! everybodyslibraries.com/2008/06/01/100…

#10yrsago Coloring the #HauntedMansion …gforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2013/06/stroll…

6/ Image
#10yrsago What is the social media style of protest? technosociology.org/?p=1255

#10yrsago Turkish Spring: Taksim #GeziPark protests in Istanbul occupygezipics.tumblr.com/post/518677729…

#10yrsago Mouldering city built of bread is a metaphor for Earth without humans web.archive.org/web/2013072814…

7/ Image
#5yrsago Leaks show that #Google expected its modest #AI-for-#drones business to expand exponentially theintercept.com/2018/05/31/goo…

#5yrsago Vermont offers remote workers a $10,000 subsidy to relocate to the state qz.com/work/1289727/v…

8/ Image
#5yrsago Oregon employers warn that the state has run out of workers who can pass a drug test wweek.com/news/2018/05/3…

#5yrsago Customs stole a US citizen’s life savings when he boarded a domestic flight, now he’s suing to get it back washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…

9/ Image
#5yrsago The most interesting thing about the “#ThanksgivingEffect” study is what it tells us about the limits of data anonymization wired.com/story/the-than…

10/ Image
#5yrsago #Uganda’s unenforceable #SocialMediaTax is augmented by a biometric requirement for SIM card purchases globalvoices.org/2018/06/01/net…

#5yrsago #Vanuatu will use drones to deliver #vaccines across its remote chain of tiny islands spectrum.ieee.org/drone-delivery…

11/ Image
#5yrsago Spain’s #austerity-loving, authoritarian Prime Minister loses no-confidence vote and is replaced by a socialist independent.co.uk/news/world/eur…

12/ Image
#5yrsago At ex-CIA panelist’s insistence, #OxfordUnion reneges on promise to upload video of #whistleblowing debate dailypublic.com/articles/05312…

#1yrago #Inflation is caused by too little capacity: Not too much money pluralistic.net/2022/06/01/fac…

13/ Image
Yesterday's threads: Ian McDonald's "Hopeland"; and more!



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

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

15/
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…

16/
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/

17/
Upcoming appearances:

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

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

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

18/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @rightscon, "#Interoperability: from buzzword to a map of solutions," Jun 6 (#CostaRica):
rightscon.org/program/

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

19/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

20/ Image
Recent appearances:

* How To Save News Media From Our Tech Overlords (@CANADALAND)
canadaland.com/podcast/888-ho…

* Most AI is not artificial or intelligent (with @jamesbridle)


* @machinekillspod
soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…

21/ 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/2023/05/31/con…

22/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - and previews of upcoming columns and exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

My latest Medium column is "Ideas Lying Around: Milton Friedman was a monster, but he wasn't wrong about this"

doctorow.medium.com/ideas-lying-ar…

23/
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…

24/
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 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
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

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