Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
May 31, 2023 25 tweets 31 min read Read on X
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
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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…

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

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

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#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…

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#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…

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#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…

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#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…

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#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…

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

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#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…

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



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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…

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…

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

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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…

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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/2023/05/31/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

Jul 30
Delta's announced new surveillance pricing: they're feeding an AI your nonconsensually harvested personal info that data-brokers and credit bureaux hold to predict the maximum you're willing to pay, and then price their tickets accordingly:



1/ fortune.com/2025/07/16/del…Hieronymus Bosch's 'The Conjurer,' which depicts a sleight-of-hand artist doing a cup-and-balls routine for a group of amazed yokels. It has been altered. The head of the conjurer has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' He wears a Delta Airlines logo over his breast. The table on which the cup-and-balls game is playing out sports a crashed jet in Delta livery, smoke rising from the wreckage.   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/2025/07/30/eff…

2/
Data-brokers sell all kinds of data, from the "legitimate" info about everywhere your car's been, to everywhere place the Bluetooth radios on your phone and headphones has been, to everything you've bought, to every sit you've visited and every search you've performed.

3/
Read 61 tweets
Jul 22
Ever notice how many right wing influencers are on the grift?

1/ A carny barker at a podium, gesticulating with a MAGA cap. He wears a Klan hood, and his podium features products from Nu-skin, Amway and Herbalife. Behind him is an oil-painted scene of a steamship with a Trump Tower logo, at a pier in flames.
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/2025/07/22/all…

2/
Like Alex Jones - that guy is basically Gwyneth Paltrow for conservative bros, selling the same "wellness" crap to a male audience (and not for nothing, Paltrow's victims are reliable boosters for RFK Jr's MAHA movement):



3/theweek.com/speedreads/709…
Read 66 tweets
Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jul 1
If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

1/ A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.   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/2025/06/30/acc…

2/
Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jun 28
In 2014, I read a political science paper that nearly convinced me to quit my lifelong career as an activist: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," published in *Perspectives on Politics*:



1/ cambridge.org/core/journals/…An inflatable pig balloon against a blue sky, bearing the Zohran for Mayor logo. The Chrysler Building sits to one side.  Image: Frank Vincentz (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geeste_-_Biener_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_Speicherbecken_-_Drachenfest_38_ies.jpg  Petri Krohn https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_building-_top.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/2025/06/28/mam…

2/
The paper's authors are Martin Gilens, a UCLA professor of Public Policy; and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, a professor of Decision Making. Gilens and Page studied a representative sample of 1,779 policy issues.

3/
Read 49 tweets
Jun 24
When a company sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they're revaluing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy's.

1/ A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light.  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/2025/06/24/pri…

2/
Economists praise "price discrimination" as "efficient." That's when a company charges different customers different amounts based on inferences about their willingness to pay.

3/
Read 50 tweets

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