Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 2, 2023 36 tweets 35 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The long, bloody lineage of private equity's looting; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plu…

#Pluralistic

1/ An overgrown graveyard, ren...
Tomorrow (3/6) at 1:30PM, I'm in #Edinburgh for @CymeraF on a panel with Nina Allen and @iannmcdonald:

cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-event…

Mon 5/6 at 7:15PM, I'm at the #BritishLibrary with my book *Red Team Blues* for an event hosted by @Marthalanefox:

bl.uk/events/an-even…

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CORRECTION: The 5/29 edition of Pluralistic quoted $20k Rebyota; this was the rumored pre-release price; the actual average wholesale price is $10.8k. Thanks to Benjamin Jolley for catching this error, and to Stephen Skolnick for getting to the bottom of it.

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The long, bloody lineage of private equity's looting: Or, if you prefer, "plundering."



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Hey look at this

* Eating Disorder Helpline Kills Chatbot Over Horribly Wrong Advice gizmodo.com/ai-chatbot-eat…

* No Such Thing As a Smart Fascist catvalente.substack.com/p/theres-no-su…

* Netflix execs want $166m in extra pay; writers strike seeks $68m from Netflix deadline.com/2023/05/wga-ne…

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#20yrsago Theme park of the chariots of the Gods web.archive.org/web/2006020704…

#20yrsago How is an #IRC channel like a Caribbean street-corner? web.archive.org/web/2003060512…

#20yrsago Can #Mozilla live without Netscape? salon.com/2003/06/02/unh…

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#20yrsago FCC loosens media concentration, screws America nytimes.com/2003/06/02/bus…

#20yrsago Kids spend six years recreating Raiders of the Lost Ark legacy.aintitcool.com/node/15348

#15yrsago Canada’s DMCA: a guide to the likely talking points michaelgeist.ca/2008/06/unoffi…

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#15yrsago Canadian DMCA will take $500/download from your kids’ college fund web.archive.org/web/2008060401…

#10yrsago Northern Ireland builds a Potemkin Village for the G8 irishtimes.com/news/recession…

#10yrsago Usury in the UK theguardian.com/money/2013/may…

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#10yrsago Linda Stone on attention, computers, and education theatlantic.com/national/archi…

#10yrsago Gezi protester kicking away teargas cannister occupygezipics.tumblr.com/post/519128907…

#10yrsago How markets allow people to violate their moral codes web.archive.org/web/2013060715…

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#5yrsago Youtubers with millions of followers are dropping out, citing stress and burnout from algorithm kremlinology polygon.com/2018/6/1/17413…

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#5yrsago Leaked document shows Trump officials planning to force Americans to spend $311m-$11.8b/year to keep unprofitable coal and nuclear energy plants from shutting bloomberg.com/news/articles/… wall

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#5yrsago Citing bad publicity and internal dissent, Google announces it won’t renew contract to supply AI for US military drones gizmodo.com/google-plans-n…

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#5yrsago Tax-funded charter schools textbooks deny evolution, teach human-dinosaur cohabitation, endorse slavery and indigenous genocide orlandosentinel.com/2018/06/01/pri…

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#5yrsago Amid wage stagnation, corporate leaders declare the end of annual raises triggered by increased profitability axios.com/2018/05/27/bro…

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#5yrsago Former Tory chancellor takes over newspaper, sells “money-can’t buy” coverage to Uber, Google and others web.archive.org/web/2018071500…

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#5yrsago Stanford prof Niall Ferguson conspired with campus Republicans to do oppo research on students who opposed invited eugenicist speaker stanforddaily.com/2018/05/31/ema…

#5yrsago Southwest wouldn’t let mixed-race family fly until mom “proved” parenthood washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlo…

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#5yrsago Congresswoman Diane Black [R-TN] blames school shootings on “pornography” huffpost.com/entry/diane-bl…

#5yrsago My science fiction story about EFF’s proposed jailbreaking exemption eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

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#5yrsago Tell your parents: Trump is lying to them about Medicare pbs.org/newshour/econo…

#5yrsago Leaked memos reveal the deep divisions within Google over Pentagon contract nytimes.com/2018/05/30/tec…

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#5yrsago Governments all over the world buy spy products that let them track and eavesdrop on global cellphones, especially US phones washingtonpost.com/business/techn…

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#5yrsago Amazon bars Australians from shopping on its non-Aussie sites to put pressure on the government to rescind tax rule smh.com.au/business/compa…

#5yrsago Telegram: ever since Russia’s blocking demand, Apple has prevented us from updating our app theverge.com/2018/5/31/1741…

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#5yrsago Elon’s Basilisk: why exploitative, egomaniacal rich dudes think AI will destroy humanity documentjournal.com/2018/04/the-ex…

#5yrsago Uganda enacts unenforceable, ridiculous anti-“gossip” internet tax theverge.com/2018/5/31/1741…

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#5yrsago Count your bees with a Raspberry Pi and machine learning matpalm.com/blog/counting_…

#5yrsago No, seriously, THIS is the mission patch for Google’s drone warfare AI contract with the Pentagon jwz.org/blog/2018/05/h…

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#5yrsago Sweden’s notorious copyright troll said they’d sue, but if you ignore them, they just go away torrentfreak.com/legal-blackmai…

#1yrago How John Deere leverages repair-blocking into gag orders pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dea…

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#1yrago House sales are cratering but inventory is soaring pluralistic.net/2022/06/02/res…

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Wednesday's threads: To save the news, ban surveillance ads; and more!



26/ Image: EFF https://www.eff....
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:

* @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…

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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, 8PM (#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/2023/06/02/plu…

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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…

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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…

36/
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

Feb 20
The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between - they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

1/   A towering figure with the head of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' surmounted by Trump's hair, wearing a tailcoat with a Google logo lapel pin. It peers through a magnifying glass at a distressed, tiny Uncle Sam figure perched in its monstrous palm.   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/2025/02/20/pri…

2/
Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:



3/pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the…
Read 41 tweets
Feb 18
In 2013, Thomas Piketty had an unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) *Capital in the 21st Century*.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a frowning Uncle Sam giving a blood transfusion to a gargantuan business-man whose waistcoat is labeled 'protected monopolies.' The businessman's head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background has been replaced with a halftoned EU flag whose blue field is covered in circuit-board traceries. The floor beneath the figures is an abstract, pinkish pattern.  Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed....
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/2025/02/18/pik…

2/
It offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:



3/memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/tho…
Read 62 tweets
Feb 17
Theory-free inference is a hell of a drug. For years, Big Data advocates - the larval form of today's AI weirdos - have insisted that if you have enough data, you can infer causal relationships between complex phenomena without ever having to understand how x causes y.

1/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine   A phrenological illustration of a man's face in profile, with his skull divided up into sections with illustrations of what each area is meant to govern, e.g., appetite, artistic aptitude, aggression, ardor. A pair of gleaming silver calipers, wielded by the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' measures the figure's skull.   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/2025/02/17/cal…

2/
Thus, we can slay the dread "correlation is not causation" beast. This is cousin to Milton Friedman's famous economic catechism:



3/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in…
Read 36 tweets
Feb 12
Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

1/ An official portrait of the US Supreme Court, with the justices sitting and standing before a red velvet curtain. Their faces have been replaced with the green 'Mr Yuck' logo. Floating in the middle of the image, obscuring several judges, is the Tiktok logo, with Trump's hair.
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/2025/02/12/you…

2/
No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will.

3/
Read 39 tweets
Feb 11
Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year.

1/ A halftoned 2025 IRS 1040 form. To the left is a bloated billionaire figure in top hat, white gloves and tux, with the pouting face of Elon Musk. With one hand, he is yanking on a lever made out of a gilded dollar-sign. With the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a street urchin. The podium to which the lever is attached bears the Turbotax logo, a white checkmark in a red circle. To the left is a cascade of gold coins, falling out of an upended sack.   Image: Wcamp9 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_March_28,_2024_%28cropped%29.jpg  CC BY 4.0 https://creative...
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/2025/02/11/dou…

2/
It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.

Not *paying* your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine.

3/
Read 29 tweets
Feb 5
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.

Inside: MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/02/04/pow…A vintage ad for Amway Nutrilite supplements; the illustration in the center of the ad has been replaced with a WPA mural depicting trade unionists rising up against capitalism.
This week, Barnes and Noble are offering a 25% discount on pre-order of my next novel, *Picks and Shovels* (use code PREORDERS):



2/ barnesandnoble.com/w/picks-and-sh…Image
MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing: In the mirror world, community organizers are community predators.



3/ Image
Read 29 tweets

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