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…

28/
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…

35/
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

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
Dec 9, 2025
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

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