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

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
Jun 20
Private equity firms are the demon princes of the hellspace that is the imploding, life-destroying, plutocrat-generating American economy.

1/ A billionaire in a tuxedo with dollar-sign cufflinks, stands at a podium, yanking a lever shaped like a gilded dollar sign with one gloved hand. From the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a bloody corpse. His head has been replaced with the head of a doctor in a surgeon's blue cap, with red, glaring eyes. The background is the text of Oregon's new Corporate Practice of Medicine law, in blown-out, red type.
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/2025/06/20/the…

2/
Their favorite scam, the "leveraged buyout" is a mafia bustout dressed up in respectable clothes, and if you mourn a beloved, failed business, chances are that an LBO was the murder weapon, and PE was the killer:



3/pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spi…
Read 44 tweets
May 27
On a recent This Machine Kills episode, guest Hagen Blix described the ultimate form of "AI therapy" with a "human in the loop":



1/ soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…A magnified image of the inside of an automated backup tape library, with gleaming racks of silver tape drives receding into the distance. In the foreground is a pile of dirt being shoveled by three figures in prisoner's stripes. Two of the figures' heads have been replaced with cliche hacker-in-hoodie heads, from which shine yellow, inverted Amazon 'smile' logos, such that the smile is a frown. The remaining figure's head has been replaced with a horse's head. Behind the figure is an impatiently posed man in a sharp business suit, frowning at his watch. His head has been replaced with the ...
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/2025/05/27/ran…

2/
> One actual therapist is just having ten chat GPT windows open where they just like have five seconds to interrupt the chatGPT. They have to scan them all and see if it says something really inappropriate. That's your job, to stop it.

3/
Read 98 tweets

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