Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK's Threads

Nov 8 • 59 tweets • 10 min read

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...

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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…

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Nov 7 • 89 tweets • 15 min read

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.

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Oct 29 • 45 tweets • 10 min read

Amazon made $35b profit last year. They're celebrating by firing 14k workers (a number they say will rise to 30k). It's the kind of thing Wall St loves. It comes after a string of pronouncements from Andy Jassy about how AI is going to let him fire *tons* of workers.

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Oct 11 • 53 tweets • 11 min read

I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a climate activist. I used to be - I even used to ring strangers' doorbells on behalf of Greenpeace.

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Sep 27 • 52 tweets • 10 min read

Like you, I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about AI. Like you, I keep getting dragged into AI discussions. Unlike you‡, I spent the summer writing a book on why I'm sick of AI⹋, which @fsgbooks will publish in 2026.

‡probably

⹋"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI"

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Sep 24 • 26 tweets • 7 min read

Billionaires don't think we're real. How could they? How could you inflict the vast misery that generates billions while still feeling even a twinge of empathy for the sufferer in your extractive enterprise. No wonder Elon Musk calls us "NPCs":

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/see…

Sep 23 • 80 tweets • 15 min read

I'm only a few chapters into Bill McKibben's stupendous new book *Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization* and I already know it's going to change my outlook forever:

1/ billmckibben.com/books/here-com…

Sep 22 • 62 tweets • 11 min read

One of the dumbest, shrewdest tricks corporate America ever pulled was teaching us all to reflexively say, "If a corporation blocks your speech, that doesn't violate the First Amendment and therefore it's not censorship":

1/ pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes…

Sep 17 • 57 tweets • 11 min read

Conspiratorialism is downstream of the trauma of institutional failures.

Insitutional failures are downstream of regulatory capture.

Regulatory capture is downstream of monopolization.

Monopolization is downstream of the failure to enforce antitrust law.

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Sep 8 • 77 tweets • 12 min read

This was the plan: America would stop making things and instead make *recipes*, the "IP" that could be sent to other countries to turn into actual *stuff*.

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Sep 6 • 48 tweets • 9 min read

Trump's doing a lot of oligarch shit, and while some of it very visible and obvious, other moves, like throwing the door open to "stock buybacks" are technical and obscure.

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Aug 20 • 40 tweets • 9 min read

Forget surveillance capitalism - let's talk about *surveillance infantalism*: the drive by the wealthy to spy on you in order to pursue the toddler's goals of getting everything they want from the people around them, without any reciprocal obligations.

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Aug 18 • 30 tweets • 7 min read

When Elon Musk disagrees with someone, he calls them an "NPC" (non-player character). In video-games, an NPC is a machine-puppeted sprite that engages in predictable movements (e.g. Pac-Man ghosts) and utters some scripted (or AI-generated) dialog:

1/ futurism.com/elon-musk-inte…

Aug 16 • 27 tweets • 6 min read

When LLM users describe their experience with their chatbots, the results are so divergent that it can sound like they're describing two completely different products.

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Aug 13 • 52 tweets • 12 min read

It's not just that Texas DA Gocha Ramirez charged a woman with murder for having an abortion (not t allowed even in Texas). It's that Ramirez paid for his mistress's abortion, after he impregnated her while having an affair with her *and* her sister:

1/ archive.is/20250812192203…

Jul 30 • 61 tweets • 13 min read

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…

Jul 22 • 66 tweets • 13 min read

Ever notice how many right wing influencers are on the grift?

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Jul 3 • 42 tweets • 8 min read

As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

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Jul 1 • 42 tweets • 9 min read

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).

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Jun 28 • 49 tweets • 10 min read

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/…

Jun 24 • 50 tweets • 11 min read

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.

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