Cory Doctorow

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
@doctorow.

Archived at pluralistic.net

I post long threads. If you don't like these in your timeline but want to read them, I suggest unfollowing me here and subscribing to my RSS, or my newsletter, or any of my various long-form feeds. Links at https://pluralistic.net.

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Last Notes

2025-10-29 14:05:23 UTC

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote that he "is convinced" that firing workers will make the company "AI ready," but it's not clear what he means by that. Does he mean that the mass firings will save money while maintaining quality, or that mass firings will help Amazon recoup the $180,000,000,000 it spent on AI this year?
12/

2025-10-10 02:15:48 UTC

TFW your book has been on sale for 65 HOURS and your editor tells you that it's just gone into its FOURTH printing.

2025-10-04 13:12:24 UTC

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Lawsuits by state attorneys general have thus far done little to stanch the bleeding. Lawsuits are slow, and they rely on judges upholding the law, a task the Supreme Court has abandoned with sadistic glee.
The people need money, not legal briefs.
8/

2025-09-03 21:00:44 UTC

Well, *fuck*.
--
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:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/03/unpunishing-process/#fucking-shit-goddammit-fuck
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2025-08-15 14:28:24 UTC

LLMs are like slot machines, in that an incorrect answer (the slot machine eating your dollar) is unremarkable, while the LLM solving a problem (a jackpot) is amazing, and the latter stands out in your memory, causing you to overestimate the reliability of LLMs.
https://blog.glyph.im/2025/08/futzing-fraction.html
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/115/033/247/777/534/313/original/ea16b7d09c0f978c.png

2025-08-13 17:16:45 UTC

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This is perfect Magaism, as captured by Wilhoit's Law:
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288
Maga is a coalition of turkeys voting for Christmas, and ax-sharpening farmers planning to make a meal out of them.
2/

2025-08-06 14:34:59 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Which jobs can be replaced with AI? and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/
#Pluralistic
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2025-07-18 16:52:58 UTC

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This is as Rich Perlstein prophesied a year ago: these groups hate each other and the only way for some of them to get what they want is for others to be totally betrayed.
Trump has been racing over those alligator-backs for so long now, it can sometimes feel like he'll never miss a step. But he's one snap away from losing a leg, and after that, it'll be a bloodbath.
27/

2025-07-18 13:27:47 UTC

Birthday suit
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/114/874/464/743/082/950/original/4c0630237c200b29.jpg

2025-07-04 16:12:57 UTC

GNU Butt
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/114/795/804/811/624/103/original/0b487173243df402.jpg

2025-06-24 02:40:45 UTC

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@nprofile…xund Sure. I like co-ops. I've been serving on co-op boards since I was 17, and I'm keynoting the UK co-op conference in Manchester in July (I also keynoted the international year of the co-op UN launch in Delhi last year).
But also: capitalism exists. Doing nothing about improving the conduct of firms until they go co-op requires that we accept untold - perhaps existential - harms to billions and possible the end of humanity.

2025-06-18 23:09:29 UTC

In reading a fascinating and important discussion of the lack of a termination clause in the new Mastodon.social Terms of Service, I was GOBSMACKED to discover that the new ToS including a "binding arbitration waiver," which takes away your right to sue, no matter how badly the service abuses you.
These are profoundly unethical, terrible clauses. They should never, ever appear in "adhesion contracts" (that is, contracts that you merely click through, rather than negotiating.)

2025-05-30 14:16:23 UTC

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Even *more* good news: the GOP have ratfucked *themselves*, doing the work that our Democratic Party leaders can't or won't do. In overruling the parliamentarian in a bid to arrogate to themselves the power to kill California emission standards, Republican Senators have opened the door for Democrats to seize 10 hours of debate time for *every single change Trump makes to federal regulations. These debates take precedence over *all* Senate business.
3/

2025-04-29 19:49:41 UTC

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All that's left is a kind of *caveat emptor* brainworm that insists that if you got scammed, you should have shopped more carefully. And if you got scammed at gunpoint, you just need to understand that the gun was held by the invisible hand, and it was pointed at you in an economically efficient manner.
15/

2025-03-10 18:44:13 UTC

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Also acidification
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/114/139/605/554/807/204/original/16453da9dd13bf67.jpg
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/114/139/605/875/324/640/original/93627a16943a622e.jpg

2025-03-04 13:05:10 UTC

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The EU *could* retaliate here by imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on US exports to the EU, which would make everything Europeans buy from America 25% more expensive. This is a very weird way to punish the USA.
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2025-03-04 13:04:33 UTC

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Musk is so attention-hungry that all this is as apt to please him as anger him. You know what would really hurt Musk? Jailbreaking every Tesla in Europe so that all its subscription features - which represent the highest-margin line-item on Tesla's balance-sheet - could be unlocked by any local mechanic for €25. That would really kick Musk in the dongle.
33/

2025-02-11 13:35:53 UTC

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. It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.
--
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:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/11/doubling-up-on-paperwork/#rip-freefile
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2025-02-08 16:22:04 UTC

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The day I turned it in *Ars Technica* ran a huge package called "As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders," reeling off the most disgusting high-tech ripoffs trying to worm their way into your home and wallet:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/as-internet-enshittification-marches-on-here-are-some-of-the-worst-offenders/
This sparked an *epic* Reddit thread on r/NoStupidQuestions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1ij42yh/what_are_some_other_examples_of_enshittification/
I love to see how giving a name and a description to this phenomenon has captured and directed some of that rage.
29/

2025-02-07 16:41:03 UTC

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While most of the coverage of Musk's wrecking crew has focused on the broccoli-haired Gen Z brownshirts who are wilding through the server rooms at giant, critical government agencies, Tkacik homes in on their boss, Tom Krause, whom she memorably dubs "the Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" (I told you she was a great writer!):
https://prospect.org/power/2025-02-06-private-equity-hatchet-man-leading-lost-boys-of-doge/
3/

2025-02-07 16:39:58 UTC

While we truly live in an age of ascendant monsters who have hijacked our country, our economy, and our imaginations, there is one consolation: the small cohort of brilliant, driven writers who have these monsters' number, and will share it with us. Writers like Maureen Tkacik:
https://prospect.org/topics/maureen-tkacik/
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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:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/07/broccoli-hair-brownshirts/#shameless
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2024-11-21 10:42:37 UTC

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What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd - imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone - but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.
2/

2024-10-03 17:31:22 UTC

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Recent appearances:
* A Book Talk with Cory Doctorow and @npub1u3g…zehv at BU Law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkt9dlTX-gs
* Rethink: Is the internet getting worse?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022z9r
* Annie's Book Stop Of Worcester
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYM3WOPOMC0
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2024-10-02 12:43:03 UTC

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#5yrsago Elizabeth Warren proposes an “excessive lobbying tax” that would fund independent Congressional experts and public participation in policy https://medium.com/@teamwarren/excessive-lobbying-tax-fca7cc86a7e5
#5yrsago Apple bans an app because Hong Kong protesters might use it to avoid the murderous, out of control police https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/02/apple-bans-an-app-because-hong-kong-protesters-might-use-it-to-avoid-the-murderous-out-of-control-police/
#5yrsago The complicated, nuanced story of how racialized French people fought to save their local McDonald’s https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758048712/libert-galit-and-french-fries
8/
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2024-10-02 12:42:40 UTC

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#10yrsago Hong Kong and America: two systems, one corruption https://web.archive.org/web/20141006033919/http://www.lessig.org/2014/10/we-should-be-protesting-too/
#10yrsago World Intellectual Property Organization in shambolic chaos https://www.keionline.org/22621
#10yrsago Why the UK middle class should be rioting in the streets https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11109845/Why-arent-the-British-middle-classes-staging-a-revolution.html
#10yrsago Human beings are the gut flora of immortal, transhuman corporations https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/02/human-beings-are-the-gut-flora-of-immortal-transhuman-corporations/
#10yrsago Daughter of Hong Kong leader thanks “taxpayers” for diamonds on Facebook https://
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2024-10-02 12:22:12 UTC

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Clinicians who actually want to improve the quality of care in their facilities end up recording data manually and keying it into spreadsheets, because they can't get Epic to give them the data they need. Meanwhile, an army of high-priced consultants stand ready to give clinicians advise on getting Epic to do what they need, but can't seem to deliver.
21/

2024-10-02 12:20:59 UTC

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Not only is this prone to the customary mistakes that make AI unsuited to high-stakes, error-sensitive applications, it also represents a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of clinical notes.
The very exercise of organizing your thoughts and reflections about an event - such as a medical exam - into a coherent report makes you apply rigor and perspective to events that otherwise arrive as a series of fleeting impressions and reactions.
17/

2024-10-02 12:18:44 UTC

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Epic collects all that extra information in order to identify potential sources of plausible upcodes, which allows hospitals to bill patients, insurers, and Medicare through the nose for routine care. Epic can automatically recode "diabetes with no complications" from a Hierarchical Condition Category code 19 (worth $894.40) as "diabetes with kidney failure," code 18 and 136, which gooses the reimbursement to $1273.60.
8/

2024-10-01 14:42:03 UTC

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#10yrsago No Such Thing: spooky (not scary!) picture book https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/01/no-such-thing-spooky-not-scary-picture-book/
#10yrsago Hundreds of US police forces have distributed malware as “Internet safety software” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/computercop-dangerous-internet-safety-software-hundreds-police-agencies
#10yrsago Chinese security forces administer rectal probes to 10,000 pigeons https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/10/1/chinese-security-body-searches-10000-pigeons
#5yrsago Europe’s Right to Repair rules have passed, and will take effect in 2021 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49884827
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2024-10-01 14:16:53 UTC

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When you pass the application process, you're told the rent is actually much higher, and if you walk away from the deal, you forfeit your application fee. That scam's netted Invitation $18m since 2019.
Stoller *really* hates junk fees, calling them "convenience fees without any convenience, service charges without any service performed."
19/

2024-10-01 14:15:17 UTC

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The vast sums Wall Street is putting into buying up all of America's available housing stock is a bet that they can establish regional monopolies over *having a home*, and charge all the market can bear.
That's the plan at Invitation Homes, a company that was just targeted by the @FTC for a slate of eye-watering crimes against the tenants in the 80,000 single-family homes they've acquired:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security
16/

2024-10-01 14:14:50 UTC

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Sure, homelessness is a fantastically complex problem, but you could address every aspect of it - addiction, mental illness, joblessness - and millions of people would *still* be homeless, because there aren't enough homes for them to live in:
https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/myths-about-homeless-people-with-dr-margot-kushel
70% of all inflation in 2024 came from the cost of housing; a quarter of *that* came from illegal collusive behavior by landlords to hike rents:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation
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2024-08-14 23:32:12 UTC

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@npub1dzv…5v2p Alice did a lawn installation previewing our final forms.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/962/981/977/680/982/original/19a7312e04b90333.png

2024-08-14 12:48:10 UTC

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They have gigantic war-chests they can spend lobbying governments and corrupting the political process, and concentrated sectors find it comparatively easy to come together to decide on a single lobbying position and then make it reality.
As Vinsel and Waterhouse discuss, US big business has traditionally *hated* small business.
20/

2024-08-14 12:44:41 UTC

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The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" - compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller).
3/

2024-08-14 12:44:06 UTC

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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:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities
2/

2024-08-13 15:13:16 UTC

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@npub1wcv…68qv Thank you! Lovely to meet you too!

2024-07-30 15:33:44 UTC

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Take reading a book. If the book arrives between two covers in the form of ink sprayed on compressed vegetable pulp, you don't need to understand the first thing about copyright to read it. But if that book arrives as a stream of bits in an app, those bits are just the thinnest scrim of scum atop a terminally polluted ocean of legalese.
2/

2024-06-18 17:27:20 UTC

"If it don't bounce back, you go hungry."

2024-06-17 15:56:04 UTC

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But the precarious state of elite bankruptcies has more to do with the personal corruption of the small cabal of judges who run the system than public outrage over their rulings; like that one judge in Texas who was secretly fucking the lawyer whose clients he was also handing hundreds of millions of dollars to:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/16/texas-two-step/#david-jones
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2024-06-17 15:55:54 UTC

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This process was so flagrantly abused by companies like Johnson & Johnson (which spent years knowingly advising women to dust their vulvas with asbestos-tainted talc, creating an epidemic of grotesque and lethal genital cancers) that it is finally generating some scrutiny and pushback:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit
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2024-06-13 20:32:41 UTC

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For members of the "efficient market" cult, reality's stubborn refusal to behave the way it does in their thought experiments is a personal affront. Panged by cognitive dissonance, the cult members insist that any market failures in the real world are illusions caused by not doing capitalism hard enough. When deregulation and markets fail, the answer is *always* more deregulation and more markets.
6/

2024-06-10 13:44:33 UTC

Let's take a sec here and notice something *genuinely great* happening in the US government: the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's stunning, unbroken streak of *major*, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption, *with* the backing of the Supreme Court (yes, *that* Supreme Court), and which is only speeding up!
1/
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2024-05-03 09:41:26 UTC

Even Google admits - grudgingly - that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation
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2024-04-01 14:44:24 UTC

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/
1/

2024-02-08 20:40:06 UTC

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But those advantages are swamped by *disadvantages* of incumbency, the many curses of bigness. Take #ArrowsReplacementEffect: new companies that compete with incumbents drive down incumbents' prices and tempt customers away. But an incumbent that *buys* a disruptive new company can shut it down, and whittle down its ideas to "sustaining innovation" (small improvements to existing products), killing "disruptive innovation" (major changes that make existing products obsolete).
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