Nostr notes by Cory Doctorow

If you are on an escalator or moving walkway in an airport and ...

2026-10-10T20:37:20Z

If you are on an escalator or moving walkway in an airport and you are standing on the left (or worse, in the middle), you are a bad person and you should feel bad about yourself. You are, by definition, in a place where many other people are in a giant fucking hurry. Come on. We live in a society, dickhead.

You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ...

2026-10-09T20:06:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…l0w2
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You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/09/impunitism/

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16/

Recent appearances: * Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN) ...

2026-10-09T20:06:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…av3z
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Recent appearances:

* Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

* AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

* AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

* How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

* Could Tech Bosses Destroy Life As We Know It? (Politics JOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4VktU0SgY

15/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd): * #Vancouver: Enshittification ...

2026-10-09T20:06:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…95dn
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

* #Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

* Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

* #Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

* #Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
https://montreal2027.ca/en

14/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd): * #Vancouver: Read, Resist, ...

2026-10-09T20:05:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…d3vx
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01

* #Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

* #Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46

* #Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

* #Kilkenny: Kilkenomics, Nov 6-8
https://kilkenomics.com/
13/

Upcoming appearances: * #Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9 ...

2026-10-09T20:05:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…6n94
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Upcoming appearances:

* #Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow

* #Paris: Slow Tech Summit, Oct 15
https://slowtechsummit.com/

12/

My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, ...

2026-10-09T20:05:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…uyq8
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) 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."

https://craphound.com/shop/

11/

#1yrago California bans algorithmic price-fixing ...

2026-10-09T20:05:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…y4wn
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#1yrago California bans algorithmic price-fixing https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/09/pricewars/#adam-smith-communist

8/

#10yrsago RBS deliberately crushed more than 1,000 healthy UK ...

2026-10-09T20:04:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…46mn
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#10yrsago RBS deliberately crushed more than 1,000 healthy UK businesses to seize and sell their assets https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/dash-for-cash?utm_term=.iq9ndLB5#.udNbypOJ

#10yrsago Though crime happens everywhere, predictive policing tools send cops to poor/black neighborhoods https://www.mic.com/articles/156286/crime-prediction-tool-pred-pol-only-amplifies-racially-biased-policing-study-shows

#10yrsago Bake: spooky chocolate chip cookies https://www.instructables.com/Creepy-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies/

#5yrsago Dead letters https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

#1yrago A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/10/synology/#how-about-nah

7/

#10yrsago Shade the Changing Girl: amazing, gorgeous new comic ...

2026-10-09T20:04:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…sdjk
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#10yrsago Shade the Changing Girl: amazing, gorgeous new comic about aliens and mean girls https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/10/shade-the-changing-girl-amazing-gorgeous-new-comic-about-aliens-and-mean-girls/

#10yrsago Massive report details the surveillance powers of 12 Central and South American nations https://necessaryandproportionate.org/principles/

#10yrsago Scotland Yard charge: teaching people to use cryptography is an act of terrorism https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/cops-charge-cardiff-man-with-terrorist-crypto-training-offence/

6/

#20yrsago Handheld printer made from a toner cartridge ...

2026-10-09T20:04:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…qacs
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#20yrsago Handheld printer made from a toner cartridge https://spritesmods.com/?art=inker&page=4

#20yrsago Panicked chefs propose copyrighted food https://megnut.com/2006/10/10/keep-recipes-free/

#20yrsago Canadian music proposal would *require* DRM for online tunes https://web.archive.org/web/20061022201913/https://www.jeremydebeer.ca/content/view/95/2/

#20yrsago Iceweasel, a free-as-in-speech version of Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian–Mozilla_trademark_dispute

#15yrsago Pratchett’s Snuff: a rural/nautical tale of drawing-room gentility, racism, and justice https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/10/pratchetts-snuff-a-rural-nautical-tale-of-drawing-room-gentility-racism-and-justice/

5/

It's a strange irony that in this moment when so many of us ...

2026-08-04T11:19:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…t5g2
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It's a strange irony that in this moment when so many of us are struggling to "de-Google" our lives, a forcible, sudden de-Googling amounts to a sort of digital death penalty:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

In a world dominated by monopolies, duopolies and cartels, there's every reason in the world to seek protection and insulation from these companies that are "too big to care" - and yet, the very same dominance that makes these companies such a danger also makes them indispensable.

3/

But Americans face the same digital sovereignty risk. America ...

2026-08-04T11:18:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…nqtr
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But *Americans* face the same digital sovereignty risk. America is a lawless place now, where a pliable Supreme Court and supine Congress have affirmed that "it's not a crime if the president does it." The same tech giants who sold out to Trump for tax breaks and protection from antitrust enforcement will happily disconnect any member of the American public, any American company, any American official who displeases Trump.

2/

Obviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty ...

2026-08-04T11:17:09Z

Obviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty problem - Trump has means, motive and opportunity to order his tech companies to shut down any public official, large corporation, or individual who displeases him:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prize

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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/2026/08/04/technology-freedom-cooperative/#hrdag

1/

Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Zuckerberg's ...

2026-06-27T11:23:10Z

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Zuckerberg's increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand/

#Pluralistic

1/

Perhaps you've encountered the stories about Dialog, an ...

2026-06-20T16:14:02Z

Perhaps you've encountered the stories about Dialog, an extremely weird secret society associated with Peter "Antichrist" Thiel, whose membership data and details have leaked this week:

https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-private-dialog-club-secretly-ranks-its-members/

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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/2026/06/20/any-club-that-would-have-me/#monologue

1/

Gotta say, the fact that Kaiser Socal has ended its policy of ...

2026-06-16T13:53:33Z

Gotta say, the fact that Kaiser Socal has ended its policy of validating your parking when you go in for cancer therapy is some genuine, grade-a, nickel-and-dime bullshit.

For conservatives, virtue is "whatever the people who are ...

2026-06-11T16:14:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…6su6
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For conservatives, virtue is "whatever the people who are born to rule desire." Hence Frank Wilhoit's definition of conservativism, "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." It's not a crime if the president does it. It's also not a crime if your boss does it, or if a monopolist does it, or if ICE does it.

27/

If the person who oversaw the catastrophe has anything remotely ...

2026-06-11T16:13:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…geac
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If the person who oversaw the catastrophe has anything remotely resembling a marginalized identity, then this is loudly trumpeted as confirmation that "diversity hires," promoted above their station, are ruining our society and wrecking our bridges. Naturally, if the person in charge was a wealthy, well-born, straight white guy, that's just proof that shit happens - it definitely doesn't prove that white straight guys, as a class, should be removed from positions of power.

26/

The same people who laid siege to antitrust law would later come ...

2026-06-11T16:12:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…mlvw
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The same people who laid siege to antitrust law would later come after *all* forms of checks and balances. These are the people who gave us the "unitary executive" and Project 2025, and the collapse of accountability that has allowed the worst people to commit the gravest sins they could imagine and still reap vast fortunes. These beam-breakers wanted kings, and they got them.

22/

And the foundation - the Dark Tower upon which all the beams ...

2026-06-11T16:12:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…307f
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And the foundation - the Dark Tower upon which all the beams converged- was antitrust enforcement, grounded in the idea that we could not afford to let any company - not a "good" company, nor a "bad" company - get so large that it could no longer be regulated, lest its executives become "autocrats of trade":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

21/

There were always enshittifiers, but those enshittifiers faced ...

2026-06-11T16:12:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…t9re
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There were always enshittifiers, but those enshittifiers faced external forces that checked their wreckers' urge. They were held in check by competition, and regulation, and workers' sense of fairness and duty, and by the threat of new products and services that might pop up to correct the defects they deliberately introduced into their products by enshittifying them.

20/

By attacking the beams, the villains of the series have all but ...

2026-06-11T16:12:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…mmsh
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By attacking the beams, the villains of the series have all but snuffed out that force, and so *the world has moved on.*

When I read that email and the invocation of the *Dark Tower*, I was immediately struck by how apt this comparison is. Because, as I've written many times, there were *always* enshittifiers who would have plundered your data and money and treated you with naked contempt:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/04/object-permanence/#picks-and-shovels

19/

Like all brokered peace settlements, Lotus Notes left both sides ...

2026-05-26T09:52:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…mlj6
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Like all brokered peace settlements, Lotus Notes left both sides feeling like they'd made a compromise they could live with, giving up *some* of their goals, but keeping the things that really mattered to them.

It's impossible to overstate how important Lotus Notes and similar products were, because workers *demanded* the right to use the web on their work computers.

15/

That's why, whenever a disaster arises, fascists demand the ...

2026-05-12T07:28:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…xu27
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That's why, whenever a disaster arises, fascists demand the gender, race and sexual orientation of the pilot, the captain, or the official in charge. If the person who crashed the ship into the bridge has brown skin, we can add another line to the ledger of costs associated with the doomed project to put people who were born to be bossed around in the boss's seat (of course, if the pilot turns out to be a white guy, that proves nothing, except that mistakes sometimes happen).

12/

Emailing a stranger a blob of unverified AI output is not a form ...

2026-03-02T09:25:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…d6el
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Emailing a stranger a blob of unverified AI output is not a form of dialogue - it's an attempt to coerce a stranger into unpaid labor on your behalf. Strangers are not your "human in the loop" whose expensive time is on offer to painstakingly work through the plausible sentences a chatbot made for you for free.

8/

Once again: the act of prompting a sentence generator to create a ...

2026-03-02T09:25:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…gnxq
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Once again: the act of prompting a sentence generator to create a rebuttal-shaped series of sentences *does not impart understanding to the prompter.* In the dialog between someone who's written something and someone who disagrees with it, but doesn't understand it well enough to rebut it, *the only person* qualified to evaluate the chatbot's output is the original author - that is, the stranger you've just emailed a chat transcript to.

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Periodic reminder that Mastodon isn't an airport and you ...

2026-01-14T19:57:38Z

Periodic reminder that Mastodon isn't an airport and you don't need to announce your departure.