Cory Doctorow

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
doctorow (npub1hs3…585k).

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.

Books: https://craphound.com
Blog: https://pluralistic.net
Podcast: https://craphound.com/podcast/
Latest book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

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Last Notes

2026-07-09 06:43:00 UTC

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"Left" and "right" represent two *radically* different paradigms. The right's paradigm is that property rights are human rights, which cashes out to "property rights are *the only* human right." If property rights are a human right, then I can burn down my orchard and laugh as you starve outside the gates. If property rights are human rights, I can leave an apartment building empty while you freeze to death on its sidewalk.
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2026-07-09 06:42:51 UTC

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We can disagree about reparations, about collectivization and co-operatives, about land reform. Very (very!) few leftists want to abolish property, but to be a leftist is to agree that property is only ever a means, and never an end.
In systems thinking, we are counseled that the most profound and durable changes come from shifts in *paradigms*, from which all rules, laws and arrangements flow:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/12/donella-meadows/#paradigmatic
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2026-07-09 06:42:43 UTC

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As Brust says, this fight is as old as the French Revolution. It's literally the plot of Les Miz ("In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live").
Note that this framework leaves plenty of room for disagreement among leftists: we can disagree about who should get taxed and how, when a company should be ordered to destroy its ill-gotten loot and when that loot should be divided up among its victims, and what to do about empty houses and homeless people.
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2026-07-09 06:42:32 UTC

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Human beings have the right to shelter. If your town has a million empty homes and a million homeless people, there's an obvious solution. At the very least, you can tax the shit out of empty homes to discourage the creation of derelict, empty blights:
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/owners-homes-left-empty-more-28622796
Human beings have the right to food. If a cartel claims that you may not legally sell your 100,000lbs of nectarines, you can just give them away and tell the cartel to fuck off:
https://apnews.com/article/california-farmer-nectarines-lawsuit-patent-4f7bc8ab185e8b9cbdd6d6ad4f2aabd1
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2026-07-03 09:03:16 UTC

In the mid-1970s, my dad - then a budding computer scientist, subsequently a math teacher - brought home my first computer: the CARDiac, a Turing-complete, all-cardboard *papercraft* computer that you could write and execute programs on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation
--
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/2026/07/03/rod-logic/making-flippy-floppy
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2026-07-02 10:38:49 UTC

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I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3mpnkwduxys27
eof/

2026-07-02 10:38:41 UTC

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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/2026/07/02/canonization/
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If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🫗". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!
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2026-07-02 10:38:29 UTC

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Recent appearances
* Lawfare Daily
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1KIwaYRs1g
* How to Think About AI (Organized Money)
https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-to-think-about-ai-with-cory-doctorow
* Breaking Points
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJmUbkRqXeE
* A.I. Enshittifies Everything (Slate)
https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2026/06/cory-doctorow-thinks-a-i-is-overvalued-and-overrated-and-still-a-threat
* A World That Just Might Work
https://aworldthatjustmightwork.com/2026/06/cory-doctorow-ai-use-it-dont-buy-the-hype-dont-feed-the-bubble/
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2026-06-30 19:17:13 UTC

Just got word that The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, my book that was released last week, is the #1 bestselling paperback nonfiction book among Canada's 400 independent bookstores!

2026-06-30 11:42:03 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Jo Walton's "Everybody's Perfect"; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/30/serenissima/
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-27 11:50:14 UTC

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No, that's the Russian transliteration; the Belarusian transliteration is "Lukashenka," and spelling it that way in English affirms the notion of a Belarusian identity separate from Russian extraterritoriality.
(Signed, My grandfather was Belarusian)

2026-06-27 11:23:10 UTC

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
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2026-06-27 11:19:59 UTC

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Why would Meta be so intent on destroying this one high-profile whistleblower? Surely they've heard of the Streisand Effect. There is no better way to ensure that Wynn-Williams' book (already a NYT #1 bestseller) continues to attract readers than to continue to escalate these threats.
I think they're perfectly aware that they are convincing more people to read *Careless People* (you should read it, it's genuinely excellent):
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250391230/carelesspeople/
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2026-06-27 11:19:47 UTC

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Her lawyers have posted their documents related to the suit, including a 285-page declaration by Wynn-Williams explaining the great lengths she's gone to in order to comply with Meta's demands, and the company's absolute intransigence and arbitrary menace:
https://katzbanks.com/sarah-wynn-williams-meta-lawsuit-documents/
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2026-06-27 11:19:37 UTC

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Nevertheless, Meta has informed Wynn-Williams that her silent, motionless appearance on a stage constitutes a further breach of her "agreement" and that they are going to seek even *more* damages from her. This act of anti-ice cream thuggery has pushed Wynn-Williams over the edge and now she's sued to invalidate her contract:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/25/whistleblower-sarah-wynn-williams-sues-meta-attempts-to-silence-her-careless-people
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2026-06-27 11:19:29 UTC

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Accordingly, Wynn-Williams maintained total silence and a blank facial expression for an hour on stage, *saying not one word*, while Wu and Cadwalladr carried on a discussion. *Careless People* was withdrawn from the festival bookshop on the days she appeared there:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/31/meta-legal-action-forces-facebook-whistleblower-to-stay-silent-at-hay-festival
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2026-06-27 11:15:37 UTC

More than a decade ago, a group of young, internet-connected Belarusian dissidents launched a series of increasingly high-stakes, increasingly surreal confrontations with the corrupt, authoritarian government of Alexander Lukashenka, a man who is often called "the last Soviet dictator."
--
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/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand/#autodisparagement
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2026-06-23 11:42:42 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/23/destroy-the-village/
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-23 11:32:24 UTC

The literature on harms to kids from online platforms is complex and nuanced, rife with people citing small, ambiguous studies as iron-clad evidence that kids are being destroyed by the internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ype6c6DdHQY
--
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/2026/06/23/destroy-the-village/#to-save-it
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2026-06-20 16:14:02 UTC

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/
--
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
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2026-06-19 21:05:43 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The Big Con; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/19/too-big-to-fact-check/
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-18 15:31:35 UTC

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Worst of all, a national AI strategy does nothing - not one solitary thing - to protect Canada from Trump shutting down our ministries, our companies, or our tractors.
In other words:
> If: digital sovereignty + AI = digital sovereignty - AI
> Then: AI = 0
If you think AI tools are nifty and want Canada to invest in AI, then first, please stop pretending that this has anything to do with "digital sovereignty."
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2026-06-18 15:31:12 UTC

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This is where the "if problem + blockchain" formulation comes in handy. If Trump shut off Canada's access to Chatgpt, Claude and Grok tomorrow, *nothing would happen*. No significant business, no federal or provincial ministry, no municipal government depends on these products for anything essential. And if Canada were to build their own local AI to sub in for Chatgpt, Claude and Grok, it would *lose tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars*.
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2026-06-18 15:30:59 UTC

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The digital sovereignty risk is having your country's government, firms and industries terminated by Trump. The digital sovereignty opportunity is making billions of dollars by producing and exporting products that defend people from Big Tech plunder and Trumpian killswitches. That is the *real world*.
But many "digital sovereignty" advocates are living in an *imaginary* world, in which the digital sovereignty risk is that Trump will *shut off their country's access to AI*.
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2026-06-18 15:30:42 UTC

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As Jeff Bezos likes to say, "your margin is my opportunity":
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce
Meanwhile, repealing these US-protecting laws would enable countries to extract their data from US platforms so they can move it into domestic alternatives, *and* bypass the software locks that block them from updating phones, cars, tractors and ventilators to protect them from remote killswitches:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
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2026-06-18 15:30:30 UTC

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It doesn't stop there! Trump can also shut down every tractor!
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/
*This is the digital sovereignty risk*. It's also the digital sovereignty *opportunity*. If countries repeal the laws that the US bullied them into accepting, laws that protect US tech giants from local competitors who block their plunder of data and money, they can turn America's tech trillions into their own tech billions.
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2026-06-18 15:30:21 UTC

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Which means that if Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn't have to roll tanks into Nuuk - he can just *brick the country of Denmark*. He can shut down all their ministries, every large firm, every household. He can shut down their iPhones and Android devices. He can kill their smart-speakers. He can hormuz the world's supply of Ozempic, Lego and ferociously strong licorice:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next
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2026-06-18 15:30:12 UTC

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When other countries' public officials make decisions that Trump dislikes, he gets companies like Microsoft to disconnect whole institutions from the internet, deleting their files, email archives, calendars and address books, and depriving them of the ability to connect to *any* service tied to their Outlook accounts:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/20/praxis/#acceleration
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2026-06-18 15:30:05 UTC

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What's more, Trump's response to finding himself in this poker game that's rigged entirely in his favor is to *flip over the table* because he *resents having to pretend to play at all* (as November Kelly so aptly put it). His incontinent belligerence on the world stage sees him making bids to steal *whole countries* and he's recruited American tech giants to help him in this chaotic program of lunatic imperialism.
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2026-06-18 15:24:15 UTC

Back at the height of the blockchain bubble, I made a hobby of pointing out that crypto weirdos were palming a card. I used this formulation:
if: problem + blockchain = problem – blockchain
then: blockchain = 0
https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/the-inevitability-of-trusted-third-parties/
--
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/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prize
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2026-06-15 17:05:40 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: AI and amateurism; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/15//
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-15 15:47:54 UTC

Over the weekend, I did an interview about my forthcoming book *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI* (a book about being a better AI critic), and the interviewer said she was surprised that I wasn't an AI booster, based on my demographics and work history:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/
--
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/2026/06/15/vernacular/#hypercardian
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2026-06-13 19:33:51 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Shareholder supremacy and the precog CEO; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/13/minority-shareholder-report/
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-13 16:40:01 UTC

We're getting our bathroom renovated. Our general contractor just told me that three of his big jobs have been paused because the clients are waiting until after November, just in case there's a civil war and/or martial law.
He's Filipino and he says this feels like the runup to the Marcos coup.

2026-06-12 20:56:57 UTC

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This is a terrible idea - it's every bit as bad as WEI was. In an age in which Big Tech is ever-more tied to authoritarian governments, redesigning our devices to tell strangers things we don't want them to know isn't just shortsighted, it's inexcusable.
eof/

2026-06-12 20:56:51 UTC

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This will make it much easier for the apps and other services you interact with to block your device if you run an Android alternative, or if you install a mod that overrides the actions of Google's stock Android:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacySecurityOSINT/comments/1tbdjbj/privacy_concerns_around_googles_recaptcha_mobile/
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2026-06-11 16:14:03 UTC

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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.
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2026-06-11 16:10:22 UTC

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I spoke with Timmons this week about the series. She told me she's been deluged with emails from readers who feel that the world is *different* now - and many of them cite my work on enshittification. Timmons wanted to know what advice I had for her readers. I told her that I don't think you can solve this as a consumer, because this isn't a *market* problem, it's a *political* problem, and shopping isn't politics:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/21/purity-culture/#stop-fucking-that-chicken
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2026-06-11 16:10:11 UTC

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So it's not just me, an old man yelling at the cloud. The world is getting *shittier*.
The latest Customer Rage Survey inspired *The Guardian*'s Heather Timmons to launch a new investigative series looking at how *fucked up* everything is. Her inaugural installment is very good, and it's drawn a massive reader response:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/04/us-consumer-rage-prices-economy
6/

2026-06-11 16:10:02 UTC

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The survey measures respondents' attitudes towards the businesses they deal with, and as of 2025, it's fair to say, customers are *pissed*:
https://customercaremc.com/2025-national-customer-rage-study/
We're experiencing more problems with the products and services we use. Those problems are more severe, they make us angrier, and they produce lingering stress. More and more, we are seeking revenge on the businesses that piss us off.
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2026-06-11 16:09:52 UTC

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The reason times seemed simpler during your childhood is *that you were a child*, and if your parents did their job, they shielded you from a lot of the complexity of *their* adulthood so you could enjoy *your* childhood:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/#simpler-times
That's where the "National Customer Rage Survey" comes in. It's been surveying a panel of 1,000 representative consumers every three years for a decade, continuing a research project that started in 1976.
4/

2026-06-11 16:08:23 UTC

Douglas Adams wrote, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things."
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2026-06-09 16:30:58 UTC

Our junk fee is not a tip
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2026-06-06 18:17:22 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Criticizing the everything machine; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/06/applied-counterescatology/
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-06 18:07:00 UTC

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Unless there's some way to estimate how much money we have to give to AI companies before they cure cancer, we should at least consider the possibility that the true sum is "more money than exists now and that will ever exist." We should also consider that whatever benefits to cancer research that AI might deliver could come with a higher price-tag than the promising cancer research we're dropping because we can't find far more modest sums.
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2026-06-06 18:06:52 UTC

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Like, even if you think there are limitless returns to scale for creating new AI capabilities, which means that if we keep the money-furnace burning it's only a matter of time until it powers a cure for cancer and the end of the climate emergency, *how much* money do we need to shovel into the furnace before that happens, and where will it come from? There are plenty of cancer researchers who have promising approaches they haven't been able to pursue due to funding shortfalls.
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2026-06-06 18:06:40 UTC

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When we fight about data-center buildout, we mostly talk about the (considerable) environmental downsides to them - but what about the question of what we will do with these data-centers after their owners go bankrupt, possibly even before they can be provisioned with electricity? How many laser-tag arenas do we actually need?
This is just one example of the questions that you could spend *days* unpacking, which make many of the other questions about AI a little silly.
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2026-06-06 18:06:30 UTC

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So before we ask about the capabilities AI will acquire in the future, we should at least give some consideration to the question of whether anyone will be willing to fund the development of those capabilities, and if so, where the money would come from? Likewise, before we ask whether AI can perform adequately in a job, we should at least consider the possibility that the company that sells that AI tool will be bankrupt in a year or two.
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2026-06-06 18:06:20 UTC

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AI is a money-furnace, and AI hustlers are clearly on the hunt for a way to force all of us to feed every dime we've got to it. Elon Musk's (now scuttled) gambit to make every pension saver in America bail out Grok (and Twitter, but at a mere $44b, the losses from Twitter are dwarfed by the titanic losses from Grok) was the most ambitious and shameless population-scale bag-holder scheme, but it's not the only one:
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/sp-global-keeps-fast-entry-proposal-unchanged-spacex-listing-looms-2026-06-04/
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2026-06-06 18:06:12 UTC

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Now, it shouldn't fall to me, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, to point out that capitalist enterprises require profits to be sustainable. You can't keep a business afloat by selling $100 bills for $5, nor for $20. You can't even make a profit selling $100 bills for $100 apiece! For a company to succeed, it needs to take in more than it expends.
10/

2026-06-06 18:05:16 UTC

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AI's happiest customers cite cost-benefits that depend on unimaginable subsidies from AI companies, who are basically selling $100 bills for $5 apiece. It would be pretty amazing if you couldn't find people who'd extol the virtues of this arrangement. But when AI companies try to raise the price of those $100 bills to, say, $20 apiece, those ecstatic customers fly into a rage and start loudly proclaiming that AI is so inefficient that they will lose money on this arrangement:
9/

2026-06-06 18:04:53 UTC

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What do you say to that? I usually start by talking about whether there's any economic basis for keeping the AI servers running. AI is - by far - the money-losingest venture in human history, and it's practically impossible to overstate just how *bad* the AI business is. Not only does AI have terrible unit economics, those unit economics are getting *worse* over time:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/26/the-ai-will-continue/#until-morale-improves
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2026-06-06 18:04:45 UTC

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Or sometimes it's an AI critic, but that person's criticism is really more "criti-hype," which is when you accept tech industry hype claims at face value, and then criticize them rather than questioning them:
https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/
AI criti-hype might ask what we'll do once AI takes all our jobs, or what we'll do when AI replaces the government or teachers or doctors, or what we'll do when AI can bypass our critical faculties and brainwash us or drive us all mad.
7/

2026-06-06 18:04:35 UTC

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I keep finding myself on stages or panels where an AI-struck person says something like, "AI is the next industrial revolution. It will change everything we do. It will let anyone create important works of art. It will cure cancer. It will take us to space. It will solve the climate crisis."
6/

2026-06-06 18:04:24 UTC

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Shortly after I did the radio show, a newspaper editor who'd heard my segment got in touch to ask me if I'd write an 800-word op-ed about the subject, and also, could I address claims that "AI is the next Industrial Revolution?"
In 800 words:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/04/ai-is-the-greatest-money-wasting-scheme-humanity-has-ever-i/
5/

2026-06-06 18:02:30 UTC

"Gish Gallop" is a debating term for an opponent who makes so many claims that "it's impossible to address them in the time available" (it's named for Creationist Duane Gish, who was notorious for this tactic):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
I think about Gish Gallops whenever I'm asked to comment on AI.
-
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/2026/06/06/applied-counterescatology/#step-right-up
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2026-06-05 20:51:38 UTC

One of the best ways to evaluate your own understanding of a subject is to attempt to explain it to someone else. Through explaining things, we discover how much of the "totally obvious" world is actually full of ambiguity, mystery and contradiction.
--
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/2026/06/05/defining-humanity/#narrowing-the-numinous
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2026-06-03 08:34:58 UTC

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Ubuntu

2026-06-03 08:20:21 UTC

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yup, it's on mamot.fr

2026-06-02 10:08:51 UTC

Hey #mastodon devs and hackers (as well as #firefox folks). For at least a week, the pgup/pgdn functions in Mastodon have undergone a substantial regression.
Before, if there was more text in the compose field than would fit on the screen, pgup would move the cursor to the top of the field and pgdn would move the cursor to the bottom, now they do *nothing*.
I don't know if this is a change in Firefox or Masto, but I suspect it's Masto, because pgup/dn work on all other sites for me.

2026-06-02 09:44:18 UTC

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My next book is *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI*, out next month. Pre-order it now, including as a DRM-free audiobook or ebook, at my Kickstarter, and help me continue to prove that DRM-free isn't just the *right* way to reach an audience, it's also the *best* way to reach them:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai
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2026-06-02 09:43:53 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The tedious power of storytelling; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/02/must-we-pretend/
#Pluralistic
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2026-06-02 09:23:27 UTC

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Mark Fisher describes the "seeming of an intent without an intender" as "eerie." It's true: when the door slams in the night and there's no one else in the house, it's eerie. But eeriness is easily dispelled: once you locate the open window that's creating the draft that's blowing the door closed, the eeriness regresses swiftly to the mean:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand
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2026-06-02 09:23:18 UTC

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Maybe some of us think, "Huh, I could take some element of this, refine it with my own brushstrokes or words, and make something out of it." That's like thinking about turning a sunset into a painting: the sunset is *striking* and maybe *beautiful*, but it doesn't become *art* until *you* work at it, in order to make it *communicate* something:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/25/communicative-intent/#diluted
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2026-06-02 09:23:05 UTC

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But it's not, "I wonder what God wants me to feel when I look at this sunset?"
So for many of us, the experience of AI "art" went from, "Wow, there's a person in the machine that's trying to tell me something," to "Wow, that is an impressive feat of software design, but it doesn't say anything to me."
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2026-06-02 09:22:52 UTC

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The rise of materialism and scientific rationalism is sometimes called a "disenchantment" and indeed, there's a sense in which a sunset that we know to have no intender is no longer "enchanted." The experience of a sunset becomes something like, "Those colors and their interplay with the physical world is very beautiful." It might even be, "How could I capture that beauty in a painting or a photo or a description so that I could communicate it to someone else?"
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2026-06-02 09:22:39 UTC

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There was a time when we thought of sunsets as explicitly created by another being, who was in communication with us through the natural environment (some people still believe this). Looking at a sunset was an exercise in asking yourself, "If I were God, what would I be trying to say to me with this sunset?" just as looking at one of my photos of a sunset would be an exercise in asking yourself, "If I were Cory, what would I be trying to say to me with this photo of a sunset?"
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2026-06-02 09:20:01 UTC

Yesterday, I attended a Brian Eno talk about the nature of creativity and art based on *What Art Does*, the short book he published with Bette Adriaanse last year:
https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571395514-what-art-does-an-unfinished-theory/
--
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/2026/06/02/must-we-pretend/#everything-you-dont-have-to-do
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2026-06-01 09:30:33 UTC

Molly Crabapple's *Here Where We Live Is Our Country* is one of the most important, timely and *salient* works of history I've ever read. It's a history of the Jewish Labor Bund, a socialist, internationalist organization that once dominated Jewish political identity:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646320/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-by-molly-crabapple/
--
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/2026/06/01/doikayt/#socialism-or-barbarism
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2026-05-31 12:32:47 UTC

Mrs Robinson has had quite enough of your shit.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/116/669/199/483/138/357/original/1ecbcb85621da294.jpg

2026-05-30 09:48:23 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Carneyism without Carney; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/30/rupture/
#Pluralistic
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2026-05-27 08:22:00 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: AI and a world without migrants; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/27/unnecessariat/
#Pluralistic
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2026-05-26 12:10:37 UTC

ITTIFICATION
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/116/640/801/249/032/632/original/225a28bbc6d4ce5d.jpg

2026-05-26 10:04:44 UTC

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The AI bubble isn't like the internet bubble: No one had to force-feed the web to workers.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116640243696727370
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2026-05-26 10:04:26 UTC

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2026-05-26 10:03:57 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The AI bubble isn't like the internet bubble; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/26/the-ai-will-continue/
#Pluralistic
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2026-05-26 09:47:54 UTC

One of the surprise breakouts of the early web was Lotus Notes, a primitive precursor to all-in-one office suites like Office365. It was so important that its creator, Ray Ozzie, was promoted to Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, succeeding Bill Gates himself:
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/the-man-who-would-change-microsoft-ray-ozzies-vision-for-connected-software/
--
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/2026/05/26/the-ai-will-continue/#until-morale-improves
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2026-05-25 08:14:53 UTC

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My next book is *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI*, out next month. Pre-order it now, including as a DRM-free audiobook or ebook, at my Kickstarter, and help me continue to prove that DRM-free isn't just the *right* way to reach an audience, it's also the *best* way to reach them:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai
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2026-05-25 08:14:42 UTC

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I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:
https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3mmnzgxop6k2x
21/

2026-05-25 08:14:35 UTC

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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/2026/05/25/lying-spies/
--
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🧆". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!
--
You can also get a fulltext RSS feed, licensed CC BY 4.0:
https://pluralistic.net/feed/
20/

2026-05-25 08:14:24 UTC

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Recent appearances
* On Enshittification – and what can be done about it (Re:publica)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhINQgPMVSI
* EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification
* The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/
* Enshittification (99% Invisible)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/
* Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor
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2026-05-25 08:13:36 UTC

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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
--
My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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2026-05-25 08:13:26 UTC

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Thursday's threads: Shopping isn't politics; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116613307220142174
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2026-05-25 08:13:11 UTC

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#5yrsago Consent theater https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/20/consent-theater/
#5yrsago Debunking the arguments for vaccine apartheid https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/21/wait-your-turn/#vaccine-apartheid
#5yrsago How the filibuster dies https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/22/not-with-a-bang/#theory-of-change
#1yrago Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/21/et-tu-sloppy-steve/#fractured-fairytales
#1yrago The meritocracy to eugenics pipeline https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/20/big-cornflakes-energy/#caliper-pilled
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2026-05-25 08:12:58 UTC

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#10yrsago Paypal refuses to deliver online purchases to UK addresses containing “Isis” https://b2fxxx.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-tyranny-of-algorithm-yet-again.html
#10yrsago 30 students debate mass surveillance on Capitol Hill https://web.archive.org/web/20160521000031/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/20/high-school-debaters-bring-surveillance-encryption-arguments-to-capitol-hill/
#10yrsago What the NSA’s assault on whistleblowers taught Snowden https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers
#10yrsago Massive, coordinated ATM heist in Japan nets $12.7 million (¥‎1.4 billion) https://web.archive.org/web/20160523102154/http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160522/p2g/00m/0dm/044000c
#5yrsago How the Sacklers rigged the game https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers
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2026-05-25 08:12:44 UTC

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#10yrsago Sex Criminals: Robin Hood bank robbers who can stop time when they orgasm https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/21/sex-criminals-robin-hood-bank-robbers-who-can-stop-time-when-they-orgasm/
#10yrsago Airbnb stealth-updates terms of service, says it’s not an insurer and requires binding arbitration https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/20/airbnb-stealth-updates-terms-of-service-says-its-not-an-insurer-and-requires-binding-arbitration/
#10yrsago Oculus breaks promise, uses DRM to kill app that let you switch VR systems https://web.archive.org/web/20160520161939/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-oculus-drm-cross-platform
#10yrsago Nintendo claims ownership over fans’ Minecraft/Mario mashups https://web.archive.org/web/20160521193334/http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/nintendo-issues-copyright-claims-on-mario-themed-minecraft-videos/
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2026-05-25 08:12:31 UTC

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#10yrsago JJ Abrams urges Paramount to drop its lawsuit over fan Star Trek movie https://web.archive.org/web/20160522121940/https://deadline.com/2016/05/star-trek-axanar-lawsuit-ending-jj-abrams-paramount-1201760721/
#10yrsago Pat Buchanan on the Republican Party’s historical opposition to free trade deals https://web.archive.org/web/20160521162845/http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/free-trade-vs-the-republican-party/
#10yrsago United offered men-only “executive” flights until 1970 https://viewfromthewing.com/united-airlines-men-only-executive-service/
#10yrsago Elderly man kills wife because they couldn’t afford her medicine https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/us/florida-man-says-he-killed-sick-wife-because-he-couldnt-afford-her-medicine-sheriffs-say.html?_r=0
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2026-05-25 08:12:09 UTC

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#15yrsago Raising a kid without disclosing their sex https://web.archive.org/web/20110523180952/http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112--parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret
#15yrsago Byron Sonne: Canadian security geek jailed for taunting G20 security theatre https://web.archive.org/web/20110518195236/http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/from-print-edition-informer/2011/05/03/how-byron-sonne’s-obsessions-with-the-g20-security-apparatus-cost-him-everything/
#15yrsago HOWTO make a SNES cartridge urinal https://blog.pricecharting.com/2011/05/how-to-build-video-game-urinal.html
#15yrsago German police raid German Pirate Party’s servers two days before election https://web.archive.org/web/20120516010632/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/german-police-seize-pirate-party-servers-looking-at-anons-toolkit/
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2026-05-25 08:11:52 UTC

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#15yrsago RIAA boss takes home $3 mil+ https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2011/05/21/another-member-of-the-overpaid/
#15yrsago Vindictive game company invites employees to pan reviewer’s novel after bad review https://maroonersrock.com/2011/05/conduit-2-developer-calls-for-internal-retaliation-against-author-of-negative-joystiq-review/
#15yrsago France lobbies G8 for Internet control and censorship https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2011/05/20/frances-g8-focuses-on-control-and-restrictions-to-online-freedoms/
#15yrsago Budweiser nunchuks: American Ninja https://web.archive.org/web/20110701153712/http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2011/05/19/american-ninja/
#15yrsago GOP legislative aide works on punitive voter ID bill, boasts of illegally voting in another district https://web.archive.org/web/20110522014606/http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/article_ede5d49e-8272-11e0-a6e0-001cc4c03286.html
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2026-05-25 08:11:34 UTC

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#20yrsago Orphan works law https://web.archive.org/web/20060531135239/http://www.copybites.com/2006/05/chairman_lamar_.html
#20yrsago U. Florida cops ask fiction writer for fingerprints, DNA https://memex.craphound.com/2006/05/22/u-florida-cops-ask-fiction-writer-for-fingerprints-dna/
#20yrsago HDMI, the Manchurian DRM – a Broadcast Flag dormant until 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20060523193853/https://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060521-6880.html
#15yrsago The Filter Bubble: how personalization changes society https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/22/the-filter-bubble-how-personalization-changes-society/
#15yrsago Last decade’s English libel legal sharks poised to make a new fortune on stupid privacy lawsuits and superinjuctions https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/22/last-decades-english-libel-legal-sharks-poised-to-make-a-new-fortune-on-stupid-privacy-lawsuits-and-superinjuctions/
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2026-05-25 08:10:15 UTC

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2026-05-25 08:09:42 UTC

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: No honor among (ad-tech) thieves; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/25/lying-spies/
#Pluralistic
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2026-05-25 07:56:54 UTC

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For example, Nissan and Kia claimed that they had data about your sex life, a thing that cannot be reasonably inferred from the sensors in your car (unless you have a highly specific sex life). *Six* car companies claimed they had your genetic data (again, not a thing that any of the sensors in your car can know about).
What's more, all of these scams have only gotten worse in the intervening three years:
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/22/mozilla-foundation-condemns-data-collection-by-cars/
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2026-05-25 07:56:39 UTC

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Mozilla's report investigated two things: which data your car was collecting and selling about you (lots) and what data your car company *claimed* it had collected about you and was offering for sale (*way, way more*).
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2026-05-25 07:56:21 UTC

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There's been plenty more examples since, rivaling previous eras for audacity and outlandishness. In 2023, Mozilla Labs investigated the ways that modern cars spy on their drivers and concluded that, when it came to privacy, cars were "the worst product category" they had ever evaluated, and recommended that you not buy *any* of the cars currently offered for sale:
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/
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2026-05-25 07:56:09 UTC

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Hwang's book documents lots more ad-tech fraud that's every bit as audacious as the Wannamaker-era con-jobs. For example, there's the fact that when Procter and Gamble zeroed out its $200m/year surveillance advertising program, they saw a *zero* percent drop in sales because (to a first approximation) all $200m of that annual spend was disappearing down the fraud-hole.
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2026-05-25 07:55:57 UTC

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That's demonstrably true of commercial surveillance. Commercial spies lie to customers *like crazy*, and always have. Think of department store magnate John Wannamaker's famous quip that "half my advertising dollars are wasted, I just don't know which half." Man, did someone ever do a sell-job on old Wannamaker: imagine believing that *only half* of your advertising dollars are wasted. Today, thanks to creepy ad-tech analytics, we know that the true figure is around *99%*.
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2026-05-25 07:55:25 UTC

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The opposite of criti-hype is *materialistic* criticism, grounded in independently verifiable claims about how these scams work. To be a good tech critic, you need to start by assuming that a company that lies to its *users* about what it's doing is perfectly capable of lying to its *customers* and *investors* about what it's doing (that is, "even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product").
10/

2026-05-25 07:55:14 UTC

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This is also a very *profitable* style of criticism: there's a huge commercial market for people who claim to be defending the world from conquest by evil dopamine-hacking sorcerers and/or superintelligent paperclip-maximizers that can chatbot you into killing yourself and/or voting for Trump (brackets derogatory).
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2026-05-25 07:55:02 UTC

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Criti-hype is satisfying because the hype itself is so fantastically overblown. These companies claim they're going to save/destroy/conquer the world, transform the very nature of humanity, etc, and so critics who repeat those claims (brackets derogatory) can style themselves as defenders of the world and humanity itself.
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