@pluralistic@mamot.fr
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pluralistic

@pluralistic@mamot.fr

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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pluralistic, to ai
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Everything Made By an Is In the : The US Office offers creative a powerful protective:

https://doctorow.medium.com/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain-caa634a8f7f1

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. 40 years of declining worker power shattered the American Dream (TM), producing multiple generations whose children fared worse than their parents, cratering faith in institutions and hope for a better future.

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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/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Engineering professor and materials scientist @debcha's new book How Infrastructure Works is a hopeful, lyrical - even beautiful - hymn to the systems of mutual aid we embed in our material world, from sewers to roads to the power grid. It's a book that will make you see the world in a different way - forever:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

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pluralistic, to apple
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

They seem nice

(Watch my @defcon talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4)

(support @eff at https://supporters.eff.org/donate/j)

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening - in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit - did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

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pluralistic, (edited ) to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

They stole something from you. For decades, they stole it. That thing they stole? Your entire culture. For all of human history, works created in living memory entered the public domain every year. 40 years ago, that stopped.

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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/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytimes

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pluralistic, to security
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing explain that "" doesn't exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won't protect you from burglaries. A condom won't protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about "security" without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

I'm in an IETF seminar where the speaker just used the term "pocket-switched network" for people trading USB sticks.

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

It's a breathtaking fraud: , America's largest gas company, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html

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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/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Just in time for , here's 'Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide," a report from a coalition of international tax justice and anti-corporate activist groups:

https://www.balancedeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Davos-Taken-not-Earned-full-Report-2024-FINAL.pdf

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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/2024/01/17/monopolies-produce-billionaires/#inequality-corruption-climate-poverty-sweatshops

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Cyberpunk trifecta

Me with Bruce Sterling on the streets of Turin
Me with Neal Stephenson at a bookstore in Seattle

pluralistic, to milan
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

To access wifi:

  1. Set time machine to 2001

  2. Install Internet Explorer

  3. There is no step three

pluralistic, to ai
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

The real existential risk was the LLCs we incorporated along the way.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90892235/researcher-meredith-whittaker-says-ais-biggest-risk-isnt-consciousness-its-the-corporations-that-control-them

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

For a brief time this year, Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon drink" was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by #CatfishUK prankster #OobahButler in a stunt for a new #Channel4 doc, "#TheGreatAmazonHeist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

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/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

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pluralistic, (edited ) to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

My latest #LocusMagazing column is "Don't Be Evil," a consideration of the forces that led to the Great Enshittening, the dizzying, rapid transformation of formerly useful services went from indispensable to unusable to actively harmful:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

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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/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Call me a conspiratorialist if you must. But when CEOs get on earnings calls and brag about how covid, war, and scare-stories about let them hike their prices and rake in never-before-seen profit margins, I think it's reasonable to blame inflation on greed, not on workers getting a couple of relief checks during the lockdown.

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Using Amazon, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Google, or Doordash, or Uber doesn't make you lazy. Platform capitalism isn't enshittifying because you made the wrong shopping choices.

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/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/#or-give-me-death

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the , I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

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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/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

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pluralistic, to DaftPunk
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

"Enshittification" isn't just a way of describing the symptoms of platform decay: it's also a theory of the mechanism of decay - the means by which platforms get shittier and shittier until they are a giant pile of shit.

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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/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

In Blood In the Machine, @bcmerchant delivers the definitive history of the , and the clearest analysis of the automator's playbook, where "entrepreneurs'" lawless extraction from workers is called "innovation" and "inevitable":

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

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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/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

"I am in awe of the mental gymnastics required to conclude that there's any solution to homelessness other than finding housing for people. It's like telling a drowning person that their real problem is they eat fatty foods." https://mitchw.blog/2023/07/27/i-am-in.html

pluralistic, to tech
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

We're living in the , in which the forces of enshittification are turning everything from our cars to our streaming services to our dishwashers into thoroughly enshittifified piles of shit. Call it the Great Enshittening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

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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/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

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pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

If AI has a future (a big if), it will have to be economically viable. An industry can't spend 1,700% more on Nvidia chips than it earns indefinitely - not even with Nvidia being a principle investor in its largest customers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39883571

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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/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

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pluralistic, to ai
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

"The reality is you can't build a $100b industry around techn that's kind of useful, mostly in mundane ways, and that boasts perhaps small increases in productivity if and only if the people who use it fully understand its limitations.You certainly can't justify the kind of exploitation, extraction, and environmental cost the industry has been mostly getting away with, in part because people have believed lofty promises of someday changing the world."

https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless-2/

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

Oh, fuck you, British Airways.

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