Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions, but what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit, ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.
Exclusive: Documents reveal donor-funded US startup embedded in Republican’s campaign paid UK university academics to collect psychological profiles on potential voters
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:
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:
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."
The internet wasn’t ruined by accident—it was ruined on purpose. In this episode, Cory Doctorow joins us to break down enshittification, his term for the slow, deliberate process that transformed a...
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There is also the option - which is treated as being unthinkable, not even acknowledged publicly - of not allowing them to do the thing without research and having a regulatory framework built before it can cause catastrophic problems. Like, with the LLMs - we could have done safety research, and learned they can lead to psychosis-like symptoms, before letting them loose on the general population, and regulated accordingly. Regulation doesn't have to come *after* harm.
when I found out you were coming to town, I rushed to book, but it was sold out.
Didn’t want to annoy you with “can you score me a ticket”, but just wanted to let you know you are too popular and plenty of us missed out due to physics - cheers!
@Migueldeicaza Aww, thank you! I would absolutely have gotten you a ticket (the craziest thing about post-pandemic ticketed events is that 20-50% of ticket holders - even paid ones! - are no-shows).
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I'm and the end of my tour for my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!
My last two events are CCC in #Hamburg, Dec 27-30:
events.ccc.de/congress/2025/in…
and the Tattered Cover in #Denver, Jan 22:
eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow…
I hope you can make it!
2/
Cory Doctorow Live at Tattered Cover Colfax
EventbriteCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Federal Wallet Inspectors: Does tech *really* move too fast to regulate?
mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11571418…
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Cory Doctorow
2025-12-13 20:40:06
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Hey look at this
* Every Drink in “Casablanca” (1942) bruces.medium.com/every-drink-…
* clbre is a fork of calibre with the aim of stripping out the AI integration github.com/grimthorpe/clbre
* EU Report Distills AI-Training Lessons from Napster Piracy Era: Don’t Sue, License torrentfreak.com/eu-report-dis…
* Rebuilding Imaginary Futures: Il Versificatore, 2025 bruces.medium.com/rebuilding-i…
* John Varley, 1947-2025 floggingbabel.blogspot.com/202…
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EU Report Distills AI-Training Lessons from Napster Piracy Era: Don't Sue, License * TorrentFreak
Ernesto Van der Sar (TF Publishing)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#20yrsago Americans smile, Brits grimace? nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazin…
#20yrsago HOWTO make a soda-can Van de Graaf scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/el…
#20yrsago Credit-card-sized USB drive web.archive.org/web/2005121408…
#20yrsago Homeland Security: Mini-golf courses are terrorist targets web.archive.org/web/2006021515…
#20yrsago Amazon rents access to a copy of the Web battellemedia.com/archives/200…
#15yrsago Pornoscanners trivially defeated by pancake-shaped explosives web.archive.org/web/2010122521…
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Chapter 2: Electromagnetism -- A simple homemade Van de Graaff generator
scitoys.comCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#10yrsago HO fhtagn! Detailed model railroad layout recreates HP Lovecraft’s Arkham web.archive.org/web/2013112704…
#10yrsago Suicide rates are highest in spring — not around Christmas theatlantic.com/health/archive…
#10yrsago Airbnb hosts consistently discriminate against black people benedelman.org/publications/ai…
#10yrsago What will it take to get MIT to stand up for its own students and researchers? youtube.com/watch?v=cQdl_JdTar…
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The Dangerous Holiday-Suicide Myth That Won't End
Olga Khazan (The Atlantic)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#10yrsago Experts baffled to learn that 2 years olds are being prescribed psychiatric drugs nytimes.com/2015/12/11/us/psyc…
#10yrsago Happy Birthday’s copyright status is finally, mysteriously settled nytimes.com/2015/12/10/busines…
#10yrsago Proposal: keep the nuclear launch codes in an innocent volunteer’s chest-cavity blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/0…
#10yrsago Obama promises statement on encryption before Xmas (maybe) web.archive.org/web/2015121104…
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The Heart of Deterrence | Restricted Data
Alex Wellerstein (Restricted Data)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#10yrsago Harlem Cryptoparty: Crypto matters for #blacklivesmatter web.archive.org/web/2015121818…
#10yrsago Backslash: a toolkit for protesters facing hyper-militarized, surveillance-heavy police arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
#10yrsago Ted Cruz campaign hires dirty data-miners who slurped up millions of Facebook users’ data theguardian.com/us-news/2015/d…
#10yrsago The Tor Project has a new executive director: former EFF director Shari Steele! blog.torproject.org/greetings-…
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Ted Cruz using firm that harvested data on millions of unwitting Facebook users
Harry Davies (The Guardian)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#10yrsago What I told the kid who wanted to join the NSA theguardian.com/us-news/2015/d…
#10yrsago Copyfraud: Disney’s bogus complaint over toy photo gets a fan kicked off Facebook arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
#15yrsago Sales pitch from an ATM-skimmer vendor krebsonsecurity.com/2010/12/wh…
#15yrsago Boardgame Remix Kit makes inspired new games out of old Monopoly, Clue, Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble sets web.archive.org/web/2010121421…
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Disney drops—then doubles down on—DMCA claim over Star Wars figure pic
Joe Mullin (Ars Technica)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#10yrsago Britons will need copyright licenses to post photos of their own furniture arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
#5yrsago Outgoing Facebookers blast the company pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fai…
#5yrsago Carbon offsets are bullshit pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fai…
#5yrsago Youtube, fair use, competition, and the death of the artist pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fai…
#5yrsago A lethally boring story pluralistic.net/2020/12/11/num…
#5yrsago Daddy Daughter Xmas Podcast 2020 pluralistic.net/2020/12/11/num…
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UK citizens may soon need licenses to photograph some stuff they already own
Glyn Moody (Ars Technica)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
#5yrsago Antitrust and Facebook's paid disinformation pluralistic.net/2020/12/11/num…
#1yrago The housing emergency and the second Trump term pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nim…
#1yrago A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation pluralistic.net/2024/12/12/the…
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Pluralistic: 11 Dec 2020 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Thursday's threads: Instacart reaches into your pocket and lops a third off your dollars; and more!
mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11570201…
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Cory Doctorow
2025-12-11 17:03:20
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
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:
us.macmillan.com/books/9781250…
--
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:
us.macmillan.com/books/9780374…
13/
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
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."
craphound.com/shop/
14/
Shop | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com
craphound.comCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Upcoming appearances:
* #Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
events.ccc.de/congress/2025/in…
* #Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow…
* #ColoradoSprings: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/
15/
Cory Doctorow Live at Tattered Cover Colfax
EventbriteCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Recent appearances:
* How to Stop “Ensh*ttification” Before It Kills the Internet (Capitalisn't)
youtube.com/watch?v=34gkIvYiHx…
* Enshittification on The Daily Show
youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5n…
* Enshittification with Four Ways to Change the World (Channel 4)
youtube.com/watch?v=tZQaEeuuI3…
* The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse. Forever. (Novarra Media)
youtube.com/watch?v=7wE8G-d7Sn…
* Enshittification (Future Knowledge)
futureknowledge.transistor.fm/…
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Future Knowledge | Enshittification
Future KnowledgeCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2025/12/13/unc…
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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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You can also get a fulltext RSS feed, licensed CC BY 4.0:
pluralistic.net/feed/
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Pluralistic: Federal Wallet Inspectors (13 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
I'm and the end of my tour for my new book, the international bestseller *Enshittification*!
My last two events are CCC in #Hamburg, Dec 27-30:
events.ccc.de/congress/2025/in…
and the Tattered Cover in #Denver, Jan 22:
eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow…
I hope you can make it!
eof/
Cory Doctorow Live at Tattered Cover Colfax
EventbriteJesse @39C3
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •This quote from the "AI-Training Lessons from Napster" article broke my mind:
“… AI is very different from historical cases of online piracy, as it creates large net benefits for society while using copyrighted works as input."
Both piracy and AI have the problem that artists aren't paid.
Piracy created the biggest media library ever seen in the history of the world, freely accessible by anyone with a connection.
What benefits has AI created compared to that? Besides a bubble?
V
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Like, with the LLMs - we could have done safety research, and learned they can lead to psychosis-like symptoms, before letting them loose on the general population, and regulated accordingly.
Regulation doesn't have to come *after* harm.
whitefish
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Cory Doctorow
in reply to whitefish • • •Raphaël Vinot
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •when I found out you were coming to town, I rushed to book, but it was sold out.
Didn’t want to annoy you with “can you score me a ticket”, but just wanted to let you know you are too popular and plenty of us missed out due to physics - cheers!
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉 • • •Will S
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •