Mastodawn

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116200392773231841

Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us: A billionaire is a machine for producing policy failures at scale.

Hey look at this

* How Live Nation allegedly terrorized the concert industry https://www.theverge.com/report/891241/live-nation-ticketmaster-week-one-jury-trial

* Canada's One-Man Air Force – and His Calculated Airline Crusade https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/canadas-one-man-air-force-and-his

* Cloud Sovereignty Framework Self Assessment https://www.suse.com/cloud-sovereignty-framework-assessment/

* EFF, Ubuntu and Other Distros Discuss How to Respond to Age-Verification Laws https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/09/0544224/eff-ubuntu-and-other-distros-discuss-how-to-respond-to-age-verification-laws

* Reading “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” https://www.not-so-obvious.net/reading-the-ethnography-of-infrastructure/

#20yrsago Indie label uses heartfelt note instead of copy-restriction http://blog.resonancefm.com/archives/48

#20yrsago Clay Shirky’s ETECH presentation on the politics of social software https://craphound.com/youshutupetech2006.txt

#20yrsago Judge quotes Adam Sandler movie in decision blasting defendant https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/motion-denied-because-youre-idiot

#15yrsago Video game in your browser’s location bar web.archive.org/web/20110309212313/http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter

#15yrsago Extinct invertebrates caught in a 40 million year old sex act https://web.archive.org/web/20110303234001/http://news.discovery.com/animals/40-million-year-old-sex-act-captured-in-amber.html

#15yrsago Improvised toilets of earthquake-struck Christchurch https://web.archive.org/web/20110310044912/https://www.showusyourlongdrop.co.nz/

#15yrsago Canadian MP who shills for the record industry is an enthusiastic pirate https://web.archive.org/web/20110310163136/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5673/125/

#15yrsago The Monster: the fraud and depraved indifference that caused the subprime meltdown https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/07/the-monster-the-fraud-and-depraved-indifference-that-caused-the-subprime-meltdown/

#15yrsago Self-destructing ebooks: paper’s fragility is a bug, not a feature https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/08/ebooks-harpercollins-26-times

#10yrsago Senior U.S. immigration judge says 3 and 4 year old children can represent themselves in court https://web.archive.org/web/20160304201631/http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/03/04/us-judge-says-3-and-4-year-olds-can-represent-themselves-in-immigration-court.html

#10yrsago Crimefighting for fun and profit: data-mining Medicare fraud and likely whistleblowers https://www.wired.com/2016/03/john-mininno-medicare/

#10yrsago Extensive list of space opera cliches https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html

#10yrsago Verizon pays $1.35M FCC settlement for using “supercookies” https://web.archive.org/web/20160308111653/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/verizon-settles-over-supercookies

#10yrsago Group chat: “an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda” https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat/#.1chnl7hf4

#10yrsago Less than a year on, America has all but forgotten the epic Jeep hack https://www.wired.com/2016/03/survey-finds-one-4-americans-remembers-jeep-hack/

#10yrsago Racial justice organizers to FBI vs Apple judge: crypto matters to #blacklivesmatter https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/the-fbi-vs-apple-debate-just-got-less-white/

#1yrago Gandersauce https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116189311117746551

Saturday's threads: The web is bearable with RSS; and more!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

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:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

Picks and Shovels

New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow returns to the world of Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new...

Macmillan Publishers

https://craphound.com/shop/

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."

10/

Upcoming appearances:

* #SanFrancisco: Launch for Cindy Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights), Mar 10
https://citylights.com/events/cindy-cohn-launch-party-for-privacys-defender/

* #Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

* #Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/

* #Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885

11/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU)
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

12/

Recent appearances:

* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074

* The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/

* Tanner Humanities Lecture (U Utah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Yf1nSyekI

* The Lost Cause
https://streets.mn/2026/03/02/book-club-the-lost-cause/

* Should Democrats Make A Nuremberg Caucus? (Make It Make Sense)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWxKrnNfrlo

13/

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Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/autocrats-of-trade/

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14/

Pluralistic: Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us (09 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3mgndq2n2mc2z

I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:

eof/

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) (@doctorow.pluralistic.net)

Even if rich people were no more prone to believe stupid shit than you or me, it would still be a problem. After all, I believe in my share of stupid shit (and if you think none of the shit you believe in is stupid, I'm afraid we've just identified at least one kind of stupid shit you believe). 1/

Bluesky Social

Laura J Mixon Mar 9

@pluralistic Sending love wavicles to you and yours, you awesome bean.

@LauraJMG You too!

#15yrsago Wondrous, detailed map of the history of science fiction https://web.archive.org/web/20110310152548/http://scimaps.org/submissions/7-digital_libraries/maps/thumbs/024_LG.jpg

#15yrsago American Library Association task forces to take on ebook lending https://web.archive.org/web/20110310085634/https://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=5749

#15yrsago Wisconsin capitol bans recording, flags, reading, balloons, chairs, bags, backpacks, photography, etc etc etc https://captimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/more-rules-released-for-state-capitol-visitors/article_f044044f-6183-5128-b718-d5dffbfdb573.html

#15yrsago Librarians Against DRM logo https://web.archive.org/web/20110308170030/https://readersbillofrights.info/librariansagainstDRM

oscarfalcon Mar 9

This collage also portrays perfectly the subject matter, Good One Doctorow!

@oscarfalcon Thank you, Oscar! I love making these collages.

oscarfalcon Mar 9

Yours are fun, I like them.

@oscarfalcon Thank you!

केशव Mar 9

@pluralistic today’s write-up mentions billionaire Peter Singer, but a quick search showed a *Paul* Singer (and not Peter), if true, then I’m pleased to have helped ☺️ (your ardent reader, admirer to the point of an addict 😅).
P.S. Met Cindy Cohn at SCALE23x Friday, and equally inspired (EFF alums are the best).

@k3shav Fixed! Thank you!

Kate Nyhan Mar 9

> Gates simply opposes open science and compulsory licenses on scientific patents, even when that kills millions of people (as it did in South Africa).

He opposes open science for vaccine patents. He enforces open science for the rest of us, to the extent to no longer allowing Gates Foundation grant funds to be used to cover open access article processing charges, instead preferring Gates-funded authors to post preprints on their in-house preprint server
https://openaccess.gatesfoundation.org/

The Gates Foundation's Open Access Policy - Gates Open Access Policy

Ensuring unrestricted access and reuse of all research funded by the Gates Foundation through its Open Access Policy (OAP).

Gates Open Access Policy

Kate Nyhan Mar 9

@pluralistic
(Frankly I think the Gates Foundation may be on to something with the preprint policy instead of covering sky-high APCs without blinking, but it's a big contrast with his take on vaccine tech.)

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras Mar 9

@nyhan @pluralistic my take on that is that he conveniently enforces open science when it's in the interest of capital, and fights it tooth and claw when it doesn't.

GhostOnTheHalfShell Mar 9

The rich are just as subject to folly as any of us. Their wealth allows them to inflict it on everyone.

It’s a harm amplifier