Cory DoctorowToday's threads (a thread)
Inside: Understaffing as a form of enshittification; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/23/nobodys-home/
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Understaffing as a form of enshittification: A way to shift value from workers, patients and shoppers to investors.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116276950502388433
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Hey look at this
* Our algorithmic future – Utopia or Armageddon? https://b2fxxx.blogspot.com/2026/03/our-algorithmic-future-utopia-or.html
* The Market Definition Trap https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-market-definition-trap/
* On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edwardwillett/on-spec-2026-new-canadian-literature-of-the-fantastic
* Day 7: Ticketmaster's "Velvet Hammer" https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/day-7-ticketmasters-velvet-hammer
* From Race to the Bottom to Worker Power on the Road https://economicpopulist.substack.com/p/from-race-to-the-bottom-to-worker
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#20yrsago Marvel Comics: stealing our language https://memex.craphound.com/2006/03/18/marvel-comics-stealing-our-language/
#20yrsago MPAA/RIAA/BSA: No breaking DRM, even if it’s killing you (literally!) https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/03/08/riaa-says-future-drm-might-threaten-critical-infrastructure-and-potentially-endanger-liv/
#20yrsago Coping with plenty – stuff gets cheaper, space gets pricier https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/feb/28/retail.shopping
#20yrsago France will let Microsoft play iTunes http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4828296.stm
#20yrsago A new discipline to describe the copyfight https://web.archive.org/web/20060422010702/https://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002930.html
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#20yrsago Right-wing think-tank hates DRM https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/circumventing-competition-perverse-consequences-digital-millennium-copyright-act#
#20yrsago Reasons to take math in high school https://web.archive.org/web/20060610134055/http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i11_math.html
#20yrsago Sun ships free and open microprocessor https://web.archive.org/web/20060221112756/http://opensparc.sunsource.net/nonav/index.html
#20yrsago Octavia Butler scholarship will send people of color to Clarion https://web.archive.org/web/20060406161412/https://carlbrandon.org/butlerscholarship/
#20yrsago Online sexual material is obscene if any community in US objects https://web.archive.org/web/20060505232346/http://www.justicemag.com/daily/item/2590.html
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#15yrsago Folk models of home computer security: what we think our PCs are doing https://rickwash.com/papers/rwash-homesec-soups10-final.pdf
#15yrsago Fixers’ Collective: people learning to make broken stuff work again https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2011/0321/The-art-of-the-fix-it
#15yrsago Bug-eyed monster steampunk mask https://bob-basset.livejournal.com/158400.html
#15yrsago Scholars to stop pretending they don’t use Wikipedia; will work out best practices instead https://www.bbc.com/news/education-12809944
#15yrsago Electronic publishing Bingo card from Scalzi https://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/03/20/the-electronic-publishing-bingo-card/
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#15yrsago RIP, Mike Glicksohn, Hugo-winning science fiction fan https://file770.com/mike-glicksohn-1946-2011/
#15yrsago Anti-labor ads celebrate workers taking paycuts and CEOs getting millions https://www.cogdis.me/2011/03/is-this-what-they-really-want.html
#15yrsago Reluctant witness refuses to admit he knows what a photocopier is https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2011/03/identifying_photocopy_machine.html
#15yrsago Tim Wu in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/the-master-switch-tim-wu-internet
#15yrsago Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/18/up-against-it-smart-whiz-bang-space-opera-pits-astro-bureaucrats-against-rogue-ais/
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#10yrsago Howto: start a fire with a lemon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2vT665bGI
#10yrsago First order of business for hard-right government: canceling Croatia’s answer to The Daily Show https://balkaninsight.com/2016/03/17/satiric-show-pulled-from-croatian-tv-for-intolerance-03-17-2016/bi/all-balkan-countries/
#10yrsago FBI issues car-hacking warning, tells drivers to keep their cars’ patch-levels current https://www.wired.com/2016/03/fbi-warns-car-hacking-real-risk/
#10yrsago BART’s twitter manager drops truth-bombs, world cheers https://gizmodo.com/i-would-like-to-buy-a-drink-for-the-poor-soul-who-ran-t-1765477706
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#10yrsago Chelsea Manning gets the US Army to cough up its “insider threat” training docs https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/government-persecuting-whistleblowers-insider-threat-chelsea-manning
#10yrsago Apple engineers quietly discuss refusing to create the FBI’s backdoor https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/technology/apple-encryption-engineers-if-ordered-to-unlock-iphone-might-resist.html
#10yrsago Russia moots ban on discussions about VPNs, reverse proxies, and other anti-censorship techniques https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-holders-want-site-block-circumvention-advice-banned-160319/
#10yrsago Medusa’s Web: Tim Powers is the Philip K Dick of our age https://memex.craphound.com/2016/03/18/medusas-web-tim-powers-is-the-philip-k-dick-of-our-age/
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#10yrsago Meet the Commercial Energy Working Group, a lobby group that won’t say who it lobbies for https://web.archive.org/web/20160320150011/https://theintercept.com/2016/03/20/mysterious-powerful-lobbying-group-wont-even-say-who-its-lobbying-for/
#5yrsago Support Amazon workers today https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/20/against-amazon-union-busting/#what-rhymes-with-bezos
#5yrsago Department of Truth https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/20/against-amazon-union-busting/#dot
#5yrsago The political possibility of cities https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/21/ex-urbe/#arcology-politics
#5yrsago Aviation bailout cost $666k/job https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#aa
#5yrsago Impunity for NYPD cops who brutalized BLM protesters https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#nypd-black-and-blue
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#5yrsago Help news, not news-barons https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#big-news
#5yrsago Announcing "The Shakedown" https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#monopsony
#5yrsago Chickenized reverse-centaurs https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex
#1yrago You can't save an institution by betraying its mission https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/19/selling-out/#destroy-the-village-to-save-it
#1yrago AI can't do your job https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete
#1yrago Ray Nayler's "Where the Axe Is Buried" https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/20/birchpunk/#cyberspace-is-everting
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Thursday's threads: Love of corporate bullshit is correlated with bad judgment; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116255988626308525
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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
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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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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."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #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
* #Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, Apr 10
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/4863920260410
* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #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
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Recent appearances:
* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech
* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU
* 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
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I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:
https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3mhpfc5mafk2m
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) (@doctorow.pluralistic.net)
Enshittification can only take place if companies can move value around. Digitization make this easier than ever, for example, by changing prices on a per-user, per-session basis, using surveillance data to predict the top price or lowest wage a user will accept: https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/ 1/
Zanne@pluralistic omg.. I went to CVS this past weekend and the cashier was running two screens where the customer had to look up their account to get their medicine. The touch screen was horrible so it took a lot of effort to use. The cashier was taking over half the time. It was completely inefficient and made us all cranky. This was in my local target which has become completely useless. Who is running these companies? #enshittification 10000%
BandersnatchI refuse to use self-checkout for any reason & have literally left a full cart at the front of the store when no other options are available.
Waste my time & I will waste even more of your money.
Diabetic Heihachi@Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic
I just steal things when I have to self checkout.
I found out the staff login to the machines at my one local grocer is 4444 so I help myself to discounts, or If an item requires a count to be entered that means the scale is not sensitive to pick up the items weight properly, so yes, I only purchased three dried fruit strips, not 50. Oh and those are chocolate covered raisins from the bulk section, not organic chocolate covered almonds...
Wayne Werner@DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic I had a Very Experience a few years ago https://waynewerner.com/blag/2024-02-06-13-29-kroger-is-the-absolute-worst.html
Joe Reinhart@DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic
This is a weird take to me as I much prefer self checkout and don't see it as enshittification at all. I'd be quite bummed if they took them away because people were using them to steal.
This is a weird take to me as I much prefer self checkout and don't see it as enshittification at all. I'd be quite bummed if they took them away because people were using them to steal.
Brett@jayemar @DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic
Capital owners should pay people to do things instead accumulating more wealth.
Self checkout in a just world would have been obliterated by collective bargaining. Grocery stores were almost universally unionized not even 25 years ago. You could literally provide for your family bagging groceries.
TobyBartels@jayemar @DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic
I much prefer them to standing in line, but whenever I do get a human checker, I'm surprised again to be reminded how much faster they are. So all in all, I wish that they would pay enough people to check everybody out, but since they won't, I'm glad to have these.
e1evenf1ngers@jayemar @DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic I doubt they take them away as staffing less people saves the companies a lot of money. My guess is they expand the surveillance tech they're already using.
At an arena near me they have a "self checkout" where you scan your card to enter, take what you want, and the cameras see everything you leave with (no self-scanning) and use AI to asses what items you "bought" / left with.
@jayemar @DavBot @Bandersnatch @pluralistic self checkout is fine if it saves the customer more time.. many times it doesn't (in my experience). In Target, self checkout has been ok, except now it's longer lines and you have to do everything yourself. CVS screens suck.. so it's was basically having to type out my name painstakingly on a touch screen that didn't work. The checkout person did it in seconds.
Matilda@DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic our local supermarket chain closed the self checkouts because of stealing.
Which was a total pain.
But each to their own
@junklight @DavBot @Bandersnatch @pluralistic
Half the store is locked up because of stealing.. they are simply pushing people online. Why don't they just close the stores? Half the parking spots are taken up as order online spots anyway and yet I hardly see anyone parking in these spots. Total waste. It's like moronic AI is already running the store from afar..
@DavBot @zannesan @pluralistic
That will work till it doesn't. Loss prevention has gotten crazy in the past few years. My wife watches YouTube videos of people getting arrested for doing *exactly* what you are describing.
Big box stores will "let" you continue to do this while they collect evidence on you until you hit a felony amount & then they will nail you to the wall and ban you from the store for a minimum of several years.
⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️@DavBot @Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic you ejit. This raises prices for everyone to cover the theft
Negahyphen@Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic even Whole Foods /Amazon are phasing out those experiments as they have shown to cause a dramatic increase in shrinkage. Mm.
There are more people who admit to taking an item from a store with self checkout than support war with Iran (even without ground troops).
There are more people who admit to taking an item from a store with self checkout than support war with Iran (even without ground troops).
Carolyn@Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic High five. Me, too. Once I went to a store that had converted to self checkouts since last I visited and I just looked at the one person who was there to oversee things and asked if there was a person with a checkout who could process me, she took me over to a what seemed the one remaining checkout counter to check me out, and I haven't been back.
If she hand't helped, I would've just dropped my basket and left.
⠵⠻⠷⠕⠭ 🍥🍉⚪🌹@Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic Same. I *could* use the anti labour device (self checkout, self order kiosk etc.) but I refuse.
Sterling@Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic
what pisses me off is when the dumb machines are either not working...or just plain old turned off or cordoned off.
Then they have the balls to check you as you go out while cameras are watching you and you have < $10 in goods.... but will not have someone check you out.
what pisses me off is when the dumb machines are either not working...or just plain old turned off or cordoned off.
Then they have the balls to check you as you go out while cameras are watching you and you have < $10 in goods.... but will not have someone check you out.
ferricoxide@Bandersnatch @zannesan @pluralistic
Prior to recent years, self-checkout was a no-go for me because the scanners were always crap and, 9/10 chance I was gonna have to flip the "help me" light and wait several minutes for the helper-dude to notice and come by.
These days, with all the poorly-designed stop-loss cameras, it's not worth the risk to use self-checkout (this wasn't one of the news stories I was looking for, but you get the drift)
Prior to recent years, self-checkout was a no-go for me because the scanners were always crap and, 9/10 chance I was gonna have to flip the "help me" light and wait several minutes for the helper-dude to notice and come by.
These days, with all the poorly-designed stop-loss cameras, it's not worth the risk to use self-checkout (this wasn't one of the news stories I was looking for, but you get the drift)
Negative12DollarBill@pluralistic not only that but CVS doesn't allow you to easily give this feedback. It's like the suits are killing their own business and they don't care enough to get valuable feedback from the people that they should care about. I guess that's why they will go out of business.. Circular loop of #enshittification
JacobCoffin@zannesan @pluralistic the feedback would reflect poorly on them, might hamper their careers. Business failures are only important if you care about the business lasting
DressToKILT@zannesan @pluralistic Let's also not forget that CVS has made it completely impossible to get on the phone and connect with a human. At best you can leave a message that they will not return.
Three plus or minus five@zannesan @pluralistic @dresstokilt
We should either:
A: serve all legal documents and notifications through their customer service portal or
B: send all our complaints to their legal address
@ThreeSigma @zannesan @pluralistic They wound up making things very easy for me by pulling up stakes and leaving my area, meaning I no longer need to send them anything.
Wade Roberts
v@pluralistic if an employee forgets to scan an item of yours, that's an oopsie. Happens semi frequently, probably. If *you* forget to scan an item, its a crime. And the source of accusation for that crime is the self-checkout terminal. We go from oopsie by a cashier to a machine accusing you of a crime.