Cory DoctorowToday's threads (a thread)
Inside: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/
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Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages: Tech rights are labor rights (again).
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116356970859867506
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Hey look at this
* Toronto’s Transit Crisis Is a Class Crisis https://jacobin.com/2026/04/toronto-transit-uber-lyft-class/
* Share Festival Call for Artists 2026: “Popular Singularity” https://bruces.medium.com/share-festival-call-for-artists-2026-popular-singularity-3b8daf92370f
* The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/
* More Than One Way to Tax a Billionaire https://4taxfairness.substack.com/p/more-than-one-way-to-tax-a-billionaire
* Bernie vs. Claude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3AtWdeu_G0
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#20yrsago Arthur C Clarke fights Buddhist monks over Daylight Savings Time http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4865972.stm
#20yrsago What parts of the .COM space are registered? https://web.archive.org/web/20060411133458/https://www.yafla.com/dforbes/2006/03/29.html
#20yrsago Bomb squad called out to “defuse” life-size Super Mario power-ups https://web.archive.org/web/20060405034455/http://www.recordpub.com/article.php?pathToFile=archive/04012006/news/&file=_news1.txt&article=1&tD=04012006
#20yrsago Poems showing the absurdities of English spelling https://web.archive.org/web/20060405223008/https://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php
#20yrsago Isaac Newton’s alchemical “chymistry” notebook scans https://web.archive.org/web/20060612203137/http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/index.jsp
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#20yrsago Poems showing the absurdities of English spelling https://web.archive.org/web/20060405223008/https://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php
#20yrsago Isaac Newton’s alchemical “chymistry” notebook scans https://web.archive.org/web/20060612203137/http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/index.jsp
#15yrsago Misleading government stats and the innumerate media who repeat them https://www.badscience.net/2011/04/anarchy-for-the-uk-ish/
#15yrsago US Customs’ domain-seizure program blocks free speech, leaves alleged pirates largely unscathed https://torrentfreak.com/us-governments-pirate-domain-seizures-failed-miserably-110403/
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#15yrsago Misleading government stats and the innumerate media who repeat them https://www.badscience.net/2011/04/anarchy-for-the-uk-ish/
#15yrsago US Customs’ domain-seizure program blocks free speech, leaves alleged pirates largely unscathed https://torrentfreak.com/us-governments-pirate-domain-seizures-failed-miserably-110403/
#10yrsago Panama Papers: Largest leak in history reveals political and business elite hiding trillions in offshore havens https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/the-panama-papers-how-the-worlds-rich-and-famous-hide-their-money-offshore
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#10yrsago America’s teachers are being trained in a harsh interrogation technique that produces false confessions https://web.archive.org/web/20160404143447/https://www.alternet.org/education/why-are-k-12-school-leaders-being-trained-coercive-interrogation-techniques
#10yrsago LA’s new rule: homeless people are only allowed to own one trashcan’s worth of things https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-apartments-demolished-20160402-story.html
#10yrsago Save Netflix! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-netflix
#10yrsago The TSA spent $1.4M on an app to tell it who gets a random search https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/tsa-randomizer-app-cost-336000/
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#10yrsago Iceland’s Prime Minister says he won’t resign, mass demonstrations gain momentum https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2016/03/31/anti_government_demo_planned_for_monday/
#10yrsago Panama Papers reveal the tax-avoidance strategies of David Cameron’s father https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-david-cameron-father-tax-bahamas
#10yrsago Studio sculpts giant coin, photographs it alongside normal objects to make them look tiny https://skrekkogle.com/projects/50c/
#5yrsago China's antitrust surge https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/03/ambulatory-wallets/#sectoral-balances
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#5yrsago Consumerism won't defeat Georgia's Jim Crow https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/03/ambulatory-wallets/#christmas-voting-turkeys
#1yrago End-stage capitalism https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/04/anything-that-cant-go-on/#forever-eventually-stops
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Saturday's threads: EU ready to cave to Trump on tech; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116345382293539190
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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:
* #Toronto: Humber Polytechnic President's Lecture Series, Apr 8
https://liberalarts.humber.ca/current-students/resources/conferences-and-lectures/presidents-lecture-series.html
* #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
* #Toronto: DemocracyXchange, Apr 16
https://www.democracyxchange.org/news/cory-doctorow-to-open-dxc26-on-april-16
* #SanFrancisco: 2026 Berkeley Spring Forum on M&A and the Boardroom, Apr 23
https://www.theberkeleyforum.com/#agenda
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691
* #NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
https://luma.com/ssgfvqz8
* #NYC: Techidemic with Sarah Jeong, Tochi Onyibuchi and Alia Dastagir (PEN World Voices), Apr 30
https://worldvoices.pen.org/event/techidemic/
* #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
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
* SXSW #London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901
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Recent appearances:
* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P
* 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/
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I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:
https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3miswwe7klc2v
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) (@doctorow.pluralistic.net)
What industry calls "personalized pricing" is really *surveillance* pricing: using digital tools' flexibility to change the price for each user, and using surveillance data to guess the worst price you'll accept: https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/ 1/
Michael Moore@pluralistic Great example of surveillance pricing for those who haven't seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo
But it's not liking shopping in person is going to be much of a fix, considering the number of places rolling out digital price tags. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/03/electronic-shelf-labels-are-taking-over-us-grocery-stores.html
We Had 400 People Shop For Groceries. What We Found Will Shock You.
GLC"What we found will shock you."
Oh so clever I must read it now.
I'm perfectly willing to take your word for the quality of the report, but at the same time, if they put "dog food" on the label the tendency is to expect dog food in the can.
I'm particularly grouchy right now as I was listening to a Chopin sonata on YouTube and halfway through it became a Hertz commercial so that ended that.
- No, strike that, I'm always grouchy these days. At least until he dies,
/grouch
Netraven@pluralistic I hope my boss knows how much I call him an idiot on the stupid chatgpt team plan he forces me to us. I rant to that motherfucking thing, like "YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS SHIT, this motherfucker is so dumb, he's arguing with me whether agentic AI is useful and doesn't believe it's unsafe, like how ignorant can one manchild be?"
And it's like "Yes, you're right, that is tough."
LOL