Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow (RSS/Atom feed)

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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow (RSS/Atom feed)
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Pluralistic: bunnie's piggyback hack (09 Jan 2026) # Today's links * [bunnie's piggyback hack][1]: An actual "one weird trick" that's pretty fucking spectacular. * [Hey look at this][2]: Delights to delectate. * [Object permanence][3]: "Keyboard Practice"; Sam Bulte says she's no dirtier than other MPs; Gene Luen Yang's Amabassador for Young People's Literature speech; Menstruation innovation. * [Upcoming appearances][4]: Where to find me. * [Recent appearances][5]: Where I've been. * [Latest books][6]: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Upcoming books][7]: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Colophon][8]: All the rest. [A slide from bunnie Huang's 39C3 talk.] # bunnie's piggyback hack ([permalink][9]) If Andrew "bunnie" Huang didn't actually exist, I'd swear he was a character out of a(n extraordinarily technologically well-informed) cyberpunk novel. Every time I interact with this legendary hardware hacker, he blows my mind with some incredible project or insight that permanently alters how I think about technology. I first met bunnie when he came to EFF for help with the threats he'd received from Microsoft. At the time, bunnie was an electrical engineering grad student at MIT, and he'd taken the bootloader locks on the new Xbox platform as a personal affront and challenge. He applied his prodigious skill and talent to these digital handcuffs, and in short order, he had broken the Xbox and installed Linux on it. MIT's general counsel immediately washed its hands of any responsibility to defend this young grad student from bullying by a corporate monopolist, hanging him out to dry. So he turned to us – and we got his back. You can read all about it in *Hacking the Xbox*, his canonical work about hardware hacking and technological freedom (it's free!): [https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf][10] In the many years since, I've been lucky enough to count bunnie as a friend, colleague and comrade, albeit one I only physically run into every year or so, usually at some tech event or on the playa at Burning Man, where he still camps with the MIT crew at The Institute. I just got to see bunnie in person again, over Christmas week at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg. He gave a late-night presentation with his collaborator Sean "xobs" Cross, entitled "Xous: A Pure-Rust Rethink of the Embedded Operating System": [] Don't let the technical-sounding title intimidate you! This was a banger of a talk, and as with every bunnie Huang production, it left a pleasant and persistent aftertaste. The background for this talk is bunnie's obsession with building a trustworthy computer. For decades, bunnie has been chasing the dream of a computer whose every component – operating system, drivers, firmware, *and hardware designs* – are open to inspection. Bunnie's reasoning here is that anything that can't be inspected (and, by extension, modified) by its users is a spot where bad guys can hide bad stuff, and where lurking bugs can fester until they are exploited by bad guys. Remember the spectacular (and still mysterious) claims that Apple's servers had all been compromised with minuscule hardware bugs? The single best explanation of that you will find comes from bunnie: [] Bunnie was doing all this before there was an "open source hardware" movement, and he remains at its vanguard. His "Precursor" project is a reference hardware platform where *every* component is open to inspection and modification, from the chassis to the random number generator: [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/category/betrusted/precursor/][13] One area of especial concern and interest for bunnie is the promise and peril of the "system-on-a-chip" (SoC). This is exactly what it sounds like: a cheap chip that incorporates everything you need to do full-fledged computing, including interfaces and drivers for networks, screens, peripherals, etc. SoCs are ubiquitous. You find them in things like individual car engine components and inkjet printer cartridges, and each one is a whole-ass computer, capable of running some really ugly malware. As bunnie explained back in 2020, there are two problems with SoCs: first, they are packaged such that the silicon traces inside of them can't be readily inspected, and second, they are so expensive to fabricate that someone like bunnie can't possibly come up with the millions needed to make an open, trustworthy, inspectable alternative: [https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/10/dark-matter/#precursor][14] That's where bunnie's CCC talk comes in. The chips that SoCs are etched upon have *lots* of space (relatively speaking – we're talking about nanometer-scale circuits, after all). Even after an SoC designer packs in a ton of extra traces to handle oddball applications, the chip is still mostly "dark matter" – blank silicon. The first half of bunnie and xobs's talk concerns itself with "Xous," a secure operating system for an SoC, written in Rust. But the *second* half of the talk tackles the problem of procuring an SoC that you can trust to run Xous on. That's where this dark matter comes in. Bunnie's day-job is consulting on extremely gnarly, high-stakes, high-value hardware design and manufacturing, so naturally, he's got lots of clients and contacts in the SoC manufacturing world. He approached one of these companies with a proposal: let me tape out *a whole separate chip* that fits in the dark matter for one of your upcoming chips. Adding these traces adds virtually no cost to the production, and adding bunnie's chips to the production run actually *saves* the manufacturer money, because the prices drop when the quantities increase. The idea is to put two chips on the chip, and badge most of them with the OEM's branding, while a small rump of the chips will have bunnie's branding (he calls it the Baochip). On bunnie's chips, the traces to the OEM chip will be physically cut, meaning that the Baochips will just be Baochips – the original chip will be inaccessible and unusable. What's more, bunnie didn't just fit *one* chip into the OEM's "dark matter" – he fit *five separate, specialized SoCs* into the unused space. Remember, the beauty of SoCs is that once they're taped out and sent to production, the cost of an actual chip is peanuts, meaning that these Baochips are cheap as hell. Even better: the traces on these chips are scaled to be readily inspected using relatively low-cost equipment, meaning that many parties around the world can grab one of these chips, stick it in a machine, and compare the traces on the chip to the free, open sourcefile that was used to produce it, confirming that there are no nasty surprises lurking inside. This was *such* an exciting talk, and as I sat through it, I had this nagging feeling that it reminded me of something else I'd learned about years before, though I couldn't quite place it. Finally, as bunnie and xobs were stepping off the stage, I had it – it reminded me of *another* bunnie talk I'd seen – this one at The Institute, the MIT Burning Man camp, more than a decade prior. Back in 2015, bunnie designed and built a set of really cool, wearable radio-linked badges for his campmates, which would help them locate one another on the playa at night. These badges were really cool – they used a genetic algorithm to "have sex" with one another and mutate their color patterns. Bunnie even worked in a "consent" mechanism! [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2015/sex-circuits-deep-house/][15] But the really cool part that stuck with me was the manufacturing story. Bunnie wanted to fabricate custom injection-molded plastic enclosures for these pendants, but injection molding – like chip design – is a mass production phenomenon, with sky-high setup costs and incredibly cheap per-unit costs thereafter. So (and this might sound familiar) bunnie reached out to a die-maker that he worked with in China and said, "Hey, the next time you're contracted to mill out a die for a client, let me know if there's any extra space on the face of the die, and I'll provide you with a shapefile you can carve out of this 'dark matter.'" This doesn't add any cost to the die setup, and it means that bunnie can run just a couple dozen injection-molded, custom cases at a cost of pennies per unit. I grabbed bunnie later that night and mentioned this old Burning Man project to him and he said, "You know, I haven't ever thought of it, but you're right, there's definitely a throughline between the two projects." I asked him what he called this technique and he shrugged and said he didn't really have a name for it, but he thought of it as "piggybacking," which seems like a good name to me. It seems to me that these two kinds of manufacturing can't be the only ones that can be "piggybacked" onto. That's what motivated me to write this post – to get people thinking about these high-setup/low-unit cost production types that might be piggybacked for small batch, delightful projects like bunnie's. Well, that, and just to do one of my periodic bunnie Huang appreciation posts. If there's one person that I'd recommend people pay more attention to, it's him. He's also a *terrific* communicator, and an indecently great writer. My readers might be familiar with him thanks to the afterword he contributed to *Little Brother*: [https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/][16] More recently, he wrote a fantastic intro for last year's *Science Comics Computers: How Digital Computers Work*, a brilliant middle-grades graphic novel that uses steampunk dinosaurs to explain digital logic and the building blocks of computation: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/05/xor-xand-xnor-nand-nor/#brawniac][17] He also co-authored a fascinating research paper with Edward Snowden, after the two of them collaborated on a daughter-board that spots otherwise untraceable malware: [https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf][18] Again, my readers will recognize this as a gimmick from my 2020 novel *Attack Surface* (a *Little Brother* novel for adults): [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757517/attacksurface/][19] That's not bunnie's only sweet hardware hack, of course. Check out the insanely clever design for a contact-tracing dongle he prototyped for the EU in 2020: [https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#trace-together][20] But really, you owe it to yourself to read bunnie at book length, and his best book is 2016's *The Hardware Hacker*, a tour-de-force, lay-friendly exegesis on the theory and practice of hardware hacking: [https://memex.craphound.com/2016/12/30/the-hardware-hacker-bunnie-huangs-tour-de-force-on-hardware-hacking-reverse-engineering-china-manufacturing-innovation-and-biohacking/][21] # Hey look at this ([permalink][22]) * Logical steps and “eldering” [https://bookmaniac.org/2026/01/07/logical-steps-and-eldering/][23] [A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'] # Object permanence ([permalink][24]) #20yrsago John McDaid’s brilliant sf story Keyboard Practice free online [https://web.archive.org/web/20060112044109/https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/jm01.htm][25] #20yrsago Pledge to boycott DRM CDs [https://web.archive.org/web/20060112061657/http://www.pledgebank.com/boycottdrm][26] #20yrsago Hollywood’s Canadian MP claims she’s no dirtier than the rest [https://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/08/hollywoods-canadian-mp-claims-shes-no-dirtier-than-the-rest/][27] #10yrsago Gene Luen Yang’s inaugural speech as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature [https://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/08/gene-luen-yangs-inaugural-speech-as-national-ambassador-for-young-peoples-literature/][28] #10yrsago Menstruation is the mother of invention [https://lastwordonnothing.com/2016/01/07/the-wonderful-world-of-period-patents/][29] #10yrsago Juniper’s products are still insecure; more evidence that the company was complicit [https://www.wired.com/2016/01/new-discovery-around-juniper-backdoor-raises-more-questions-about-the-company/][30] #10yrsago Red-baiting water speculator plans to drain the Mojave of its ancient water [https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-2-4-billion-plan-to-water-la-by-draining-the-mojave/?mbid=social_alleniverson][31] # Upcoming appearances ([permalink][32]) [A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.] * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937][33] * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 [https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/][34] * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 [https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/][35] * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 [https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/][36] * Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5 [https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/][37] * Berlin: Re:publical, May 18-20 [https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow][38] * Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25 [https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2][39] [A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.] # Recent appearances ([permalink][40]) * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) [https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet][41] * Enshittification with Plutopia [https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/][42] * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) [] * The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money) [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2412334/episodes/18399894][44] * Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper: [https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-the-last-show-with-david-c-31145360/episode/cory-doctorow-enshttification-december-16-2025-313385767][45] [A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..] # Latest books ([permalink][46]) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/][47] * "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 ([https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels][48]). * "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ([thebezzle.org][49]). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 ([http://lost-cause.org][50]). * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 ([http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org][51]). Signed copies at Book Soup ([https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245][52]). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books [http://redteamblues.com][53]. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 [https://chokepointcapitalism.com][54] [A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.] # Upcoming books ([permalink][55]) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 # Colophon ([permalink][56]) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America ( words today, total) * "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/][57] Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [Pluralistic.net][58] Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://pluralistic.net/plura-list][59] Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic][60] Medium (no ads, paywalled): [https://doctorow.medium.com/][61] Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://twitter.com/doctorow][62] Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic][63] "*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X [1]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#so-many-chips [2]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#linkdump [3]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#retro [4]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#upcoming [5]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#recent [6]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#latest [7]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#upcoming-books [8]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#bragsheet [9]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#so-many-chips [10]: 📄.pdf [11]: [12]: [13]: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/category/betrusted/precursor/ [14]: https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/10/dark-matter/#precursor [15]: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2015/sex-circuits-deep-house/ [16]: https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ [17]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/05/xor-xand-xnor-nand-nor/#brawniac [18]: 📄.pdf [19]: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757517/attacksurface/ [20]: https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#trace-together [21]: https://memex.craphound.com/2016/12/30/the-hardware-hacker-bunnie-huangs-tour-de-force-on-hardware-hacking-reverse-engineering-china-manufacturing-innovation-and-biohacking/ [22]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#linkdump [23]: https://bookmaniac.org/2026/01/07/logical-steps-and-eldering/ [24]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#retro [25]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060112044109/https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/jm01.htm [26]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060112061657/http://www.pledgebank.com/boycottdrm [27]: https://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/08/hollywoods-canadian-mp-claims-shes-no-dirtier-than-the-rest/ [28]: https://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/08/gene-luen-yangs-inaugural-speech-as-national-ambassador-for-young-peoples-literature/ [29]: https://lastwordonnothing.com/2016/01/07/the-wonderful-world-of-period-patents/ [30]: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/new-discovery-around-juniper-backdoor-raises-more-questions-about-the-company/ [31]: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-2-4-billion-plan-to-water-la-by-draining-the-mojave/?mbid=social_alleniverson [32]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#upcoming [33]: [34]: https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ [35]: [36]: [37]: [38]: https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow [39]: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2 [40]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#recent [41]: [42]: [43]: [44]: [45]: [46]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#latest [47]: [48]: [49]: [50]: http://lost-cause.org [51]: [52]: [53]: [54]: https://chokepointcapitalism.com [55]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#upcoming-books [56]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/#bragsheet [57]: [58]: [59]: [60]: [61]: https://doctorow.medium.com/ [62]: [63]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/09/quantity-break/
Pluralistic: Where did the money go? (08 Jan 2026) # Today's links * [Where did the money go?][1] Turning a mountain of (their) money into a pile of (your) money. * [Hey look at this][2]: Delights to delectate. * [Object permanence][3]: Revolutionary Colossus; T-Mobile CEO v EFF; Broadband isn't gasoline. * [Upcoming appearances][4]: Where to find me. * [Recent appearances][5]: Where I've been. * [Latest books][6]: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Upcoming books][7]: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Colophon][8]: All the rest. [A US$100 bill, tinted red; the face of Ben Franklin has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'] # Where did the money go? ([permalink][9]) America is trudging through its third consecutive K-shaped recovery (an economic rally where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer). The rich have never been richer, and the debt-fueled consumption that kept the economy going is tapering down to a trickle. This isn't down to the iron laws of economics or the great forces of history. It's because we made rules that let rich people steal from everyone else, including local, state and federal tax authorities, and also workers, customers and suppliers (and society at large). From junk fees to wage theft to greedflation, politicians have thumbed the scales in favor of scumbags who drain the wealth of workers and remit it to parasites. These crooks and hustlers keep coming up with ways to squeeze a few more drops out of us. They come up with gimmicks like buy now/pay later (and then slam us with massive fees when we can't pay later), or margin-based gambling on cryptocurrency or "prediction markets," both of which are crooked poker tables where you are always the sucker and the house always wins. The Trump administration didn't invent the idea of government-supported scams and hustles, but they sure supercharged it. Trump rips off his supporters like crazy – as anyone who's long on $TRUMPcoin knows – and surrounds himself with "businessmen" notorious for scamming workers, customers, and the government itself. But even as Trump throws his support behind hustlers and con artists, he's also backing debt-collectors, whether they're chasing student debt, medical debt, or the spiraling penalties for missing the fourth payment on your Klarna. Broadly, these are the two industries in America now: scammers who put Americans into debt, and industries who torment Americans into paying the debt. And while these two industries represent a *moral* crisis for the nation, they also represent an *economic* crisis, because they are at irreconcilable odds with one another. If you're in the business of scamming Americans so they go into debt, you want your suckers to have money (so they can give it to you). But if you're in the business of collecting the losses that Americans incur at the hands of scammers, then you're at odds with those scammers themselves – every dollar you collect on the debt from the *last* scam is a dollar that can't be lost to the *next* scam. This is what gave us the Great Financial Crisis: scumbag bankers tricked people into taking out unsustainable mortgages whose "teaser rates" would blow up after a couple years to levels that the borrower couldn't possibly pay back. But the lenders didn't care, because they were only "loan originators" who could pass those loans off to "investors" via exotic financial instruments. These two groups had an irreconcilable conflict: the people making the loans could only keep *their* scam going so long as the people *collecting* the loans didn't demand repayment. But these two groups – scammers and arm-breakers – aren't the only two groups in the economy. There's a third group that you might call, "People who want to make useful things that we like and pay for." This third group is at odds with both the scammers and the arm-breakers, because their potential customers are being tricked (by scammers) and bankrupted (by arm-breakers). Say you want to go into business renting hotel rooms to people at reasonable rates. You're an honest sort, so you list your room prices right there on your site. But the scumbags you're competing with want to rip people off, so they list a *lower* price than yours, and then whack the customer with junk fees at check-in that make their room *more* expensive than yours. What's more, the scumbags make so much money that they can bribe the handful of dominant travel sites (which are all owned by one of two massive private-equity backed rollups) to list their hotels ahead of yours. They might not like paying bribes – in fact, they probably hate it – but they're willing to part with some of that hard-won ripoff money to keep the money-machine going. Besides, they can make up the difference with more junk fees. Whaddya gonna do, walk away from your nonrefundable, prepaid reservation and try and get a last-minute booking in a strange city? Societally speaking, the problem is that economic growth only comes from the third group. They're the ones inventing new categories of (useful) products and services that delight their customers and enrich their workers and shareholders (who then buy more things in the economy, keeping the virtuous cycle going). This festering economic zit is finally coming to a head with AI, whose most profitable use is in predicting how much a vendor can charge you – or how little a boss can pay you – without you walking away from the table: [https://www.reddit.com/r/shitrentals/comments/1q38sh4/if_you_get_promoted_at_work_keep_it_a_secret_from/][10] AI's most enthusiastic customers, meanwhile, are bosses who dream of firing most of their workers and using the ensuing terror to force down the wages of the remaining workers: [https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism][11] If the average American is a squeezed-flat toothpaste tube that's been drained of all its readily extractable contents, then AI is the scissors that slit the tube up the side so that the very last dregs can be scraped out. As Anil Dash put it, > Those niceties that everybody loved, like great healthcare and decent benefits, were identified by the people running the big tech companies as “market inefficiencies” which indicated some wealth was going to you that should have been going to *them.* [https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/06/500k-tech-workers-laid-off/][12] The scammer/arm-breaker economy is fundamentally *extractive*. When a private equity fund buys a company, sells off its assets, declares a special dividend and gives the proceeds to itself, and pronounces the company to have been "right-sized" because now it has to rent the things it used to own, they are setting that company up to fail. All it takes is one rent-shock or a couple bad quarters and a once-healthy business will fall over: [https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates][13] Looking at America, it's hard not to ask, "Where did all the money go?" Where did free state college tuition, excellent public libraries, public housing, transit, fully staffed national parks and air-traffic control towers all *go*? Why can't we fix the potholes? How is it that a country that once electrified itself from top to bottom and sea to sea can't figure out how to run fiber lines to the same roofs where all those power lines connect? It's because the system is organized around cheaters and arm-breakers. The Heritage Foundation – architects of Trump's Project 2025 – were founded and funded by Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos, the guys who made their billions running Amway, a pyramid scheme that was legalized by their pet Congressman, Gerry Ford, shortly after he became president: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/05/free-enterprise-system/#amway-or-the-highway][14] The nation's system has been colonized and is being operated by people whose institutional home was created by pyramid-scheme hucksters. Why doesn't Trump's administration care about scam ads on Twitter and Facebook that clean out the very same Boomers who voted him into office? Because Trump's ideological project was founded by actual, non-metaphorical, non-hyperbolic *con artists.* That's where the money went. Smart people keep asking how Trump plans on stealing Venezuela's oil when the country is in a state of shambolic collapse and its people are starving? Who will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new equipment when every dollar spent on capital will require a dollar for a gunman to keep it from being stolen and sold for food? You could ask the same question about America. In a country where we've literally legalized bribery, who wants to invest in *productive* businesses? [] America's crisis is the world's opportunity. A chaotic mess of cyberwarfare, trade war, and invasions means that America is no longer your ally or your trading partner – it's a threat. To neutralize that threat, we must take away the money (and thus the power) of America's oligarchs. We start down that path by changing the international laws – passed at the insistence of the US over the past 25 years – that ban foreign tech companies from modifying America's tech products. Once other countries' companies start producing the tools that let farmers fix their tractors, that let games publishers sell outside of the official ripoff app stores, that let merchants avoid the Amazon tax, they will not only reap billions of dollars, they will also create a market that favors good products, rather than scams: [https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition][16] America's largest companies have amassed trillions by robbing Americans (first) and then everyone else (once the US trade rep got laws passed that prevented non-US tech companies from making defensive products). The project of the next ten years is to convert those trillions to billions (in profits for companies that disenshittify America's defective technology – and in savings for people who use those tools to escape America's scam economy). The beneficiaries of this program aren't limited to the investors in foreign tech companies, nor their overseas customers. *Americans* will also benefit from this technology, because *Americans* were the first victims of the US scam economy. Everyday Americans pay the app tax, the Amazon tax, the streaming tax, the Apple tax, the Google tax, the Microsoft tax. Supply Americans with the digital arms to resist these corporate raids, and they will stage a tax revolt (a thing that Americans are remarkably good at). Escaping oligarchy, escaping the climate emergency, escaping economic desperation: these goals require *doing things* and *making things*. They require *real* products and services, they require *real* infrastructure and tools. By and large people would rather have real things than scams. Ponzi America is breaking down. It's run out of suckers. We just can't afford to structure our economy like an Amway downline anymore. We never could. (*Image: [Cryteria][17], [CC BY 3.0][18], modified*) # Hey look at this ([permalink][19]) * what particularity is required when an ad campaign has zillions of possibly algorithmic variants? [https://tushnet.blogspot.com/2026/01/what-particularity-is-required-when-ad.html][20] * The Narco-Terrorist Elite [https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra/][21] * Section 230 Doesn’t Cover Elon Musk’s Ass When It Comes to Deepfake Abuse, Senator Says [https://gizmodo.com/section-230-doesnt-cover-elon-musks-ass-when-it-comes-to-deepfake-abuse-senator-says-2000706234][22] * Mamdani Targets Junk Fees and Hidden Charges in Two Executive Orders [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/nyregion/mamdani-affordability-consumer-protections.html][23] * 500,000 tech workers have been laid off since ChatGPT was released [https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/06/500k-tech-workers-laid-off/][24] [A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'] # Object permanence ([permalink][25]) #10yrsago Caught lying by an EFF investigation, T-Mobile CEO turns sweary [https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10733298/john-legere-binge-on-lie][26] #10yrsago Code for America’s year in civic tech [https://web.archive.org/web/20160811012751/https://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/12/22/this-year-in-civic-tech-2015-in-review/][27] #10yrsago Flying while trans: still unbelievably horrible [https://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/2016/01/traveling-while-trans-false-promise-of.html][28] #10yrsago Resilience over rigidity: how to solve tomorrow’s computer problems today [https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-wicked-problems-resilience-through-sensing/][29] #10yrsago Dear Comcast: broadband isn’t gasoline [https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/07/with-fixed-costs-fat-margins-comcasts-broadband-cap-justifications-are-total-bullshit/][30] #10yrsago High-rez trip through Florida’s Haunted Mansion with a low-light filter [] #5yrsago Revolutionary Colossus [https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/07/revolutionary-colossus/#1776][32] # Upcoming appearances ([permalink][33]) [A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.] * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937][34] * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 [https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/][35] * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 [https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/][36] * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 [https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/][37] * Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5 [https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/][38] * Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25 [https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2][39] [A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.] # Recent appearances ([permalink][40]) * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) [https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet][41] * Enshittification with Plutopia [https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/][42] * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) [] * The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money) [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2412334/episodes/18399894][44] * Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper: [https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-the-last-show-with-david-c-31145360/episode/cory-doctorow-enshttification-december-16-2025-313385767][45] [A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..] # Latest books ([permalink][46]) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/][47] * "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 ([https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels][48]). * "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ([thebezzle.org][49]). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 ([http://lost-cause.org][50]). * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 ([http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org][51]). Signed copies at Book Soup ([https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245][52]). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books [http://redteamblues.com][53]. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 [https://chokepointcapitalism.com][54] [A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.] # Upcoming books ([permalink][55]) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 # Colophon ([permalink][56]) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1003 words today, 2023 total) * "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/][57] Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [Pluralistic.net][58] Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://pluralistic.net/plura-list][59] Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic][60] Medium (no ads, paywalled): [https://doctorow.medium.com/][61] Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://twitter.com/doctorow][62] Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic][63] "*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X [1]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#who-took-the-money-away [2]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#linkdump [3]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#retro [4]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#upcoming [5]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#recent [6]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#latest [7]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#upcoming-books [8]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#bragsheet [9]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#who-took-the-money-away [10]: https://www.reddit.com/r/shitrentals/comments/1q38sh4/if_you_get_promoted_at_work_keep_it_a_secret_from/ [11]: [12]: https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/06/500k-tech-workers-laid-off/ [13]: https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates [14]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/05/free-enterprise-system/#amway-or-the-highway [15]: [16]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition [17]: [18]: [19]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#linkdump [20]: https://tushnet.blogspot.com/2026/01/what-particularity-is-required-when-ad.html [21]: https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra/ [22]: https://gizmodo.com/section-230-doesnt-cover-elon-musks-ass-when-it-comes-to-deepfake-abuse-senator-says-2000706234 [23]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/nyregion/mamdani-affordability-consumer-protections.html [24]: https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/06/500k-tech-workers-laid-off/ [25]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#retro [26]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10733298/john-legere-binge-on-lie [27]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160811012751/https://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/12/22/this-year-in-civic-tech-2015-in-review/ [28]: https://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/2016/01/traveling-while-trans-false-promise-of.html [29]: https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-wicked-problems-resilience-through-sensing/ [30]: https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/07/with-fixed-costs-fat-margins-comcasts-broadband-cap-justifications-are-total-bullshit/ [31]: [32]: https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/07/revolutionary-colossus/#1776 [33]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#upcoming [34]: [35]: https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ [36]: [37]: [38]: [39]: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2 [40]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#recent [41]: [42]: [43]: [44]: [45]: [46]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#latest [47]: [48]: [49]: [50]: http://lost-cause.org [51]: [52]: [53]: [54]: https://chokepointcapitalism.com [55]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#upcoming-books [56]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/#bragsheet [57]: [58]: [59]: [60]: [61]: https://doctorow.medium.com/ [62]: [63]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/08/after-the-moneys-gone/
Pluralistic: Writing vs AI (07 Jan 2026) # Today's links * [Writing vs AI][1]: If you wouldn't ask an AI to eat a delicious pizza for you, why would you ask it to write a college essay? * [Hey look at this][2]: Delights to delectate. * [Object permanence][3]: WELL State of the World; A poem in 30m logfiles; Weapons of Math Destruction; The cost of keeping "13" a British secret; Congress v. "Little Green Men"; "Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air" * [Upcoming appearances][4]: Where to find me. * [Recent appearances][5]: Where I've been. * [Latest books][6]: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Upcoming books][7]: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Colophon][8]: All the rest. [A midcentury male figure in a suit seated at a yellow typewriter; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. He sits in a steeply ranked lecture hall filled with wooden seats. A halo radiates from his head.] # Writing vs AI ([permalink][9]) I come from a family of teachers – both parents taught all their lives and now oversee Ed.D candidates, brother owns a school – which has left me painfully aware of the fact that I am *not* a great teacher. I am, however, a *good* teacher. The difference is that a good teacher can teach students who want to learn, whereas a great teacher can inspire students to *want to learn*. I've spent most of my life teaching, here and there, and while I'm not great, I am getting better. Last year, I started a new teaching gig: I'm one of Cornell's AD White Visiting Professors, meaning that I visit Cornell (and its NYC campus, Cornell Tech) every year or two for six years and teach, lecture, meet, and run activities. When I was in Ithaca in September for my inaugural stint, I had a string of what can only be called "peak experiences," meeting with researchers, teachers, undergrads, grads and community members. I had so many conversations that will stick with me, and today I want to talk about one of them. It was a faculty discussion, and one of the people at the table had been involved in a research project to investigate students' attitudes to their education. The research concluded that students come to Cornell to learn – because they love knowledge and critical thinking – but they are so haunted by the financial consequences of failure (wasting tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars repeating a year or failing out altogether, and then entering the job market debt-burdened and degree-less) that they feel pressured not to take intellectual risks, and, at worst, to cheat. They *care* about learning, but they're *afraid* of bad grades, and so chasing grades triumphs over learning. At that same discussion, I met someone who taught Cornell's version of freshman comp, the "here's how to write at a college level" course that every university offers. I've actually guest-taught some of these, starting in 2005/6, when I had a Fulbright Chair at USC. Now, while I'm not a great teacher, I am a pretty good *writing* teacher. I was lucky enough to be mentored by Judith Merril (starting at the age of 9!), who taught me how to participate in a peer-based writing workshop: [https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians][10] In high school, I met Harriet Wolff, a gifted writing teacher, whose writing workshop (which Judith Merril had actually founded, decades earlier) was so good that I spent seven years in my four-year high-school, mostly just to keep going to Harriet's workshop: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/30/merely-clever/#rip-harriet-wolff][11] I graduated from the Clarion science fiction and fantasy workshop (where Judith Merril learned to workshop) in 1992, and then went on to teach Clarion and Clarion West on several occasions, as well as other workshops in the field, such as Viable Paradise (today, I volunteer for Clarion's board). I have taught and been taught, and I've learned a thing or two. Here's the thing about every successful writing workshop I've been in: they don't necessarily make writing enjoyable (indeed, they can be painful), but they make it profoundly *satisfying*. When you repeatedly sit down with the same writers, week after week, to think about what went wrong with their work, and how they can fix it, and to hear the same about your work, something changes in how you relate to your work. You come to understand how to transform big, inchoate ideas into structured narratives and arguments, sure – but you also learn to recognize when the structure that emerges teaches you something about those big, inchoate ideas that was there all along, but not visible to you. It's revelatory. It teaches you what you know. It lets you know what you know. It lets you know *more* than you know. It's alchemical. It creates new knowledge, and dispels superstition. It sharpens how you think. It sharpens how you talk. And obviously, it sharpens how you write. The freshmen comp students I've taught over the years were amazed (or, more honestly, incredulous) when I told them this, because for them, writing was a totally pointless exercise. Well, *almost* totally pointless. Writing had one point: to get a passing grade so that the student could advance to other subjects. I'm not surprised by this, nor do I think it's merely because some of us are born to write and others will never get the knack (I've taught too many writers to think that anyone can guess who will find meaning in writing). It's because we don't generally teach writing this way until the most senior levels – the last year or two of undergrad, or, more likely, grad school (and then only if that grad program is an MFA). Writing instruction at lower levels, particularly in US high schools, is organized around standardized assessment. Students are trained to turn out the world's worst literary form: the five-paragraph essay: [https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3749][12] The five-paragraph essay is so rigid that *any* attempt to enliven it is actually *punished* during the grading process. One cannot deviate from the structure, on penalty of academic censure. It's got all the structural constraints of a sonnet, and all the poetry of a car crusher. The five-paragraph essay is so terrible that a large part of the job of a freshman comp teacher is to teach students to *stop* writing them. But even after this is done, much of the freshman comp curriculum is also formulaic (albeit with additional flexibility). That's unavoidable: freshman comp classes are typically *massive*, since so many of the incoming students have to take it. When you're assessing 100-2,000 students, you necessarily fall back on formula. Which brings me back to that faculty discussion at Cornell, where we learned first that students want to learn, but are afraid of failure; and then heard from the freshman comp teacher, who told us that virtually all of their students cheated on their assignments, getting chatbots to shit out their papers. And that's what I've been thinking about since September. Because of *course* those students cheat on their writing assignments – they are being taught to hit mechanical marks with their writing, improving their sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. What they're *not* learning is how to use writing to order and hone their thoughts, or to improve their ability to express those thoughts. They're being asked to write *like* a chatbot – why *wouldn't* they use a chatbot? You can't teach students to write – not merely to create formally correct sentences, but to *write* – through formal, easily graded assignments. Teaching writing is a *relational* practice. It requires that students interact extensively with one another's work, and with one another's criticism. It requires structure, sure – but the structure is in how you proceed through the critiques and subsequent discussion – not in the work itself. This is the kind of thing you do in small seminars, not big lecture halls. It requires that each student produce a steady stream of work for critique – multiple pieces per term or semester – and that each student closely read *and discuss* every other student's every composition. It's an intense experience that pushes students to think critically about critical thought itself. It's hard work that requires close supervision and it only works in small groups. Now, common sense will tell you that this is an impractical way to run a freshman comp class that thousands of students have to take. Not every school can be Yale, whose Daily Themes writing course is the most expensive program to deliver with one instructor for every two students: [https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/logan/2020/03/01/daily-themes][13] But think back to the two statements that started me down this line of thinking: 1) Most students want to learn, but are afraid of the financial ruin that academic failure will entail and so they play things very safe; and 2) Virtually all freshman comp students use AI to cheat on their assignments. By the time we put our students in writing programs that you *can't* cheat on, and where you wouldn't *want* to cheat, they've had *years* of being taught to write like an LLM, but with the insistence that they not use an LLM. No wonder they're cheating! If you wanted to train a graduating class to cheat rather than learn, this is how you'd do it. Teaching freshman comp as a grammar/sentence structure tutorial misses the point. Sure, student writing is going to be bad at first. It'll be incoherent. It'll be riddled with errors. Reading student work is, for the most part, no fun. But for students, reading other students' writing, and *thinking about what's wrong with it and how to fix it* is the most reliable way to improve their own work (the dirty secret of writing workshops is that other writers' analysis of your work is generally less useful to you than the critical skills you learn by trying to fix their work). The amazing thing about bad writing is that it's easy to improve. It's much easier than finding ways to improve the work of a fluid, experienced writer. A beginning writer who makes a lot of easily spotted mistakes is a beginning writer who's making a lot of easily *fixed* mistakes. That means that the other writers around the circle are capable of spotting those errors, even if they're just starting out themselves. It also means that the writer whose work is under discussion will be able to make huge improvements through simple changes. Beginning writers can get a lot of momentum going this way, deriving real satisfaction from constant, visible progress. Replacing freshman comp with dozens of small groups run like graduate seminars is expensive and hard to imagine. But it would create a generation of students who wouldn't use an AI to write their essays any more than they'd ask an AI to eat a delicious pizza for them. We should aspire to assign the kinds of essays that change the lives of the students who write them, and to teach students to write that kind of essay. Freshman comp was always a machine for turning out reliable sentence-makers, not an atelier that trained reliable sense-makers. But AI changes the dynamic. Today, students are asking chatbots to write their essays for the same reason that corporations are asking chatbots to do their customer service (because they don't give a shit): [https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice][14] I'm not saying that small writing workshops of the sort that changed my life will work for *everyone*. But I *am* saying that teaching writing in huge lecture halls with assignments optimized for grading works for *no one*. (*Image: [Cryteria][15], [CC BY 3.0][16], modified*) # Hey look at this ([permalink][17]) * Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit [https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax-debunked/][18] * If you get promoted at work, keep it a secret from your landlord [https://www.reddit.com/r/shitrentals/comments/1q38sh4/if_you_get_promoted_at_work_keep_it_a_secret_from/][19] * Cops Forced to Explain Why AI Generated Police Report Claimed Officer Transformed Into Frog [https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-police-report-frog][20] * Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) [https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/][21] * Patrick Nielsen Hayden Retires [https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/05/patrick-nielsen-hayden-retires/][22] [A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'] # Object permanence ([permalink][23]) #10yrsago The annual WELL State of the World, with Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky [https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html][24] #10yrsago NZ police broke the law when they raided investigative journalist’s home [https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/05/new-zealands-raid-investigatory-journalist-was-illegal/][25] #10yrsago Someone at the Chaos Communications Congress inserted a poem into at least 30 million servers’ logfiles [https://web.archive.org/web/20160106133105/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/chaos-communication-congress-hackers-invaded-millions-of-servers-with-a-poem][26] #10yrsago Bernie Sanders on small money donations vs sucking up to billionaires [https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34452-this-is-not-democracy-this-is-oligarchy][27] #10yrsago Weapons of Math Destruction: how Big Data threatens democracy [https://mathbabe.org/2016/01/06/finishing-up-weapons-of-math-destruction/][28] #10yrsago Charter schools are turning into the next subprime mortgages [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2704305][29] #10yrsago New York Public Library does the public domain right [https://www.nypl.org/research/resources/public-domain-collections][30] #10yrsago UK government spent a fortune fighting to keep the number 13 a secret [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35221173][31] #5yrsago Congress bans "little green men" [https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#ndaa][32] #5yrsago Mass court: "I agree" means something [https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#i-agree][33] #5yrsago Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air [https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#3kg-per-day#5yrsago][34] # Upcoming appearances ([permalink][35]) [A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.] * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937][36] * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 [https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/][37] * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 [https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/][38] * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 [https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/][39] * Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5 [https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/][40] * Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25 [https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2][41] [A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.] # Recent appearances ([permalink][42]) * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) [https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet][43] * Enshittification with Plutopia [https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/][44] * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) [] * The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money) [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2412334/episodes/18399894][46] * Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper: [https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-the-last-show-with-david-c-31145360/episode/cory-doctorow-enshttification-december-16-2025-313385767][47] [A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..] # Latest books ([permalink][48]) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/][49] * "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 ([https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels][50]). * "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ([thebezzle.org][51]). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 ([http://lost-cause.org][52]). * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 ([http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org][53]). Signed copies at Book Soup ([https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245][54]). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books [http://redteamblues.com][55]. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 [https://chokepointcapitalism.com][56] [A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.] # Upcoming books ([permalink][57]) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 # Colophon ([permalink][58]) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1013 words, 1013 total) * "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/][59] Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [Pluralistic.net][60] Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://pluralistic.net/plura-list][61] Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic][62] Medium (no ads, paywalled): [https://doctorow.medium.com/][63] Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://twitter.com/doctorow][64] Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic][65] "*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X [1]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#hold-the-gravel [2]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#linkdump [3]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#retro [4]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#upcoming [5]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#recent [6]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#latest [7]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#upcoming-books [8]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#bragsheet [9]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#hold-the-gravel [10]: https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians [11]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/30/merely-clever/#rip-harriet-wolff [12]: https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3749 [13]: https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/logan/2020/03/01/daily-themes [14]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice [15]: [16]: [17]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#linkdump [18]: https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax-debunked/ [19]: https://www.reddit.com/r/shitrentals/comments/1q38sh4/if_you_get_promoted_at_work_keep_it_a_secret_from/ [20]: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-police-report-frog [21]: https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/ [22]: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/05/patrick-nielsen-hayden-retires/ [23]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#retro [24]: https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html [25]: https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/05/new-zealands-raid-investigatory-journalist-was-illegal/ [26]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160106133105/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/chaos-communication-congress-hackers-invaded-millions-of-servers-with-a-poem [27]: https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34452-this-is-not-democracy-this-is-oligarchy [28]: https://mathbabe.org/2016/01/06/finishing-up-weapons-of-math-destruction/ [29]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2704305 [30]: https://www.nypl.org/research/resources/public-domain-collections [31]: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35221173 [32]: https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#ndaa [33]: https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#i-agree [34]: https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#3kg-per-day#5yrsago [35]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#upcoming [36]: [37]: https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ [38]: [39]: [40]: [41]: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2 [42]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#recent [43]: [44]: [45]: [46]: [47]: [48]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#latest [49]: [50]: [51]: [52]: http://lost-cause.org [53]: [54]: [55]: [56]: https://chokepointcapitalism.com [57]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#upcoming-books [58]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/#bragsheet [59]: [60]: [61]: [62]: [63]: https://doctorow.medium.com/ [64]: [65]: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/07/delicious-pizza/
Pluralistic: Code is a liability (not an asset) (06 Jan 2026) # Today's links * [Code is a liability (not an asset)][1]: AI psychosis, tech boss edition. * [Hey look at this][2]: Delights to delectate. * [Object permanence][3]: Coldplay CD DRM; Star Wars Wars; Digital manorialism vs neofeudalism; Transvaginal foetal sonic bombardment: woo-tunes for your hoo-hah. * [Upcoming appearances][4]: Where to find me. * [Recent appearances][5]: Where I've been. * [Latest books][6]: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Upcoming books][7]: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Colophon][8]: All the rest. [A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'] # Code is a liability (not an asset) ([permalink][9]) Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities. AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society: [] Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets. The goal of a tech shop is to have code whose capabilities generate more revenue than the costs associated with keeping that code running. For a long time, firms have nurtured a false belief that code costs less to run over time: after an initial shakedown period in which the bugs in the code are found and addressed, code ceases to need meaningful maintenance. After all, code is a machine without moving parts – it does not wear out; it doesn't even wear down. This is the thesis of Paul Mason's 2015 book *Postcapitalism*, a book that has aged remarkably poorly (though not, perhaps, as poorly as Mason's own political credibility): code is not an infinitely reproducible machine that requires no labor inputs to operate. Rather, it is a brittle machine that requires increasingly heroic measures to keep it in good working order, and which eventually does "wear out" (in the sense of needing a top-to-bottom refactoring). To understand why code is a liability, you have to understand the difference between "writing code" and "software engineering." "Writing code" is an incredibly useful, fun, and engrossing pastime. It involves breaking down complex tasks into discrete steps that are so precisely described that a computer can reliably perform them, and optimising that performance by finding clever ways of minimizing the demands the code puts on the computer's resources, such as RAM and processor cycles. Meanwhile, "software engineering" is a discipline that subsumes "writing code," but with a focus on the long-term operations of the *system* the code is part of. Software engineering concerns itself with the upstream processes that generate the data the system receives. It concerns itself with the downstream processes that the system emits processed information to. It concerns itself with the adjacent systems that are receiving data from the same upstream processes and/or emitting data to the same downstream processes the system is emitting to. "Writing code" is about making code that *runs well*. "Software engineering" is about making code that *fails well*. It's about making code that is legible – whose functions can be understood by third parties who might be asked to maintain it, or might be asked to adapt the processes downstream, upstream or adjacent to the system to keep the system from breaking. It's about making code that can be adapted, for example, when the underlying computer architecture it runs on is retired and has to be replaced, either with a new kind of computer, or with an emulated version of the old computer: [https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/05/hpux_end_of_life/][11] Because that's the thing: any nontrivial code has to interact with the outside world, and the outside world isn't static, it's *dynamic*. The outside world busts through the assumptions made by software authors *all the time* and every time it does, the software needs to be fixed. Remember Y2K? That was a day when perfectly functional code, running on perfectly functional hardware, would stop functioning – not because the code changed, but because *time marched on*. We're 12 years away from the Y2038 problem, when 32-bit flavors of Unix will all cease to work, because they, too, will have run out of computable seconds. These computers haven't changed, their software hasn't changed, but the world – by dint of ticking over, a second at a time, for 68 years – will wear through their seams, and they will rupture: [https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/23/the_unix_epochalypse_might_be/][12] The existence of "the world" is an inescapable factor that wears out software and requires it to be rebuilt, often at enormous expense. The longer code is in operation, the more likely it is that it will encounter "the world." Take the code that devices use to report on their physical location. Originally, this was used for things like billing – determining which carrier or provider's network you were using and whether you were roaming. Then, our mobile devices used this code to help determine your location in order to give you turn-by-turn directions in navigation apps. Then, this code was repurposed again to help us find our lost devices. This, in turn, became a way to locate *stolen* devices, a use-case that sharply diverges from finding lost devices in important ways – for example, when locating a lost device, you don't have to contend with the possibility that a malicious actor has disabled the "find my lost device" facility. These additional use cases – upstream, downstream and adjacent – exposed bugs in the original code that never surfaced in the earlier applications. For example, all location services must have some kind of default behavior in the (very common) event that they're not really sure where they are. Maybe they have a general fix – for example, they know which cellular mast they're connected to, or they know where they were the *last* time they got an accurate location fix – or maybe they're totally lost. It turns out that in many cases, location apps drew a circle around all the places they *could* be and then set their location to the middle of that circle. That's fine if the circle is only a few feet in diameter, or if the app quickly replaces this approximation with a more precise location. But what if the location is miles and miles across, and the location fix *never* improves? What if the location for any IP address without a defined location is given as *the center of the continental USA* and any app that doesn't know where it is reports that it is in a house in Kansas, sending dozens of furious (occasionally armed) strangers to that house, insisting that the owners are in possession of their stolen phones and tablets? [https://theweek.com/articles/624040/how-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-kansas-farm-into-digital-hell][13] You don't just have to fix this bug once – you have to fix it over and over again. In Georgia: [] In Texas: [] And in my town of Burbank, where Google's location-sharing service once told us that our then-11-year-old daughter (whose phone we couldn't reach) was 12 miles away, on a freeway ramp in an unincorporated area of LA county (she was at a nearby park, but out of range, and the app estimated her location as the center of the region it has last fixed her in) (it was a rough couple hours). The underlying code – the code that uses some once-harmless default to fudge unknown locations – needs to be updated *constantly*, because the upstream, downstream and adjacent processes connected to it are changing *constantly*. The longer that code sits there, the more superannuated its original behaviors become, and the more baroque, crufty and obfuscated the patches layered atop of it become. Code is not an asset – it's a liability. The longer a computer system has been running, the more tech debt it represents. The more important the system is, the harder it is to bring down and completely redo. Instead, new layers of code are slathered atop of it, and wherever the layers of code meet, there are fissures in which these systems behave in ways that don't exactly match up. Worse still: when two companies are merged, their seamed, fissured IT systems are smashed together, so that now there are *adjacent* sources of tech debt, as well as upstream and downstream cracks: [] That's why giant companies are so susceptible to ransomware attacks – they're full of incompatible systems that have been coaxed into a facsimile of compatibility with various forms of digital silly putty, string and baling wire. They are not watertight and they cannot be made watertight. Even if they're not taken down by hackers, they sometimes just fall over and can't be stood back up again – like when Southwest Airlines' computers crashed for all of Christmas week 2022, stranding millions of travelers: [] Airlines are especially bad, because they computerized early, and can't ever shut down the old computers to replace them with new ones. This is why their apps are such dogshit – and why it's so awful that they've fired their customer service personnel and require fliers to use the apps for *everything*, even though the apps do. not. work. These apps won't ever work. The reason that British Airways' app displays "An unknown error has occurred" 40-80% of the time isn't (just) that they fired all their IT staff and outsourced to low bidders overseas. It's that, sure – but also that BA's first computers ran on electromechanical valves, and everything since has to be backwards-compatible with a system that one of Alan Turing's proteges gnawed out of a whole log with his very own front teeth. Code is a liability, not an asset (BA's new app is years behind schedule). Code is a liability. The servers for the Bloomberg terminals that turned Michael Bloomberg into a billionaire run on RISC chips, meaning that the company is locked into using a dwindling number of specialist hardware and data-center vendors, paying specialized programmers, and building brittle chains of code to connect these RISC systems to their less exotic equivalents in the world. Code isn't an asset. AI can write code, but AI can't do software engineering. Software engineering is all about thinking through *context* – what will come before this system? What will come after it? What will sit alongside of it? How will the world change? Software engineering requires a very wide "context window," the thing that AI does not, and cannot have. AI has a very narrow and shallow context window, and linear expansions to AI's context window requires *geometric* expansions in the amount of computational resources the AI consumes: [] Writing code that works, without consideration of how it will fail, is a recipe for catastrophe. It is a way to create tech debt at scale. It is shoveling asbestos into the walls of our technological society. Bosses *do not know* that code is a liability, not an asset. That's why they won't shut the fuck up about the chatbots that shit out 10,000 times more code than any human programmer. They think they've found a machine that produces *assets* at 10,000 times the rate of a human programmer. They haven't. They've found a machine that produces *liability* at 10,000 times the rate of any human programmer. Maintainability isn't just a matter of hard-won experience teaching you where the pitfalls are. It also requires the cultivation of "Fingerspitzengefühl" – the "fingertip feeling" that lets you make reasonable guesses about where never before seen pitfalls might emerge. It's a form of process knowledge. It is ineluctable. It is not latent in even the largest corpus of code that you could use as training data: [] *Boy* do tech bosses not get this. Take Microsoft. Their big bet right now is on "agentic AI." They think that if they install spyware on your computer that captures every keystroke, every communication, every screen you see and sends it to Microsoft's cloud and give a menagerie of chatbots access to it, that you'll be able to tell your computer, "Book me a train to Cardiff and find that hotel Cory mentioned last year and book me a room there" and it will do it. This is an incredibly unworkable idea. No chatbot is remotely capable of doing all these things, something that Microsoft freely stipulates. Rather than doing this with one chatbot, Microsoft proposes to break this down among dozens of chatbots, each of which Microsoft hopes to bring up to 95% reliability. That's an utterly implausible chatbot standard in and of itself, but consider this: probabilities are *multiplicative*. A system containing two processes that operate at 95% reliability has a net reliability of 90.25% (0.95 * 0.95). Break a task down among a couple dozen 95% accurate bots and the chance that this task will be accomplished correctly rounds to *zero*. Worse, Microsoft is on record as saying that they will grant the Trump administration secret access to all the data in its cloud: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/][20] So – as Signal's Meredith Whittaker and Udbhav Tiwari put it in their incredible 39C3 talk last week in Hamburg – Microsoft is about to abolish the very *idea* of privacy for *any* data on personal and corporate computers, in order to ship AI agents that cannot *ever* work: [] Meanwhile, a Microsoft exec got into trouble last December when he posted to Linkedin announcing his intention to have AI rewrite *all* of Microsoft's code. Refactoring Microsoft's codebase makes lots of sense. Microsoft – like British Airways and other legacy firms – has lots of very old code that represents unsustainable tech debt. But using AI to rewrite that code is a way to *start* with tech debt that will only accumulate as time goes by: [https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/12/24/microsoft-denies-rewriting-windows-11-using-ai-after-an-employees-one-engineer-one-month-one-million-code-post-on-linkedin-causes-outrage/][22] Now, some of you reading this have heard software engineers extolling the incredible value of using a chatbot to write code for them. Some of you *are* software engineers who have found chatbots incredibly useful in writing code for you. This is a common AI paradox: why do some people who use AI find it really helpful, while others loathe it? Is it that the people who don't like AI are "bad at AI?" Is it that the AI fans are lazy and don't care about the quality of their work? There's doubtless some of both going on, but even if you teach everyone to be an AI expert, and cull everyone who doesn't take pride in their work out of the sample, the paradox will still remain. The true solution to the AI paradox lies in automation theory, and the concept of "centaurs" and "reverse centaurs": [] In automation theory, a "centaur" is a person who is assisted by a machine. A "reverse centaur" is someone who has been conscripted into *assisting a machine*. If you're a software engineer who uses AI to write routine code that you have the time and experience to validate, deploying your Fingerspitzengefühl and process knowledge to ensure that it's fit for purpose, it's easy to see why you might find using AI (when you choose to, in ways you choose to, at a pace you choose to go at) to be useful. But if you're a software engineer who's been ordered to produce code at 10x, or 100x, or 10,000x your previous rate, and the only way to do that is via AI, and there is no human way that you could possibly review that code and ensure that it will not break on first contact with the world, you'll hate it (you'll hate it even more if you've been turned into the AI's accountability sink, personally on the hook for the AI's mistakes): [] There's another way in which software engineers find AI-generated code to be incredibly helpful: when that code is *isolated*. If you're doing a single project – say, converting one batch of files to another format, just once – you don't have to worry about downstream, upstream or adjacent processes. There aren't any. You're writing code to do something once, without interacting with any other systems. A *lot* of coding is this kind of utility project. It's tedious, thankless, and ripe for automation. Lots of personal projects fall into this bucket, and of course, by definition, a personal project is a centaur project. No one forces you to use AI in a personal project – it's always your choice how and when you make personal use of any tool. But the fact that software engineers can sometimes make their work better with AI doesn't invalidate the fact that code is a liability, not an asset, and that AI code represents liability production at scale. In the story of technological unemployment, there's the idea that new technology creates new jobs even as it makes old ones obsolete: for every blacksmith put out of work by the automobile, there's a job waiting as a mechanic. In the years since the AI bubble began inflating, we've heard lots of versions of this: AI would create jobs for "prompt engineers" – or even create jobs that we can't imagine, because they won't exist until AI has changed the world beyond recognition. I wouldn't bank on getting work in a fanciful trade that literally can't be imagined because our consciousnesses haven't so altered by AI that they've acquired the capacity to conceptualize of these new modes of work. But if you *are* looking for a job that AI will definitely create, by the millions, I have a suggestion: digital asbestos removal. For if AI code – written at 10,000 times the speed of any human coder, designed to work well, but not to fail gracefully – is the digital asbestos we're filling our walls with, then our descendants will spend generations digging that asbestos out of the walls. There will be plenty of work fixing the things that we broke thanks to the most dangerous AI psychosis of all – the hallucinatory belief that "writing code" is the same thing as "software engineering." At the rate we're going, we'll have full employment for generations of asbestos removers. (*Image: [Cryteria][25], [CC BY 3.0][26], modified*) # Hey look at this ([permalink][27]) * The State of Anti-Surveillance Design [https://www.404media.co/the-state-of-anti-surveillance-design/][28] * Ancient Everyday Weirdness [https://bruces.medium.com/ancient-everyday-weirdness-591955f40a2d][29] * Norman Podhoretz, 1930-2025 [https://coreyrobin.com/2025/12/18/norman-podhoretz-1930-2025/][30] * I’m a developer for a major food delivery app. The 'Priority Fee' and 'Driver Benefit Fee' go 100% to the company. The driver sees $0 of it [https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1q1mzej/im_a_developer_for_a_major_food_delivery_app_the/][31] * A Cultural Disease: Enshittificationitis [] [A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'] # Object permanence ([permalink][33]) #20yrsago Coldplay CD DRM — more information [] #20yrsago Sony sued for spyware and rootkits in Canada [https://web.archive.org/web/20060103051129/http://sonysuit.com/][35] #20yrsago What if pizzas came with licenses like the ones in DRM CDs? [https://web.archive.org/web/20110108164548/http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060104161112858][36] #10yrsago Star Wars Wars: the first six movies, overlaid [https://starwarswars.com/][37] #10yrsago Transvaginal foetal sonic bombardment: woo-tunes for your hoo-hah [https://babypod.net/en/][38] #10yrsago Of Oz the Wizard: all the dialog in alphabetical order [] #5yrsago Pavilions replacing union workers with "gig workers" [] #5yrsago South Carolina GOP moots modest improvements to "magistrate judges" [] #5yrsago Digital manorialism vs neofeudalism [] #5yrsago My Fellow Americans [] # Upcoming appearances ([permalink][44]) [A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.] * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 [] * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 [https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/][46] * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 [] * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 [] * Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5 [https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/][49] [A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.] # Recent appearances ([permalink][50]) * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) [https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet][51] * Enshittification with Plutopia [https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/][52] * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) [] * The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money) [] * Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper: [] [A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..] # Latest books ([permalink][56]) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/][57] * "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 ([]). * "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ([thebezzle.org][59]). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 ([http://lost-cause.org][60]). * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 ([http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org][61]). Signed copies at Book Soup ([https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245][62]). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books [http://redteamblues.com][63]. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 [https://chokepointcapitalism.com][64] [A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.] # Upcoming books ([permalink][65]) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 # Colophon ([permalink][66]) Today's top sources: Currently writing: * "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/][67] Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [Pluralistic.net][68] Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://pluralistic.net/plura-list][69] Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic][70] Medium (no ads, paywalled): [https://doctorow.medium.com/][71] Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://twitter.com/doctorow][72] Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic][73] "*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: [13]: [14]: [15]: [16]: [17]: [18]: [19]: [20]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/ [21]: [22]: [23]: [24]: [25]: [26]: [27]: [28]: [29]: https://bruces.medium.com/ancient-everyday-weirdness-591955f40a2d [30]: [31]: https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1q1mzej/im_a_developer_for_a_major_food_delivery_app_the/ [32]: [33]: [34]: [35]: [36]: [37]: [38]: [39]: [40]: [41]: [42]: [43]: [44]: [45]: [46]: https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ [47]: [48]: [49]: [50]: [51]: [52]: [53]: [54]: [55]: [56]: [57]: [58]: [59]: [60]: http://lost-cause.org [61]: [62]: [63]: [64]: https://chokepointcapitalism.com [65]: [66]: [67]: [68]: [69]: [70]: [71]: https://doctorow.medium.com/ [72]: [73]:
Pluralistic: A world without people (05 Jan 2026) # Today's links * [A world without people][1]: AI is a promise to wire the boss's toy steering wheel directly into the company's drive-train. * [Hey look at this][2]: Delights to delectate. * [Object permanence][3]: Adding exclusive rights make economies weaker; Bloggers after the collapse; Why the media can't figure out Wikipedia; Who are these sf legends?; Anne Frank is in the public domain; Hollywood's MP in Canada; Piketty on Piketty; Vanilla ISIS; India throws out Facebook's astroturf emails; Google unionizes; "The Data Detective"; Breaking Apple ][+ DRM. * [Upcoming appearances][4]: Where to find me. * [Recent appearances][5]: Where I've been. * [Latest books][6]: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Upcoming books][7]: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. * [Colophon][8]: All the rest. [The interior of a car, tinted cyberpunk green. The car's steering wheel has been replaced with a vintage Fisher Price steering wheel toy, which has been modified so that the malignant eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' glares out of it, and the Fisher Price logo has been replaced with the Openai wordmark. Through the windscreen rains down a 'code waterfall' effect as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the rear-view mirror, we see the reflected eyes of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar.] # A world without people ([permalink][9]) To be a billionaire is to be a solipsist – to secretly believe that (most) other people don't really exist – otherwise, how could you live with the knowledge that your farcical wealth and power springs from the agony you have inflicted on whole populations? [https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs][10] This is what it means for Elon Musk to dismiss the people who disagree with him as "NPCs"; in some important sense, he doesn't think other people *exist*. It's a very ketamine-coded way to move through the world: [https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/on-elon-musk-and-npcs][11] Solipsism is a very difficult belief to maintain. No matter how sociopathic you are, there's always going to be a part of you that craves the approval, love and attention of others. That craving is a nagging reminder that other people do, in fact, exist. This creates the very weird insistence on the part of the ultra-rich that they are actually *philanthropists*. Thus, the very weird spectacle of corporate raiders – responsible for tens of thousands of job losses – describing themselves as "job creators," and funding whole economic subdisciplines dedicated to shoring up this absurd claim ("The search for a superior moral justification for selfishness" -JK Galbraith): [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html][12] Trying to squeeze this claim through an ever-narrowing credibility aperture forces it into some extremely weird shapes. Take "Effective Altruism," the belief that you should make as much money as possible by working in the most exploitative and destructive fields you can find, in order to fund a program to improve the lives of 53 trillion hypothetical artificial people who will come into existence in 10,000 years: [https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-long-run-future][13] Effective Altruism, "job creators" (and other claims to billionaireism as a force for good in the world) show just how much work it takes to maintain the belief that other people don't exist. The ruling classes are haunted by this knowledge, and as more and more wealth accumulates in the hands of fewer and fewer people, those eminently guillotineable plutes need to perform increasingly complex mental gymnastics to keep from confronting the reality of other people. Corporate bosses have near-total control over the lives of their workers, who might number in the hundreds of thousands. But they also know, in their secret hearts, that they don't *really* control their businesses. If Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stops showing up for work, the company will continue to hum along, not missing a beat. But if all of Amazon's drivers or warehouse workers walk off the job, the company will grind to a halt. If they never come back, the company might never be able to restart, unable to recover the process knowledge that walks out the door with them: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/process-knowledge/#dance-monkey-dance][14] Andy Jassy wants to think that he's in Amazon's driver's seat, but is haunted by the undeniable reality that Amazon is really in the hands of its lowest-paid, most abused workers. Andy Jassy isn't driving Amazon – he's stuck in the back seat, playing with a Fisher Price steering-wheel toy. Enter AI. AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete][15] Your boss is an easy mark for these AI swindlers, because your boss dreams of a world without workers, because that's a world where *bosses* are driving the bus. The Hollywood writers' strike was precipitated by studio bosses' fantasy of a world without writers – a world where studio bosses don't have to be satisfied with giving harebrained notes to writers who don't bother to disguise their contempt for their bosses' shitty ideas. In a world of AI scripts, the boss decides what kind of movie to make, and a chatbot shits out a script to order, without ever telling the boss that the idea stinks. The fact that this is an unshootable turkey of a script is of secondary importance. The *most* important thing is the boss's all-consuming need to avoid ego-shattering conflicts with people who actually know how to *do things*, who gain power thanks to that knowledge, and who use that power to imply (or state outright) that you're a fucking dunce. Same goes for the Hollywood actors' strike, and the continued project of cloning actors in software and puppeteering them via chatbot: it's the fantasy of a movie without actors, actors who tell you that the scenario you've spun is an incoherent mess, who insist that their expertise in an art you don't understand and can't perform yourself entitles them to challenge your ideas. AI is solipsism, the fantasy of a world without people. Bosses keep pushing the idea that AI can replace doctors and (especially) nurses. Health bosses – increasingly likely to be a giant private equity fund – want to cut care in order to direct more money to the hospital's shareholders. They want to stop paying exterminators and allow their hospitals to fill up with *thousands of bats*: [https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house][16] They want to stop paying for clean needles at dialysis clinics and transmit blood-borne chronic illnesses to immunocompromised, sick patients: [https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood][17] They want to use algorithmic death panels to eject sick patients from their beds before they can sit up, walk or, you know, *survive*: [https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca][18] The problem is that nurses and doctors are *professionals*, and that means – by definition – that they follow a professional code of ethics that *requires* them to refuse their bosses' orders when those orders are bad for patients. The same goes for shrinks of all kinds – psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counselors. They are legally and professionally required to put patients' mental health ahead of commercial imperatives. That's a big problem for any boss who wants to swap out in-person counseling for dial-a-doc shrink-on-demand services delivered via videoconference that serve up a new therapist every time the patient dials in, chasing the lowest wages around the country or the globe. The mania for "AI therapists" isn't driven by efficiency or by our societal mental health crisis – it's driven by the fantasy of mental health counseling without counselors (who insist on minimum standards for patient care): [https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/01/doctor-robo-blabbermouth/#fool-me-once-etc-etc][19] Capitalism is a single-criterion optimization: it organizes itself around the accumulation of capital, to the exclusion of all other criteria: [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59821b9ff14aa110e16b69c0/t/686621934eb5b7060da1cdaf/1751523732570/Aaron+Benanav%2C+Beyond+Capitalism+1%2C+NLR+153%2C+May+June+2025.pdf][20] This means that capitalism is forever locked in a conflict with professionalism, since professionalism is a system that upholds a code of conduct before all other priorities, including the capital accumulation. Professional ethics are, quite simply, bad for business. That's why bosses fantasize so furiously about pushing AI into professional situations – it's the fantasy of a profession without professionals. AI schoolteachers mean "education without educators," which means that there's no organized group of trained and trusted professionals telling you that chatbot slop, high-stakes testing, and standardized curriculum will fail students. This is true no matter how much money you stand to make by replacing the skilled craft process of teaching with automation. Professions are infamously resistant to automation, unlike, say, manufacturing. This means that the cost of professional services steadily increases, relative to the cost of manufactured goods. The labor, energy, materials and time it took to travel from New York to Vienna have plummeted since the 18th century – but the number of hours it takes a Viennese string quartet to perform Mozart's String Quartet No 1 is the same today as it was in 1773 – about half an hour. The cost of producing a chalkboard has crashed over the past two centuries – but the number of hours it takes a math teacher to show a classroom full of ten year olds how to do long division has hardly budged. The cost of producing a scalpel is lower today than at any time in history, but the duration of an appendectomy has only decreased a little over the past century. Economists have a name for this: they call it "cost disease." The fact that automation makes professional services (proportionally) more expensive over time isn't an indictment of professionalism, it's a testament to the power of automation for manufacturing. Bosses (should) know this, but they constantly bemoan the cost of professional services, as though the numerator (teaching, healthcare, screenwriting) is going up, when it's actually a shrinking denominator (automated manufacturing processes) that's increasing the price. The AI fantasy is a fantasy of dismantling the professions and replacing them with pliable chatbots who can be optimized for profits and thus cure cost disease for once and for all, and if that comes at the expense of the value that society derives from professional activities, that's a small price to pay for finally clearing the most stubborn barrier to capital accumulation. Last year, Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE fired or forced out a critical mass of government scientists, even as they gutted funding to research programs at the country's universities. You'd think that this would be a barrier to making scientific breakthroughs in America, but not according to Trump. He's promised that America will produce *annual* "moonshot"-scale breakthroughs, *without scientists*, by asking a chatbot to shit out paradigm-shattering scientific leaps on demand: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/trump-spent-2025-attacking-science-that-could-set-back-his-genesis-mission/][21] The problem is that while AIs can shit out sentences that seem to qualify as scientific breakthroughs, they can't actually do science. Take Google's claim that its Deepmind product had advanced material science by 800 years, "discovering 2.2 million structures." It turns out that these "discoveries" are useless – in that they constitute trivial variations on known materials, and/or have no uses, and/or can only exist at absolute zero: [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643][22] But the fact that a chatbot can't do science isn't important to Trump – or at least, not as important as all the *other* things a chatbot won't do. A chatbot won't tell Trump not to stare at an eclipse. A chatbot won't tell Trump not to inject bleach. A chatbot won't tell Trump that trans people exist. A chatbot won't tell Trump that the climate emergency is real. A chatbot will agree with Trump when he says that offshore wind kills whales and that Tylenol causes autism. For Trump, the fantasy of science without scientists is more important than whether any science happens. America needs science, but for Trump – a billionaire solipsist – America is a country populated by people who mostly don't really exist. That's true of tech bosses, too. After all, they were the original suckers for Effective Altruism and the fantasy of a world without people. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg announced that the average person has three friends, but wants 15 friends, and that he would solve this with chatbots? [https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mark-zuckerberg-on-ai-friendships_l_681a4bf3e4b0c2b15d96851d][23] Sure, we all dunked on him for being such an unlikable fucking Martian that he doesn't understand what a "friend" is. But I don't think that's what's actually going on there: it's not that Zuck doesn't understand what friends are; it's that he treats your friendships as problems to be solved. Your friends' behavior determines how much money Zuck can make. When your friends arrange their interactions with you in a way that increases how much time you spend on his platforms, Zuckerberg maximizes the number of ads he gets to show you and thus how much money he can make. The fact that your friends stubbornly refuse to help him maximize his capital accumulation is a problem, and the solution to that problem is chatbots, which can be instructed to relate to you in ways that are optimized for increasing Zuck's wealth. For Zuck, chatbots are a fantasy of a social network without socializing. It's not just users that tech bosses fantasize about replacing with AI, though – they *really* want to get rid of coders. Computer programmers aren't (formally) a profession, but they are quite powerful, and have a cultural norm of criticizing their bosses' stupid ideas: [https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/][24] Tech bosses are completely dependent on coders, who know how to do things they don't know how to do, and aren't shy about letting them know it. That's why tech bosses are so quick to equate "writing code" with "software engineering" (the latter being a discipline that requires consideration of upstream, downstream and adjacent processes while prioritizing legibility and maintainability by future generations of engineers). A chatbot can produce software routines that perform some well-scoped task, but one thing they *can't* do is maintain the wide, deep "context window" at the heart of software engineering – a linear increase in a chatbot's context window results in a *geometric* increase in the amount of computation the chatbot has to perform: [https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/29/worker-frightening-machines/#robots-stole-your-jerb-kinda][25] But the fact that chatbots will produce technical debt at scale is less important to tech bosses than the fact that a chatbot will do what you tell it without giving the boss any lip. For tech bosses, chatbots are the fantasy of a coding shop without any coders. This is a bad joke, literally. When I worked in a shop, we used to sarcastically say, "Retail would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers." We were unknowingly reprising Brecht, whose "Die Lösung" contains the immortal line, "Would it not be simpler if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?" Billionaires don't see the humor. For them, AI is a chance to wire the toy steering wheel directly into the firm's drive-train, and make movies without writers or actors, factories without workers, hospitals without nurses, schools without teachers, science without scientists, code shops without coders, social media without socializing, and yes, even retail without the fucking customers. Billionaires *love* the idea of "Universal Basic Income." For them, this is the apotheosis of the AI fantasy of a world without people. In this fantasy, the boss's toy steering wheel is steering the firm. Business consists of a boss and a computer that turns the boss's ideas into products. Who will consume these products? You will, thanks to UBI – the government will continue to exist in this fantasy, but for the sole purpose of creating new money and dispersing it to you, so that you can turn it over to billionaires who singlehandedly direct all of society's functions. Billionaires love UBI for the same reason they love charter schools. In the AI UBI fantasy, everyone who's not a billionaire has been replaced with a chatbot, and our only job is to receive government vouchers that we hand over to billionaire grifters who run the institutions that used to be under democratic choices. We no longer vote with our ballots – only with our wallets, and in the wallet election, we only get the ballots that billionaires decide we deserve, and can only direct them between choices that are as meaningless as "Mac vs Windows" or "Coke vs Pepsi." A world optimized for capital accumulation. It's a world without people. (*Image: [Matti Blume][26], [CC BY-SA 4.0][27]; [Cryteria][28], [CC BY 3.0][29]; modified*) # Hey look at this ([permalink][30]) * Necrosecurity [https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/opan-2020-0104/html][31] * 'Tis the Season to Ensh*ttify the ACM Digital Library [https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~tpkelly/grinch.html][32] * US Trade Dominance Will Soon Begin to Crack [https://www.wired.com/story/us-trade-dominance-will-begin-to-crack/][33] * How Screen-Time Limits Fail and What Matters More [https://www.owenkellogg.com/p/how-screen-time-limits-fail-and-what?hide_intro_popup=true][34] * KdK (Kinetik der Kontinua) part 1: Introduction [https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/kdk-kinetik-der-kontinua-part-1-introduction][35] [A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'] # Object permanence ([permalink][36]) #20yrsago Hollywood’s Canadian Member of Parliament [https://web.archive.org/web/20060217022615/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1060][37] #20yrsago IKEA stores make great babysitters, soup-kitchens [https://web.archive.org/web/20061107014101/http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,392850,00.html][38] #20yrsago Deaf geek mods implant-firmware so he can enjoy music again [https://web.archive.org/web/20060110053839/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bolero_pr.html][39] #20yrsago Study: Best place to advertise to teens is in-game [https://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/04/study-best-place-to-advertise-to-teens-is-in-game/][40] #20yrsago Misbehavior in Second Life game punished by exile to “the corn field” [https://web.archive.org/web/20060209002925/http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/hidden_virtual_world_prison_revealed/][41] #20yrsago Florida may sue Sony, too [https://web.archive.org/web/20060109130626/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004292.php][42] #20yrsago CEO of Neuros to Congress: If you plug the A-Hole, we’re out of biz [https://web.archive.org/web/20060106045933/https://open.neurostechnology.com/files/dtcsa.html][43] #20yrsago Click-fraud explained [https://web.archive.org/web/20060103050629/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/fraud_pr.html][44] #20yrsago Canadian MP imports US’s worst copyright AND dirty campaign financing [https://web.archive.org/web/20060624204919/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1058&Itemid=89&nsub=][45] #20yrsago EU study: more exclusive rights = worse economy [https://www.ft.com/content/99610a50-7bb2-11da-ab8e-0000779e2340][46] #20yrsago Online fundraiser for mom being sued by the RIAA [https://web.archive.org/web/20060604021749/http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/][47] #20yrsago Sf story: Internet collapses, bloggers become homeless [https://web.archive.org/web/20060105051729/https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2006/pdf0602.htm][48] #20yrsago Weinberger: Why the media can’t get Wikipedia right [https://web.archive.org/web/20060104032042/https://hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-dec29-05.html#wikipedia][49] #10yrsago Switching to Linux, saying goodbye to Apple and Microsoft [https://medium.com/backchannel/i-moved-to-linux-and-it-s-even-better-than-i-expected-9f2dcac3f8fb#.3vhxku71i][50] #10yrsago Understand: The esoteric criminal sentencing that mobilized Oregon’s Cowliphate [https://web.archive.org/web/20220621233456/https://www.popehat.com/2016/01/04/what-happened-in-the-hammond-sentencing-in-oregon-a-lawsplainer/][51] #10yrsago Thomas Piketty on Thomas Piketty [https://crookedtimber.org/2016/01/04/capital-predistribution-and-redistribution/][52] #10yrsago TPP vs Canada: a parade of horribles [https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/01/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-day-1-u-s-blocks-balancing-objectives/][53] #10yrsago Vanilla ISIS needs snacks [https://web.archive.org/web/20160222182431/https://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/oregon-terrorists-dont-plan-siege-very-well-put-out-plea-for-snacks-and-supplies–ZJglh9sRjx][54] #10yrsago T-Mobile’s “Binge On” is just throttling for all video [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles-bingeon-optimization-just-throttling-applies][55] #10yrsago Help identify the science fiction legends in these thrift-scored pix of the 1956 Worldcon [https://www.flickr.com/photos/slomuse/sets/72157662390340119][56] #10yrsago India’s telcoms regulator says it will ignore Facebook’s astroturf army [https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/Consultation-paper-is-not-an-opinion-poll-TRAI-chairman/article60523944.ece][57] #10yrsago Anne Frank’s diary is in the public domain; editors aren’t co-authors [https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/1/10698254/anne-frank-diary-free-download-copyright-dispute][58] #10yrsago Armed domestic terrorists take over federal building, but it’s OK, they’re white [https://web.archive.org/web/20060103094308/https://www.opb.org/][59] #10yrsago Paypal rolls out the welcome mat for hackers [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/12/2016-reality-lazy-authentication-still-the-norm/][60] #10yrsago Hong Kong’s dissident publishing workers are disappearing, possibly kidnapped to mainland [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/01/03/hong-kong-unsettled-strange-case-missing-booksellers/78226448/][61] #10yrsago Breaking the DRM on the 1982 Apple ][+ port of Burger Time [https://ia801207.us.archive.org/14/items/BurgerTime4amCrack/BurgerTime][62] #5yrsago The Data Detective [] #5yrsago Google's unionizing [] #5yrsago Ad-tech is a bezzle [] # Upcoming appearances ([permalink][66]) [A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.] * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 [] * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 [https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/][68] * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 [] * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 [] [A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.] # Recent appearances ([permalink][71]) * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) [https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet][72] * Enshittification with Plutopia [https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/][73] * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) [] * The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money) [] * Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper: [] [A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..] # Latest books ([permalink][77]) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/][78] * "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 ([]). * "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 ([thebezzle.org][80]). * "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 ([http://lost-cause.org][81]). * "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 ([http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org][82]). Signed copies at Book Soup ([https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245][83]). * "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books [http://redteamblues.com][84]. * "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 [https://chokepointcapitalism.com][85] [A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.] # Upcoming books ([permalink][86]) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 # Colophon ([permalink][87]) Today's top sources: Currently writing: * "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/][88] Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [Pluralistic.net][89] Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://pluralistic.net/plura-list][90] Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): [https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic][91] Medium (no ads, paywalled): [] Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://twitter.com/doctorow][93] Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): [https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic][94] "*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: [13]: [14]: [15]: [16]: [17]: [18]: [19]: [20]: 📄.pdf [21]: [22]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643 [23]: [24]: [25]: [26]: image [27]: [28]: [29]: [30]: [31]: [32]: https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~tpkelly/grinch.html [33]: [34]: [35]: [36]: [37]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060217022615/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1060 [38]: [39]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060110053839/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bolero_pr.html [40]: [41]: [42]: [43]: [44]: [45]: [46]: [47]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060604021749/http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/ [48]: [49]: [50]: https://medium.com/backchannel/i-moved-to-linux-and-it-s-even-better-than-i-expected-9f2dcac3f8fb#.3vhxku71i [51]: [52]: https://crookedtimber.org/2016/01/04/capital-predistribution-and-redistribution/ [53]: [54]: [55]: [56]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/slomuse/sets/72157662390340119 [57]: [58]: [59]: [60]: [61]: [62]: https://ia801207.us.archive.org/14/items/BurgerTime4amCrack/BurgerTime [63]: [64]: [65]: [66]: [67]: [68]: https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ [69]: [70]: [71]: [72]: [73]: [74]: [75]: [76]: [77]: [78]: [79]: [80]: [81]: http://lost-cause.org [82]: [83]: [84]: [85]: https://chokepointcapitalism.com [86]: [87]: [88]: [89]: [90]: [91]: [92]: https://doctorow.medium.com/ [93]: [94]:
Pluralistic: Facebook's fraud files (08 Nov 2025) Today's links Facebook's fraud files: 10% of gross ad revenue coming from fraudulent ads. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: FOIA for Theresa May; Paid patriotism; Antiusurpation. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Facebook's fraud files (permalink) A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal documents that reveal that: 10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because; the fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users' lives: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ The crux of the enshittification hypothesis is that companies deliberately degrade their products and services to benefit themselves at your expense because they can. An enshittogenic policy environment that rewards cheating, spying and monopolization will inevitably give rise to cheating, spying monopolists: You couldn't ask for a better example than Reuters' Facebook Fraud Files. The topline description hardly does this scandal justice. Meta's depravity and greed in the face of truly horrifying fraud and scams on its platform is breathtaking. Here's some details: first, the company's own figures estimate that they are delivering 15 billion scam ads every single day, which generate $7 billion in revenue every year. Despite its own automatic systems flagging the advertisers behind these scams, Meta does not terminate their account – rather, it charges them more money as a "disincentive." In other words, fraudulent ads are more profitable for Meta than non-scam ads. Meta's own internal memos also acknowledge that they help scammers automatically target their most vulnerable users: if a user clicks on a scam, the automated ad-targeting system floods that user's feed with more scams. The company knows that the global fraud economy is totally dependent on Meta, with one third of all US scams going through Facebook (in the UK, the figure is 54% of all "payment-related scam losses"). Meta also concludes that it is uniquely hospitable to scammers, with one internal 2025 memo revealing the company's conclusion that "It is easier to advertise scams on Meta platforms than Google." Internally, Meta has made plans to reduce the fraud on the platform, but the effort is being slow-walked because the company estimates that most it will ultimately pay in fines worldwide ads up to $1 billion, while it currently books $7 billion/year in revenue from fraud. The memo announcing the anti-fraud effort concludes that scam revenue dwarfs "the cost of any regulatory settlement involving scam ads." Another memo concludes that the company will not take any pro-active measures to fight fraud, and will only fight fraud in response to regulatory action. Meta's anti-fraud team operates under an internal quota system that limits how many scam ads they are allowed to fight. A Feb 2025 memo states that the anti-fraud team is only allowed to take measures that will reduce ad revenue by 0.15% ($135m) – even though Meta's own estimate is that scam ads generate $7 billion per year for the company. The manager in charge of the program warns their underlings that "We have specific revenue guardrails." What does Meta fraud look like? One example cited by Reuters is the company's discovery of a "six-figure network of accounts" that impersonated US military personnel, who attempted to trick other Meta users sending them money. Reuters also describes "a torrent of fake accounts pretending to be celebrities or represent major consumer brands" in order to steal Meta users' money. Another common form of fraud is "sextortion" scams. That's when someone acquires your nude images and threatens to publish them unless you pay them money and/or perform more sexual acts on camera for them. These scams disproportionately target teenagers and have led to children committing suicide: In 2022, a Meta manager sent a memo complaining about a "lack of investment" in fraud-fighting systems. The company had classed this kind of fraud as a "low severity" problem and was deliberately starving enforcement efforts of resources. This only got worse in the years that followed, when Meta engaged in mass layoffs from the anti-fraud side of the business in order to free up capital to work on perpetrating a different kind of scam – the mass investor frauds of metaverse and AI: These layoffs sometimes led to whole departments being shuttered. For example, in 2023, the entire team that handled "advertiser concerns about brand-rights issues" was fired. Meanwhile, Meta's metaverse and AI divisions were given priority over the company's resources, to the extent that safety teams were ordered to stop making any demanding use of company infrastructure, ordered instead to operate so minimally that they were merely "keeping the lights on." Those safety teams, meanwhile, were receiving about 10,000 valid fraud reports from users every week, but were – by their own reckoning – ignoring or incorrectly rejecting 96% of them. The company responded to this revelation by vowing to reduce the share of valid fraud reports that it ignored to a mere 75% by 2023. When Meta roundfiles and wontfixes valid fraud reports, Meta users lose everything. Reuters reports out the case of a Canadian air force recruiter whose account was taken over by fraudsters. Despite the victim repeatedly reporting the account takeover to Meta, the company didn't act on any of these reports. The scammers who controlled the account started to impersonate victim to her trusted contacts, shilling crypto scams, claiming that she had bought land for a dream home with her crypto gains. While Meta did nothing, the victim's friends lost everything. One colleague, Mike Lavery, was taken for CAD40,000 by the scammers. He told Reuters, "I thought I was talking to a trusted friend who has a really good reputation. Because of that, my guard was down." Four other colleagues were also scammed. The person whose account had been stolen begged her friends to report the fraud to Meta. They sent hundreds of reports to the company, which ignored them all – even the ones she got the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to deliver to Meta's Canadian anti-fraud contact. Meta calls this kind of scam, where scammers impersonate users, "organic," differentiating it from scam ads, where scammers pay to reach potential victim. Meta estimates that it hosts 22 billion "organic" scam pitches per day. These organic scams are actually often permitted by Meta's terms of service: when Singapore police complained to Meta about 146 scam posts, the company concluded that only 23% of these scams violated their Terms of Service. The others were all allowed. These permissible frauds included "too good to be true" come-ons for 80% discounts on leading fashion brands, offers for fake concert tickets, and fake job listings – all permitted under Meta's own policies. The internal memos seen by Reuters show Meta's anti-fraud staffers growing quite upset to realize that these scams were not banned on the platform, with one Meta employee writing, "Current policies would not flag this account!" But even if a fraudster does violate Meta's terms of service, the company will not act. Per Meta's own policies, a "High Value Account" (one that spends a lot on fraudulent ads) has to accrue more than 500 "strikes" (adjudicated violations of Meta policies) before the company will take down the account. Meta's safety staff grew so frustrated by the company's de facto partnership with the fraudsters that preyed on its users that they created a weekly "Scammiest Scammer" award, given to the advertiser that generated the most complaints that week. But this didn't actually spark action – Reuters found that 40% of Scammiest Scammers were still operating on the platform six months after being flagged as the company's most prolific fraudster. This callous disregard for Meta's users isn't the result of a new, sadistic streak in the company's top management. As the whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams' memoir Careless People comprehensively demonstrates, the company has always been helmed by awful people who would happily subject you to grotesque tormets to make a buck: The thing that's changed over time is whether they can make a buck by screwing you over. The company's own internal calculus reveals how this works: they make more money from fraud – $7 billion/year – than they will ever have to pay in fines for exposing you to fraud. A fine is a price, and the price is right (for fraud). The company could reduce fraud, but it's expensive. To lower the amount of fraud, they must spend money on fraud-fighting employees who review automated and user-generated fraud flags, and accept losses from "false positives" – overblocking ads that look fraudulent, but aren't. Note that these two outcomes are inversely correlated: the more the company spends on human review, the fewer dolphins they'll catch in their tuna nets. Committing more resources to fraud fighting isn't the same thing as vowing to remove all fraud from the platform. That's likely impossible, and trying to do so would involve invasively intervening in users' personal interactions. But it's not necessary for Meta to sit inside every conversation among friends, trying to decide whether one of them is scamming the others, for the company to investigate and act on user complaints. It's not necessary for Meta to invade your conversations for it to remove prolific and profitable fraudsters without waiting for them to rack up 500 policy violations. And of course, there is one way that Meta could dramatically reduce fraud: eliminate its privacy-invasive ad-targeting system. The top of the Meta ad-funnel starts with the nonconsensual dossiers Meta has assembled on more than 4 billion people around the world. Scammers pay to access these dossiers, targeting their pitches to users who are most vulnerable. This is an absolutely foreseeable outcome of deeply, repeatedly violating billions of peoples' human rights by spying on them. Gathering and selling access to all this surveillance data is like amassing a mountain of oily rags so large that you can make billions by processing them into low-grade fuel. This is only profitable if you can get someone else pay for the inevitable fires: https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/ That's what Meta is doing here: privatizing the gains to be had from spying on us, and socializing the losses we all experience from the inevitable fallout. They are only able to do this, though, because of supine regulators. Here in the USA, Congress hasn't delivered a new consumer privacy law since 1988, when they made it a crime for video-store clerks to disclose your VHS rentals: https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy Meta spies on us and then allows predators to use that surveillance to destroy our lives for the same reason that your dog licks its balls: because they can. They are engaged in conduct that is virtually guaranteed by the enshittogenic policy environment, which allows Meta to spy on us without limit and which fines them $1b for making $7b on our misery. Mark Zuckerberg has always been an awful person, but – as Sarah Wynn-Williams demonstrates in her book – he was once careful, worried about the harms he would suffer if he harmed us. Once we took those consequences away, Zuck did exactly what his nature dictated he must: destroyed our lives to increase his own fortune. Hey look at this (permalink) Dick Cheney Doesn’t Deserve Your Heartfelt Eulogies https://theintercept.com/2025/11/04/dick-cheney-death-iraq-war/ Queen West Complete, Summer 2015 https://crowdfundr.com/queenwest2015?ref=ab_4OgKuqNTSbD4OgKuqNTSbD Does Ubiquitous Computing Need Interface Agents? 📄.pdf America’s Dumbest Billionaires Fail to Stop Zohran Mamdani https://prospect.org/2025/11/04/americas-dumbest-billionaires-fail-to-stop-zohran-mamdani/ Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa Object permanence (permalink) #20yrsago Singapore’s stocking-foot executioner #20yrsago Cinemas as police-states: why box-office revenue is in decline? #20yrsago Westchester Co’s clueless WiFi lawmakers demonstrate cluelessness #20yrsago Katamari Damacy homemade models #15yrsago Cut-up artist alphabetizes the newspaper https://web.archive.org/web/20101109012930/http://derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2010/11/kim-rugg-london-artists-knife-skills-knack-precision/ #15yrsago Colorado DA drops felony hit-and-run charges against billion-dollar financier because of “serious job implications” https://web.archive.org/web/20101108122254/http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20101104/NEWS/101109939/1078&ParentProfile=1062 #10yrsago A Freedom of Information request for UK Home Secretary Theresa May’s metadata https://www.techdirt.com/2015/11/06/uk-home-secretary-says-dont-worry-about-collection-metadata-foia-request-made-her-metadata/ #10yrsago Religious children more punitive, less likely to display altruism https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study #10yrsago Once again, the SFPD blames a cyclist for his own death without any investigation https://sfist.com/2015/11/04/sfpd_once_again_blames_cyclist_for/ #10yrsago Paid Patriotism: Pentagon spent millions bribing sports teams to recognize military service #10yrsago Spy at will! FCC won’t force companies to honor Do Not Track https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/fcc-wont-force-websites-to-honor-do-not-track-requests/ #10yrsago TPP will let banks write their own regulations and stick taxpayers with the bill https://theintercept.com/2015/11/06/ttp-trade-pact-would-give-wall-street-a-trump-card-to-block-regulations/ #10yrsago Typewriter portraiture, the strange story of 1920s ASCII art https://web.archive.org/web/20151108220746/https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-typewriter-ascii-portraits-of-classic-hollywood-and-1738094492 #5yrsago QE, inflation, slave labor and a People's Bailout https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/07/obamas-third-term/#peoplesbailout #1yrago Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation Upcoming appearances (permalink) Lisbon: A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet, with Rabble (Web Summit), Nov 12 https://websummit.com/sessions/lis25/92f47bc9-ca60-4997-bef3-006735b1f9c5/a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet/ Cardiff: Hay Festival After Hours, Nov 13 https://www.hayfestival.com/c-203-hay-festival-after-hours.aspx Oxford: Enshittification and Extraction: The Internet Sucks Now with Tim Wu (Oxford Internet Institute), Nov 14 https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/events/enshittification-and-extraction-the-internet-sucks-now/ London: Enshittification with Sarah Wynn-Williams and Chris Morris, Nov 15 https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/cory-doctorow-with-sarah-wynn-williams London: Downstream IRL with Aaron Bastani (Novara Media), Nov 17 https://dice.fm/partner/tickets/event/oen5rr-downstream-irl-aaron-bastani-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-17th-nov-earth-london-tickets London: Enshittification with Carole Cadwalladr (Frontline Club), Nov 18 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-conversation-enshittification-tickets-1785553983029 Virtual: Enshittification with Vass Bednar (Vancouver Public Library), Nov 21 Toronto: Jailbreaking Canada (OCAD U), Nov 27 San Diego: Enshittification at the Mission Hills Branch Library, Dec 1 Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4 Madison, CT: Enshittification at RJ Julia, Dec 8 Recent appearances (permalink) Reimagining Digital Public Infrastructure (Attention: Govern Or Be Governed) Enshittification and How To Fight It (ILSR) Big Tech’s “Enshittification” & Bill McKibben on Solar Hope for the Planet Enshittification and the Rot Economy with Ed Zitron (Clarion West) Amanpour & Co (New Yorker Radio Hour) Latest books (permalink) "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (). "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (). Signed copies at Book Soup (). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books . "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED. A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X
Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) Today's links LLMs are slot-machines: You only remember the jackpots. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Heinlein bio; Amazon bans Amazon-critical podcasts; How to Argue With a Racist. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. LLMs are slot-machines (permalink) When LLM users describe their experience with their chatbots, the results are so divergent that it can sound like they're describing two completely different products. Previously, I've hypothesized that this is because there are two distinct groups of users: "centaurs" (people who are assisted by a machine – in this case, people who get to decide when, whether and how to integrate an LLM into their work) and "reverse-centaurs" (people conscripted into being an assistant to a machine – here, people whose bosses have fired their colleagues and ordered the survivors to oversee an LLM that badly approximates the work of those departed workers): But yesterday, I read "The Futzing Fraction," an essay by Glyph, that advances a compatible, but very different hypothesis that I find extremely compelling: Glyph proposes that many LLM-assisted programmers who speak highly of the reliability and value of AI tools are falling prey to two cognitive biases: The "availability heuristic" (striking things are easier to remember, which is why we remember the very rare instances of kids being kidnapped and killed, but rarely think about the relatively common phenomenon of kids dying in boring car-crashes); and The "salience heuristic" (big things are easier to remember, which is why we double-check that the oven is turned off and the smoke alarms are working after our neighbor's house burns down). In the case of LLM coding assistants, this manifests as an unconscious overestimation of how often the LLM saves you time. That's because a coding program that produces a bug that you have to "futz with" for a while before it starts working is normal, and thus unmemorable, while a coding tool that turns a plain-language prompt into a working computer program is amazing, so it stands out in your memory. Glyph likens this to a slot-machine: when you lose a dollar to a slot-machine, that is totally unremarkable, "the expected outcome." But when a slot pays out a jackpot, you remember that for the rest of your life. Walk through a casino floor on which a player hits a slot jackpot, and the ringing bells, flashing lights, and cheering crowd will stick with you, giving you an enduring perception that slot-machines are paying out all the time, even though no casino could stay in business if this were the case. Glyph develops this analogy to describe why LLMs are worse than slot machines. He says that (non-pathological) gamblers set a budget for the amount of money they're prepared to lose to the slots, while a coder who's feeling warmly disposed to an LLM coding assistant may not put any explicit limits on how much time they'll spend futzing with LLM-generated code (I'll add here that part of the seductive joy of coding is that it can put its practitioners into a kind of autohyptnotic fugue state where they don't notice the passing of time, a state that is also a feature of pathological gambling). Glyph poses a hypothetical: if you have a coding project and that you ask a chatbot to write, and the resulting code initially doesn't work, but does work after ten minutes of futzing, that feels amazing and you will remember it forever as the time you saved 3:50 by using a chatbot. But it's possible that you repeated the "well, I'll just futz with this for ten minutes" step to get to that final success so many times that the whole affair took six hours, two hours longer than it would have taken had you just written the program from scratch. It's like winning a $1000 jackpot after "just putting a dollar in," except that that was the one-thousand-and-first dollar that you fed to the machine. Glyph says that in other business activities, the "let's just try this for 10 minutes more" strategy usually pays off, but that LLMs produce an "an emotionally variable, intermittent reward schedule" that subverts your ability to wisely deploy that tactic. But that's not the only way in which an LLM coding assistant is like a slot machine. Reg Braithwaite proposed that AI companies' business model is also like a casino's, because they charge every time you re-prompt the AI. He writes: When you are paying by the "pull of the handle," the vendor's incentive is not to solve your problem with a single pull, but to give the appearance of progress towards solving your problem. https://social.bau-ha.us/@raganwald/115033262770049100 Jpeck likens the use of an LLM coding assistant to "a dense intern" who has to be walked through each step and then have their work double-checked: But there's an important difference between an intern and an LLM. For a senior coder, helping an intern is an investment in nurturing a new generation of talented colleagues. For a reverse-centaur, refining an LLM is either an investment in fixing bugs in a product designed to put you on the breadline (if you believe AI companies' claims that their products will continue to improve until they don't need close supervision), or it's a wasted investment in a "dense intern" who is incapable of improving. (Image: Frank Schwichtenberg, CC BY 4.0Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; modified) Hey look at this (permalink) How The Internet Died Object permanence (permalink) #20yrago PC disguised as a set of encyclopedia volumes #20yrago Nobel economist on harm lurking in copyright monopolies #15yrsago Heinlein biography: LEARNING CURVE – the secret history of science fiction #5yrsago Amazon bans podcasts that criticize Amazon # #5yrsago Combat Wheelchairs #5yrsago How to Argue With a Racist #5yrsago Self-driving cars are bullshit #1yrago MIT libraries are thriving without Elsevier Upcoming appearances (permalink) Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12 https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/ DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12 Chicago: Enshittification with Kara Swisher (Chicago Humanities), Oct 15 San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5 Recent appearances (permalink) The Utopias Podcast Tariffs vs IP Law (Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons) ORG at 20: In conversation with Maria Farrell Latest books (permalink) Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (). The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (). Signed copies at Book Soup (). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books . "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) Canny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1022 words yesterday, 32968 words total). A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X
Pluralistic: Goodhart's Law (of AI) (11 Aug 2025) Today's links Goodhart's Law (of AI): When a metric becomes a target, AI can hit it every time. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Bill Ayers graphic novel; Foxconn in India; Uber loses $4B; Warren Buffet, monopolist. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Goodhart's Law (of AI) (permalink) One way to think about AI's unwelcome intrusion into our lives can be summed up with Godhardt's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure": Goodhart's Law is a harsh mistress. It's incredibly exciting to discover a new way of measuring aspects of a complex system in a way that lets you understand (and thus control) it. In 1998, Sergey Brin and Larry Page realized that all the links created by everyone who'd ever made a webpage represented a kind of latent map of the value and authority of every website. We could infer that pages that had more links pointing to them were considered more noteworthy than pages that had fewer inbound links. Moreover, we could treat those heavily linked-to pages as authoritative and infer that when they linked to another page, it, too, was likely to be important. This insight, called "PageRank," was behind Google's stunning entry into the search market, which was easily one of the most exciting technological developments of the decade, as the entire web just snapped into place as a useful system for retrieving information that had been created by a vast, uncoordinated army of web-writers, hosted in a distributed system without any central controls. Then came the revenge of Goodhart's Law. Before Google became the dominant mechanism for locating webpages, there only reason for anyone to link to a given page or site was because there was something there they thought you should see. Google aggregated all those "I think you should see this" signals and turned them into a map of the web's relevance and authority. But making a link to a webpage is easy. Once there was another reason to make a link between two web-pages – to garner traffic, which could be converted into money and/or influence – then bad actors made a lot of spurious links between websites. They created linkfarms, they spammed blog comments, they hacked websites for the sole purpose of adding a bunch of human-invisible, Google-scraper-readable links to pages. The metric ("how many links are there to this page?") became a target ("make links to this page") and ceased to be a useful metric. Goodhart's Law is still a plague on Google search quality. "Reputation abuse" is a webcrime committed by venerable sites like Forbes, Fortune and Better Homes and Gardens, who abuse the authority imparted by tons of inbound links accumulated over decades by creating spammy, fake product-review sites stuffed with affiliate links, that Google ranks more highly than real, rigorous review sites because of all that accumulated googlejuice: Goodhart's Law is 50 years old, but policymakers are woefully ignorant of it and continue to operate as though it doesn't apply to them. This is especially pronounced when policymakers are determined to Do Something about a public service that has been starved of funding kicked around as a political football to the point where it has degraded and started to outrage the public. When this happens, policymakers are apt to blame public servants – rather than themselves – for this degradation, and then set out to Bring Accountability to those public employees. The NHS did this with ambulance response times, which are very bad, and that fact is, in turn, very bad. The reason ambulance response times suck isn't hard to winkle out: there's not enough money being spent on ambulances, drivers, and medics. But that's not a politically popular conclusion, especially in the UK, which has been under brutal and worsening austerity since the Blair years (don't worry, eventually they'll do enough austerity and things will really turn around, because, as the old saying goes, "Good policymaking consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome)." Instead of blaming inadequate funding for poor ambulance response times, politicians blamed "inefficiency," driven by a poor motivation. So they established a metric: ambulances must arrive within a certain number of minutes (and they set a consequence: massive cuts to any ambulance service that didn't meet the metric). Now, "an ambulance where it's needed within a set amount of time" may sound like a straightforward metric, and it was – retrospectively. As in, we could tell that the ambulance service was in trouble because ambulances were taking half an hour or more to arrive. But prospectively, after that metric became a target, it immediately ceased to be a good metric. That's because ambulance services, faced with the impossible task of improving response times without spending money, started to dispatch ambulance motorbikes that couldn't carry 95% of the stuff needed to respond to a medical emergency, and had no way to get patients back to hospitals. These motorbikes were able to meet the response-time targets…without improving the survival rates of people who summoned ambulances: AI turns out to be a great way to explore all the perverse dimensions of Goodhart's Law. For years, machine learning specialists have struggled with the problem of "reward hacking," in which an AI figures out how to meet some target in a way that blows up the metric it was derived from: My favorite example of this is the AI-powered Roomba that was programmed to find an efficient path that minimized collisions with furniture, as measured by a forward-facing sensor that sent a signal whenever the Roomba bumped into anything. The Roomba started driving backwards, smashing into all kinds of furniture, but measuring zero collisions, because there was no collision-sensor on its back: Charlie Stross has observed that corporations are a kind of "slow AI," that engage in endless reward-hacking to accomplish their goals, increasing their profits by finding nominally legal ways to poison the air, cheat their customers and maim their workers: Public services under conditions of austerity are another kind of slow AI. When policymakers demand that a metric be satisfied without delivering any of the budget or resources needed to satisfy it, the public employees downstream of that impossible demand will start reward-hacking and the metric will become a target, and then cease to be a useful metric. Which brings me, at last, to AI in educational contexts. In 2008, George W Bush stepped up the long-running war on education with the No Child Left Behind Act. The right hates public education, for many reasons. Obviously, there's the fact that uneducated people are easier to mislead, which is helpful if you want to get a bunch of turkeys to vote for Christmas ("I love the uneducated" -DJ Trump). Then there's the fact that, since 1954's Brown v Board of Ed, Black and brown kids were legally guaranteed the right to be educated alongside white kids, which makes a large swathe of the right absolutely nuts. Then there was the 1962 Supreme Court decisions that banned prayer in school, leading to bans on teaching Christian doctrine, including nonsense like Young Earth Creationism. Finally, there's the fact that teachers a) belong to unions; and, b) believe in their jobs and fight for the kids they teach. No Child Left Behind was a vicious salvo in the war on teachers, positing the problem with education as a failure of teachers, driven by a combination of poor training and indifference to their students. Under No Child Left Behind, students were subjected to multiple rounds of standardized tests, and teachers with low-performing students had their budgets taken away (after first being offered modest assistance in improving those scores). Some of NCLB's standardized tests represented reasonable metrics: we really do want kids to be able to read and do math and reason and string together coherent thoughts at various points in their schooling. But when these metrics became targets, boy did they stop being useful as metrics. It's impossible to overstate how fucking perverse NCLB was. I once met an elementary school teacher from an incredibly poor school district in Kansas. Many of her students were resettled refugees who didn't speak English; they spoke a language that no one in the school system could speak, and which had no system of writing. They arrived in her classroom unable to speak English and unable to read or write in any language, and no one could speak their language. Obviously, these students performed badly on standardized tests delivered in English (it didn't help that they had to take the tests just months after arriving in the classroom, because the clock started ticking on their first test when they entered the system, which could take half a year to place them in a class). Within a couple years, these schools had had most of their budgets taken away. When the standardized tests rolled around, this teacher would lead her students into the only room in the school with computers – the test taking room. For many of these students, this was the first time they had ever used a computer. She would tell them to do their best and leave the room for an hour, while a well-paid proctor (along with test-taking computers, the only thing NCLB guaranteed funding for) observed them as they tried to figure out how a mouse worked. They would all score zero on the test, and the school would be punished. NCLB was such a failure that it was eventually rescinded (in 2015), but by that time, a new system of standardization had rushed in to fill the gap, the Common Core. Common Core is a set of rigid standardized curriciula – with standardized assessment rubrics – that was, once again, driven by contempt for teachers. The argument for Common Core was that students were failing – not because of falling budgets or No Child Left Behind – but because the unions were "protecting bad teachers," who would then go on to fail students. By taking away discretion from teachers, we could impose "accountability" on them. The absolutely predictable outcome followed Goodhart's Law to a tee: teachers prioritized inclulcating students with the skills to pass the standardized tests, and when those test-taking skills crowded out actual learning, learning fell by the wayside. This continues up to the most advanced part of public education, the Advanced Placement courses that students aspiring to college are strongly pressured to take. If Common Core is rigid, AP is brittle to the point of shattering. Anyone who's ever parented a kid through the US secondary school system knows how much time their kids spent learning to hit their marks on standardized assessments, to the exclusion of actual learning, and how soul-suckingly awful this is. Take that staple of the AP assessment rubric: the five-paragraph essay (5PE), bane of students, teachers and parents everywhere: Speaking as a sometime writing teacher and an internationally bestselling essayist, 5PEs are objectively very bad essays. Their only virtue is that they can be assessed in a totally standard way, so the grade any given 5PE is awarded by any grader is likely to be the same grade it receives when presented to any other grader. Grading an essay is an irreducibly subjective matter, and the only way to create an objective standard for essays is to make the essays unrecognizable as essays. And yet, the 5PE is the heart of assessment for many AP classes, from History to English to Social Studies and beyond. A kid who scores high on any humanities APs will have put endless hours into perfecting this perfectly abominable literary form, mastering a skill that they will never, ever be called upon to use (the top piece of college entrance advice is "don't write your personal essay as a 5PE" and college professors spend the first half of their 101 classes teaching students not to turn in 5PEs). The same goes for many other aspects of AP and Common Core assessment. If you do AP Lit, you'll be required to annotate the literature you read by making a set number of marginal observations on every page of the novels, poems and essays you read. Again, as a literary reviewer, novelist, and nonfiction writer who's written more than 30 books, I have to say, this is a batshit way to learn to analyze and criticize literature. It's sole virtue is that it reduces the qualitative matter of literary analysis to a qualitative target that students can hit and teachers can count. And that's where AI comes in. AI – the ultimate bullshit machine – can produce a better 5PE than any student can, because the point of the 5PE isn't to be intellectually curious or rigorous, it's to produce a standardized output that can be analyzed using a standardized rubric. I've been writing YA novels and doing school visits for long enough to cement my understanding that kids are actually pretty darned clever. They don't graduate from high school thinking that their mastery of the 5PE is in any way good or useful, or that they're learning about literature by making five marginal observations per page when they read a book. Given all this, why wouldn't you ask an AI to do your homework? That homework is already the revenge of Goodhart's Law, a target that has ruined its metric. Your homework performance says nothing useful about your mastery of the subject, so why not let the AI write it. Hell, if you're a smart, motivated kid, then letting the AI write your bullshit 5PEs might give you time to write something good. Teachers aren't to blame here. They have to teach to the test, or they will fail their students (literally, because they will have to assign a failing grade to them, and figuratively, because a student who gets a failing grade will face all kinds of punishments). Teachers' unions – who consistently fight against standardization and in favor of their members discretion to practice their educational skills based on kids' individual needs – are the best hope we have: The right hates teachers and keeps on setting them up to fail. That hatred has no bottom. Take the Republican Texas State Rep Ryan Guillen, whose House Bill 462 will increase the state's school safety budget from $10/student to $100/student, with those additional funds earmarked to buy one armed drone per 200 students (these drones are supplied by a single company that has ties to Guillen): Imagine how much Texas schools could do with an extra $90/student/year – how much more usefully that money could be spent if it were turned over to teachers. But instead, Rep Guillen wants to put "AI in schools" in the form of drones equipped with pepper-spray, flash bangs, and "lances" that can be smashed into people at 100mph. The problem with AI in schools isn't that students are using AI to do their homework. It's that schools have been turned into reward-hacking AIs by a system that hates the idea of an educated populace almost as much as it hates the idea of unionized teachers who are empowered to teach our kids. (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; Lee Haywood, CC BY-SA 2.0; modified) Hey look at this (permalink) Cybertruck Leads Tesla’s Used-Car Collapse Hackers Went Looking for a Backdoor in High-Security Safes—and Now Can Open Them in Seconds I clustered four Framework Mainboards to test huge LLMs The Framework Desktop is a beast Leaving MAGA Object permanence (permalink) #15yrsago Bill Ayers’s To Teach: The Journey, in Comics, a humanist look at education #10yrsago Kansas officials stonewall mathematician investigating voting machine “sabotage” https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article27951310.html #10yrsago Chinese mega-manufacturers set up factories in India #10yrsago Oracle’s CSO demands an end to customers checking Oracle products for defects #10yrsago Girl Sex 101: “for EVERYone who wants to bone down with chicks, regardless of your gender/orientation.” #10yrsago John Oliver on the brutal state of sex-ed in America #10yrsago Insurance monitoring dashboard devices used by Uber let hackers “cut your brakes” over wireless #10yrsago US lobbying for TPP to lock up clinical trial data #10yrsago Larry Lessig considers running for the Democratic presidential nomination #10yrsago Felicia Day’s “You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)” #10yrsago Overshare: Justin Hall’s biopic about the first social media/blogging #5yrsago When you hear "intangibles"… #5yrsago How they're killing the post office #5yrsago Terra Nullius #5yrsago Uber lost $4b in H1/2020 #5yrsago Warren Buffet, monopolist Upcoming appearances (permalink) Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12 https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/ DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025 San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5 Recent appearances (permalink) Tariffs vs IP Law (Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons) ORG at 20: In conversation with Maria Farrell Why aren't we controlling our own tech? (Co-Op Congress) https://www.youtube.com/live/GLrDwHgeCy4?si=NUWxPphk0FS_3g9J&t=4409 Latest books (permalink) Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (). The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (). Signed copies at Book Soup (). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books . "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) Canny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1076 words yesterday, 27803 words total). A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X
Pluralistic: Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch (05 Aug 2025) Today's links Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch: The reality is more complex. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: David Byrne vs Spotify; India's porn ban; Qanon ARG; Contextual ads; Leveraged buyouts aren't mortgages. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch (permalink) We spend a lot of time talking about AI's technical capabilities: what it can do now, what it might do tomorrow, what it will never do. But AI is only secondarily a technological phenomenon; it is primarily a financial phenomenon, hundreds of billions of dollars in investment capital in search of a return. The return on that capital only comes from one place: workers' wages. AI – as a financial phenomenon – represents that AI will a) replace, and/or; b) frighten workers to the point where more of the revenues generated by firms that buy AI tools will be returned to executives and shareholders, at the expense of their workforce. This is why AI bosses are so eager to cite statistics – conjured out of thin air, without any backing – about how AI is about to replace the majority of workers: And it's why tech companies that are peddling AI tools boast so brazenly about how many programmers' work can be replaced by AI: After all, tech workers were – until recently – the princes of labor. Despite infinitesimal union density in the tech sector, tech workers were in such high demand that they could tell their bosses to go fuck themselves – and keep their jobs. Those bosses knew that a worker who quit during the morning scrum could have a better job with a rival firm before evening cocktails. While tech bosses cultivated a chuminess with these workers, treating them as peers (temporarily embarrassed founders, not employees) and sitting down for "town halls," they clearly hated this and wanted nothing more than to put these arrogant pismires in their place. The instant tech labor's supply caught up with demand, these bosses mass-fired their precious tech workers, canceled town halls ("Not a good use of my time" -M. Zuckerberg), and told workers that the "sweet spot" was a 60-hour work-week: Facebook announced a 5% across-the-board layoff and doubled its executives' bonuses – on the same day. They fired thousands of workers and then hired a single AI researcher for $200m: Whatever else all this is, it's a performance. It's a way of demonstrating the efficacy of the product they're hoping your boss will buy and replace you with: Remember when techies were prized beyond all measure, pampered and flattered? AI is SO GOOD at replacing workers that we are dragging these arrogant little shits out by their hoodies and firing them over Interstate 280 with a special, AI-powered trebuchet. Imagine how many of the ungrateful useless eaters who clog up your payroll *you will be able to vaporize when you buy our product!* Which is why you should always dig closely into announcements about AI-driven tech layoffs. It's true that tech job listings are down 36% since ChatGPT's debut – but that's pretty much true of all job listings: And the major decline in tech hiring isn't the result of hiring far fewer programmers – the tech companies have mostly cut back on hiring marketers, administrative assistants, and HR staff. The whole fucking economy is in freefall. It's so bad that Trump just fired the country's head labor statistician and pledged to replace her with a flunky who wouldn't produce numbers "that made him look bad": The tech industry has changed. During the lockdowns, tech companies trumpeted their hiring sprees a performance of growth, staged for pandemic-panicked investors. Now, tech companies trumped their layoffs as a performance of AI's technical excellence, aimed at potential AI customers and credulous investors stampeded by FOMO. Hey look at this (permalink) Xiaomi users stole their phones from the service center to unlock the bootloader AI Agents have, so far, mostly been a dud USAID Shield Shirts The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine FULL HOPE SCHEDULE IS LIVE Object permanence (permalink) #15yrsago Stuff: Oliver-Sacks-like account of pathological hoarders #10yrsago David Byrne explains the streaming music ripoff #10yrsago The only furniture you need is a single smooth stone that reminds you of your mother #10yrsago WATCH: Elizabeth Warren rescues Planned Parenthood, excoriates misogynist GOP creeps #10yrsago India’s porn ban collapses in less than 48 hours #10yrsago Parenting and the Internet: the smarter, missing third way #10yrsago Idaho court strikes down anti-whistleblower “ag-gag” law #10yrsago Actual questions from my Green Card questionnaire #10yrsago Germany’s top prosecutor fired for bringing “treason” charge against Netzpolitik #5yrsago Qanon is magical thinking #5yrsago Trump wants to force you to invest in failing fossil fuel companies #5yrsago Cori Bush triumphs in Missouri #5yrsago Qanon is an ARG #5yrsago GE's billion dollar tax-fraud #5yrsago Contextual ads can save media #1yrago Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages Upcoming appearances (permalink) San Diego: ACM Collective Intelligence keynote, Aug 5 https://ci.acm.org/2025/speakers/cory-doctorow/ Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12 https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/ DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025 San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5 Recent appearances (permalink) Tariffs vs IP Law (Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons) ORG at 20: In conversation with Maria Farrell Why aren't we controlling our own tech? (Co-Op Congress) https://www.youtube.com/live/GLrDwHgeCy4?si=NUWxPphk0FS_3g9J&t=4409 Latest books (permalink) Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (). The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (). Signed copies at Book Soup (). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books . "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) Canny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Slashdot (). Currently writing: "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1053 words yesterday, 21600 words total). A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/05/ex-princes-of-labor/
Pluralistic: Trump's not gonna protect workers from forced labor (03 Jul 2025) Today's links Trump's not gonna protect workers from forced labor: But states hate noncompete "agreements." Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Non-Singularity futures, CBP corruption, Sun Ra's syllabus, Snowden on Little Brother, EU interop, bossware. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Trump's not gonna protect workers from forced labor (permalink) As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are not popular. Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is extremely unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps. Keeping this fact in mind is essential if we are to nurture hope's embers, and fan them into the flames of change. Trumpism is a coalition of people who hate each other, who agree on almost nothing, whose fracture lines are one deft tap away from shattering: https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual The vast unpopularity of Trumpism presents endless opportunities for breaking off parts of his coalition. Take noncompete "agreements": contractual clauses that ban workers from taking a job with any of their employers' competitors for years. One in 18 Americans has been captured by a noncompete, and the median noncompete victim is a minimum-wage fast-food worker whose small business tyrant boss wants to be sure that she doesn't quit working the register at Wendy's and start making $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at McDonald's. The story of noncompetes is bullshit from top to bottom. The argument goes, "Your boss invests heavily in training you, and lets you in on all his valuable trade-secrets. When you walk out the door and go to work for a competitor, you're stealing all that training and knowledge. Without noncompetes, no boss will invest in the knowledge-intensive industries that are the future of our economy." Now, like I said, the vast majority of people under noncompetes are working low-waged, menial jobs with little to no training, and no proprietary trade secrets to speak of. Which makes sense: workers with less bargaining power end up signing worse contracts. That's half the case against noncompetes. Here's the other half: the most IP-intensive, profitable, knowledge-based industries in America operate without any noncompetes. California's state constitution bans noncompetes, which means that every worker in Hollywood and Silicon Valley is free to quit their job and walk across the street and join a rival. If Hollywood and tech are examples of industries that "can't attract investment," then we should be shooting for every sector of the American economy to be so starved for capital. Silicon Valley's origin story is based on the ability of key workers at knowledge-intensive firms to quit their jobs and go to work for a direct competitor: the first Silicon Valley company was Shockley Semiconductors, founded by William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing silicon transistors. Shockley literally put the "silicon" in Silicon Valley, but he never shipped a working chip, because he was a deranged, paranoid eugenicist who ran such a dysfunctional company that eight of his top engineers quit to found a rival company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Then two of the "Traitorous Eight" quit the Fairchild to start Intel, and the year after, another Fairchild employee quit to start AMD: https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/ This never stopped. Woz quit HP and Jobs quit Atari to start Apple and the tradition of extremely well-capitalized companies being founded by key employees who quit market-leading firms to compete with their old bosses continues to this day. There are many things we can say about AI, but no one will claim that AI companies – especially not those in California, where noncompetes are banned – have trouble attracting investment. Half of the leading AI companies were founded by people who couldn't stand working for Sam Altman at Openai and quit to found a competitor. Just last week, Altman flipped out because Mark Zuckerberg poached his key scientists to work on competing products at Meta: Knowledge-intensive industries are provably compatible with a system of free labor where workers can work for anyone they want. You know who understands this? The lawyers who draw up employment contracts with noncompete clauses in them: the American Bar Association bans noncompetes for lawyers! Every law firm in America operates without noncompetes! Everyone hates noncompetes. They are bullshit, and only get worse with time, as the largest companies in America metastasize into sprawling conglomerates, they compete with everyone. Who isn't a competitor of Amazon's? Biden's antitrust enforcers hated noncompetes, too. Former FTC chair Lina Khan held listening tours and solicited comments to hear workers stories about noncompetes, developing a record that she used to create a rule that banned noncompetes nationwide: America's oligarchs weren't happy. They sued to overturn the rule, and got a nationwide injunction (you know, those things that Trump's illegitimate Supreme Court claims are unenforceable) that suspended the FTC rule pending a full hearing. It's clear that Trump's FTC is going to walk away from this fight and let the rule die. Trumpism is wildly unpopular, and this is no exception. Americans overwhelmingly support banning noncompetes, but Trump's richest donors are terrified of another Great Resignation and want to keep us indentured to their shitty companies, so Trump's FTC will sell us all out. But that's not the end of things. As David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, states and local governments can pass their own noncompete bans, and they are: https://prospect.org/labor/2025-07-02-ftc-noncompete-state-regulation-workers-wages/ Take NYC mayor-in-waiting Zoran Mamdani: unlike Trump (and the Democratic Party's billionaire wing), Mamdani campaigned by offering to create policies that are popular, including a ban on noncompetes. New York City has two distinct groups of workers who are screwed over by noncompetes. One of those groups is Wall Street finance bros, who work for some of the most legendarily toxic assholes to ever draw breath, and are overwhelming bound by noncompetes that will all become null and void the day Mamdani dons his sash. The other group of workers Mamdani will liberate are those at the very bottom of the income distribution, from fast food workers to gig workers to doormen, who are victims of some of the dirtiest noncompete clauses in America, including "bondage fees": Big cities are filled with workers who are getting screwed by noncompetes and every city government has it in their power to liberate every one of those workers (who are also voters). States can do even better. There are already four states that ban noncompetes, two of them blood red: California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. Other states place significant restrictions on noncompetes, including Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. Nevada bans noncompetes for hourly workers, Idaho only allows them for "key employees"; Louisiana limits noncompetes to two years, and NJ bans noncompetes for domestic workers. Up and down the country, in states blue and red, noncompetes are unpopular, and banning noncompetes is popular: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/majority-americans-support-ftc-ruling-would-ban-non-compete-agreements Oregon just banned noncompetes for doctors and other health workers, as part of a sweeping, bipartisan law that banned the "corporate practice of medicine": https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/20/the-doctor-will-gouge-you-now/#states-rights Oregon's in good company: noncompetes are banned in the health sector in 32 states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Colorado. Lina Khan's FTC developed an irrefutable evidentiary record about the abusive nature of noncompetes, proving that industries can attract capital and field successful companies without them. States have it in their power to step in where Trump has betrayed American workers. This isn't the most efficient way to protect workers – that would be a federal ban on noncompetes – but it will still get the job done, and it will weaken the Trump coalition, which is barely holding together as it is. Hey look at this (permalink) What's Going on Online https://www.ninetiesinternet.com/ State Department Wants to Know Student Visa Applicants’ Myspace Accounts https://theintercept.com/2025/07/01/trump-student-visa-social-media/ The bug in the letter, part 2 Turns Out Appeasing Trump Only Emboldened Him https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-03-trump-prosecution-law-felonies-fascism/ Object permanence (permalink) #15yrsago Futures for SF writers that aren’t the Singularity https://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2008/08/25/fresh-sf-futures/ #10yrsago Secret court will let NSA do mass surveillance for another six months https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/secret-us-court-allows-resumption-of-bulk-phone-metadata-spying/ #10yrsago Bigoted officials: First Amendment means we don’t have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples https://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/30/us/same-sex-marriage-supreme-court-ruling-holdouts/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+(RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories) #10yrsago McKinney, TX wants $79K to retreive emails of the cop who tackled bikini-clad teen https://www.techdirt.com/2015/06/30/city-claims-it-will-take-9000-hours-79000-to-fulfill-gawkers-request-emails-related-to-abusive-police-officer/ #10yrsago We’ve evolved to disbelieve evolution https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/06/29/418289762/don-t-believe-in-evolution-try-thinking-harder #10yrsago US Customs and Border Protection: America’s largest, most corrupt police force #5yrsago Snowden on Little Brother https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#omnibus #5yrsago Sun Ra's syllabus https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#sun-ra #5yrsago Invigilation CEO doxes student https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar #5yrsago Big Cop's corporate armorers https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#charitable-laundering #5yrsago Bossware https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware #5yrsago EFF on EU interoperability policy https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#eu-interop #1yrago Austin Grossman's 'Fight Me' https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/the-big-genx-chill/#im-super-thanks-for-asking Upcoming appearances (permalink) Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 4 https://www.uk.coop/events-and-training/events-calendar/co-op-congress-2025-book-your-place Virtual: ORG at 20: in conversation with Maria Farrell, Jul 16 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/org-at-20-cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-maria-farrell/ DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025 San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 Recent appearances (permalink) If We Had a Choice, Would We Invent Social Media Again? (The Agenda/TVO) Forward Kentucky Democrats Abroad https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/demsabroadca/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-Enshittification-e34blmg/a-ac0jn7i Latest books (permalink) Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (). The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (). Signed copies at Book Soup (). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books . "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) Uncanny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/03/states-rights-trumps-wrongs/