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Pluralistic: Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (15 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-15T13:17:22.000Z

Today's links

Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! What the Eurostack is missing.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Giga pudding; What Technology Wants; Blue Screens of Death; Bernie outperforming Obama; DRM in JPEGs; Dirty words are politically potent; Fury Road 8-bit side-scroller; History of web auth; Prop 22 is a scam.
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.

Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (permalink)

Even though he's the darkest of clouds, Trump has some deeply weird silver linings, formed out of a combination of his self-owning isolationism and blunt aggression.

In my quarter-century as a digital activist, I've had cause to work in more than 30 countries. Wherever I went, I'd meet with policymakers about the rules they should be thinking about in order to make their technology work better for their countries. Every single time, they'd agree politely with me, but insist that making any kind of tech-improving rules was impossible, because the US trade representative would kick their teeth in if they tried.

For all of this century, the USTR has been one of the greatest global impediments to a better world, hopping from country to country, demanding policies that would protect American tech firms from foreign competitors – especially the kind of competitor who would improve on American tech products by protecting users' privacy, consumer rights or labor rights while they used them.

The most glaring example of this are "anticircumvention laws." Under these laws, it's illegal to modify any technology that has any kind of anti-modification defenses. In other words, if the manufacturer draws a kind of virtual dotted line around part of the product's software and labels it, "Do not look inside this box," then it becomes illegal to do so, even if you're trying to do something that's otherwise legal.

That means that if your printer is designed to reject generic ink, you can't change the code that verifies the ink cartridge. There's no law that says, "You have to buy your ink from the same company that sold you your printer," but if HP adds any kind of anti-modification measure to its ink-checking code, then disabling that code becomes a serious crime.

Now, these laws are obviously an invitation to mischief. They are used to prevent independent repair of everything from tractors to cars to phones to games consoles to ventilators. They're used to stop you from blocking ads or surveillance on your phone or "smart" TV. They keep you locked into manufacturers' app stores, payment systems and other add-ons, which means that you are constantly being ripped off with junk fees, and you can't install the software of your choosing, including software that will help you avoid being kidnapped by masked thugs and sent to a secret torture prison:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

The US passed the first of these laws in 1998, when Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As the ink was still drying on Clinton's signature, the US trade rep started racing around the world, demanding that America's trading partners adopt their own version of the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/13/ctrl-ctrl-ctrl/#free-dmitry

As these laws were adopted around the world, US tech giants were given carte blanche to extract more money and data from their global users. American users were getting ripped off too, of course (they were the first victims of Big Tech), but at least the US stock market reaped the benefit of Big Tech's incredibly lucrative scams. But for America's trading partners, anticircumvention was an entirely losing proposition: their people got ripped off for their data and their money, and their tech companies couldn't go into business selling products to disenshittify America's cash-and-data extraction machines.

So why did America's trading partners agree to anticircumvention law? Well, that was down to the tender ministrations of the US trade rep. Countries that didn't pass anticircumvention were threatened with US tariffs.

I used to occasionally guest-lecture at an international relations grad program at the Central European University in Budapest, and one summer, I had a student who had served as the information minister to a Central American country while the US was negotiating the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This student described getting a phone call from their country's chief negotiator who said, "I know you told me not to budge on anticircumvention, but the USTR tells me that if we don't give them this, they will block our agricultural exports. I'm sorry." Country by country, the world fell into line.

When someone tells you, "You'd better do what I say or I'm going to burn your house down," and then they burn your house down, you'd be an absolute sucker if you kept up your part of the bargain.

I find it absolutely bizarre that the USTR spent decades racing around the world, getting every country on earth to sign up to "America First" policies by threatening them with tariffs, and then Trump actually imposed the tariffs anyway, which has opened up the space for every country to get rid of those America First policies.

Of course, that's not all Trump has done. He's also made it abundantly clear that he considers America's (former) allies to be geopolitical and economic competitors, and that US tech is one of the primary weapons he will use to wage war on the world. He got Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to cave on taxing Big Tech, which means that they'll be able to go on cheating on their taxes, while Canadian companies won't be able to, which means Canada's tech sector will never be able to compete:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0vv2pe7ydo

Trump has also ordered the EU to scrap its new tech antitrust laws, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, which aim to open up space for European competitors to US tech:

https://www.politico.eu/article/trumps-antitrust-agency-chief-blasts-eu-digital-rules-as-taxes-on-american-firms/

But more than that, Trump and US tech have teamed up to attack and deplatform public officials that Trump has beef with. Take Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Khan swore out a criminal complaint and arrest warrant for the génocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu, and Trump sanctioned Khan. Then, Microsoft cut off Khan's access to his account, nuking his email, calendar, address book and files:

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3

For officials all over the world, the message couldn't be clearer: Trump sees you as the enemy, and he will use American tech companies to cut you off at the knees if you don't roll over for him.

Enter the Eurostack. This is an initiative from the EU that seeks to fund and deploy open source equivalents to the platforms that the European public, its businesses and its governments are currently locked into:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/25/eurostack/#viktor-orbans-isp

Thus far, Eurostack's focus has been on building those Made-in-the-EU alternatives to the US tech stack, and on financing data-center rollout. But very shortly, Eurostack advocates are going to hit a wall.

Escaping from US Big Tech isn't merely a matter of having another service to move your data and interactions to. You also have to have a way to transition from the old, US service to the new Eurostack equivalent.

No government ministry, no business, no individual is going to manually copy-and-paste thousands (or millions) of documents out of Microsoft, Apple or Google's cloud into the Eurostack. No one is going to individually move all the edit histories, email chains, and file permissions over. These files and data-structures are essential to the people who created them, and they often contain sensitive information and compliance data that is illegal to delete.

Sure, the EU could try to order American Big Tech companies to create export tools so that Europeans can easily retrieve their data in formats that can be faithfully imported into Eurostack services, but we can already see how that will play out.

Last year's Digital Markets Act contains a modest set of "interoperability" requirements that require big US companies like Apple to open up their platforms to rival app stores and payment processors. Apple's monopoly over iPhone apps is a big deal – it lets the company structure the market for software in Europe, without any accountability or limits, and Apple extracts a 30% tax on every euro that changes hands via an iOS app. Globally, Apple makes more than $100b/year from this "app tax."

When the EU passed a law aimed at halting this racket, Apple lost its mind. First, they proposed a "solution" to this that was so onerous and tortured that it was a kind of sick joke:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

Then they threatened to stop selling iPhones in the EU altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

Now, Apple has filed 18 legal challenges to any interoperability mandate under the DMA:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/5213/oj/eng

If this is how an American tech company responds to a small-potatoes order to give Europeans more choice over how they use their own devices and data, imagine what these US giants will do if the EU orders them to open up their platforms so people can leave altogether!

The only plausible path from US Big Tech to the Eurostack runs straight through anticircumvention. The EU needs to repeal Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, a law it passed at the behest of the US Trade Representative, to protect the rent-extraction tactics of American tech companies. We need to make it legal for European technologists to reverse-engineer the American tech platforms' websites and apps so that Europeans can get their data out of America's tech silos and into open, sovereign, privacy-respecting, consumer rights-preserving, worker-protecting Eurostack versions.

Building the Eurostack without thinking about migration tools is a recipe for disappointment. It's like building housing for East Germans…in West Berlin, without sparing a thought for how those East Germans are going to get to the new apartment blocks.

The good news is, there's no reason to keep Article 6 of the Copyright Directive on the books. The law has always been a wreck. It's one of the primary barriers to Right to Repair: companies now build devices with "access controls" on their parts. Even after you install a new part into a device, it won't start working until the manufacturer's representative unlocks it (for a hefty fee). Under anticircumvention laws like EUCD Article 6, it's illegal to bypass these locks.

What's more, the digital locks that EUCD 6 protects are almost all to be found in American products. Only a handful of EU manufacturers rely on these, and they use them to in terrible ways. Volkswagen used the fact that it was illegal to reverse-engineer its engines to disguise the fact that it was cheating on its emissions tests, and the resulting "Dieselgate" scandal killed thousands of Europeans:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/18/dieselgate-kills-5000-europeans-per-year/

Newag, a Polish train manufacturer, boobytraps the trains they sell. When these trains sense that they have been taken to a competitor's train-yard for maintenance, they render themselves inoperable. Newag then charges thousands of euros to remotely "repair" their own sabotage. When this was revealed by a team of independent security researchers, Newag used claims under EUCD 6 in an attempt to intimidate them into silence:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Mercedes won't let you unlock your new car's full acceleration capability unless you pay them a monthly subscription fee, and any mechanic who tries to bypass this and give you your whole engine's capability violates EUCD 6. BMW won't let you use the feature that auto-dims your high-beams when there's oncoming traffic, and once again, that can't be fixed by another company because of EUCD 6:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Any business that relies on EUCD 6 is garbage and should be killed with fire. The global champions of this legal sabotage are all American, but the EU companies that copied their business models are also trash and the EU should be terminating them with extreme prejudice.

It's pretty remarkable that we've forgotten about the kind of reverse-engineering that EUCD 6 bans. This used to be totally normal. Providing tools to move data from one system to another – without permission from your old vendor – is a completely legitimate business.

The only reason we forgot that this stuff existed is that the US trade rep spent 25 years lobotomizing us all, threatening us with tariffs if we dared to do anything that disrupted American Big Tech. With those companies, it's always "disruption for thee, never for me."

In a few short months, Trump has sown the seeds of the destruction of one of the most world's pernicious "America First" systems. Now, it's in the EU's power to send it to a long-overdue grave.

"Mr Cook, Mr Nadella, Mr Ellison, Mr Pichai – tear down that wall!"

(Image: Armin Kübelbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

Cory Doctorow Thinks He Knows How to Fix the Internet https://slate.com/technology/2025/10/cory-doctorow-enshittification-internet-tech-silicon-valley.html
How to Save the Internet From “Enshittification” https://jacobin.com/2025/10/internet-enshittification-antitrust-tech-doctorow
Jeep software update bricks vehicles, leaves owners stranded https://www.thestack.technology/jeep-software-update-bricks-vehicles-leaves-owners-stranded/
Anti-Monopolism as an Ideology of the Left https://lpeproject.org/blog/anti-monopolism-as-an-ideology-of-the-left/
Lawyer Caught Using AI While Explaining to Court Why He Used AI https://www.404media.co/lawyer-using-ai-fake-citations/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Japanese court: links to news stories can’t use headlines for link-text https://web.archive.org/web/20060309190419/http://www.ridingsun.com/posts/1129257907.shtml

#20yrsago Understanding broadband regulation https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=557330

#20yrsago Anti-game wacko designs ultra-violent video game to prove games are violent https://web.archive.org/web/20051030003500/http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883

#20yrsago Gilberto Gil in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/oct/14/brazil.popandrock

#15yrsago BoomCases: self-powered amps built into old suitcases https://theboomcase.wordpress.com/gallery/

#15yrsago The Singularity won’t be heaven: Annalee Newitz https://web.archive.org/web/20101016204801/http://io9.com/5661534/why-the-singularity-isnt-going-to-happen

#15yrsago Webcam spying school settles with students, pays $1.2M in fees and damages https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39631890

#15yrsago Rucker and Sterling’s new story: “Goodnight Moon” on Tor.com https://web.archive.org/web/20101016231350/http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/10/good-night-moon

#15yrsago Wonderful Japanese pudding ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sEI1AUFJKw

#15yrsago Anatomical illustrations from Japan’s Edo period https://pinktentacle.com/2010/10/anatomical-illustrations-from-edo-period-japan/

#15yrsago Travel author sues DHS to make it obey the law with its vast traveller databases https://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001887.html

#15yrsago Kevin Kelly’s WHAT TECHNOLOGY WANTS: how technology changes us and vice-versa https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/13/kevin-kellys-what-technology-wants-how-technology-changes-us-and-vice-versa/

#10yrsago TPP requires countries to destroy security-testing tools (and your laptop) https://web.archive.org/web/20151020122940/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/white-hat-hackers-would-have-their-devices-destroyed-under-the-tpp

#10yrsago How to make “Dracula’s dentures” cookie sandwiches https://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/draculas-dentures-for-halloween/

#10yrsago Playboy (circulation 800k, down from 5.6m) drops nude images https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html

#10yrsago Glitchlife: Gallery of public Blue Screens of Death, including a world-beater https://web.archive.org/web/20151013003105/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/public-blue-screens-of-death-remind-us-that-life-is-a-farce

#10yrsago Bernie Sanders is beating all of Obama’s important 2008 records https://web.archive.org/web/20151013123107/https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/remember-obamas-historic-2008-presidential-run-bernie-sanders-so-far-exceeding-it

#10yrsago How to teach gerrymandering and its many subtle, hard problems https://mitesp.tumblr.com/post/130793404248/how-i-teach-gerrymandering

#10yrsago Police end round-the-clock Assange detail at London’s Ecuadorian embassy https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/police-stop-24-7-monitoring-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-ecuadorian-embassy-1523634

#10yrsago CIA black-site torture survivors sue shrinks who made $85M overseeing CIA torture program https://theintercept.com/2015/10/13/former-u-s-detainees-sue-psychologists-responsible-for-cia-torture-program/

#10yrsago SRSLY, they want to put DRM in JPEGs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/theres-no-drm-jpeg-lets-keep-it-way

#10yrsago Fury Road as a vintage run-and-gun side-scroller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsXWTcVvCwQ

#10yrsago Information leakage shows DEA blew millions on the secret phone trackers it won’t admit it bought https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/oct/14/dea-cell-phone-trackers/

#10yrsago No, poor kids don’t struggle in school because their parents have small vocabularies https://newrepublic.com/article/123093/rich-kids-better-poor-kids-school-its-not-word-gap

#10yrsgo Thrust/parry/counter: the history of Web authentication http://blog.slaks.net/2015-10-13/web-authentication-arms-race-a-tale-of-two-security-experts/

#5yrsago How to spreadsheet https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#csv

#5yrsago Prop 22 is a scam https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#prop-22

#5yrsago What happened in Florida https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#bush-v-gore

#5yrsago Pandemic shock doctrine vs internet freedom https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#freedom-house

#5yrsago Beyond Cyberpunk https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/13/hopeful-disasters/#technologist-wizards

#5yrsago SF as intuition pump https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/13/hopeful-disasters/#narratives

#1yrago Dirty words are politically potent https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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
Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
https://compneuro.washington.edu/news-and-events/neuroscience-ai-and-society/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (The Gist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgBiv_KchI0
Canadian tariffs with Avi Lewis
https://plagal.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/cory-doctorow-talks-to-avi-lewis-about-his-proposal-to-fightback-against-trumps-tariff-attack/
Enshittification (This Is Hell)
https://thisishell.com/interviews/1864-cory-doctorow
Enshittification (Computer Says Maybe)
https://csm.transistor.fm/episodes/gotcha-enshittification-w-cory-doctorow
Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCX5Yst64Hw

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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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

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Book Review: The Anarchy - The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple ★★★★☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-15T11:34:11.000Z

This is a marvellous and depressing book. Marvellous because it finely details the history, atrocities, and geopolitical strife of unfettered capitalism. Depressing for much the same reason.

Dalrymple takes the thousand different strands of the story and weaves them into a (mostly) comprehensible narrative. With this many moving parts, it is easy to get confused between the various people, places, companies, and loyalties. Your eReader's dictionary will have a good workout as you try to decipher the various calques and loanwords.

It is more nuanced than I expected. Rather than just an unending parade of awfulness, it does dive in to the various attempts to reign in the terror and promote peaceful trade. These nearly always failed. Similarly, there were individual acts of kindness and honour which, nevertheless, cannot begin to make up for the exploitation.

The one question it doesn't (and possibly can't) answer is "what would India have been like without the EIC?" Obviously the company was hugely disruptive and extracted vast amounts of wealth - but the history of every continent shows internecine warfare whenever a ruler dies. A constant theme of the book is "Almost immediately, the court disintegrated into rival factions" The bloody battles between the various states, despots, kings, and tyrants would have eventually occurred. The French - and other colonisers - would have also rampaged through the nation. This isn't to excuse the EIC, and almost everything they did was inexcusable, but rather to say they probably weren't uniquely awful in the atrocities they committed.

We see the rapacious nature of megacorporations today. While few have a standing army, they are all dedicated to usurping authority and plundering resources. The Anarchy describes how the Company whispered in the ears of leaders, promised them the world, and then cruelly turned on them. Again, a depressing reflection of our own times.

Notable by their absence are women. There are an endless assortment of unnamed dancing girls and courtesans, but the only named women are the (mostly British) wives in the background and Begum Samru. There's also only a brief mention of the other geopolitical impacts the EIC had. For example, I had no idea that the tea from the eponymous Boston Tea Party was supplied by the EIC.

I don't understand why publishers pretend eBooks have the same limitations as their paper counterparts. The paper book puts all the illustrations at the end - presumably to save money. But this book would have benefited from interspersing the portraits with the text. Similarly, a map or two wouldn't have gone amiss to help the reader visualise the tangled path the various armies took.

The books is disturbing and upsetting, but a vital read for anyone who wants to understand a key point in the world's history. If only we could learn from it, eh?

Pluralistic: How to fix the UK housing crisis (13 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-13T14:19:23.000Z

Today's links

How to fix the UK housing crisis: Reconverting homes to human rights, rather than assets.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Theme park privacy; 3 strikes dead in Eire; HK ghost posters; Hotel wifi sucks; Facebook pays no UK tax; Econ research replicability crisis; Herd immunity.
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.

How to fix the UK housing crisis (permalink)

Here's a surprising stat: from 1845-1960, UK house prices pretty much kept pace with inflation – a house you'd bought 20 years ago could only be sold for more-or-less what you paid for it (technically, houses rose about 0.25% ahead of consumer prices).

From 1960-1979, house prices started to nudge ahead of inflation, averaging gains that were 1.75% higher than consumer prices. But it wasn't until 1980 that the annual above-inflation price increase of houses grew to 3%. Steve Keen's "Remedies for Ridiculous House Prices" explains what happened to make housing so eye-wateringly expensive (and how to make it affordable again):

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/remedies-for-ridiculous-house-prices

McKeen unpacks just how dramatic this change is: since the Thatcher years, house prices have doubled every 23 years. Before 1960, the house prices rose so slowly that they would have taken 280 years to double (which is to say, the fate of most houses was to turn to rubble, not to double).

So what did Thatcher do to make homes so eye-wateringly expensive? The high-level explanation is that the UK – like much of the world – transformed its housing stock: not a way provide the basic human right to shelter, but rather, an asset:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/14/euthanasia-of-the-rentier/#georgeism

Transforming a human necessity into an asset is a terrible idea. Governments work to increase the price of assets owned by actors in their economy. But increasing the price of housing only benefits the minority who own houses, while everyone else – everyone who needs a roof over their head – suffers. For a comparison, imagine if our governments instituted a policy of making some other necessity as expensive as possible, say, food or water. Transforming shelter into an asset class was always going to end badly.

McKeen is an econ prof, and the point of this piece isn't merely to observe this remarkable shift in the economics of having a home, but also to trace the policy choices that led us to this moment, and to propose policies that could change things so that everyone can have a home.

So what did Margaret Thatcher do to destroy the chances of everyday Britons to have a home? Well, this is Margaret Thatcher, so if you guessed the answer was "deregulation," you'd be right. Prior to Thatcher's deregulation, home loans in the UK mostly originated with "building societies," a specialized lender whose operations are fundamentally different from the operations of a bank.

Here's the difference: when a building society makes a home loan, it withdraws money from a regular bank account at a regular bank, much like your savings account. In order for your building society to credit your mortgage account by £100k, there must be a corresponding decrease of £100k in its savings account (just like when you send £10 to a friend, you have £10 less and they have £10 more).

But that's not how it works when a bank originates a loan. Banks are "fiscal agents" for the UK's central bank, the Bank of England. That means that banks can create new money, simply by crediting one of its depositors' accounts. When a bank loans you £100k to buy a house, £100k in new money is created. Banks don't raid other depositors' accounts for your loan – they make new money, out of thin air.

So after the bank originates your loan, your account has £100k more in it, and the bank has an IOU from you for £100k, which sits on its books as an asset. In the moment the money is created, the bank makes £100k in new money for its balance-sheet.

Every time a bank issues a new mortgage loan, the money supply increases – more money is added to the economy. Thatcher deregulated mortgage lending, and after that, the majority of UK mortgages came from banks, not building societies. Every new mortgage increased the supply of money in circulation in the UK.

As Keen writes, this precipitated an "explosion" in house prices – and in household debt, which rose from 20% of GDP to 80% of GDP by the time of the Great Financial Crisis. Since Thatcher, house price have risen by 350% more than consumer prices.

Thatcher's deregulation "set off a vicious cycle": the existence of more mortgage debt made house prices rise (when banks supply more bidding money to buyers, buyers bid higher sums). As housing prices went up, housing could be used as collateral for still more loans, which encouraged homeowners to stake their homes to borrow money in order to buy more homes to rent out. Because they have so much collateral (an overpriced home), they can borrow so much (from banks that can create money) that they are able to outbid people who don't have a home yet and just want to buy a home so they can live in it.

This is Keen's diagnosis, but the real question is, what do we do about it? The UK housing situation has been vapor-locked, because there's a powerful voting and donating bloc of homeowners who want to keep house prices high, both to maintain their personal net worth, and to avoid having their "chained mortgages" collapse when prices fall and they suddenly no longer have enough collateral and the banks demand repayment.

This is where Keen's proposal gets really interesting. In this installment, he proposes two policies that break the deadlock, offering a glide-path out of the housing crisis, rather than a crash.

The first of these policies is deflationary – it will lower prices. It's called the "PILL" ("Property Income Limited Leverage").

With the PILL, the most a bank could offer a housebuyer for a mortgage loan would be some multiple of the rental income from the property they're buying. Say that multiple is 10, and the home you're trying to buy would rent out at £50k/year: the largest mortgage you'd be allowed to take would be £500k (even if you're not buying a home to rent it out, you'd still be subject to this cap, since potential rental income is a large determinant of the price of a home).

Keen notes that UK rents are really high, but property prices are even higher – property prices (and mortgages) have risen faster than rents. The average London home price is about 25x the annual rent it generates, and London mortgages are about 20x the annual rent for the properties those mortgages cover.

The PILL would cap mortgage issuance at the current multiple (so in London, about 25x annual rent), but that number would be gradually reduced, a few points per year, until it reaches about 10x annual rent. This will have the effect of making homes a much less attractive asset-class for speculators, gradually driving "investors" out of the market, so that the majority of homebuyers would be people who were in the market for somewhere to live.

This will make houses cheaper over time, and the majority of Britons (who can't afford to buy a home) would like this. But house-rich Boomers would not, and for good reason: the austerity-starved UK state has slashed benefits for everyone, and older people rely on selling or borrowing against their homes as a way to remain sheltered, fed, and cared for as they age.

How do we win those Boomers over and stop them from scuttling affordable housing (again)? That's where the second proposal kicks in: AHA (the "Affordable Housing Authority"). This is a system for making homes more valuable, offsetting some of the reductions from the PILL, but without denying homes to people looking for somewhere to live.

The biggest barrier to buying a home isn't the price of the home – it's the price of the home and the price of the mortgage. Decades of mortgage interest vastly increase the total cost of a home, and the interest on a monthly mortgage can make the difference between an affordable home and one that makes you "house poor" (where the cost of your home eats up so much of your income that you struggle to pay for heating, groceries, transportation, etc).

Here's Keen's math: say you're a median UK household (£37k/year in disposable income) and you buy a median house (£270k) with a 10% deposit (what Americans call a "down-payment"), at 7% interest. Over a 25-year mortgage, your monthly payments will be £20.6k/year, more than half of your disposable income.

Not only is this more than you can afford – it's also so much that you just won't get a mortgage from a bank. They'll look at those numbers and decide that you can't afford to pay back this loan (they'd be right, too).

But what if we trim that interest rate to zero? At 0% interest, the annual payments for your mortgage go from £20.6/year to £9,300 per year – an easily affordable sum for the median household.

So the question is, why do we pay so much to the banks in interest? The Econ 101 answer is that banks take a risk when they loan out their depositors' funds, and they need a reward and incentive to take that risk. But banks don't lend out deposits: they create deposits. When you take out a £100k mortgage, the bank adds £100k to your account, without taking it from anywhere else. Banks are "fiscal agents" of the national bank, and they are permitted to create money this way – and then charge you rent (interest) on that money they can create for free.

Keen's AHA is a different kind of lender, a publicly owned one that creates money in exactly the same way as banks do, but without charging interest. The AHA is charged with offering loans solely to people trying to buy a home who have been priced out of the market. These loans will drive property prices up (by putting more buyers into the system), offsetting some of the price declines created by the PILL.

Other than the fact that AHA loans won't come with interest, these loans will work like regular mortgages: the borrower will pay them off every month, until they have paid back the entire principle. If they default on the mortgage, AHA can foreclose on the house and sell it off to get its money back. AHA always gets its money back and costs nothing – on balance – to operate.

Do interest free loans sound like a communist plot to you? Keen asks us to consider such noted socialist proponents for this ideas as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, who railed against financing the Muscle Shoals hyrdroelectric plant with bank loans, instead insisting that the national bank should simply create the money to make those loans:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/12/06/98768710.html?pageNumber=6

Here's Edison:

[Ford] thinks it’s stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000—that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovel of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest.

As Keen points out, it's not merely that the banks that currently issue mortgages don't "turn a shovel of dirt or contribute a pound of material" – they simply will not issue a mortgage to a median buyer. The median buyer can't get a mortgage, so the system is rigged to make them pay someone else's mortgage through their monthly rents, every month until they die.

AHA cuts the banks "out of a market they won't even enter."

Now, it's true that current financial rules (foolishly) ban the Treasury from having a negative balance at the Central Bank. But we don't have to repeal those rules to make this work: the Treasury can offset AHA loans by offering bonds to private banks.

These two policies create "winners all round." New home buyers can afford a home. Banks get interest from AHA bonds to offset losses from limits on mortgage lending. Current home owners get a cushion to protect their net worth even as homes become more affordable.

The loser is the investment sector, the City boys who buy and sell mortgage debt. And you know, fuck those guys.

Keen finishes by teasing one more policy prescription that he thinks will tie this all together: the intriguingly named Modern Debt Jubilee, a way to "to reduce private debt, but in a way that doesn’t cause an economic collapse," which he says he'll cover in his next post. Can't wait!

Hey look at this (permalink)

Mass Organizing Call with Naomi Klein and Anjali Appadurai https://act.lewisforleader.ca/organizercall
How close are we to solid state batteries for electric vehicles? https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/how-close-are-we-to-solid-state-batteries-for-electric-vehicles/
The Fluke That Brought Us The Discreet Eliminators Series https://horrortree.com/the-fluke-that-brought-us-the-discreet-eliminators-series/
Q Timex 1975 SSQ Digital Reissue https://timex.com/products/q-timex-1975-ssq-digital-reissue-38mm-stainless-steel-bracelet-watch-tw2y06100
The App Store Was Always Authoritarian https://infrequently.org/2025/10/the-app-store-was-always-authoritarian/
The first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-first-evidence-of-a-take-off-in-solar-in-africa/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago TV on the Internet versus IPTV https://web.archive.org/web/20051013090228/http://gigaom.com/2005/10/11/iptv-versus-tv-over-ip/

#20yrsago Privacy and access-control in America’s theme-parks https://archive.epic.org/privacy/themepark/

#20yrsago Why hotel WiFi sucks https://web.archive.org/web/20090917145044/https://wifinetnews.com/archives/2005/10/ny_times_v_wall_st_journal_on_hotel_internet_fees.html

#20yrsago Vet’s obit: “send acerbic letters to Republicans” https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/chicagotribune/name/theodore-heller-obituary?id=2437473

#15yrsago Canon’s printer/photocopier blocks jobs based on keywords https://www.itnews.com.au/news/canon-blocks-copy-jobs-by-keyword-235047

#15yrsago Tom Waits and Preservation Hall Jazz Band release limited-edition 78RPM record and matching limited edition record-player http://www.tomwaits.com/news/article/108/Preservation_Hall_Jazz_Band_Tom_Waits_On_78_rpm_Vinyl/

#15yrsago Koster’s “Fundamentals of Game Design” https://www.raphkoster.com/2010/10/12/the-fundamentals-of-game-design/

#15yrsago Pratchett’s I Shall Wear Midnight, sentimental and fun book about a witch among enemies https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/12/pratchetts-i-shall-wear-midnight-sentimental-and-fun-book-about-a-witch-among-enemies/

#15yrsago Depressing million-dollar London homes https://www.oobject.com/category/depressing-million-dollar-london-property/

#15yrsago Library of Congress: Copyright is killing sound archiving https://www.osnews.com/story/23888/us-library-of-congress-copyright-is-destroying-historic-audio/

#15yrsago Irish High Court strikes down “3 strikes” copyright rule https://web.archive.org/web/20101012083637/http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/1011/breaking32.html

#15yrsago Rise Again: would you rather be killed by zombies or Blackwater mercs? https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/11/rise-again-would-you-rather-be-killed-by-zombies-or-blackwater-mercs/

#10yrsago Funny because it’s true: “Tories to build thousands of affordable second homes” https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/tories-to-build-thousands-of-affordable-second-homes-20151008102712

#10yrsago Facebook UK made £105M in 2014, paid £35M in bonuses, and will pay £4,327 in tax https://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/oct/11/facebook-paid-4327-corporation-tax-despite-35-million-staff-bonuses

#10yrsago Economics research considered unreplicable https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2015083pap.pdf

#10yrsago The hockey-stick from hell: US incarceration per 100,000 people, 1890-today https://www.vox.com/2015/10/11/9497161/incarceration-history

#10yrsago Read: Austin Grossman’s moving text-adventure story “The Fresh Prince of Gamma World” https://www.wired.com/2015/10/excerpt-fresh-prince-of-gamma-world/

#5yrsago The herd immunity conspiracy https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/12/redeeming-hackers/#herd-immunity

#5yrsago Attack Surface in Wired https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/12/redeeming-hackers/#origin-stories

#5yrsago Basic income works https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/11/means-testing-conundrum/#ubi-v-bi

#5yrsago Hong Kong's ghost protest posters https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/11/means-testing-conundrum/#seeing-ghosts

#1yrago Lina Khan's future is the future of the Democratic Party – and America https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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
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
Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
https://compneuro.washington.edu/news-and-events/neuroscience-ai-and-society/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (Computer Says Maybe)
https://csm.transistor.fm/episodes/gotcha-enshittification-w-cory-doctorow
Enshittification (Democracy Now!)
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10/cory_doctorow
Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCX5Yst64Hw
Enshittification with Adam Conover (Factually)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1EKQidRooc
Enshittification (Everyday Anarchism)
https://www.everydayanarchism.com/168-enshittification-cory-doctorow/

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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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)

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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

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Every Theatre Show is "Immersive" - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-13T11:34:49.000Z

I go to see a lot of theatrical productions. While most shows are good, the audience experience is usually dreadful. I'm not just talking about cramped seats and disgusting toilets (although they play a part) but that theatres haven't cottoned on to the idea that theatre is an immersive experience which can't be replicated by watching Netflix.

There's an excellent article in The Stage about the growth and pain-points of immersive shows (free registration required to read).

One thing that most creators agree on is that while the word immersive remains the most accurate umbrella term, it is largely functionally meaningless. The sense is that it will have to do as there is not currently a better one. “The word ‘immersive’is one that we have to continue to own,” says Matt Costain of Secret Cinema. “Because I think the fad of calling everything immersive will pass, but it’s a broad church. I went to an immersive art exhibition and what are they supposed to call it? They have as much right to it as I have.”

The idea of an "immersive" performance is somewhat nebulous. Sitting passively in a theatre is not immersive - but what about a self-guided tour of an art gallery? You can make the case for pantomime being immersive (oh no you can't!) - but it isn't in the same league as Phantom Peak.

In an article about the immersive Elvis show, Amanda Parker succinctly describes what audience expects:

The whole point of immersive theatre is the blurring of boundaries.

Live performance is expensive. A single ticket to a 90 minute show can cost more than an entire year of Netflix. A drink before the show and an ice-cream in the interval is the same cost as a month of Disney+! Audiences want blurred boundaries, but they also want value for money. I don't think it takes much money or effort for any show to become more immersive.

Here's my 6-point guide to making any theatrical experience more immersive and more entertaining for the audience.

Pre-Pre-Show

Even before booking, there's a chance for a show to be immersive. Most shows have trailers on YouTube - but are the characters on social media? Where are the opportunities to learn about the costume designer's vision (outside a one-paragraph entry in an expensive programme)?

Once booked, there are some brilliant opportunities for pre-pre show immersion. Emails shouldn't be the usual hectoring affair of reminding people to be on time; they should build a sense of excitement. What makes the paying customer feel like they're going on an adventure?

If I remember correctly, when schools booked group tickets for the 1990s run of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", they were sent colouring-in packs or some activity worksheets (it was a long time ago and my memory is hazy). What can a theatre do to make its paying customers excited about making the trip outside to sit in an unfamiliar building?

Pre-Show

This is probably the easiest one to get right, and the one which most shows fail at. Decorate the venue. That's it. It is that simple. It costs next to nothing to put up posters on the walls, or fun little Easter-Eggs on the back of toilet doors, or to have a themed cocktail menu. The Stranger Things show does this brilliantly - there are lots of little clues dotted around the show in the form of newspaper clippings and yearbook pages.

Shows like Just For One Day had "selfie pods". Big posters which let audience members take cool looking selfies with the stars of the show. The guest gets a fun memento, the show gets free advertising.

You can go further and have the cast play with the audience. When I saw "Cats" in New York, some of the actors were roaming the stalls - fighting, stealing licks of ice-creams, miaowing at each other. It was brilliant to watch and got the audience in the mood.

More recently, The Play That Goes Wrong has the on-stage crew setting up the stage while the audience enters. It's pre-show which rewards early attendance - it gets people rushing back to the bar to drag their friends in. It feels improvised and rewards returning guests.

You can spend time in the KitKat Club before the start of Cabaret. A seedy underbelly with bored dancers and sweaty patrons. A brilliant way immerse the audience before the show. (Although not everyone agrees.)

Operation Mincemeat has an online pub-quiz for audience members. Sit and chat about what you think the answers are, try to get on the leaderboard, see if it motivates you to learn more about the real history of the operation.

A bunch of theatres offer "Touch Tours" for visually impaired visitors. They get to come on stage and feel the set, have it described to them, so that they can get more immersed in the performance without constantly trying to guess the layout of the set. The stage magicians Penn and Teller invite members of the audience onto the stage before the performance so they can check for hidden wires and other trickery. That's probably not possible for every show - but can be sympathetically integrated into some.

Show

I'll defer this to the director! It's up to them whether they want to make use of the audience! I've been to operas where the lead performer appeared at the back of the stalls singing to his love on stage. Confetti falls into the auditorium with regular abundance.

It doesn't suit every show, of course, but there are a dozen little tweaks which can remind the audience that this is a high-quality experience worth paying for. That this is something they simply can't get by watching TV.

The Interval

The interval isn't just a chance to go for a piss and an over-priced drink. It's an opportunity to reflect on what you've seen, discuss what you think will happen, and stretch your legs.

All of the pre-show decoration is available to browse again - but is there anything else to do?

At a performance of Misalliance, a character hides himself in a portable Turkish bath at the end of Act 1. Throughout the interval, the audience were encouraged to follow the character on social media. He sent messages about his predicament and replied to people who interacted with him.

During the interval of a schools' performance of La bohème, the curtain was raised so that we could see the hard work which went into changing all the sets around. Is that suitable for every show? Probably not. Does it interfere with the fire curtain? Maybe. Was it a fascinating look literally behind the scenes? Absolutely!

Although I hated Murder Trial Tonight, it used the interval to encourage audience members to discuss the case laid before them. It's high-risk to get a reserved British audience to talk to strangers, but it can pay dividends.

Post-Show

The audience have risen to their feet in applause. Perhaps the lead actor (the one from that TV show you like) gives a short, heartfelt speech thanking everyone for coming out and encouraging them to tell their friends about the show.

What next?

Musicals often go with an encore where they specifically encourage the audience to take photos and sing along. Hey! You're part of the show! You'll probably never watch that video again, but you'll get the joy of communal singing and will feel like you're contributing.

As we left Just For One Day, we were handed commemorative leaflets which turned out to be discount vouchers. A little memento and a way to get repeat custom!

At the end of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, the audience were encourage to learn more about various historical and modern cases of police corruption by scanning QR codes projected onto the set.

Walking out of The Storeroom, we found ourselves in a lovely cocktail bar with an amazing view. Of course we paid for a fancy drink while discussing the evening's entertainment. Most West End theatres shove you out into the cold night air as though you're a guest who has overstayed their welcome.

Stage door autographs have been a thing since time immemorial. Probably a bit annoying for the actors, but a huge part of building a post-show buzz for some people. There are shows which have a paid meet-and-greet option (which feels a little icky to me).

I've been to plenty of shows which have a Q&A with the cast and director afterwards. Again, not something which can be done every night, but a brilliant opportunity to reward people for coming.

Even Shakespeare used to end his plays with a jig.

The point is, a show can do some aftercare. A little something to keep the audience happy and engaged.

Post-Post-Show

The audience has gone home. Is that the end of the experience? Sending out a survey email or asking them to share their memories on social media is a pretty cheap (and lazy) option for a show. It doesn't do much for the audience though.

What about competitions? Can a show encourage the audience to enter a prize draw. Why not offer an upgraded seat at a discount for your next visit - as a little thank you for being a customer?

It beggars belief that most shows don't offer a "come back and bring a friend" offer.

After every roller-coaster ride, the theme park attempts to sell you a photo of you and your friends screaming. What's the equivalent for a theatrical show?

This doesn't have to be a full-on marketing assault. Just a little nudge to make the audience feel special and like they'd want to repeat the experience.

Is all this really necessary?

No.

If you think people are happy to spend £150 to sit in conditions worse than the nastiest budget airline, and that they're delighted to be screamed at by over-officious security guards, then you don't need to do any of this. Leave the theatre decorated in its faded glory with faded photos of faded stars. Over-charge for the drinks, pad the programme with adverts, and hope the audience don't reflect on whether they enjoyed the experience.

I'm not saying every show needs to be Secret Cinema's Grease, but a little effort goes a long way.

Premium Netflix costs £19 per month. Find me a single ticket at the back of the gods which costs less than that! Even the last-minute seat filler shows I go to have trouble getting down to that level. Live performance cannot compete on cost-per minute. Instead, theatre has to play to its strengths.

Live actors are there!
It's a communal experience!
Something unique happens every performance!
The building is interesting!
You can't distract yourself with your phone!
You can show your appreciation directly!
It's part of a night out!
The audience is an integral part of the experience!

All theatre is immersive because you are there - with actual people in front of you. Theatre needs to capitalise on the fact that it is different to being sat at home watching the telly. And that means putting a little effort into treating the audience like valued guests rather than treating them like cattle.

Quick and dirty bar-charts using HTML's meter element - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-11T11:34:57.000Z

"If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid."

I want to draw some vertical bar charts. I don't want to use a 3rd party library, or bundle someone else's CSS, or learn how to build SVGs.

HTML contains a <meter> element. It is used like this:

<meter min="0" max="4000" value="1234">1234</meter>

Which looks like this: 1234

There isn't much you can do to style it. Browser manufacturers seem to have forgotten it exists and the CSS standard kind of ignores it.

It is possible to use CSS to rotate it using:

meter {
   transform: rotate(-90deg);
}

But then you have to mess about with origins and the box model gets a bit confused.

See what 1234 I mean?

You can hack your way around that with <div>s and bludgeoning your layout into submission.

But that is a bit tedious.

Luckily, there's another way. As suggested by Marius Gundersen, it's possible to set the writing direction of the element to be vertical.

That means you can have them "written" vertically, while having them laid out horizontally. Giving a nice(ish) bar-chart effect.

1000200030004000

As well as the normal sort of CSS spacing, there is basic colour support for values which are inside a specific range:

1000 2000 3000 4000

The background colour can also be set.

1000

I dare say they're slightly more accessible than a raster image - even with good alt text. They can be targetted with JS, if you want to do fancy things with them.

Or, if you just want a quick and dirty bar-chart, they're basically fine.

Pluralistic: The curious, intertwined history of climate and digital rights activism (11 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-11T11:08:22.000Z

Today's links

The curious, intertwined history of climate and digital rights activism: It's going much [better|worse] than expected.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Bricked EVs; Cross-stitched tracert.
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.

The curious, intertwined history of climate and digital rights activism (permalink)

I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a climate activist. I used to be – I even used to ring strangers' doorbells on behalf of Greenpeace. But a quarter of a century ago, I fell in with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and became a lifelong digital rights activist, and switched to cheering on environmental activists from the sidelines of their fight:

https://eff.org

Over the decades, there've been many moments where I've been struck by the parallels between climate activism and tech activism. In both cases, the foundational challenge is getting people to care about the looming catastrophic effects of bad policies. In both cases, those policies and their effects are highly abstract and technical, and are downstream of a huge, weird, cross-cutting set of contingencies and circumstances, which makes it hard for anyone to truly take their measure. You don't just have to master the technical issues – you have to get your arms around the economic, social and political issues, too. Bad tech policy and bad climate policy are both wicked problems, hard to define and even harder to solve.

Whether we're talking about tech or the climate, there is a surefire way to get people to care about these issues: simply do nothing, allow these problems to get worse, and worse still, until millions of peoples' lives have been ruined. Then, of course, people will care. If we do nothing about fire debt and rising temperatures, then everyone who lives in the urban-wildlife interface will lose their homes and possibly their lives to a wildfire. And if we do nothing about surveillance, manipulation and monopoly, then eventually everyone will find their pay slashed, their freedoms curtailed, their identities stolen, and their pockets picked by a tech monopolist or an opportunistic predator living off of the monopolist's weakened, vulnerable victims.

In some important sense, the job of an activist is to raise the salience and convey the urgency of these issues before those consequences are upon us. Both climate and tech activists use storytelling to do this, and I've written novels that are cautionary tales about what happens if we get climate wrong and if we get tech wrong, as well as novels that are meant to inspire hope for the kind of world we could have if we get them right.

Both climate and tech activists have to contend with bullshit neoliberal "solutions" that propose to solve the problem by deploying technologically outlandish policies. Tech activists have to fight with people who say we can solve the commercial surveillance problem by "getting consent" to spy on people. Environmental activists have to fight with people who say we can control emissions with garbage "carbon credits" that make Elon Musk into a centibillionaire by selling indulgences to SUV manufacturers that fill our roads and our skies with ever-mounting clouds of CO2 and carcinogenic exhaust:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Both climate and tech activists have to show people that this crisis stems from systemic dysfunctions, not individual consumption choices. We have to get our supporters to stop focusing on agonizing about whether they should use a plastic straw or agonizing about whether they should quit Facebook, and focus instead on using politics to shatter the power of the giant, wildly profitable corporations that got us into this crisis. We need to smash oil companies like Chevron and Exxon, and we have to smash oily rag companies like Facebook and Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/05/zucks-oily-rags/#into-the-breach

Beyond these parallels, both climate and tech activism have some actual commonalities. The biggest barrier to getting good tech or climate policy is the power of the cartel that dominates each sector. Cartels aren't just contrivances for raising prices – they're even better at capturing their regulators. A hundred small and medium-sized companies are a hopeless rabble, unable to agree on anything – especially what they want from regulators. But five giant companies find it very easy to come to agreement, and they are aslosh in monopoly cash, which they can mobilize to get their way in policy forums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

But there's another, more hopeful parallel between tech and climate: after decades of vapor lock, both have seen rapid global improvement. Solar is racing ahead of all expectations. Globally, we're getting more power from solar than we are from coal. Solar is cheaper than any form of fossil fuel. Solar gets better every day, and we're figuring out how to overcome some of the serious challenges to solar, like finding all the materials we'll need for a solar transition. It turns out that a lot of the challenges on that front boil down to the fact that recycling old cleantech uses up a lot of energy. But as solar gets cheaper and more efficient, we have a lot of energy, and we can take apart an old solar panel that ran at 20% efficiency and use its recovered materials to make two solar panels that each run at 40% efficiency:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility

Then there's tech. The past half-decade has seen more global action on tech regulation than the previous 40 years. Not all of it is good – plenty of it is as stupid as pinning your hopes on carbon capture or fusion reactors – but governments all over the world have got the bit in their teeth and they're champing at it:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/07/the-people-no-2/#water-flowing-uphill

For both climate and tech, Trump is turning out to be a (mixed) blessing in disguise. Sure, he's killing decarbonization in the US, but he's also alienating America's (former) allies so quickly and thoroughly that many countries are moving closer to China's orbit. Again, that's a mixed blessing, but one very positive impact of Trump's beliigerence is that it has lit a fire under the leaders of other (formerly) friendly countries, spurring big, ambitious programs to escape US-based tech companies:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

Back in the first Trump administration, tariffs on Chinese solar panels led Chinese manufacturers to flood countries in the global south with solar panels that were so cheap that whole regions solarized, virtually overnight. Pakistan – one of the countries suffering the most from a changing climate, and most at risk from future changes – is now a solar nation, so much so that its national power company is in danger of going bust because everyone's making their own electricity rather than buying it from the grid.

Meanwhile, Putin's invasion of Ukraine pushed Europe – all of it, but especially Germany – into a galloping solar transition of its own. Virtually every high rise in Germany is now dotted (or even covered) with cheap, easy to hang balcony solar panels. Europe is way ahead of its energy transition goals:

https://electrek.co/2025/09/30/solar-leads-eu-electricity-generation-as-renewables-hit-54-percent/

Putin's not the only dictator pushing Europe to enact rapid changes in order to escape US Big Tech silos, building a "Eurostack" of open, transparent, made-in-the-EU applications and services that are meant to replace American tech platforms:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/25/eurostack/#viktor-orbans-isp

Another, unhappier commonality between tech and climate: it's not just that both are getting better faster than we'd thought possible, it's also that they're both getting worse faster than we'd feared.

On climate, virtually every bad thing that showed up in our models is breaking faster than we thought it would. The permafrost is melting faster and it's releasing more methane than we'd anticipated. The gulf stream and jet stream are bother getting more screwy, more quickly than predicted. Sure, we're decarbonizing and solarizing faster than we thought we could – but the world is falling apart faster than we thought it would, too:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/something-extraordinary-just-happened

And I don't have to tell you what's happening with tech. Technofascism is ascendant. ICE is using our devices to round up our neighbors and send them to torture prisons. Trump is using our social media posts to hunt down "the radical left" as a prelude to mass purges. Seven AI companies are now a third of the S&P 500, and they're losing money even faster than they are emitting carbon, and the crash on the horizon is gonna make 2008 look like a walk in the park:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/

What's more, tech and cleantech are merging. The enshittification that has turned every platform to shit can now turn every part of the cleantech stack into a pile of shit, too. If Apple can pull the ICEBlock app out of your phone, then a solar inverter company can also remotely shut down your solar array and leave you in the dark:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/america-with-chinese-characteristics/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

For all of this century, I've been a tech activist, but it's turning out that being a tech activist has an awful lot in common with being a climate activist, and sometimes – as when we're fighting to keep EVs from being bricked by their manufacturers or to prevent rent-seeking with inverters – they're literally the same thing.

The great James Boyle has described the transformational power of the word "ecology." Without that word, there's no obvious connection between, say, the campaign to save the ozone layer and the campaign to save endangered owls. The fate of charismatic nocturnal avians is not readily understood as being of a piece with the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere. The word "ecology" makes the connection, and so transforms a thousand issues into a movement

I think something like that is happening again. There's a inchoate movement groping its way to understanding that it is a movement – that the problems of labor exploitation, fascism, climate degradation, surveillance, authoritarianism and genocide are all connected to each other by the fact that they are caused by extreme concentrations of wealth and power. Highly concentrated wealth and power is dangerous in and of itself, because even the most benign billionaire isn't infallible, and the stupid decisions of very rich people are far more consequential than the stupid decisions you or I make. Our mistakes make the people around us unhappy. Billionaires' mistakes – like their dilettanteish obsession with "education reform" – can ruin a whole generation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#ed-bezzle

And of course, the kind of person who amasses billions is pretty much never a benign person. The story you have to tell yourself in order to become a billionaire makes you into a literal psychopath:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

We don't have a word for this new anti-enshittification, anti-oligarch, anti-carbon baron movement yet, but perhaps that word might be "solidarity." Solidarity is the opposite of fascism. The solidarinet is the opposite of the enshitternet. Solidarity is what stops disasters from becoming catastrophes:

http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2017/07/cory-doctorow-be-the-first-one-to-not-do-something-that-no-one-else-has-ever-not-thought-of-doing-before/

Hey look at this (permalink)

UPS is 'disposing of' U.S.-bound packages over customs paperwork problems https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ups-delay-customs-tariffs-packages-destroyed-rcna236607
People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/people-regret-buying-amazon-smart-displays-after-being-bombarded-with-ads/
How Antimonopoly is Enduring Despite Trumpian Corruption https://prospect.org/power/2025-10-09-antitrust-pam-bondi-corruption-senate/
China confirms solar panel projects are irreversibly changing desert ecosystems https://glassalmanac.com/china-confirms-solar-panel-projects-are-irreversibly-changing-desert-ecosystems/
People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/people-regret-buying-amazon-smart-displays-after-being-bombarded-with-ads/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Music labels: DRM makes you into iTunes’ love-slave https://web.archive.org/web/20051013082542/http://www.affbrainwash.com/archives/020414.php

#20yrsago 20 suicidal Congressional Reps demand a Broadcast Flag https://web.archive.org/web/20051011041517/http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004047.php

#20yrsago Cross-stitched tracert output https://web.archive.org/web/20051013061129/http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/10/stitched_tracert_dos_commands.html

#15yrsago UK government ready to abolish consumer protection agencies as “waste” https://web.archive.org/web/20101013075803/http://www.noshockdoctrine.iparl.com/lobby/50

#1yrago Cars bricked by bankrupt EV company will stay bricked https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/10/software-based-car/#based

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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
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
Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
https://compneuro.washington.edu/news-and-events/neuroscience-ai-and-society/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (Democracy Now!)
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10/cory_doctorow
Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCX5Yst64Hw
Enshittification with Adam Conover (Factually)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1EKQidRooc
Enshittification (Everyday Anarchism)
https://www.everydayanarchism.com/168-enshittification-cory-doctorow/
The Trouble with Tech Companies (and Their Strategies) (Ideadcast)
https://hbr.org/podcast/2025/10/the-trouble-with-tech-companies-and-their-strategies

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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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

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https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

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https://doctorow.medium.com/

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https://twitter.com/doctorow

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https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

Pluralistic: A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage (10 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-10T12:05:49.000Z

Today's links

A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage: Score one for the good guys.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Douglas Copeland's depressing 10-year outlook; Unicorn poop; The brainwashing grift.
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.

A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage (permalink)

Sometimes, you really can vote with your wallet. I know, I'm generally pretty down on this kind of thing, but sometimes, it works!

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/13/consumption-choices/#marginal-benefits

Here's the latest victory from the land of wallet-based elections: Synology, a leading maker of "network-attached storage" (NAS) devices, has done a quiet (but total) 180 on its enshittificatory policy of blocking third party hard drives from its products:

https://www.guru3d.com/story/synology-reverses-policy-banning-thirdparty-hdds-after-nas-sales-plummet/

Network-attached storage devices are basically boxy computers with a bunch of slots for hard-drives and one or more network cards so you can connect them to your wifi or wired network. You fill them with hard-drives and plug them in, and they show up on your network as a file-server: any device on the network can connect to them and access their files. They're great for things like libraries of music or videos, which can be streamed to your TV or smart speakers. They're essential for people who work with very large files – musicians, photographers, video and sound editors, etc. They're also great for home backups, a single storage system that everyone in your household can back up all their data to. The better ones also have some kind of "NAT traversal" that lets you connect to them from the road – just plug your NAS into your home broadband and you can access your files from anywhere in the world.

Synology doesn't just make NAS boxes, they also make hard-drives that go inside them. Earlier this year, Synology pushed an update to its devices that caused them to reject hard-drives manufactured by their rivals, including giants like Seagate. This was a blatant piece of rent-seeking, a page straight out of the inkjet printer playbook, where the company that made the box decided that this gave them the right to decide what you could put in the box.

When your printer updates itself to reject generic ink, there's an implied threat: anyone who disenshittifies this printer – by making another update that restores generic ink support – risks prosecution under "anti-circumvention" laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These are laws that ban reverse-engineering, even for lawful purposes, like restoring generic printer ink support:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

The same goes for Synology. Under a decent and sane system of tech regulation, Synology's move to take away support for the vast majority of hard drives ever manufactured would prompt some other manufacturer to leap into the market and restore that support, by making alternative software for Synology's products. That represents a huge potential risk to Synology – once you're running a rival's software on your Synology product, it's a short leap to buying your next product from the company that saved your ass.

But because that kind of reverse-engineering is banned, enshittifiying companies like Synology don't have to worry about that kind of usurpation. They can enlist the justice system to destroy any company that tries to rescue us from their predatory behavior.

That leaves us with comparatively weak defenses against enshittification, like complaining in public, and/or buying someone else's products. These are much weaker than responses like "having a regulator fine Synology a zillion dollars for screwing us" or "having a rival company sell us a tool to disenshittify the product we already have."

Sometimes, though, those weaker measures really work. The hard drives that go in Synology's devices are fully standardized, and the data you store on them is far more valuable than the box you put them in. People in the market for a new NAS box can mix and match any hard drive with any NAS enclosure…except Synology's. That's a huge commercial disadvantage for Synology, and the fact that you can throw away your Synology box and keep your drives, and that any drive will work with any product except Synology, means that people really were able to vote with their wallets. After a catastrophic drop in sales, Synology pushed another software update that restored its support for every kind of drive.

Of course, no one should ever buy a Synology product again. They have shown us what they do when they have power over you and no one should ever give them any power over their economic future.

Remember, for enshittification to work, the company has to have locked in its users and/or business customers. Making things worse without some kind of lock-in simply precipitates a mass departure.

Contrast Synology' story with Chamberlain's. Chamberlain is a private equity-backed monopolist, a garage door-opener company that bought all the other garage door-opener companies, and then withdrew support for Homekit, a standardized way for apps to connect to home automation systems (like garage door-openers):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Chamberlain nuked Homekit support, they forced every owner of every Chamberlain garage door-opener (which is basically all garage door-openers) to switch to using Chamberlain's app to open and close their garages, and now every time you open your garage, you have to look at seven ads.

Where Synology customers found it easy to switch vendors, Chamberlain customers are pretty stuck. Partly, that's because Chamberlain owns all the competing brands, so they are all defective in the same way. But also, it's because garage door-openers have to be installed, generally by a professional, and switching openers is an expensive, logistically complex operation. Of course, Chamberlain's app – like all apps – is off-limits to rival companies that might reverse engineer it to block its apps, thanks to the anticircumvention law's prohibition on reverse-engineering closed systems. Chamberlain's openers are also closed systems, which prevents rivals from reverse-engineering them and restoring Homekit integration.

It's interesting to compare Synology to other companies that enshittified, only to face a humiliating climbdown and blood on the C-suite's walls. There was Unity, the giant game-development tool monopolist who decided to institute a "shared success" program where they'd put a tax on any game made with their product that did well. Interestingly, they didn't want a "shared failure" program where they'd help defray the losses of any unsuccessful game made with their product. This is like the company who sold a hammer to the carpenter who renovated your kitchen demanding a share of the proceeds when you sell your house. After a mass revolt – including an industry-wide, very public switch to Unity's competitors – the company fired its top managers and abandoned its rent-seeking efforts:

https://venturebeat.com/games/john-riccitiello-steps-down-as-ceo-of-unity-after-pricing-battle/

Then there's Sonos, who remotely, irreversibly downgraded every smart speaker they'd ever sold in a doomed bid to create a unified app for the speakers and a set of headphones they were hoping to launch. The headphones fizzled, users were furious, and the CEO was defenstrated (but the speakers still don't work):

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342179/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app

And earlier this year, HP, the world's most habitual and egregious enshittifier, climbed down from a breathtaking act of enshittification. The company announced that anyone calling for tech support would be put into a mandatory 15 minute hold, even if an operator was available to help out. The idea was to punish people for seeking help from a human, rather than making do with the much cheaper (and shittier) chatbot option.

People hated this and arose in towering fury, so intense that HP – world champion enshittifiers HP – backed down:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/22/ink-spattered-pitchforks/#racehorse-semen

If only every company could be punished for enshittifying this way. If only, say, Reddit had gotten a suitable beat-down after its shameful attacks on third-party apps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Reddit_API_controversy

But Reddit is hard to leave. We might hate is asshole management, but we like each other, and so we hold each other hostage there because we can't agree on when to leave or where to go next.

Reddit enshittified, and so did Synology, and Synology's outraged (former) customers made them pay for it. It's one of those rare instances in which voting with your wallet actually works. Savor it.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/22/ink-spattered-pitchforks/#racehorse-semen

Hey look at this (permalink)

Something extraordinary just happened https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/something-extraordinary-just-happened
A deep dive into the rss feed reader landscape https://lighthouseapp.io/blog/feed-reader-deep-dive
Desert and Capitalism Again https://mattbruenig.com/2025/10/03/desert-and-capitalism-again/
The distance of leverage https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/distance-of-leverage/
California Lets Residents Opt-Out of a Ton of Data Collection on the Web https://gizmodo.com/california-lets-residents-opt-out-of-a-ton-of-data-collection-on-the-web-2000670530

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago Leaked (final?) TPP Intellectual Property chapter spells doom for free speech online https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/09/wikileaks-releases-tpp-intellectual-property-rights-chapter

#15yrsago Douglas Coupland’s depressing next ten years https://web.archive.org/web/20101012190424/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-radical-pessimists-guide-to-the-next-10-years/article1750609/page1/

#10yrsago Canadian Tories funneled $8M in publicc money to US Republican Party’s NGO https://web.archive.org/web/20151010221542/http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/contributions.nsf/Eng/33D228F6B286373D85257D420061CEB2#tphp

#10yrsago How a billionaire GOP rainmaker tried (and failed) to rewrite history by suing Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit/

#10yrsago Volkswagen CEO: Dieselgate caused by Lynndie England “rogue engineers”; execs blameless https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/volkswagen-pulls-2016-diesel-lineup-from-us-market/

#10yrsago Unicorn poop and squatty potties: the greatest viral ad in Internet history https://memex.craphound.com/2015/10/09/unicorn-poop-and-squatty-potties-the-greatest-viral-ad-in-internet-history/

#5yrsago Machine Democrats https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/09/boss-politics/#tammany-hall

#5yrsago MK-Ultra and the brainwashing grift https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/09/boss-politics/#brainwashed

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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
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
Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
https://compneuro.washington.edu/news-and-events/neuroscience-ai-and-society/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification with Adam Conover (Factually)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1EKQidRooc
Enshittification (Everyday Anarchism)
https://www.everydayanarchism.com/168-enshittification-cory-doctorow/
The Trouble with Tech Companies (and Their Strategies) (Ideadcast)
https://hbr.org/podcast/2025/10/the-trouble-with-tech-companies-and-their-strategies
Enshittification (The Honest Broker)
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-honest-broker-launches-an-interview
Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything

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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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

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https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

Book Review: The Breaking of Liam Glass by Charles Harris ★★★⯪☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-09T11:34:00.000Z

This is a curious and mostly satisfying novel. It bills itself as a satire, but it is rather more cynical than that. A kid has been stabbed and the worst instincts of humanity descend. Race-baiting police, vote-grubbing politicians, and exploitative journalists.

I can't comment on the accuracy of the satire of the press - but it feels real. It's full of the hungriest, nastiest people who will step over anyone and cross any moral line in pursuit of a headline.

Similarly, the political commentary isn't exactly subtle - but it will raise your blood pressure.

Perhaps that's the aim of the book? The author is an equal opportunity cynic. Every paragraph is so wry that it can only have been written with a permanently raised eyebrow. You'll leave it frustrated and bitter.

There are no heroes in the story - just a series of increasingly desperate villains all trying to profit from a senseless tragedy - which makes for a difficult read at times.

Pluralistic: California bans algorithmic price-fixing (09 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-09T11:25:11.000Z

Today's links

California bans algorithmic price-fixing: Bye-bye, Realpage.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Android can't stop phoning home; FBI wants its bug back; Bikram can't copyright yoga; Prison debaters trounce Harvard.
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.

California bans algorithmic price-fixing (permalink)

As the Marxist pamphleteer Adam Smith wrote in his Leninist textbook The Wealth of Nations, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

For a commie, that Adam Smith sure had a fine grasp of the business mindset. Price-fixing conspiracies are as old as the lumber barons who gouged Noah, and they're illegal as hell.

But price-gougers gonna gouge, and for most of the past 40 years, regulators have been monumentally disinterested in protecting the public from these ripoffs. All our regulators asked was of the price-gougers was that they come up with the thinnest, least-convincing comb-over and in return, these regulators would pretend not to notice the glaring bald-spot shining through.

The one weird trick that these guys have hit upon is to use industry-wide "pricing consultancies" – clearinghouses that pretend to offer individualized price advice to each seller in a market. In reality what these companies do is aggregate all the prices charged by every major seller in the market, then advise all of them to raise their prices in sync:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/

When we talk about "greedflation," we don't just mean one seller – a major grocery chain, say – raising prices because they know they've got a regional lock on their market. That happens, but far more pernicious is when all the sellers get together to raise the price of goods, via a brokerage that lets them pretend (unconvincingly) that they're just getting "price advice."

Take Agri-Stats, a conspiracy in plain sight that gathers in pricing from all the major meat processors and then tells them all to jack up the price of meat:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

Then there's Realpage, a conspiracy that gathers rental prices from all the landlords in your town and "advises" them all to jack up prices. Landlords who don't obey this "advice" get kicked out of the conspiracy:

These "price consultancies" are the reason you can't afford a hamburger or your apartment anymore. During the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission was working towards a nationwide ban on this stuff:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

Of course, after Trump took office, his FTC canceled all that work and instead set up a snitch line where FTC employees could report on each other for being "woke." And, you know, fair: making sure that no one who works for the federal government has a pronoun is far more important than making sure you can afford to eat dinner and sleep indoors.

But (as the saying goes) the states are the laboratories of democracy. State legislatures are (sometimes) stepping in to fill the voids where Trump has failed the American people. That's what's just happened in California, the world's fourth largest economy, where Governor Newsom has just signed AB325 into law, and banned these price consultancies:

https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB325/id/3269757

Specifically, the law makes it "unlawful for a person to use or distribute a common pricing algorithm if the person coerces another person to set or adopt a recommended price or commercial term recommended by the common pricing algorithm for the same or similar products or services."

As Matt Stoller writes, this may seem like small potatoes, but it's actually a huge ideological victory, and marks a major new milestone in the long fight to slay the political ideology that welcomes oligarchy:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-to-overturn-an-oligarchy

Stoller recounts the history of this pro-oligarch movement, and describes how it began by rejecting earlier Supreme Court decisions that banned price coercion – like when a cartel forces its members to adopt higher prices. The Chicago School – the faction of economists who took over the world in the Reagan years – rejected any kind of politics that took account of the role that power played in the economy. They insisted that if workers accepted a starvation wage, it was because they had a "revealed preference" for going hungry – and not because they needed a union to force their bosses to pay them enough to live on.

The Chicago School replaced this kind of power-centric analysis with something they called "efficiency":

If you were coerced by a dominant supplier, but an economist showed there was no loss of output, then that was just vigorous competition. Gradually, the notion that the antitrust laws protect business from economic violence fell away. The result is an economy of coercion machines, from Amazon to pharmacy benefit managers to RealPage.

The mere existence of a law – in 2025, nearly half a century into the neoliberal era – that mentions "coercion" marks a profoud shift in ideology, a recovery of the idea that we are always under threat of "a conspiracy against the public…some contrivance to raise prices."

In a way, this just proves how right Trump is: the American way of life really is under threat from the radical Marxist ideology…of Adam Smith.

Hey look at this (permalink)

Chat control in Europe, an open letter to the Irish Minister who wants to scan all our messages https://crookedtimber.org/2025/10/07/chat-control-in-europe-an-open-letter-to-the-irish-minister-who-wants-to-scan-all-our-messages/
Canadaland’s Artificial Intelligence Policy https://www.canadaland.com/canadalands-artificial-intelligence-policy/
A cartoonist's review of AI art https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art
Folk Tech https://folktechnology.org/

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago Student finds GPS bug on car, uploads photo, FBI demands to have their warrantless bug back https://web.archive.org/web/20101009211920/https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/

#15yrsago THE UNIDENTIFIED: dystopian YA about education transformed into a giant, heavily sponsored game https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/08/the-unidentified-dystopian-ya-about-education-transformed-into-a-giant-heavily-sponsored-game/

#10yrsago Court tells millionaire yoga troll Bikram Choudhury that poses can’t be copyrighted https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2015/10/08/13-55763.pdf

#10yrsago Jimmy Wales calls UK’s proposed crypto ban “moronic” https://web.archive.org/web/20151009011752/https://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-regulation/jimmy-wales-wikipedia-encryption-178365

#10yrsago Prisoners’ debate team trounces national champs from Harvard – Cory Doctorow's MEMEX https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/oct/07/harvards-prestigious-debate-team-loses-to-new-york-prison-inmates

#5yrsago Good Intentions, Bad Inventions https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/08/hype-beast/#moral-panics

#1yrago Google's new phones can't stop phoning home https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/08/water-thats-not-wet/#pixelated

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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
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
Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
https://compneuro.washington.edu/news-and-events/neuroscience-ai-and-society/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (Everyday Anarchism)
https://www.everydayanarchism.com/168-enshittification-cory-doctorow/
The Trouble with Tech Companies (and Their Strategies) (Ideadcast)
https://hbr.org/podcast/2025/10/the-trouble-with-tech-companies-and-their-strategies
Enshittification (The Honest Broker)
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-honest-broker-launches-an-interview
Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything

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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

She Can't Take Up All The Air In Every Room, Can She? - Nicky FloweRSS

2025-10-08T17:59:00.000Z

Why does she have to be the only thing happening in music at any given point? Why can't someone else have some of the attention? No, we gotta take up all the vinyl plants to make 20 variants of the yearly track dump. We gotta have the painfully slow social media roll-out with all of the requisite non-social media stops to farm for clips. We gotta do the discourse of the pre-release and the mid-listen liveblogs and the post-release navel-gazing. I'm tired. I don't even want to make fun of her anymore. No, not even for the song about that dude's penis.

Isn't it time for new things? Are we cursed to live in the endless album cycle of a maniac who can't stop for a second to think about if the lyrics are any good or not? The producer is locked in on the one fucking thing he does so she doesn't have to worry about that. And this year, we're down to 12 really bad songs instead of 31 pretty bad songs. That's something at least. But we still have this thing weighing us down, culturally. I'm not naming her but it's obvious who I'm talking about. I can't be cute about it, there's just no avoiding it. I'm sick of her shit and have been for years and I think more people are getting on board, finally. It's not just her either, of course, she's just the tip of the corporate iceberg. It's all melting into slush.

I'm sick of "art" designed like a product. Extruded from a tube out onto Spotify playlists with paid placements. How are we not revolting against everything every day? Aren't you sick of this shit too??? Well?????? Let's do something about it. No more fake art. Develop your taste. Refine your music experience. Get an mp3 player and go for a walk listening to an album you found while listening to college radio or KEXP or something. Seek out real shit. Yes, I'm saying all of this out of self-interest but I want better for all of us! We don't have to live like this!! Like any of this!!!

Nicky Flowers - 10/08/25 - My recommendation: go tag spelunking on Bandcamp (find an album you like, find stuff in the tags of that album you also like, click on more tags, etc.)... I have other recommendations, too. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Note published on October 7, 2025 at 7:08 PM UTC - Molly White's microblog feed

2025-10-07T19:08:32.000Z

[Ars Technica] asked Cruz's office to explain why a senator pressuring Wikipedia is appropriate while an FCC chair pressuring ABC is not and will update this article if we get a response.

Pluralistic: They're just trying to earn a buck (07 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-07T15:17:00.000Z

Today's links

They're just trying to earn a buck: No, they're taking what they can get.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Milk jug Storm Trooper; HIV-positive muppet; Optimal copyright; EU v NSA; Pig bomb; Maine's disgraceful public defenders; Google Reader launches; Bill Gates hates Blu-Ray; NYPD steals Black woman's BMW and puts her in a mental institution; Baby flask; Zombie mouth cupcakes.
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.

They're just trying to earn a buck (permalink)

Life as a prisoner of the neoliberal mind palace must suck: it's a world where every person who suffers under predatory business practices is a "consumer" who has "revealed a preference" for being screwed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/07/water-thats-not-wet/

And the companies doing the screwing? They're blameless: they're just rationally pursuing profits, upholding the fiduciary duty dictated by "shareholder supremacy":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/#figleaves-not-rubrics

In this Hayek-pilled cosmology, businesses are prisoners of the profit imperative and can be forgiven for everything, and the public are "consumers" whose bad choices are to blame for all the world's woes. It's a worldview with no room in it for political agency and no theory of power:

https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-qualia/

The problem, of course, is that power is real, and it sets the rules of this game. Even if you stipulate that it is management's duty to do whatever they can to make the largest profit for the company's owners, "whatever they can do" isn't a free-floating concept. It is inescapably tethered to the rules of the game set by politics (that is, power).

A company cannot charge infinity dollars and pay its workers zero dollars. In the former case, customers might reasonably take their business elsewhere. In the latter case, workers might sell their labor elsewhere.

But if companies can capture their regulators and hijack power to change the rules of the game in their favor, they can go a long way to achieving both goals. An airport concessionaire on the sanitary side of the TSA checkpoint can charge $14 for a bottle of filtered tap water because exiting the checkpoint to shop elsewhere is a multi-hour affair and you'll miss your flight.

Now, the government could intervene here. The federal, state and local regulators overseeing the airport could require price-parity with the prevailing rate in town for water. They could ban obvious scams like stocking weird-sized water (or water with weird characteristics) at the airport that have no in-town equivalents. They could fill the airport with filtered water refill stations.

On the other hand, if the merchant can convince the government to collude with it in rigging the game, they can remove all the water fountains from the airport, and switch the bathroom taps to a non-potable "environmentally responsible" water source.

Likewise, an employer that can bind their workers to noncompete "agreements" can make it so difficult to switch jobs that workers accept a lower wage out of fear that their employer will use the power of the state to ruin them if they take a better job elsewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/09/germanium-valley/#i-cant-quit-you

Even better, if the employer makes workers sign a "training repayment agreement provision" (TRAP) clause, they can literally ask the government to fine workers thousands of dollars for quitting their jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

When a firm rips you off or abuses you and gets away with it, that's not "fulfilling their fiduciary duty," it's cheating. They're either buying off the state that is supposed to protect you, or enlisting it to help them screw you. You don't need to make excuses for these fuckers. You can hate them and complain and warn other people. You can make them pariahs and shout mean things at them if you see them on the street.

Take Snapchat: the company has just done a bait-and-switch on its users, announcing that it will erase their saved photos and videos. Ironically, it calls these "memories," which means that it is threatening to erase its users' memories. Users who don't want their memories erased will have to pay stonking monthly fees:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g5ypl6nkzo

Now, if Snapchat had an API that let you migrate your photos to a rival platform – or if the law would permit a rival to make a scraper to accomplish this without their help – then the rate that Snapchat chose for its monthly fee would reflect a calculation on these lines, "This is how long it takes to click one link on a rival service and port my account to it, and this is how much I value my time at, so this is how much I will pay to avoid making that one click."

But because Snapchat decides how you use its service, it can set a much higher price, calculated thus: "Here is how long it would take me to download gigabytes of saved storage, figure out how the filesystem on my device works, verify these files, and upload them to a rival platform, and here's how much I value my time, so this is how much I will pay to avoid this enormous, tedious task."

They get to charge you more because they are fucking you over, and they are fucking you over so they can charge you more.

If you heard about Snapchat's memory tax and thought to yourself, "Oh, those fools who signed up for Snapchat thinking it would be free forever were rooked by the world's most transparent ruse and have no one to blame but themselves!" then you've been rooked. The price that Snapchat arrived at – and Snapchat users' ability to get a better price – are both determined by regulation that tilts in favor of corporations at the public expense. No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets bearing Snapchat's rate card.

Nor is it your job or mine to figure out how Snapchat can keep its lights on. The question, "Well, how can Snapchat keep providing a free service if it doesn't charge certain users through the nose?" is no more those users' problem than, "How can Snapchat users preserve their memories if Snapchat charges them more than they can afford, every month, until they die?" is Snapchat's problem.

"How can Snapchat stay in business?" sounds like a Snapchat problem, not a you problem (unless you work there or own its stock). Snapchat isn't a charity. It's a venture-backed, for-profit entity listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ. In a just world, we'd say that the public has the right to advocacy and protection from the state that is accountable to it, and companies that make bad decisions about their business models can eat shit and be bought out of bankruptcy by smarter people who don't blow up their own balance sheets.

If you want to live in a better world, then shut up that nagging, neoliberalism-trained reflex that treats corporations as charitable enterprises and "consumers" as the secret legislators of the market and the ultimate authors of all its dysfunctions.

Even for their most ardent defenders, markets are supposed to "process aggregated demand signals" about the willingness of different parties to accept different offers. But if the only "demand signal" you can offer is a binary "take it or leave it," that's a very thin data set (and it gets thinner still when "leave it" requires a time machine so you can go back to before you started and warn yourself that the offer's going to be altered adversely in the future).

There are a range of ways to respond to a worsening offer from a merchant, well beyond "take it or leave it." You can complain. You can sue. You can picket. You can boycott. You can spraypaint "GREEDY PIGS" on the corporate headquarters. This is a rich set of infomrational inputs for the market indeed.

When it comes to digital services, you have even more opportunities to program the great market computer in the sky (all hail the infallible market computer!). For example, if a company makes the ads on its webpage too obnoxious and invasive, you can install an ad-blocker, a thing that 51% of all web users have done, making it the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

An ad-blocker enriches the take-it-or-leave it, thin data-set of internet usage patterns by allowing users to make a counter-offer: "How about nah?"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Of course, no one has ever installed an ad-blocker for an app, because that's a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA. An app is just a web-page skinned in the right kind of IP to make it a crime to protect yourself while you use it. That's why companies – like Snapchat – are insatiably horny to get you to switch from using websites to using apps.

Ultimately, I just don't think neoliberal economists believe in what they're selling. They don't want a market of "demand-signals" that can be used to guide allocations. They just want to help the greediest, worst people on earth screw you as hard as they can, all day long.

And then blame you for it.

Hey look at this (permalink)

The Unexpected New Threat to Video Creators https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/07/the-threat-to-video-creators/
Breaking: Amazon Actually Employs Its Delivery Drivers https://prospect.org/labor/2025-10-06-breaking-amazon-actually-employs-its-delivery-drivers/
Why Did Hotel Rates Surge in Vegas? (Hint: It’s Wasn’t the Demand) https://www.thesling.org/why-did-hotel-rates-surge-in-vegas-hint-its-wasnt-the-demand/
The Socialist Case for Antitrust https://prospect.org/economy/2025-10-07-socialist-case-for-antitrust/
Brown Stage Capitalism https://prospect.org/culture/books/2025-10-07-brown-stage-capitalism-enshittification-doctorow-review/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Lawmaker: I'll fight the Broadcast Flag https://web.archive.org/web/20071114231008/http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2005/10/07/surprise_your_reps_actually_listen_when_you_complain_about_the_broadcast_flag.php

#20yrsago Google launches a feedreader https://web.archive.org/web/20090210070551/http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlereader/tour.html

#20yrsago Soviet PCs http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ussr.html

#20yrsago Soviet pocket-calculators https://web.archive.org/web/20051013063203/https://rk86.com/frolov/calcolle.htm

#20yrsago Bill Gates shouts at Sony CEO that his crappy DRM is less crappy https://web.archive.org/web/20051013082800/http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc2005106_9074_tc024.htm

#20yrsago Guy who was busted “for using lynx” found guilty https://web.archive.org/web/20051101013155/http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39226548,00.htm

#20yrsago It’s legal to break DRM in Australia, sez High Court https://www.smh.com.au/technology/court-allows-gamers-to-modify-consoles-20051006-gdm7bs.html

#15yrsago HOWTO make a Storm Trooper helmet out of a milk jug http://www.filthwizardry.com/2010/10/milk-jug-storm-trooper-helmet.html

#15yrsago Nigerian Sesame Street will feature HIV-positive muppet https://web.archive.org/web/20101006182715/https://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/06/sesame.street.nigeria/index.html

#15yrsago Norwegian musicians’ income goes up by 66% 1999-2009, while record sales decline by 50% https://appliedabstractions.com/2010/10/06/record-companies-lose-artists-gain/

#15yrsago USA caves on secret Internet treaty https://web.archive.org/web/20101007044555/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5352/125/

#15yrsago NM cops raid Montessori School greenhouse for pot, find tomatoes https://web.archive.org/web/20101008023326/https://www.santafenewmexican.com/localnews/pot-raid-at-school-turns-up-tomatoes/

#15yrsago Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: multidisciplinary hymn to diversity, openness and creativity https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/06/steven-johnsons-where-good-ideas-come-from-multidisciplinary-hymn-to-diversity-openness-and-creativity/

#10yrsago Kim Davis isn’t doing her job. Again. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/oct/07/kim-davis-emails/

#10yrsago Howto make Zombie Mouth cupcakes https://www.instructables.com/Zombie-Mouth-Cupcake/#10yrsago

#10yrsago Algorithmic guilt: defendants must be able to inspect source code in forensic devices https://web.archive.org/web/20190421120433/https://slate.com/technology/2015/10/defendants-should-be-able-to-inspect-software-code-used-in-forensics.html

#10yrsago Make a booze flask hidden in a baby https://www.instructables.com/baby-flask/

#10yrsago NYPD steal black woman banker’s BMW, commit her when she asks for it back https://web.archive.org/web/20151002030408/https://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/shes-banker-owns-bmw-and-obama-follows-her-twitter-ny-cops-still-threw-innocent

#10yrsago How guards and prosecutors retaliate against solitary confinement prisoners who blow the whistle https://web.archive.org/web/20151006195426/https://www.vice.com/read/unauthorized-group-activity-0000772-v22n10

#10yrsago What the barcode on your discarded boarding-pass reveals https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/10/whats-in-a-boarding-pass-barcode-a-lot/

#10yrsago Bankers’ “Vulnerability Index”: scoring employees’ desperation https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=521

#10yrsago NZ government leaks on TPP: copyright terms will go to life plus 70 years https://web.archive.org/web/20151007185923/https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/all/files/TPP-Q&A-Oct-2015.pdf

#10yrsago What’s the objectively optimal copyright term? https://timharford.com/2015/10/copyrights-and-wrongs/

#10yrsago Genocide, not genes: indigenous peoples’ genetic alcoholism is a racist myth https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9428659/firewater-racist-myth-alcoholism-native-americans

#10yrsago Global coalition tells Facebook to kill its Real Names policy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/global-coalition-facebook-authentic-names-are-authentically-dangerous-your-users

#10yrsago Primer explains the spying tech your local cops are using https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/law-enforcement-tech-civilian-oversight-primer

#10yrsago EU top court: NSA spying means US servers are not a fit home for Europeans’ data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/europes-court-justice-nsa-surveilance

#5yrsago America's wild hog "pig bomb" https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/06/hybrid-vigor/#porcs

#5yrsago Maine's drunken, thieving, bumbling, child-porning public defenders https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/06/hybrid-vigor/#gideon-v-wainwright

#5yrsago Congress's Big Tech trustbusting smackdown https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/07/google-and-platos-cave/#break-em-up

#5yrsago Hackers can remotely lock IoT cock-cages https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/07/google-and-platos-cave/#power-play

#1yrago China hacked Verizon, AT&T and Lumen using the FBI's backdoor https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/07/foreseeable-outcomes/#calea

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Boston: Enshittification with Randall Munroe (Brattle Theater), Oct 7
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1591235180259?aff=oddtdtcreator
DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825
NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything
Why Everything Is Getting Worse (Majority Report)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQW6UxY144Q

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 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

How to actually test your readme - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-07T11:34:08.000Z

If you've spent any time using Linux, you'll be used to installing software like this:

The README says to download from this link. Huh, I'm not sure how to unarchive .tar.xz files - guess I'll search for that. Right, it says run setup.sh hmm, that doesn't work. Oh, I need to set the permissions. What was the chmod command again? OK, that's working. Wait, it needs sudo. Let me run that again. Hang on, am I in the right directory? Here it goes. What, it crapped out. I don't have some random library - how the hell am I meant to install that? My distro has v21 but this requires <=19. Ah, I also need to upgrade something which isn't supplied by repo. Nearly there, just need to compile this obscure project from SourceForge which was inexplicably installed on the original dev's machine and then I'll be good to go. Nope. Better raise an issue on GitHub. Oh, look, it is tomorrow.

As a developer, you probably don't want to answer dozens of tickets complaining that users are frustrated with your work. You thought you made the README really clear and - hey! - it works on your machine.

There are various solutions to this problem - developers can release AppImages, or Snaps, or FlatPaks, or Docker or whatever. But that's a bit of stretch for a solo dev who is slinging out a little tool that they coded in their spare time. And, even those don't always work as seamlessly as you'd hope.

There's an easier solution:

Follow the steps in your README
See if they work.
…
That's it.

OK, that's a bit reductive! There are a million variables which go into a test - so I'm going to introduce you to a secret zeroth step.

Spin up a fresh Virtual Machine with a recent-ish distro.

If you are a developer, your machine probably has a billion weird configurations and obscure libraries installed on it - things which definitely aren't on your users' machines. Having a box-fresh VM means than you are starting with a blank-slate. If, when following your README, you discover that the app doesn't install because of a missing dependency, you can adjust your README to include apt install whatever.

OK, but how?

Personally, I like Boxes as it gives you a simple choice of VMs - but there are plenty of other Virtual Machine managers out there.

Pick a standard OS that you like. I think the latest Ubuntu Server is pretty lightweight and is a good baseline for what people are likely to have. But feel free to pick something with a GUI or whatever suits your audience.

Once your VM is installed and set up for basic use, take a snapshot.

Every time you want to test or re-test a README, revert back to the original state of your box. That way you won't have odd half-installed packages laying about.

Your next step is to think about how much hand-holding do you want to do?

For example, the default Debian doesn't ship with git. Does your README need to tell people to sudo apt install git and then walk them through configuring it so that they can git clone your repo?

Possibly! Who is your audience? If you've created a tool which is likely to be used by newbies who are just getting started with their first Raspberry Pi then, yeah, you probably will need to include that. Why? Because it will save you from receiving a lot of repeated questions and frustrated emails.

OK, but most developers will have gcc installed, right? Maybe! But it doesn't do any harm to include it in a long list of apt get … anyway, does it? Similarly, does everyone know how to upgrade to the very latest npm?

If your software is designed for people who are experienced computer touchers, don't fall into the trap of thinking that they know everything you do. I find it best to assume people are intelligent but not experienced; it doesn't hurt to give slightly too much detail.

The best way to do this is to record everything you do after logging into the blank VM.

Restore the snapshot.
Log in.
Run all the commands you need to get your software working.
Once done, run history -w history.txt
- That will print out every command you ran.
Copy that text into your README.

Hey presto! You now have README instructions which have been tested to work. Even on the most bare-bones machine, you can say that your README will allow the user to get started with your software with the minimum amount of head-scratching.

Now, this isn't foolproof. Maybe the user has an ancient operating system running on obsolete hardware which is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays. But at least this way your issues won't be clogged up by people saying their install failed because lib-foobar wasn't available or that ./configure had fatal errors.

A great example is the Opus Codec README. I went into a fresh Ubuntu machine, followed the readme, ran the above history command, and got this:

sudo apt-get install git autoconf automake libtool gcc make
git clone https://gitlab.xiph.org/xiph/opus.git
cd opus
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Everything worked! There was no missing step or having to dive into another README to figure out how to bind flarg 6.9 with schnorp-unstable.

So that's my plea to you, dear developer friend. Make sure your README contains both the necessary and sufficient information required to install your software. For your sake, as much as mine!

Wait! You didn't follow your own advice!

You're quite right. Feel free to send a pull request to correct this post - as I shall be doing with any unhelpful READMEs I find along the way.

Pluralistic: Apple's unlawful evil (06 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-06T14:36:11.000Z

Today's links

Apple's unlawful evil: Everyone's a rogue capitalist now.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Why copyright wars matter; Car accidents aren't accidents; Ayn Rand, firefighter; Most sound recordings are unavailable; Kill the Dead; XKCD map; Lockdown with kindergartners; Facebook's living will; Ad tech bubble; The Internet is for end-users; Squeeze Me.
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.

Apple's unlawful evil (permalink)

Apple has removed ICEBlock, a totally legal app that helps people track the movements of the masked snatch-squads who illegally terrorize brown people in America's cities, capitulating to a warrantless demand from Trump's DoJ boss Pam Bondi:

https://www.404media.co/iceblock-owner-after-apple-removes-app-we-are-determined-to-fight-this/

In killing ICEBlock, Apple insists that it is only complying with lawful orders, which is patently untrue. Pam Bondi has no authority to order the censorship of this legal speech tool, which is likely why she didn't seek a court order and instead merely rage-tweeted about it. This was sufficient to get Apple CEO Tim Cook, the billionaire who moved Apple's manufacturing to Chinese sweatshops where working conditions are so brutal that they require suicide nets, to cave in.

Apple does not permit its iPhone customers to install software unless it is delivered via their App Store. They claim they do so in order to protect their customers from their customers' own bad choices about which apps to install. But time and again, Apple has shown that they exercise this control over their users to pursue their own ends, blocking:

A dictionary (because it contained swear words);
A game that simulated working in an Apple sweatshop;
An informative app that cataloged civilian casualties of US drone strikes;
The Tumblr app because some Tumblr blogs contained adult content; and
Working VPN apps for the entire nation of China.

Apple uses its app store control to extract 30 cents out of every dollar spent by its customers in the apps they use. That's a 30%, economy-wide, worldwide tax on news outlets and podcasts that collects subscriptions through apps, Patreon performers whose subscribers pay by app and games publishers who sell via the app store.

Apple also uses its app store control to block rival browser engines (every browser on iOS is just a reskinned version of Safari). Apple's own browser engine, Webkit, is riddled with longstanding, grave security vulnerabilities, and there is no way to distribute more secure browsers on iOS:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban-persists-even-under-the-dma/

Apple claims that it must be able to override its customers' choices about which software they'd like to run, lest those customers make foolish software choices and compromise their own security. Bruce Schneier calls this "feudal security," in which a digital warlord offers you sanctuary from the internet's roving bandits within the mercenary-studded walls of his impenetrable fortress. The problem is that when the warlord decides to attack you, the fortress becomes a prison, and you are rendered helpless:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Normally, the safety problems of feudal security are digital, but with ICEBlock, they are very, very physical. ICE is kidnapping our neighbors and sending them to offshore and onshore gulags. Of the 1,600 people illegally detained in Alligator Auschwitz, two thirds cannot be located. They have disappeared:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/25/alligator_alcatraz

In removing ICEBlock, Apple has deprived its customers of a vital tool for evading these kidnapping, murdering, masked thugs.

ICE moved from targeting "the worst of the worst" to targeting "people here illegally" to "people who look foreign" to "people who live in cities":

https://federate.social/@mattblaze/115323465203575305

You know who would have been at the top of that list? Steve Jobs, who died 14 years ago today:

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/05/remembering-steve/

Steve Jobs was "the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the US on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock":

https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/

He is exactly the sort of person that Trump wants to deport.

Jobs isn't the only foreigner whose company is helping Trump round up and disappear foreigners. Google – co-founded by Soviet refugee Sergey Brin – has also killed ICEBlock. Google has also announced that they will nonconsensually update every Android device in the world to prevent their owners from installing software that Google hasn't approved:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal

When China hacked Gmail in order to target dissidents, Sergey Brin unilaterally pulled the company out of China, gripped by visceral horror of his platform being used for totalitarian oppression. Today, Brin is taking away his customers' best tool for evading ICE kidnappers on behalf of a self-declared "dictator." Hey, Sergey, one Soviet refugee's son to another, that's some pretty Vichy bullshit, landsman.

Under Trump's policies, neither Apple nor Google would exist today. These companies both claim that they have to "obey the law" but this isn't following a lawful order – it's going above and beyond the law to help a dictator kidnap their customers.

When China turned on Google's users, Google left the country. When the European Union ordered Apple to open up to third party app stores, Apple threatened to leave Europe:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

But when Pam Bondi ordered Apple and Google to help her round up their own customers, Brin and Cook didn't even ask for a court order.

You could not ask for a better example of the failure of feudal security. Nor could you ask for a better rebuttal to the "Surveillance Capitalism" claim that Google is a "rogue capitalist" (because it spies on you for profit) while Apple is a good capitalist (because they extract money, not private data):

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Apple spies on you, of course. And because they trap you in the App Store's airtight bubble, they block you from installing any software that would protect you from Apple's surveillance. And now, Apple has thrown in with the Trump regime's most violent, human-rights invading program: mass kidnappings and disappearances of thousands of our neighbors.

Truly, everyone's a "rogue capitalist" now. It's almost like the problem with companies isn't whether their business model is based on showing you ads or charging you money, but rather, whether they can abuse you for profit and get away with it.

Hey look at this (permalink)

Social Media Provenance Challenge https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/10/01/C2PA-For-Social-Media
A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/books/review/cory-doctorow-enshittification.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rE8.s411.gJIQKhZDXbJX&smid=url-share
Socialist Approaches To Enterprise Information Technology https://saeit.org/
Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/05/way-past-its-prime-how-did-amazon-get-so-rubbish
Man buys used Tesla only to discover it's banned from Supercharger network https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/used-tesla-banned-supercharger-network-daniel-boycott/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Ebook DRM that encourages identity theft gets a huge makeover https://web.archive.org/web/20051011041018/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004026.php

#20yrsago Alternate reality game turns online poker into tombstone parties in cemetaries https://web.archive.org/web/20130514004112/https://42entertainment.com/work/lastcallpoker

#20yrsago Reporter vows to fight DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20051210140945/https://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1952

#20yrsago Library of Congress: Most sound recordings aren’t available https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub133/contents/

#15yrsago T-Mobile sneaks “rootkit” into G2 phones – reinstalls locked-down OS after jailbreaking https://web.archive.org/web/20101009072029/https://oti.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/newest_google_android_cell_phone_contains_unexpected_feature_a_malicious_root_kit-380

#15yrsago XKCD’s Online Communities map, part 2 – the online world, visualized with loads of funny https://xkcd.com/802/

#15yrsago KILL THE DEAD: Kadrey’s grisly, hard-boiled sequel to SANDMAN SLIM https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/05/kill-the-dead-kadreys-grisly-hard-boiled-sequel-to-sandman-slim/

#15yrsago Security company ad tricks people into thinking their houses were burgled https://copyranter.blogspot.com/2010/10/adt-shows-you-how-easy-it-is-to-break.html

#15yrsago Firefighters watch as house burns to the ground: owner had not paid annual firefighting fees https://web.archive.org/web/20101003021723/https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/local/firefighters-watch-as-home-burns-to-the-ground-104052668.html

#15yrsago Sky Marshals to lose their cushy first-class seats? https://web.archive.org/web/20160521034617/https://www.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703431604575521832473932878-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwOTEyNDkyWj.html

#15yrsago Michael Swanwick writes a story about autumn on fallen leaves https://www.flickr.com/photos/54366973@N04/5035946705/in/photostream/

#15yrsago Why the copyright wars matter: a reply to Helienne Lindvall https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/oct/05/free-online-content-cory-doctorow

#15yrsago William Gibson nails my philosophy in life https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/04/william-gibson-nails-my-philosophy-in-life/

#10yrsago Car accidents aren’t accidents https://www.wired.com/2015/10/stop-calling-daughters-death-car-accident/

#10yrsago How a romance-scam victim laundered $1.1M worth of other victims’ money https://www.wired.com/2015/10/online-dating-made-woman-pawn-global-crime-plot/

#10yrsago Snowden broke a nondisclosure EULA in order to uphold his Constitutional oath https://www.aaronswartzday.org/snowden-oath/

#10yrsago What it’s like to do a lockdown drill with kindergarten kids https://web.archive.org/web/20141029062211/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rehearsing-for-death-a-pre-k-teacher-on-the-trouble-with-lockdown-drills/2014/10/28/4ab456ea-5eb2-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html

#10yrsago Forget tidying: losing your precious possessions is the real “life-changing magic” https://medium.com/chrysaora-weekly/the-life-changing-magic-of-losing-shit-18122103f499

#10yrsago UK Chancellor: I must cut tax benefits for working poor to help them https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-low-paid-will-suffer-if-i-don-t-cut-their-tax-credits-says-george-osborne-a6679636.html

#10yrsago UK top government official: human rights no longer a “top priority” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/human-rights-are-no-longer-a-top-priority-for-the-government-says-foreign-office-chief-a6677661.html

#5yrsago Facebook's living will https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#dnr

#5yrsago Ad-tech is a bubble https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

#5yrsago The Internet is for End-Users https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#user-agents

#5yrsago Squeeze Me https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#disappearing-act

#5yrsago Why I love the Haunted Mansion https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/04/build-back-better/#grim-grinning-ghosts

#5yrsago Normal isn't enough https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/04/build-back-better/#post-pandemic

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Boston: Enshittification with Randall Munroe (Brattle Theater), Oct 7
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1591235180259?aff=oddtdtcreator
DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825
NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything
Why Everything Is Getting Worse (Majority Report)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQW6UxY144Q

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 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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

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https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

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https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

Language Support for Marginalia Search - Weblog on marginalia.nu

2025-10-06T00:00:00.000Z

One of the big ambitions for the search engine this year has been to enable searching in more languages than English, and a pilot project for this has just been completed, allowing experimental support for German, French and Swedish. These changes are now live for testing, but with an extremely small corpus of documents. As the search engine has been up to this point built with English in mind, some anglo-centric assumptions made it into its code.

You did no fact checking, and I must scream - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-05T11:34:23.000Z

I'm neither a journalist nor a professional fact checker but, the thing is, it's has never been easier to check basic facts. Yeah, sure, there's a world of misinformation out there, but it doesn't take much effort to determine if something is likely to be true.

There are brilliant tools like reverse Image Search which give you a good indicator of when an image first appeared on the web, and whether it was published by a reputable source.

You can use Google Books to check whether a quote is true.

You can use social-media searches to easily check the origin of memes.

There are vast archives of printed material to help you.

The World Wide Web has a million sites which allow you to cross-reference any citations to see if they're spurious.

Now, perhaps all that is a bit too much effort for someone casually doomscrolling and hitting "repost" for an instant dopamine hit. But it shouldn't be. And it certainly shouldn't be for people who write for trusted sources like newspapers.

Recently, the beloved actor Patricia Routledge died. Several newspapers reposted a piece of viral slop which I had debunked a month previously. Let's go through the piece and see just how easy it is to prove false.

Here's that "viral" story. I've kept to the parts which contain easily verifiable / falsifiable claims.

Wikpedia says that her birthday was 17 February 1929. She would have turned 95 in 2024.

Open up your calendar app. Scroll back to February 2024. What date was 17 February 2024? Saturday. Not Monday.

Now, OK, maybe at 95 she's forgotten her birthday. What else does the rest of the piece say?

In 1968, Patricia Routledge won Best Actress (Musical) at the Tony Awards - she was 39. I don't know if I'd consider appearing on Broadway as provincial stages.

Keeping Up Appearances was first broadcast in 1990. Patricia was around 60, not 50, when she was cast.

While she may have thought it would only be a small series - even though it was by the creator of Open All Hours and Last of the Summer Wine - there's no way that being the lead character could be described as a "small part". She wasn't a breakout character - she was the star.

Wikipedia isn't always accurate, but it does list lots of her stage work. She was working steadily on stage from 1999 - when she hit 70 - but none of it Shakespeare.

I was able to do that fact checking in 10 minutes while laying in bed waiting for the bathroom to become free. It wasn't onerous. It didn't require subscriptions to professional journals. I didn't need a team of fact-checkers. It took a bit of web-sleuthing and, dare I say it, a smidgen of common sense.

And yet, a couple of newspapers ran with this utter drivel as though it were the truth. The Independent published it as part of their tribute - although they took the piece down after I emailed them. Similarly The Express ran it without any basic fact-checking (and didn't take it down after being contacted).

Both of them say their primary source is the "Jay Speak" blog. There's nothing on that blog post to say that the author interviewed Patricia Routledge. A quick check of the other posts on the site don't make it obvious that it is a reputable source of exclusive interviews with notable actors.

The date on that blog post is August 2nd, 2025. Is there anything earlier? Typing a few of the phrases into a search engine found a bunch of posts which pre-date it. The earliest I can find was this Instagram post and this Facebook post both from the 24th of July - a week early than the Jay Speaks post.

To be clear, I don't think Jay Speaks was deliberately trying to fool journalists or hoax anyone. They simply saw an interesting looking post and re-shared it. I also suspect the Facebook and Instagram posts were copied from other sources - but I've been unable to find anything definitive.

I would expect that professional journalists at well-established newspapers to be able to call an actor's agent to fact-check a piece before running it. If they can't, I would have thought they'd do a cursory fact check.

But, no. I presume the rush to publish is so great that it over-rides any sense of whether a piece should be accurate.

This is irresponsible. Last week saw the BBC air an outright lie on Have I Got News For You. A professional TV company, with a budget for lawyers, fact checkers, and researchers - and they just broadcast easily disproven lies. Why? Maybe hubris, maybe laziness, maybe deliberate rabble-rousing.

The media have comprehensively failed us. They will repeat any tawdry nonsense as long as it keeps people clicking. It's up to us to defend ourselves and our friends against this unending tsunami of low-grade slurry.

I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. It doesn't require anything more than an Internet connection and a curious mind. If you see something online, take a moment to check it before sharing it.

Stopping misinformation starts with you.

Pluralistic: Blue Bonds (04 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-04T13:09:16.000Z

Today's links

Blue Bonds: State debt is generative.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Why copyright wars matter; Car accidents aren't accidents.
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.

Blue Bonds (permalink)

The US economy is on the brink. Trump's illegal clawbacks of federal spending (waved through by a supine Congress), combined with his illegal tariffs and his government shutdown have sucked billions out of the economy, which was already much-weakened by proliferating crypto scams and AI stock swindles.

Every day sees more irreparable harm done. People who are pushed out of the workforce stand a good chance of never rejoining it, becoming "discouraged workers" (the economist's term for a worker who can no longer find employment thanks to bosses' prejudice against hiring people who don't already have a job). The businesses those people used to patronize are next in line for the mortuary.

Farms are failing at rates not seen since in generations, even as Trump sends billions to prop up the Argentinian madman Javier Milei, whose Trumpalike policies have wrecked the Argentine economy. Milei repaid the US for its bailout by sending soybeans to China to replace the US crops that China blocked in response to Trump's trade war:

https://www.farmprogress.com/commentary/china-thrives-without-u-s-soybeans

Long-running scientific experiments that might represent the cure for the cancer you'll contract next year, or a way to improve solar output and save you from the wildfires and floods have your town's name on them, or a vaccine for the next pandemic, have had the plug pulled and may never restart. Research groups at universities are falling apart, their grants illegally canceled, the teams scattered to the four winds, never to reform.

Families, illegally deprived of food assistance, are having to choose between rent and groceries. Parents skip medication to feed their kids. Kids go hungry. All of this has permanent effects – on learning, on health, and on growth. Literally: my grandfather, a refugee who suffered from malnutrition in his boyhood, was a head shorter than his Canadian-born children.

Solar and wind projects are being shut down just as they near completion, squandering billions in public money – and a renewable future. Trump has stolen billions intended for Chicago public transit:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/03/trump-targets-chicago-transit-money-shutdown-00592722?utm_source=chatgpt.com

What is to be done? What can be done?

Many Americans have pinned their hopes on federalism, the devolution of power to the states. When I became a US citizen, the hardest question on the exam was untangling the tortured syntax of the 10th Amendment:

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

In a nutshell: the states have total power over their affairs, except where the Constitution says otherwise.

Lawsuits by state attorneys general have thus far done little to stanch the bleeding. Lawsuits are slow, and they rely on judges upholding the law, a task the Supreme Court has abandoned with sadistic glee.

The people need money, not legal briefs.

The editorial collective of Money on the Left offers a way to get money into the peoples' hands, right now, to allow us the material security we need if we are to organize to overthrow fascism and rekindle American Democracy. Their solution is "Blue Bonds," billed as "A Fiscal Strategy for Overcoming Trump 2.0":

https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/09/blue-bonds-a-fiscal-strategy-for-overcoming-trump-2-0/

What's a Blue Bond? It's a municipal or state bond, issued to replace the funds that Trump has illegally impounded. Blue states and cities can issue these bonds and use them to fund all the research, subsidies, programs and projects that Trump is trying to murder:

Dollars for housing and rental assistance, infrastructure and construction projects, rural energy and development, public health programs, veterans’ services, K-12 schools, colleges and universities, arts and culture: all public money previously authorized by congressional procedures should be reinstated in compliance with the Constitution.

Blue Bonds wouldn't just be backed by the states and cities that issue them, either. The Fed can swap them, one-for-one, with T-bills, the federal Treasury bonds that are considered "risk-free debt."

Blue Bonds don't have to be bonds, either; states can issue lots of different kinds of debt instruments, like "Tax Anticipation Notes" (TANs) and "Revenue Anticipation Notes" (RANs). These have different maturities and interest rates, and can be combined to hedge against liquidity traps.

These are legal. As the authors write, "Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act permits the Central Bank to purchase debt in any amount 'in unusual and exigent circumstances,' such as during financial crises." Trump destroying the US economy is unquestionably "a crisis." The Fed used Special Purpose Vehicles to bail out the economy during other recent crises, including the 2008 crash and covid. The difference here is that this is a people's bailout, going to fund the programs that people – not bankers or investors – rely on.

This is within the Fed's means. Thanks to those earlier bailouts, the Fed holds $7T worth of assets, and has "repeatedly emphasized [that] it can continue to do so without limit":

https://www.c-span.org/clip/house-committee/user-clip-greenspan-there-is-nothing-to-prevent-the-government-from-creating-as-much-money-as-it-wants/5028493

But – as the authors point out – this isn't just about bridging state and local financing through the Trump years. This is a fundamental restructuring of public spending, a way out of neoliberalism's violent allergy to the fiscal spending that expands the economy and lifts up the population. It's been nearly a century since the New Deal and Americans are still basking in its benefits (where they survive). It is time to renew those benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/03/we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to/#were-the-phone-company

Austerity can't get us out of a collapsing economy. It is precisely when the private sector withers that the state must step in, providing the income that people need to do the purchasing that makes the private sector possible. After all, money ultimately comes from the government (try making your US dollars and see how far you get). It's only through government spending (and government authorized lending through banks) that money enters our economy. When governments stop spending, money – the economy's lubricant – dries up, and the economy grinds to a halt.

Public debt issuance isn't "borrowing" in the sense that you or I might borrow. Governments are not households or businesses. Governments aren't money users, they are money creators. Governments don't need to "borrow" to create money any more than Starbucks needs to "borrow" to create gift cards redeemable for future mochalattafrappacheenaspressos.

Private debt is a drag on the debtor. State debt is generative. It creates the roads, the hospitals, the schools, the educated and healthy populace, needed for the private sector.

To issue Blue Bonds, states – which cannot be forced into bankruptcy – must repeal their disastrous "balanced budget" rules and rules requiring supermajorities to raise taxes. From Money on the Left: "public deficits are healthy, so long as they support communities and take care of our planet. What is debt but a promise to bring about a desired outcome in the future?"

Trump has destroyed investor confidence in the US economy. The only paths to returns today are flushing your money into the crypto casino or backing giga-mergers that only go through if the companies involved throw sufficient bribes at the tip jar on the Resolute Desk. Blue Bonds are a safe place for institutional investors seeking a safe haven from kleptocratic chaos.

As the authors say, this is "the true Abundance agenda" – not the "diet Reaganism" of deregulation and sacrifices to the market gods being peddled by the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. A true Abundance agenda "builds robust public systems, including newly chartered public banks, that put people over profits."

Blue Bonds are the good version of Trump's beloved shitcoins. Rather than wildcat money created by and for speculators, Blue Bonds are a source of public prosperity, backed by a present or future Fed under democratic control, accountable to the people. Trump and his fascist pals are all-in on creating as many forms of "money" as there are memes on the internet. Here, at last, is a form of novel money creation that builds a human, shared future.

Hey look at this (permalink)

FCC Reconsiders Ban on Big Four TV Networks Being Owned by One Company https://gizmodo.com/fcc-reconsiders-ban-on-big-four-tv-networks-being-owned-by-one-company-2000665921
Open Printer https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer
Bankification Nation https://www.levernews.com/bankification-nation/
Apple removes apps that allow anonymous reporting of ICE agent sightings https://www.startribune.com/apple-takes-down-app-that-allows-people-to-track-and-anonymously-report-sightings-of-ice-agents/601485533
What Europe’s New Gig Work Law Means for Unions and Technology https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/what-europes-new-gig-work-law-means-unions-and-technology

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Ebook DRM that encourages identity theft gets a huge makeover https://web.archive.org/web/20051011041018/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004026.php

#15yrsago Security company ad tricks people into thinking their houses were burgled https://copyranter.blogspot.com/2010/10/adt-shows-you-how-easy-it-is-to-break.html

#15yrsago Michael Swanwick writes a story about autumn on fallen leaves https://www.flickr.com/photos/54366973@N04/5035946705/in/photostream/

#15yrsago Why the copyright wars matter: a reply to Helienne Lindvall https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/oct/05/free-online-content-cory-doctorow?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

#15yrsago William Gibson nails my philosophy in life https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/04/william-gibson-nails-my-philosophy-in-life/

#10yrsago Car accidents aren’t accidents https://www.wired.com/2015/10/stop-calling-daughters-death-car-accident/

#5yrsago Why I love the Haunted Mansion https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/04/build-back-better/#grim-grinning-ghosts

#5yrsago Normal isn't enough https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/04/build-back-better/#post-pandemic

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Boston: Enshittification with Randall Munroe (Brattle Theater), Oct 7
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1591235180259?aff=oddtdtcreator
DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825
NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Montreal: Enshittification at Librarie Drawn and Quarterly, Oct 24
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/3757420251024
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything
Why Everything Is Getting Worse (Majority Report)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQW6UxY144Q

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 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

Pluralistic: When your ISP pays you (03 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-03T17:24:37.000Z

Today's links

When your ISP pays you: The New Deal keeps on giving.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Internet Archive scans books; Europe's Broadcast Flag; Three middle-finger salute; The enshittification of Prime.
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.

When your ISP pays you (permalink)

Holy shit I love my internet service provider said no one ever!

Except, some people do love their ISPs. Across American more than 400 community-owned fiber networks, serving more than 700 communities, bring joy and satisfaction to their customers:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

Many of these are in blood-red states, the kind of places where it's impossible to find a readable copy of Atlas Shrugged because every page of every copy is stuck together. Nevertheless, these publicly owned networks are wildly popular with their subscribers. What's more, there'd be a ton more of them but for the brutal ministration of ALEC, the far-right, dark money policy shop that convinced multiple state governments to ban community broadband, even in places where there was no commercial broadband service:

https://actions.eko.org/a/att-alec-lobby-community-owned-internet-networks

One of the great predictors of whether your town will get fast, affordable, future-proof fiber is its history. Many of today's municipal broadband co-ops are descended from rural telephone co-ops, and those telephone co-ops were birthed by the New Deal's rural electrification co-ops. This is the incredibly long shadow that good public spending casts – a century of successful provision of amenities that substantially improve the quality of life of whole regions.

Take Jackson and Owlsley Counties, rural Kentucky counties in Appalachia, some of America's poorest places. Starting in 2009, the local telephone company, the Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative, started pulling fiber to every home in both counties. To get that fiber over rugged mountain passes, they pulled it on the back of a mule named "Ole Bub." Soon, every subscriber had access to symmetrical fiber broadband at speeds of up to 10gb/s, and the region found itself at the center of an economic revival:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191210051442/https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

The Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative was founded in 1953, as an extension of the town's electrification co-op, itself founded in the 1930s after the passage of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (the REA was amended in 1949, allowing electrification co-ops to secure low-cost loans for telephone rollouts).

You don't need to live in rural Appalachia to reap the benefit of publicly backed broadband co-ops. In Minnesota's Beltrami County (pop 46,288; density 18.6 people/square mile, median income $33,392/household), the local co-op Paul Bunyan Communications offers symmetrical fiber at speeds up to 10gb/s. But that's just table-stakes: Paul Bunyan doesn't just offer reasonably priced, reliable, screamingly fast broadband – it also pays its members whenever too much cash builds up in its bank account. Paul Bunyan just paid out $3.6 million in refunds to its subscribers:

https://ilsr.org/article/community-broadband-networks/minnesotas-paul-bunyan-communications-shares-3-6-million-windfall-with-members/

The payouts are pro-rated based on how much you spend on broadband. Customers who were due $150 or less got a credit on their next bill, while customers owed more than $150 got a check in the mail.

Nice, huh? It gets nicer: in 2018, Paul Bunyan paid back its subscribers $2.2 million; in 2022, they paid back $6.3 million, and last year they paid back $3 million. Paul Bunyan employes 160 people in the county, at fair wages, with good benefits. Every dollar Paul Bunyan makes literally stays in the community.

99% of the county has access to fiber from the co-op. Local business growth has outperformed statewide performance. A local aerospace company owner said that the co-op fiber made the difference between running a business with $300,000 in annual revenue and a business making $3,000,000 per year.

All of this is even cooler when you learn about the kind of internet service the rest of Minnesota has had to cope with. A 2019 Minnesota Commerce Department investigation found that Frontier, the state's leading ISP, had unbelievably badly maintained infrastructure. We're talking about high-capacity long-haul wires draped over shrubs and tree-branches:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/frontier-letting-its-phone-network-fall-apart-state-investigation-finds/

Minnesotans on Fiber's "free market" service suffered from frequent outages. They paid higher costs for their unreliable, slow DSL lines than Paul Bunyan customers in Beltrami County paid for fiber that was literally thousands of times faster than Frontier's. Unlike Paul Bunyan's cheerful, local customer service, Frontier's service numbers went to "cost-efficient" (busied-out, distant) call centers where you could wait for hours to speak to someone who would either "accidentally" drop your call or simply refuse to help you. Customers frequently lost access to 911 service, and often saw spurious, sky-high charges on their bills that no one would explain or erase.

Frontier "strongly disagreed" with the report. But when Frontier went bankrupt (a year later!), we got a look at its internal operations and discovered just how much contempt the company had for its customers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

By Frontier's own calculations, it could have made an extra $10 billion by investing in fiber rollouts, but it chose not to make that money, because the stock analysts at institutional investment funds would punish any telco that committed to capital expenditures with long-term payouts. Since Frontier's execs were mostly paid in stock, they decided not to risk a drop in their personal net worth, and so they left ten billion on the table and millions of customers stuck on 19th century copper-line infrastructure – technology that dated back to Samuel Morse and the telegraph.

Frontier was especially interested in customers who had no alternatives – no cable or fixed wireless companies that could offer competition for Frontier's own terrible service. These customers were booked as an "asset" and their connections were earmarked for substandard maintenance and slow upgrades. The old Lily Tomlin gag goes, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company." But Frontier really cared about the customers who had no alternative – they cared about royally fucking those customers.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the marvel that is the efficient free market!

Municipal fiber is a godsend. It's fast, cheap and reliable, and it is an engine for economic development. Of course, the Trump administration is running away from municipal fiber – indeed, from all fiber – as fast as it can, because every fiber installation competes with Elon Musk's satellite based internet service, Skylink:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/24/geometry-hates-cars/#dogshit-unit-economics

The thing is, satellite internet makes sense in a few places – temporary encampments, ships at sea – but it is vastly more expensive than fiber to install and maintain, and it is millions of times slower than fiber. Nor is this something you can fix by filling the sky with more collision-prone, astronomer-demoralizing minisats – no matter how many satellites there are over your head, they're all in the same universe and have to share its single, fixed electromagnetic spectrum. Meanwhile, if you want more broadband in your fiber network, you just pull another bundle of fiber (principle ingredient: sand) through your conduit and you add dozens of new universes' worth of electromagnetic spectra that are each isolated from one another.

Smart politicians aren't being sucked in by Musk's claim that he can billionaire his way out of the intractable laws of physics. They're pulling fiber, and lots of it. In Utah, the aptly named UTOPIA network is serving publicly owned fiber to 21 cities, and private businesses can offer service over that public system, which means that Utahans have their choice of 18 carries:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Moreover, these are symmetrical connections, meaning that they are as fast for sending data as they are for receiving it:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/03/beautiful-symmetry/#fibrous-growth

To put this in Information Superhighway terms from the 1990s, a symmetrical broadband connection is necessary for you to be a "netizen," while an asymmetrical connection that beams lots of data to you but isn't capable of letting you talk back is what makes you a "mouse potato."

It's grimly hilarious that the right has done so much damage to public fiber rollouts, given their oft-repeated grievances about being "shadowbanned" by dominant services. With symmetrical fiber, every crank could run their own server – a 4chan in every garage. And if that fiber is provided by the government, then your ISP will be bound by the First Amendment, and legally prohibited from discriminating against customers based on their political speech (something that commercial providers can do to their heart's content):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber

The New Deal was a mere blip in the American project, but a century later, America's poorest, worst-served people are still reaping its benefits, with far faster, cheaper connections than you can get from the big telcos that have sewn up New York City and Los Angeles. And in some of those places, the public ISP doesn't just shower their subscribers with fast data – they shower them with millions of dollars.

Hey look at this (permalink)

Evaluating the Impact of AI on the Labor Market: Current State of Affairs https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/evaluating-impact-ai-labor-market-current-state-affairs
Help Dick Gaughan in seeking to retrieve his music https://www.gofundme.com/f/aatux2
LLMs Are the Ultimate Demoware https://blog.charliemeyer.co/llms-are-the-ultimate-demoware/
Mel Lastman https://www.patreon.com/posts/mel-lastman-140195778
Who Is The Sky? | David Byrne https://davidbyrne.bandcamp.com/album/who-is-the-sky

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Internet Archive and Yahoo announce open scanned-in-book index https://web.archive.org/web/20051007010920/https://www.opencontentalliance.org/

#20yrsago Europe’s Broadcast Flag: first look https://web.archive.org/web/20051026014633/https://www.eff.org/IP/DVB/dvb_critique.php

#15yrsago Mouseland: a parable from the father of Canada’s healthcare system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC1GtIhwpSk

#15yrsago ElfQuest fan-film blessed by the Pinis https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2010/10/01/01gigaom-creator-blessed-elfquest-fan-film-crowdsources-fun-7954.html

#10yrsago Pokemon demands $4000 from broke superfan who organized Pokemon party https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/pokemon-copyright-lawyers-demand-4000-from-party-planner/

#10yrsago Tea Party “family values” pol resigns after sending adulterous vid to entire address-book https://thefrisky.com/family-values-lawmaker-resigns-after-sexting-contact-list-with-pictures-of-affair/

#10yrsago Mayor of Stockton, CA detained by DHS at SFO, forced to give up laptop password https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Stockton-mayor-was-briefly-detained-on-return-6546419.php

#10yrsago How to flip someone off with THREE middle-fingers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-skVOUZAoFA

#5yrsago Inequality and luck and risk and merit https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/03/the-house-always-wins/#socialized-losses

#1yrago Prime's enshittified advertising https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Boston: Enshittification with Randall Munroe (Brattle Theater), Oct 7
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1591235180259?aff=oddtdtcreator
DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825
NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything
Why Everything Is Getting Worse (Majority Report)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQW6UxY144Q

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 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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:

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Pluralistic.net

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https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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https://doctorow.medium.com/

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https://twitter.com/doctorow

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https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

ISSN: 3066-764X

Getting started with Mastodon's Quote Posts - technical implementation details for servers - Terence Eden’s Blog

2025-10-03T11:34:27.000Z

Quoting posts on Mastodon is slightly complex. Because of the privacy conscious nature of the platform and its users, reposting isn't merely a case of sharing a URl.

A user writes a status. The user can choose to make their statuses quotable or not. What happens when a quoter quotes that post?

I've read through the specification and tried to simplify it. Quoting is a multi-step process:

The status must opt-in to being shared.
The quoter quotes the status.
The quoter's server sends a request to the status's server.
The status's server sends an accept message back to the quoter's server.
When other servers see the quote, they check with the status's server to see if it is allowed.

I'm going to walk you through each stage as best as I understand them.

Opting In

An ActivityPub status message is JSON. In order to opt-in, it needs this additional field.

"interactionPolicy": {
  "canQuote": {
    "automaticApproval": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  }
}

That tells ActivityPub clients that anyone is allowed to quote this post. It is also possible to say that only specific users, or only followers, or no-one is allowed.

The QuoteRequest

Someone has hit the quote post button, typed their own message, and shared their wisdom. Their server sends the following message to the server which hosts the quoted status. This has been edited for brevity.

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    {
      "QuoteRequest":   "https://w3id.org/fep/044f#QuoteRequest",
    }
  ],
  "type": "QuoteRequest",
  "id":     "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent/quote_requests/1234-5678-9101",
  "actor":  "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent",
  "object": "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json",
  "instrument": {
    "id":           "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent/statuses/123456789",
    "url":          "https://mastodon.test/@Edent/123456789",
    "attributedTo": "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent",
    },
    "quote":          "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json",
    "_misskey_quote": "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json",
    "quoteUri":       "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json"
  }
}

All this says is "I would like permission to quote you."

The Stamp

The quoted server needs to approve this quote. First, it generates a "stamp".

This is a file which lives on the quoted server. It is proof that the quote is allowed. If it is deleted, the quote permission is revoked. The filename must be the same as the stamp's ID.

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    {
      "gts": "https://gotosocial.org/ns#",
      "QuoteAuthorization": {
        "@id": "https://w3id.org/fep/044f#QuoteAuthorization",
        "@type": "@id"
      },
      "interactingObject": {
        "@id": "gts:interactingObject"
      },
      "interactionTarget": {
        "@id": "gts:interactionTarget"
      }
    }
  ],
  "type": "QuoteAuthorization",
  "id":                "https://example.com/quote-987654321.json",
  "attributedTo":      "https://example.com/users/username",
  "interactionTarget": "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json"
  "interactingObject": "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent/statuses/123456789",
}

If the quoted status is viewed from a different server, that server will query the stamp to make sure the share is allowed.

The Accept

This is the message that the quoted server sends to the quoting server. It references the request and the stamp.

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    {
      "QuoteRequest": "https://w3id.org/fep/044f#QuoteRequest"
    }
  ],
  "type": "Accept",
  "to":    "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent",
  "id":    "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json",
  "actor": "https://example.com/account",
  "object": {
    "type": "QuoteRequest",
    "id":         "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent/quote_requests/1234-5678-9101",
    "actor":      "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent",
    "instrument": "https://mastodon.test/users/Edent/statuses/123456789"
    "object":     "https://example.com/posts/987654321.json",
  },
  "result": "https://example.com/quote-987654321.json"
}

The "result" must be the same as the stamp's URl.

And then?

You can follow and quote @colours@colours.bots.edent.tel on your favourite Fediverse platform.

I've written an ActivityPub server in a single file which is designed to teach you have the protocol works. Have a play with ActivityBot.

Pluralistic: Decarbonization at a distance (02 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

2025-10-02T19:50:43.000Z

Today's links

Decarbonization at a distance: A post-American century that runs on sunshine.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Human shields for Internet of Shit slumlords; Tubemap with one-bedroom flat prices; Years of Repair; Internet of Lying Things; Dieselgate for TVs; Apple kills Chinese RSS readers.
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.

Decarbonization at a distance (permalink)

In Bill McKibben's new book Here Comes the Sun, he frequently laments activists' tendency not to celebrate our wins, a habit that sees us always feeling as though we were losing, even when we're racking up massive victories:

https://billmckibben.com/books/here-comes-the-sun/

Here Comes the Sun is an extraordinary, beautifully told, exhaustively researched and argued book about the remarkable progress of solar energy over the past five or so years. McKibben is speaking as much to his fellow activists as he is to the people on the sidelines, trying to get them to understand the quiet, profound changes to solar, to "update their priors" about whether a solar transition is possible, and what impediments stand between us and decarbonization.

For example, you may have read that the material bill for solar is simply too large to pay – that there isn't enough copper, enough conflict minerals, enough lithium for the panels, wires and batteries we'll need for a solar transition:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility

This is just not true, for several reasons.

First, the material bill for solarization is in freefall, with no end in sight. The amount of stuff we need to make panels, transmission lines and batteries keeps declining. Further: the efficiency gains of "clean" technology are astounding – meaning that, for example, it not only takes a lot less material to make a solar panel, the panel we make out of so much less stuff generates a lot more power. More: we keep finding ways to substitute more abundant materials for materials that are harder to find or refine (for example, swapping out lithium in batteries and replacing it with sodium, one of the most abundant minerals on Earth). Finally: we keep finding new sources of the materials that we can't readily substitute for. It turns out that when there's a lot more demand for a given mineral, people who've previously disregarded potential sources of that material suddenly pipe up with information about where (a lot) more of it can be found.

None of that is to say that extracting and refining these materials is without cost or risk. The realpolitik of extraction means that mining and refining companies will preferentially target poor and indigenous communities for their mines and factories. That's totally true and completely unacceptable, and it means that our task is to demand climate justice (letting those communities decide for themselves whether and how they will be a part of this). That's important work, and it's very different from endlessly parroting 15-year old back-of-the-envelope calculations about the material bill for solarization.

The material story is a really cool and exciting one. There is so much solar energy out there for the taking. A lot of the time, when we characterize high-tech products as "non-recyclable," what we mean is "it would take too much energy to recycle this device." As more and more solar comes online, we can reclaim literal tons of material from existing, superannuated tech. There's a solar-powered factory that ingests old solar panels, decomposes them into their source materials, and makes new, hyper-efficient solar panels out of them, reclaiming 99% of their materials:

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/solarcycle-to-recycle-10-million-solar-panels-yearly

Far from being an insurmountable barrier to a cleaner, better future, the material bill for solar is eminently tractable. What's more, the material bill for solar is superior in every way to the material bill for fossil fuels. The amount of stuff we need to dig up in order to solarize the planet is equal to one seventeenth of the fossil fuels we dig up every year. Remember, when you dig up a bunch of stuff to make a solar panel, that solar panel produces energy for decades afterwards, and when it finally reaches its end-of-life, we make it into another solar panel. When you dig up coal, you burn it and all that's left behind is a bunch of planet-destroying carbon dioxide and earth-and water-poisoning toxic ash.

I can't emphasize this enough. Solar is a superior substitute for fossil fuels in more ways than one. Fossil fuels need to be continuously replenished, meaning that every fossil fuel-powered system in the world requires a continuous, ongoing stream of materials to produce energy. Replenishing this fuel doesn't merely require us to dig up enough old dead shit to burn in the machine, we also have to dig up tons more old dead shit to shlep that old dead shit around. The gas and coal being set on fire all around you right now required another mountain of fossil fuel to power the mining rig, the refinery, and the ship and the truck that brought it to you.

Making more solar involves digging stuff up and moving it too – but just once. Once those panels are on your roof (or over your parking lot or irrigation canal, or between the rows in your farm's fields) they convert abundant sunshine into efficient energy, without requiring any more materials:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility

So it's definitely time we rethink our assumptions about the solar transition. Here's one assumption I had to jettison after reading McKibben's book: I used to assume that whenever I heard about Europe or the US or Canada lowering CO2 emissions, that was mostly because these rich countries had exported their carbon to China, by shifting carbon-intensive manufacturing there.

Back around the time of the Paris Accords, there was a raging debate about national carbon targets, with poor countries in the global south arguing that because rich northern countries were responsible for nearly all the CO2 in the atmosphere, the rich world should make the sacrifices needed to decarbonize, leaving China, India, and other poor countries to continue to enjoy the benefits of burning coal.

China made an especially pointed case, insisting that their CO2 figures were grossly inflated because they made all the stuff that the rich world consumed. The carbon emissions from the appliances, consumer goods and industrial equipment and other exports from China were really the rich world's carbon, which had been offshored to "the world's factory" – China.

This may have been true back then, but things have changed dramatically. China is running away from coal as fast as it can, and solarizing everything. China lights up a new solar generation facility with the capacity of a coal plant every eight hours. Trump can subsidize fossil fuels and throw up as many structural impediments to renewables as he can think of, and it won't change the fact that as a planet, we're on track to replace all of the embodied energy in the stuff the whole world uses with solar.

So when you read that 54% of the energy in the EU is coming from renewables, that doesn't mean that they're cheating by offshoring their emissions to China. The EU is offshoring its manufacturing to China, but China has found a better way to manufacture Europe's stuff, without having to set old dead stuff on fire 24/7:

https://electrek.co/2025/09/30/solar-leads-eu-electricity-generation-as-renewables-hit-54-percent/

Reading Here Comes the Sun is a forceful reminder that there's a big old world out there beyond America's borders. It's true that American policy was once very important to the whole world, but that was largely down to the things that Trump is hell-bent on destroying. American dollar-clearing and the SWIFT system gave the US a massive, global structural advantage, but the weaponization of SWIFT, the deliberate weakening of the US dollar, and the destruction of American monetarism via cryptocurrency scams has put dollar clearing into terminal decline:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#the-other-swifties

Even US military might is in decline. US military spending remains off the charts, but Trump and Hegseth are purging the forces, targeting Black and brown people (disproportionately represented in the US military because people from minority groups are typically poorer, and the US military recruits a lot of poor people without many other options):

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/01/pete-hegseth-war-pentagon-beardos-dei/

American aid agendas used to give it a huge global footprint. When American evangelicals forced the government to ban aid that included birth control or helping gender minorities, countries all around the world saw surges in unwanted pregnancies and homophobic discrimination. Now that the US has cut off all that aid, the US can no longer set priorities for those countries.

America's domestic research agenda used to set the standard for the world, because the brightest scholars in the world moved here to go to university and to pursue their research. This meant that the priorities behind US federal scientific and academic grants determined what the world's best and brightest worked on. Of course, that's dead, too.

Trump hasn't just killed research funding in America – he's also singlehandedly reversed generations of work to lure the world's most talented scientists and scholars to the USA. Grad students, professors, engineers and researchers are leaving the US rather than risk being kidnapped to a gulag in El Salvador or imprisoned in Alligator Auschwitz. Our loss is everyone else's gain. It's not clear whether people will ever again aspire to come to America to pursue their research.

The point is that things are very much up for grabs right now. The planet is solarizing at rates that beggar the imagination (and warm the heart). McKibben quotes many sources who've called China "the Saudi Arabia of solar," but he is skeptical of that characterization. The sun, after all, shines everywhere and once you've got the solar installed, China can't take it away from you.

Or can they?

Solar – and the whole cleantech sector – is the first truly successful "internet of things" application. From inverters to EVs to household batteries, the new, electric world is digital and networked, and that means that it's all terribly enshittification prone.

Today, the US has the ability to remotely, permanently disable every John Deere tractor in the world and set off a global famine:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Tomorrow, Chinese soft (and not-so-soft) power could be vested in the ability to remotely update, downgrade, disable, or brick whole countries' worth of cleantech:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/23/our-friend-the-electron/#to-every-man-his-castle

There's a way to prevent this, thankfully. The only reason that technologists around the world can't reverse-engineer and unlock these "smart" devices is that the US trade representative bullied every country into passing punitive IP laws that ban this practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

Absent these laws, there could be a roaring trade in jailbreaking smart devices of all kinds – from printers to ventilators, but also all of cleantech – so that owners of these devices could always change how they work, blocking field updates and restoring functionality that had been confiscated by the manufacturer, whether due to greed or geopolitics.

The US trade rep got these IP laws passed abroad by threatening America's trading partners with tariffs. Tariffs: another source of power that Trump has vaporized. The threat of tariffs loomed over the whole world, and fear of losing access to American markets meant that policymakers all over the world kept laws on the books that allowed US tech companies to extract rent and extort their populations. But a deterrent only works if you don't use it. Now that everyone's been tariffed by Trump, the threat is dead. Happy Liberation Day, folks.

It's these US tech-protecting laws that create the conditions for an eventual mass-enshittification of cleantech. It's these laws that Chinese firms – and the Chinese state – would use to secure their ability to truly be the Saudi Arabia of the sun: not just the source of the technology that converts sunshine to electrons, but also the landlord of those sunbeams, with the power to evict whole countries from their solar arrays, at the click of a mouse.

Creating a legal and technical framework for local control over cleantech's software has many advantages. The mere existence of a killswitch (or any remote-update facility that device owners can't override) makes devices vulnerable to shutdown by malicious hackers as well as manufacturers.

However, a world of cleantech devices that are under their owners' absolute control also poses some challenges to the solar revolution. If you want to build a virtual power plant by harnessing the batteries of thousands of homeowners, or relieve grid pressure by adjusting the thermostats and fridges of millions of utility subscribers, it's a lot easier if you know that you're communicating with devices that do what you tell them to do and faithfully communicate their operations to you.

That's a tradeoff we're going to have to make, though. The incremental reliability of designing technology so its owners can't override remote instructions is swamped by the massive risk that this power will be abused to attack individuals, regions, and whole countries.

As the US government turns its back on solar, the sun is setting on the American empire. It's not clear whether there will be elections next year. Trump says he'll use terrorism laws to arrest people who are "anti-Christian" or "anti-capitalist":

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/trump-classifies-anti-capitalism-as-a-political-pre-crime/

Will China step in and become the world's unipower as America shits itself to death after drinking raw milk or coughs itself to death after boycotting vaccines? I don't know. I hope we end up with a multipolar world, and that someone picks up the research agendas that Trump has destroyed. Earlier this year, Elon Musk's DOGE killed all the NIH grants that included the word "systemic" (because they're racist against the idea of "systemic racism"). Speaking as a guy whose cancer diagnosis was just upgraded from "localized" to "systemic," I really want some other well-resourced entity to do this work.

One way the EU can act as a hedge against Chinese hegemony is by turning itself to manufacturing and selling disenshittifying technology – tools to jailbreak computers, phones, consoles, and embedded systems in cars and solar inverters and medical devices. This is a giant market opportunity for the EU, and it's also key to actually moving to a "Eurostack" of technology that is independent from the American tech companies that Trump uses to project power into every company and government in the world (except China).

It doesn't matter if the EU funds an Office365 clone if there's no way to migrate data from Microsoft to that made-in-Europe alternative. No government ministry, no large firm, no civil society group is going to manually move each of their documents, messages, edit histories, directories and permissions over from a US tech product to a Eurostack alternative. To do that work, you'll need automation: scrapers, jailbreaks of virtualized devices that directly access their RAM and instruction flow.

What about America? Well, there's still the tattered remains of federalism. The states and localities have power – on paper, at least. Many of these localities (including ones in deepest, reddest Trumpland) have been able to seize control over their energy destiny. If you want to get involved in insulating your town from "the Saudi Arabia of oil" (AKA "Saudi Arabia"), check out the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's work on "Community Power":

https://ilsr.org/article/energy-democracy/four-shortcuts-to-boost-your-states-community-power-score/

Do that work, and maybe you'll be able to keep the lights on in the coming American Dark Ages. Practically speaking, it's unlikely that the rest of the world is going to accept 250 million American refugees fleeing the 50 million Trump diehards who've looted the country and torched its future.

Hey look at this (permalink)

* The Government Has Been Shut Down for Months https://prospect.org/politics/2025-09-30-government-has-been-shut-down-for-months/

I’ve Written About Loads of Scams. This One Almost Got Me. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/nyregion/zelle-chase-banking-scam.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nE8.mifp.13j7oh96HfpC&smid=url-share
Chat Control Is Back on the Menu in the EU. It Still Must Be Stopped https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/09/chat-control-back-menu-eu-it-still-must-be-stopped-0
18 Lawyers Caught Using AI Explain Why They Did It https://www.404media.co/18-lawyers-caught-using-ai-explain-why-they-did-it/
The Ann Arbor District Library Plans to Acquire the Ann Arbor Observer https://aadl.org/node/647334
Blippo+ Stands Against the Enshittification of TV https://www.endlessmode.com/video-games/blippo/blippo-stands-against-the-enshittification-of-tv

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago Stuttgart police use overwhelming force against peaceful protestors concerned about new train station https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-world-from-berlin-germany-shocked-by-disproportionate-police-action-in-stuttgart-a-720735.html

#10yrago Apple removes Ifixit’s repair manuals from App Store https://www.ifixit.com/News/7401/ifixit-app-pulled

#10yrsago Theoretical “auto-brothel” attack on mechanics’ computers could infect millions of cars https://www.wired.com/2015/10/car-hacking-tool-turns-repair-shops-malware-brothels/

#10yrsago France’s plan to legalize mass surveillance will give it the power to spy on the world https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/frances-government-aims-give-itself-and-nsa-carte-blanche-spy-world

#10yrsago Tube-map labelled with one-bedroom flat rental rates https://www.thrillist.com/lifestyle/london/london-underground-rent-map

#10yrsago Nuanced profile of the Oklahoma County where “no one believes in climate change” https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/opinions/sutter-climate-skeptics-woodward-oklahoma/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

#10yrsago Judge John Hodgman is back in the NYThttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/magazine/judge-john-hodgman-on-a-christmas-wish.html?_r=0

#10yrsago Fuerdai: Paris Hilton with Chinese characteristics https://web.archive.org/web/20151002094642/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-10-01/children-of-the-yuan-percent-everyone-hates-china-s-rich-kids

#10yrago New $50 Kindle Fire won’t recognize sideloaded ebooks on SD cards https://web.archive.org/web/20151002213918/https://teleread.com/chris-meadows/first-look-amazons-50-fire-tablet/

#10yrsago Landmark patent case will determine whether you can ever truly own a device againhttps://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-use-gadgets-may-hinge-printer-ink-case/?mbid=social_twitter

#10yrsago Internet of Things That Lie: the future of regulation is demonology https://web.archive.org/web/20151002063110/http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/rinesi20150925

#10yrsago Dieselgate for TVs: Samsung accused of programming TVs to cheat energy efficiency ratings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/01/samsung-tvs-appear-more-energy-efficient-in-tests-than-in-real-life

#10yrsago Pope: I don’t support homophobic civic layabout Kim Davis https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34425450

#10yrsago Arbitration: how America’s corporations got their own private legal system https://web.archive.org/web/20151004171307/http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/we-now-have-a-justice-system-just-for-corporations

#10yrsago Voter suppression act two: closing driver’s license offices in Alabama’s Black Belt https://www.al.com/opinion/2015/09/voter_id_and_drivers_license_o.html

#10yrsago Why an obscure left-wing MP won the UK Labour leadership by the biggest margin in history https://mondediplo.com/2015/10/04corbyn

#5yrsago Apple kills RSS readers in China https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/02/chickenized-by-arise/#rss-ccp-rip

#5yrsago Call center workers pay for the privilege https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/02/chickenized-by-arise/#arise

#5yrsago Block Google-Fitbit https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/01/the-years-of-repair/#google-fitbit

#5yrsago The Years of Repair https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/01/the-years-of-repair/#leap-manifesto

#5yrsago Private equity's profitable murder https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/01/the-years-of-repair/#mass-murder

#5yrsago Witch https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/01/the-years-of-repair/#witch

#1yrago Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street's Internet of Shit slumlords https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/#

#1yrago Epic Systems, a lethal health record monopolist https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/02/upcoded-to-death/#thanks-obama

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Boston: Enshittification with Randall Munroe (Brattle Theater), Oct 7
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-at-the-brattle-theatre-tickets-1591235180259?aff=oddtdtcreator
DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825
NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm
New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
New Orleans: Enshittification at Octavia Books, Oct 12
https://www.octaviabooks.com/event/enshittification-cory-doctorow
Chicago: How Platforms Die with Rick Perlstein (University Club), Oct 14
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-platforms-die-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1747916117159
Los Angeles: Enshittification with David Dayen (Diesel), Oct 16
https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2025-10-16/cory-doctorow-enshittification
San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works with Jenny Odell (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
PDX: Enshittification at Powell's, Oct 21
https://www.powells.com/events/cory-doctorow-10-21-25
Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/
Vancouver: Enshittification with David Moscrop (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 23
https://www.showpass.com/2025-festival-39/
Montreal: Montreal Attention Forum keynote, Oct 24
https://www.attentionconferences.com/conferences/2025-forum
Ottawa: Enshittification (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 25
https://writersfestival.org/events/fall-2025/enshittification
Toronto: Enshittification with Dan Werb (Type Books), Oct 27
https://www.instagram.com/p/DO81_1VDngu/?img_index=1
Barcelona: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/
Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
Miami: Cloudfest, Nov 6
https://www.cloudfest.com/usa/
Burbank: Burbank Book Festival, Nov 8
https://www.burbankbookfestival.com/
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

Recent appearances (permalink)

Enshittification (The.Ink)
https://the.ink/p/watch-cory-doctorow-on-why-everything
Why Everything Is Getting Worse (Majority Report)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQW6UxY144Q
Enshittification (Cornell)
https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/view/K091225/

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 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"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 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"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.
"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
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"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

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Pluralistic: Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (15 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Book Review: The Anarchy - The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple ★★★★☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

Pluralistic: How to fix the UK housing crisis (13 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Every Theatre Show is "Immersive" - Terence Eden’s Blog

Quick and dirty bar-charts using HTML's meter element - Terence Eden’s Blog

Pluralistic: The curious, intertwined history of climate and digital rights activism (11 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Pluralistic: A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage (10 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage (permalink)

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Book Review: The Breaking of Liam Glass by Charles Harris ★★★⯪☆ - Terence Eden’s Blog

Pluralistic: California bans algorithmic price-fixing (09 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Note published on October 7, 2025 at 7:08 PM UTC - Molly White's microblog feed

Pluralistic: They're just trying to earn a buck (07 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Pluralistic: Apple's unlawful evil (06 Oct 2025) - Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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