Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/autocrats-of-trade/
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Discussion
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Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us: A billionaire is a machine for producing policy failures at scale.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116200392773231841
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Hey look at this
* How Live Nation allegedly terrorized the concert industry https://www.theverge.com/report/891241/live-nation-ticketmaster-week-one-jury-trial
* Canada's One-Man Air Force – and His Calculated Airline Crusade https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/canadas-one-man-air-force-and-his
* Cloud Sovereignty Framework Self Assessment https://www.suse.com/cloud-sovereignty-framework-assessment/
* EFF, Ubuntu and Other Distros Discuss How to Respond to Age-Verification Laws https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/09/0544224/eff-ubuntu-and-other-distros-discuss-how-to-respond-to-age-verification-laws
* Reading “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” https://www.not-so-obvious.net/reading-the-ethnography-of-infrastructure/
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#15yrsago Wondrous, detailed map of the history of science fiction https://web.archive.org/web/20110310152548/http://scimaps.org/submissions/7-digital_libraries/maps/thumbs/024_LG.jpg
#15yrsago American Library Association task forces to take on ebook lending https://web.archive.org/web/20110310085634/https://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=5749
#15yrsago Wisconsin capitol bans recording, flags, reading, balloons, chairs, bags, backpacks, photography, etc etc etc https://captimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/more-rules-released-for-state-capitol-visitors/article_f044044f-6183-5128-b718-d5dffbfdb573.html
#15yrsago Librarians Against DRM logo https://web.archive.org/web/20110308170030/https://readersbillofrights.info/librariansagainstDRM
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#20yrsago Indie label uses heartfelt note instead of copy-restriction http://blog.resonancefm.com/archives/48
#20yrsago Clay Shirky’s ETECH presentation on the politics of social software https://craphound.com/youshutupetech2006.txt
#20yrsago Judge quotes Adam Sandler movie in decision blasting defendant https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/motion-denied-because-youre-idiot
#15yrsago Video game in your browser’s location bar web.archive.org/web/20110309212313/http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter
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#15yrsago Extinct invertebrates caught in a 40 million year old sex act https://web.archive.org/web/20110303234001/http://news.discovery.com/animals/40-million-year-old-sex-act-captured-in-amber.html
#15yrsago Improvised toilets of earthquake-struck Christchurch https://web.archive.org/web/20110310044912/https://www.showusyourlongdrop.co.nz/
#15yrsago Canadian MP who shills for the record industry is an enthusiastic pirate https://web.archive.org/web/20110310163136/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5673/125/
#15yrsago The Monster: the fraud and depraved indifference that caused the subprime meltdown https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/07/the-monster-the-fraud-and-depraved-indifference-that-caused-the-subprime-meltdown/
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#15yrsago Self-destructing ebooks: paper’s fragility is a bug, not a feature https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/08/ebooks-harpercollins-26-times
#10yrsago Senior U.S. immigration judge says 3 and 4 year old children can represent themselves in court https://web.archive.org/web/20160304201631/http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/03/04/us-judge-says-3-and-4-year-olds-can-represent-themselves-in-immigration-court.html
#10yrsago Crimefighting for fun and profit: data-mining Medicare fraud and likely whistleblowers https://www.wired.com/2016/03/john-mininno-medicare/
#10yrsago Extensive list of space opera cliches https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html
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#10yrsago Verizon pays $1.35M FCC settlement for using “supercookies” https://web.archive.org/web/20160308111653/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/verizon-settles-over-supercookies
#10yrsago Group chat: “an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda” https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat/#.1chnl7hf4
#10yrsago Less than a year on, America has all but forgotten the epic Jeep hack https://www.wired.com/2016/03/survey-finds-one-4-americans-remembers-jeep-hack/
#10yrsago Racial justice organizers to FBI vs Apple judge: crypto matters to #blacklivesmatter https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/the-fbi-vs-apple-debate-just-got-less-white/
#1yrago Gandersauce https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play
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Saturday's threads: The web is bearable with RSS; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116189311117746551
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
--
My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #SanFrancisco: Launch for Cindy Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights), Mar 10
https://citylights.com/events/cindy-cohn-launch-party-for-privacys-defender/
* #Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/
* #Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/
* #Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885
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