My favorite example of adversarial interoperability is the Hush-a-Phone. @pluralistic

Report: Palantir Targets UK MPs With ‘Intimidating’ Letters

"British MPs who criticised Palantir in parliament received 'intimidating' letters from the US spytech firm".

Eg, Palantir warned Clive Lewis that it "was surveilling his activities relating to Palantir last month", a letter that Lewis described as “very Big Brother” & an “implicit threat”. 

https://novaramedia.com/2026/10/22/palantir-targets-mps-with-intimidating-letters/

#UKPol #EUPol #USPol #Palantir #PalantirIntimidation #news #democracy .

While the majority are struggling with the cost of living, politicians are perpetuating a system that rewards the super-rich and punishes the rest.⁣
⁣
All humans have the right to decent housing, good education and a good life. ⁣

Hey, @EUCommission, fuck you too.

***

On Wednesday, EU Member States approved a change to the GDPR that would put the profit-making interests of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and SpaceX over European's fundamental right to data protection. According to the approved text, processing personal data “in the context of AI” should automatically be lawful. In particular, Big Tech would be able to use all personal data collected over the past decades with virtually no restrictions, as long as this happens “in the context” of AI. Schrems: “Under the agreed text, the profits of AI companies would typically trump European’s fundamental right to privacy. This is nothing but a digital expropriation of Europeans.”

https://noyb.eu/en/ai-eu-member-states-approve-digital-expropriation-europeans-ai-companies

#privacy #humanRights #EU #BigTech #corporatocracy #fascism

If someone in your life needs to hear this, here you go.

@pluralistic@.fr 's post from yesterday on the real reasons peer critique is important for writers is relevant to creative fields generally:

'Getting editorial feedback that helps you shore up the weakest spots in a story that is ultimately never published and constitutes a learning exercise has value, but it has far less value than applying the things you've learned from making and fixing those mistakes to your *next* story. … The idea that an LLM might be able to stand in for a workshop is grounded in the fallacy that the point of a workshop is to have people tell you how to fix your story, rather than analyzing other people's writing in order to develop your own critical skills.'

https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/23/better-to-give/#than-to-receive

mmh… something went very wrong, i guess

- art by @royaards

#ai #ki

What a perfect time to tell you all how great @pluralistic ’s book Enshittification is.

It’s the true story of how and why all things on the internet that were once great and drew us all in eventually changed. What started as a nice piece of cheese that everyone enjoyed end up becoming the bait that tech companies built a trap around. They then used us as bait to build a trap around advertisers.

The terrible cheese analogy is entirely mine. I promise the book doesn’t mention tech cheese. 😂

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/7149d003-daa2-4d4b-a83c-da82a24c1248

#books #tech #data #pii #corydoctorow #enshittification

@pluralistic

One benefit of a writing group critique that very much caught me by surprise was that group-mates critiques of my story surfaced specific anxieties I had that I didn't have the chops to evaluate (or maybe even be conscious of) on my own.

A strange sort of validation: supporting not necessarily my writing skill, but rather reinforcing my writing •judgement•.

I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3myl2wkfhss2v

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You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/23/better-to-give/

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If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🐄". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

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You can also get a fulltext RSS feed, licensed CC BY 4.0:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

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Recent appearances:

* Clint Eastwood (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/NoGodsNoMayors/posts/clint-eastwood-173008088

* Life After AI (Brain Bar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPa43-n0vI

* Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

* AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

* AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

* Virtual: Enshittification, AI, and the Future of Technology (UBC Master of Educational Technology), Nov 28
https://met.ubc.ca/2026/09/met-speaker-series-cory-doctorow-enshittification-ai-and-the-future-of-technology/

* #Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

* #Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
https://montreal2027.ca/en

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Upcoming appearances:

* #Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

* #Vienna: TED AI, Oct 28-30
https://tedai-vienna.ted.com/

* #Kilkenny: Kilkenomics, Nov 6-8
https://kilkenomics.com/

* #Courtenay: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

* #Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

* #Oxford: Ministry of the Future, Nov 23
https://ministryforthefuture.co.uk/events.html

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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."

https://craphound.com/shop/

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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

--

My previous nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It":

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

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Wednesday's threads: Adversarial interoperability is a team sport; and more!

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/117480830338262316

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#10yrsago RIP, Tom Hayden: Yippie, radical, politician, author https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37749127

#10yrsago Audit reveals significant vulnerabilities in Truecrypt and its successors https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2016/10/18/veracrypt-security-audit/

#5yrsago Cyber-mercenaries helped Saudis hack an NYT reporter https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

#5yrsago The Traitorous Eight and the Battle of Germanium Valley https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

#1yrago Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/#pee-bottles

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#15yrsago Understanding the hyperrich through the lens of tomorrow’s history http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/10/a-cultural-experiment.html

#15yrsago Scored: pulse-pounding/thought-provoking YA novel about surveillance https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/24/scored-pulse-pounding-thought-provoking-ya-novel-about-surveillance/

#10yrsago UAE surveillance contractor is recruiting an army of foreign hackers to break into its citizens’ devices https://web.archive.org/web/20161024141138/https://theintercept.com/2016/10/24/darkmatter-united-arab-emirates-spies-for-hire/

#10yrsago Publicly-funded NZ company sold mass surveillance tech to torturers and GCHQ https://web.archive.org/web/20161023101410/https://theintercept.com/2016/10/23/endace-mass-surveillance-gchq-governments/

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#20yrsago Investigative journal: “Fair use is not applicable” https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/shlep/2006/10/23/whaddayaknow-about-fair-use-and-copyright/

#20yrsago Warners stiffs African amputee film extras on prosthetics promise https://web.archive.org/web/20061105004400/http://www.nypost.com/seven/10232006/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

#20yrsago Former FCC Chairman shills against Net Neutrality https://web.archive.org/web/20061028043416/http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003577.shtml

#15yrsago Plotting advice for fiction writers http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013243.html

#15yrsago DARPA wants vampire satellites to harvest parts from dead sats prior to decommissioning https://web.archive.org/web/20111022223128/http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2011/10/20.aspx

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