Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray: The business model for AI is the same as the business model for Big Data - bilking credulous advertisers.

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11446665…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-05-07 12:54:52

Zuck's told investors how he plans to make back the tens of billions he's spending on AI: he's going to use it to make ads that can bypass our critical faculties and convince anyone to buy anything. In other words, Meta will make an AI mind-control ray and rent it out to grateful advertisers.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah…

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Pluralistic: Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again) (07 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

^{pluralistic.net}

Hey look at this

* The Epochalypse Project epochalypse-project.org

* Censoring Social Media tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/20…

* RSA cofounder: The world would've been better without cryptocurrencies theregister.com/2025/04/29/cry… (h/t Super Punch)

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#20yrsago V-TV DAY: WE WON THE BROADCAST FLAG FIGHT! memex.craphound.com/2005/05/06…

#20yrsago Google Accelerator is bad news for Web apps signalvnoise.com/archives2/goo…

#15yrsago UNESCO’s bizarre World Anti-Piracy Observatory web.archive.org/web/2010030800…

#15yrsago Naked scanner reveals airport screener’s tiny penis, sparks steel baton fight with fellow officers staugustine.com/story/news/nat…

#15yrsago India’s e-voting machines vulnerable to fraud indiaevm.org

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#15yrsago Roy Lichtenstein’s estate claims copyright over the images he appropriated web.archive.org/web/2010050922…

#10yrsago Mass protests, brutal crackdown in Macedonia balkaninsight.com/2015/05/06/m…

#10yrsago Which UK MPs rebel against the party, and with whom do they ally? vartree.blogspot.com/2015/05/v…

#10yrsago Legal threat against security researcher claims he violated lock’s copyright arstechnica.com/information-te…

#10yrsago Talent, practice and doing the hard stuff locusmag.com/2015/05/cory-doct…

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#5yrsago Ohio's got snitchline for bosses whose workers who won't go back pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/mol…

#5yrsago Appeals court says Miami jail doesn't need to provide soap pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/mol…

#5yrsago Scarfolk death statistics pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/mol…

#5yrsago Sacrifice banks to save businesses pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/mol…

#5yrsago America's corporate lobbyists want a bailout pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/mol…

7/

#1yrago Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one…

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Yesterday's threads: The Adventures of Mary Darling; and more!

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11446170…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-05-06 15:55:38

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: The Adventures of Mary Darling; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/05/06/nev…

#Pluralistic

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Pluralistic: The Adventures of Mary Darling (06 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

^{pluralistic.net}

My last nationally bestselling novel was "The Bezzle," an ice-cold revenge story of high-tech finance crime starring the forensic accountant Martin Hench.

us.macmillan.com/books/9781250…

Signed copies from Chevalier's Books:

chevaliersbooks.com/product-pa…

--

My latest nonfiction book is "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" from Verso Books:

seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Signed copies available from Book Soup:

booksoup.com/book/978180429124…

Both are national bestsellers!

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Book details - Macmillan Publishers

New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's The Bezzle is a high stakes thriller where the lives of the hundreds of thousands of inmates in California’s pris...

^Macmillan

My ebooks and audiobooks (from 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."

craphound.com/shop/

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Upcoming appearances:

* #Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15
whitewhalebookstore.com/events…

* #Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/

* Virtual: Writing to Resist (California Writers Club Berkeley):
cwc-berkeley.org/writing-to-re…

* #PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
crowdsupply.com/teardown/portl…

* #PDX: Picks and Shovels with BUNNIE HUANG at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
stores.barnesandnoble.com/even…

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
howtoacademy.com/events/cory-d…

* #Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell's Bookshop, Jul 2
eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-…

* #Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 3
uk.coop/events-and-training/ev…

* #NewOrleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
contraflowscifi.org/

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Recent appearances:

* Don't Be Evil (Who Killed the Internet?)
cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.674…

* How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Cloudfest)
youtube.com/watch?v=_Ai-fC-2Bp…

* Move Fast and Break Kings
flipboard.video/w/2aH2AFNTPjcd…

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Flipboard Video

2025-04-24 21:42:39

Move Fast and Break Kings, with Cory Doctorow

Blogger, journalist, author and activist Cory Doctorow can embark on a 10-minute monologue about what’s wrong with tech and still leave you hungering for more of his rapid-fire analysis and biting humor. It’s stunning to be presented with the big picture of the mess we’re in — and how to potentially get out of it.

In this episode of Dot Social, recorded live at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025, Doctorow unpacks the concept of “enshittification.” It’s a term he coined to show how we got to this place where platforms prioritize business interests over user experience, leading to tragic declines in quality and trust. He talks about how to challenge platform monopolies and the importance of true federation.

Highlights include:

01:52 The path to enshittification
12:50 Is there a way out of this?
17:18 How Cory uses RSS
22:20 Advice for people building the social web
28:07 Take on Bluesky and Mastodon
33:44 On being a “sharecropper in Musk’s farm”
36:05 EFF’s biggest mandate this year
39:04 What bad regulations are going away?
40:16 Is enshittification inevitable?
46:27 What happened to change the way that we enforce antitrust?
53:14 “Radicalized” and take on political violence
59:27 Cory’s book, “Picks and Shovels”

🔎 You can find Cory at @pluralistic@mamot.fr

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social

🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new beta from the people at Flipboard. about.surf.social/

Surf – Join the Surf Beta Waitlist

^Surf

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

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Today's top sources: Slashdot (slashdot.org/).

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I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in #PITTSBURGH at White Whale Books on May 15:

whitewhalebookstore.com/events…

and then in #PDX with BUNNIE HUANG at Barnes and Noble on Jun 20:

More tour dates (#London, #Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

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