Mike Lee and Jim Jordan want to kill the law that bans companies from cheating you: Section 5 of the FTC Act is a century-old Swiss Army Knife for fighting corruption.

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11442297…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-04-29 19:46:29

House and Senate Republicans are on the verge of killing Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, one of the most potent anti-corruption laws on the US statute books:

thebignewsletter.com/p/house-g…

--

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/2025/04/29/che…

1/

House GOP Proposes Eliminating Key Antitrust Law

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan released a bill to move all antitrust work from the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice, deleting a key antitrust law. PBMs and Amazon could benefit.

^{Matt Stoller (BIG by Matt Stoller)}

Hey look at this

* At 93, legendary Disney imagineer Bob Gurr has stories to tell latimes.com/travel/story/2025-… (h/t Alice)

* Birth rates are falling. But solutions are focused on the wrong thing. yourlocalepidemiologist.substa…

* The World After Amazon afteramazon.world

4/

#20yrsago Tell US govt not to steal tax-funded weather from the public web.archive.org/web/2005042918…

#20yrsago Fairfax libraries waste tax-dollars on DRM his.com/~pshapiro/audiobook.ht…

#20yrsago Dirty tricks at WIPO web.archive.org/web/2005042918…

#15yrsago Goodhart’s Law: Once you measure something, it changes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart…

#15yrsago All of Gopherspace as a single download changelog.complete.org/archive…

5/

#15yrsago Timeline of Facebook privacy policy: from reasonable (2005) to apocalyptic (2010) web.archive.org/web/2010050104…

#15yrsago Top US psychiatric pharmaceuticals, 2009 edition web.archive.org/web/2010042908…

#15yrsago Canadian record industry won’t say what it wants michaelgeist.ca/2010/04/cria-o…

#15yrsago Music industry spokesman loves child porn christianengstrom.wordpress.co…

#15yrsago Mississippi school purges top student from yearbook for being lesbian jacksonfreepress.com/news/2010…

6/

#10yrsago Lifting the lid on Scientology’s fatally woo version of rehab muckrock.com/news/archives/201…

#5yrsago "Essential" workers will strike across America for May Day pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/for…

#5yrsago Citizen DJ pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/for…

#5yrsago NYC will pedestrianize 40 miles of city streets pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/for…

#5yrsago Foreclosure vultures hold illegal auctions on courthouse steps pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/for…

#5yrsago The law is free pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/for…

7/

#5yrsago DRM and CHI pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/for…

8/

Sunday's threads: The enshittification of tech jobs; and more!

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11441219…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-04-27 22:06:26

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: The enshittification of tech jobs; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/som…

#Pluralistic

1/

Pluralistic: The enshittification of tech jobs (27 Apr 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!

10/

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/

11/

Upcoming appearances:

* #Auckland: Unity Books, May 2, 6PM
eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-…

* #Wellington: Unity Books, May 3, 3PM
unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-even…

* #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…

12/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #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…

* #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…

13/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

14/

Recent appearances:

* 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…

* Beyond the Web (Ostrom Workshop)
youtube.com/watch?v=-WfO-9G4Eg…

15/

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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16/

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

Catch me in NEW ZEALAND at UNITY BOOKS in #AUCKLAND on FRIDAY (May 2, 6PM):

eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-…

and #WELLINGTON on SATURDAY (May 3, 3PM):

unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-even…

More tour dates (PDX, Pittsburgh, London, Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

eof/