Notices by Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Just don't send me anything that is not that

@MrBerard I have never had a 'conversation' with a chatbot. Why would you ask?

@MrBerard I'm sorry I still don't understand. What does that have to do with having a 'conversation' with an llm?

(Perhaps you don't know this but a computer program cannot converse)

Also, what does reading a room have to do with whether something is correct?

It sounds like you're saying people disagree with you, then you must be wrong, irrespective of the substance?

@MrBerard on the copyright question, first, the question of whether a technology is lawful emphatically does not turn on how it is advertised. The foundational case here is betamax, where it was undisputed that Sony advertised the first VCRs for infringing purposes and the court found that nevertheless the devices were lawful.

@MrBerard secondly, I don't think arguing that you don't like something because of the intent of its maker is the defense against the charge of purity culture that you think it is.

@MrBerard finally, there's no evidence that llms themselves were invented for infringing purposes, nor that every person who has made an alline had infringement in mind. Again, the idea that no one should use a technology if anyone involved with an adjacent technology had bad intent is not the defense of a charge of purity culture you think it is.

Bad news: tonight's terrible snowstorm means that I'm not giving my Tanner Talk at the University of Utah in person.

Good news: the (previously) sold out talk is going to be on Zoom, which means anyone can attend! We're starting in 30 minutes at 19h Mountain/18h Pacific/21h Eastern, and it's open to all!

https://utah.zoom.us/j/81227694323

Passcode: Doctorow

1037 words (32992 total) on “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America #DailyWords

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: What's a "gig work minimum wage"; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/17/no-piecework/

#Pluralistic

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What's a "gig work minimum wage": The important rate is what you're paid when you're waiting for a job.

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116085742947462240

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Anyone have contact with Microsoft network ops? They've blackholed my SMTP (204.11.50.134) (which is used by me and half a dozen other people, none of whom send spam), and my admin's on vacation and I don't wanna screw up his time off. This is obviously a false positive though.

America's descent into authoritarian fascism is made all the more alarming and demoralizing by the Democrats' total failure to rise to the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KADW3ZRZLVI

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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:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification

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It's hard to talk about the Epstein class without thinking about "The Economy" - "The Economy" in the sense of a kind of mystical, free-floating entity whose health or sickness determines the outcomes for all the rest of us, whom we must make sacrifices to if we are to prosper.

--

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:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/09/sloppy-steve/#mckinley-fanfic-panic

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1007 words (25708 total) on “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America #DailyWords

Solidarity with Comrade Bill

But the US citizenship test is the *easy* part. That test sits at the center of a bureaucratic maze that no American could find their way through.

eof/

Again: I've got it easy. The people they want to put in concentration camps are doing something a million times harder than anything I've had to do to become a US citizen. People sometimes joke about how Americans couldn't pass the US citizenship test, with its questions about the tortured syntax of the 10th Amendment and the different branches of government.

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One guy, Elon Musk, took the immigration system from "frustrating and inefficient" to "totally impossible." That same guy is an avowed white nationalist - and illegal US immigrant who *did* cheat the immigration system - who sadistically celebrates the unlimited cruelty the immigration system heaps on other immigrants:

https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118277/documents/HHRG-119-JU13-20250520-SD003.pdf

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This was terrible a couple years ago, when the immigration system still had human operators you could reach by sitting on hold for several hours. Today, thanks to a single billionaire's gleeful cruelty, the system is literally unnavigable, "staffed" by a chatbot that can't answer basic questions. A timely reminder that the only jobs AI can do are the jobs that no one gives a shit about:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice

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It's also a timely reminder of the awesome destructive power of a single billionaire. This week, I took a Southwest flight to visit my daughter at college for her 18th birthday, and of course, SWA now charges for bags and seats. Multiple passengers complained bitterly and loudly about this as they boarded (despite the fact that the plane was only half full, many people were given middle seats and banned from moving to empty rows).

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