[Plura-list] Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain; The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV)

Tue Feb 20 23:44:10 EST 2024

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/

Today's links

* Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain: A search monopolist should never do a layoff, buyback or dividend for so long as it's enshittifying.

* The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV): LA Sheriff's Deputies are the most violent gangs in LA.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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↩️ Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google - which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed *magic* - suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads *are* scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works - just that it works for people stupider than *them*."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system - The Algorithm (TM) - in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh - who review air purifiers - describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims - like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in *Better Homes and Gardens*'s Des Moines lab - result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the *Better Homes and Gardens* top air purifiers perform in comparison to the - extensively documented - tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on *BH&G* comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model *BH&G* chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by *Consumer Reports*. Either *BH&G*'s rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or *BH&G* absolutely *sucks* at rigorous testing.

*BH&G*'s competitors commit the same sins - literally, the *exact* same sins. *Real Simple*'s reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." *Real Simple* has the same corporate parent as *BH&G*: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a *lot* of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists *22* air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like *Popular Science*, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs *PopSci* makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they *loooove* Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: *Rolling Stone*, *Forbes*, *US News and Report*, *CNN*, *New York Magazine*, *CNN*, *CNET*, *Tom's Guide*, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that  if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET *used* to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an *entire smart home* and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like *BH&G* into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that *BH&G* can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh - through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all - so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, *BH&G* has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do *real* rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in...making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like *Better Homes and Gardens* and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into *fixing this problem*. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be *fixing their shit*.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's *very* frustrating. When they vaporize *seventy billion dollars* on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's *outrageous*.

Google's scale *has* transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground - and endless temptation - for scammers.

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↩️ The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV)

This week marks the publication of my latest novel, *The Bezzle*, and to celebrate, I'm serializing an excerpt from Chapter 14 in six parts:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

*The Bezzle* is a revenge story, a crime novel, and a technothriller. It stars Martin Hench, a hard-fighting forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding high-tech scams. Hench made his debt in last year's *Red Team Blues* (now in paperback!); *The Bezzle* is a standalone followup:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

The serial tells the tale of Stefon Magner, AKA Steve Soul, a once-famous R&B frontman whose disintegrating career turned to tragedy when his crooked manager forged his signature on a rights assignment contract that let him steal all of Stefon's royalties, which ballooned after modern hiphop artists discovered his grooves and started buying licenses to sample them. The first three installments related the sad circumstances of Stefon's life, and the real-world analogues (like Leonard Cohen and George Clinton, both of whom were pauperized by sticky-fingered managers) as well as one real-world countermeasure, copyright termination, a thing that more artists should know about and use:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Today's installment weaves in a major subplot for the first time in the serial: Los Angeles's notorious, murderous Sheriff's Deputy gangs. These are another unbelievable true tale: for decades, the LASD's deputies have formed themselves into criminal gangs, some of which require that initiates murder someone to be inducted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

They sport gang tattoos, have secret signs, and run vast criminal enterprises. This has been the subject of numerous investigative press reports, and one extensive official report that called the gangs "a cancer":

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deputy-gangs-cancer-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-department-scathing-re-rcna73367

The sordid tales of the LASD gangs beggar belief. For example, deputies in charge of LA County jails forced inmates to pit-fight and took bets on the outcomes:

https://www.aclu.org/publications/report-cruel-and-usual-punishment-how-savage-gang-deputies-controls-la-county-jails

The taxpayers of LA have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to settle claims against LA's criminals with badges:

https://news.yahoo.com/deputies-accused-being-secret-societies-230851807.html

Periodically, LA judges and officials will insist that they are tackling the problem:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-17/dozens-of-lasd-deputies-ordered-to-show-suspected-gang-tattoos-reveal-others-who-have-them

But at ever turn, the LA police "unions" manage to crush these investigations:

https://abc7.com/los-angeles-county-lasd-deputy-gangs-cliques/13492081/

And top cops are right there with them, insisting that these aren't "gangs" - they're just "subgroups":

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/01/former-la-sheriff-villanueva-sheriffs-gangs-are-just-subgroups/

It's very weird being an Angeleno and knowing that one of the largest, most militarized, best funded police departments in the world has been openly captured by a hyperviolent crime syndicate. When I was in the Skyboat Media studios last December with Wil Wheaton recording the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, Wil broke off from reading to say, "You know, someone's going to read this and google it and have their mind blown when they discover that it's real":

https://sowl.co/8nyGh

That's one of my favorite ways to turn literature into something more than entertainment. It's why I filled the *Little Brother* books with real-world surveillance, cryptography and security tech, giving enough detail to advance the plot *and* give readers an idea of what search terms would let them understand and use the concepts in the novel. That's something I'm happy to keep up with the *Hench* novels, unpicking the inner workings of scams and corruption. The more of us who are wise to this, the sooner we'll be able to get rid of it.

Here's part one of the serial:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

Part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

Part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#lawyer-up

And now, onto part four!

* * *

The last of the boxes had been shelved.

Benedetto rose from his chair. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to the movers, and dug a roll of twenties out of his pocket and handed each of them two of their own. He turned to me as they filed out. “You wanna get sushi? The place next door is *great*.”

The empty storefront was in a down-at-heels strip mall in Eagle Rock. On one side, there was a Brazilian jujitsu studio that never seemed to have any students training in it. On the other side was Sushi Jiro, name on a faded sign with half its lightbulbs gone. Beyond that was a vaping store.

“The place next door is *good*?”

He laughed. “You San Francisco motherfuckers got terrible LA restaurant radar. Put Sushi Jiro in the Mission and it’d have a Michelin star and a six-month waiting list. Here it’s in a strip mall and only the locals know how good it is. Bet you never had a decent meal in this town, am I right?”

“I’ve had a few,” I said, “but I admit my track record isn’t great.”

“Let’s improve it.”

The sushi was amazing.

#

Inglewood Jams had the kind of books that were *performatively* bad, designed to foil any attempt at human comprehension.

But whoever cooked them was an amateur, someone who mistook *complexity* for *obfuscation*. Like *cross-referencing* was a species of transcendentally esoteric sorcery. I don’t mind cross-referencing. It’s meditative, like playing solitaire. I had Benedetto send over some colored post-it tabs and a big photocopier with an automatic feeder and I started making piles.

One night, I worked later than I planned. Sushi Jiro was becoming a serious hazard to my waistline and my sleep-debt, because when your dinner break is ten yards and two doors away from your desk, it’s just too damned easy to get back to work after dinner.

That night, I’d fallen into a cross-referencing reverie, and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m., my lower back was groaning, and my eyes were stinging.

I straightened, groaned, and slid my laptop into my bag. I found my keys and unlocked the door. The storefront was covered with brown butcher’s paper, but it didn’t go all the way to the edge. I had just a moment to sleepily note that there was some movement visible through the crack in the paper over the glass door when it came flying back toward me, bouncing off my toe, mostly, and my nose, a little. I put my one hand to my face as I instinctively threw myself into the door to close it again.

I was too late and too tired. A strong shoulder on the other side of the doorframe pushed it open and I stumbled back, and then the guy was on me, the door sighing shut behind him on its gas lift as he bore me to the ground and straddled my chest, a move he undertook with the ease of much practice. He pinned my arms under his knees and then gave me a couple of hard hits, one to the jaw, one to the nose.

My lip and nose were bleeding freely and my head was ringing from the hits and from getting smacked into the carpet tiles over concrete when I went down backward. I struggled—to free my arms, to buck off my attacker, to focus on him.

He was a beefy white guy in his late fifties, with watery dark eyes and a patchy shave that showed gray mixed in with his dark stubble. As he raised his fist for another blow, I saw that he was wearing a big class ring. A minute later, that ring opened my cheek, just under the orbit of my eye.

Apart from some involuntary animal grunts, I hadn’t made a sound. Now I did. “Ow!” I shouted. “Shit!” I shouted. “Stop!” I shouted.

He split my lip again. I bucked hard but I couldn’t budge him. He had a double chin, a gut, and he was strong, and used that bulk to back up his strength. It was like trying to free myself from under a boulder. That kept punching me in the face.

The strip mall would be deserted. Everything was closed, even the vaping store.

Shouting wouldn’t help. I did it anyway. He shut my mouth for me with a left. I gagged on blood.

He took a break from punching me in the face, then. I think he was tired. His chest heaved, and he wiped sweat off his lip with the back of his hand, leaving behind a streaky mustache of my blood.

He *contemplated* me, weighing me up. I thought maybe he was trying to decide if I had any fight left in me, or perhaps whether I had any valuables he could help himself to.

He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “Goddammit, I messed your face up so bad I can’t tell for sure. I hope to fuck that you’re Martin Hench, though.”

Even with my addled wits, this was an important piece of intelligence: *he came here for me*. This wasn’t a random act of senseless Los Angeles street violence. This was aimed at *me*.

I was briefly angry at Benedetto for not warning me that Chuy Flores was such a tough son of a bitch. Then I had the presence of mind to lie.

“I don’t know who the fuck this Mark Hendricks is.” My voice was thick with gargled blood, but I was proud of *Mark Hendricks*. Pretty fast thinking for a guy with a probable concussion. The guy slapped me open-handed across the face, and as I lay dazed for a moment, he shifted, reached into my back pocket for my wallet, and yanked it—and the seat of my pants—free. Before I could react, his knees were back on my biceps, pinning my arms and shoulders. It was a very neat move, and fast for an old guy like him.

He flipped my wallet open and squinted at it, then held it at arm’s length, then smiled broadly. He had bleach-white teeth, a row of perfectly uniform caps. Los fucking Angeles, where even the thugs have a million-dollar smile.

“Shoulda sprung for botox,” I slurred.

His grin got wider. “Maybe someday I will. Got these in trade from a cosmetic dentist I did some work for.” He dropped my wallet. “Listen, Martin Hench, you stay the fuck away from Thames Estuary and Lawrence Coleman.”

“It’s Lionel Coleman,” I said.

“What the fuck ever,” he said. He labored to his feet. I stayed still. He looked at me from a great height, and I stared up his nostrils. Without warning, he kicked my ribs hard enough that I heard one of them crack.

“You’ve been told,” he said to my writhing body, and let himself out.

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↩️ Hey look at this

* Street Of Satisfaction https://soundcloud.com/dj-moule/street-of-satisfaction

* Don’t Fall for the Latest Changes to the Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/dont-fall-latest-changes-dangerous-kids-online-safety-act

* Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york-times-might-win-its-copyright-lawsuit-against-openai/

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↩️ This day in history

#15yrsago Tesla coils sing the Doctor Who theme in orgy of electric awesomesauce https://arcattack.com/about-us/

#15yrsago HOWTO Make a duct-tape corsage https://www.instructables.com/How_to_Make_a_Duct_Tape_Corsage_and_Flowers/

#15yrsago 419 scammer impersonates the nation of Ethiopia, takes $27 million from Citibank https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/nyregion/21scam.html

#15yrsago On the demise of books, newspapers, music and movies https://web.archive.org/web/20090301000000*/https://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=171555&

#15yrsago Future of News video from 1981: epitome of foolish futurism https://memex.craphound.com/2009/02/20/future-of-news-video-from-1981-epitome-of-dumb-futurism/

#10yrsago Comic explains problems with Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center surveillance plan https://medium.com/the-nib/the-testing-ground-for-the-new-surveillance-db4f129a7177

#10yrsago Well-Sorted Version, an alphabetical Bible https://www.wellsortedversion.com

#10yrsago Sculptor collaborates with honeybees to cover statues with comb https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/02/artist-aganetha-dyck-collaborates-with-bees-to-create-sculptures-wrapped-in-honeycomb/

#10yrsago Obama’s top Trans-Pacific Partnership officials were given millions by banks before taking the job https://www.republicreport.org/2014/big-banks-tpp/

#10yrsago Report from a meeting of Wall Street’s secret, tasteless plutocrats’ club https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

#10yrsago Edgar Allan Poe’s interior design proscriptions https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/edgar-allan-poe-interior-design-critic-180949543/

#10yrsago Museums and the free world: keynote from the Museums and the Web conference in Florence https://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/glam-and-the-free-world/

#5yrsago Florida inmates sue prisons for digitally confiscating the music they were sold https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2019/02/19/florida-prisoners-could-form-class-action-to-demand-refund-on-confiscated-media-players-and-files/5881894007/

#5yrsago Owner of civil war reenactment business sues school district that canceled field trips after his far-right social media came to light https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-rileys-farm-lawsuit-oak-glen-20190219-story.html

#5yrsago FDA: infusing young people’s blood will not improve your health https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/19/health/plasma-infusion-young-blood-fda-bn/index.html

#5yrsago A malicious USB cable with its own wifi rig https://twitter.com/_MG_/status/1094389042685259776

#5yrsago Magic Lantern: feature-rich addons for Canon EOS cameras https://www.magiclantern.fm

#5yrsago Google admits Nest security product has a secret mic, insists it wasn’t supposed to be a secret https://www.businessinsider.com/nest-microphone-was-never-supposed-to-be-a-secret-2019-2

#1yrago Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

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↩️ Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: How I Got Scammed (https://craphound.com/news/2024/02/18/how-i-got-scammed/)

Upcoming appearances:

* The Bezzle at Weller Book Works (Salt Lake City), Feb 21
https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

* The Bezzle at Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego), Feb 22
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow

* The Bezzle at Vroman's (Pasadena), Feb 24
https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle

* The Bezzle at Third Place Books (Seattle), Feb 26
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow

* The Bezzle at Powell's (Portland) Feb 27:
https://www.powells.com/book/the-bezzle-martin-hench-2-9781250865878/1-2

* The Bezzle at Changing Hands (Phoenix), Feb 29:
https://www.changinghands.com/event/february2024/cory-doctorow

* Tucson Festival of Books, Mar 9/10
https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676

* Enshittification: How the Internet Went Bad and How to Get it Back (virtual), Mar 26
https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3781006

* Wondercon Anaheim, Mar 29-31
https://www.comic-con.org/wc/

* The Bezzle at Anderson's Books (Chicago), Apr 17
https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1

* Torino Biennale Tecnologia (Apr 19-21)
https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia

* Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337?aff=oddtdtcreator

* Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival (May 5-11)
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/

* Media Ecology Association keynote, Jun 6-9 (Amherst, NY)
https://media-ecology.org/convention

* American Association of Law Libraries keynote, (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/

Recent appearances:

* This Is Hell
https://thisishell.com/interviews/1701-cory-doctorow

*  From privacy to paper jams, a look at printer problems
https://www.ctpublic.org/show/the-colin-mcenroe-show/2024-02-15/from-privacy-to-paper-jams-a-look-at-printer-problems

* Big Story Podcast
https://thebigstorypodcast.ca/2024/02/13/a-story-about-how-anyone-yes-even-you-can-get-scammed/

Latest books:

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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