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Today's links
- Trump antitrust is dead: The "populist right" was doomed to fail.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Premature internet activists; Privacy Without Monopoly; "Broad Band"; Yazidi supersoldiers; I was a Jeopardy! clue.
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Trump antitrust is dead (permalink)
Remember when the American right decided that it hated (some) big businesses, specifically Big Tech? A whole branch of the Trump coalition (including JD Vance, Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley) declared themselves to be "Khanservatives," a cheering section for Biden's generationally important FTC commissioner Lina Khan:
https://www.fastcompany.com/91156980/trump-vp-pick-j-d-vance-supports-big-tech-antitrust-crackdown
Trump owes his power to his ability to bully and flatter a big, distrustful coalition of people who mostly hate each other into acting together, like the business lobby and the grievance-saturated conspiratorialists who hate Big Tech because they were momentarily prevented from calling for genocide or peddling election disinformation:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/18/winning-is-easy/#governing-is-harder
The best framing for the MAGA war on Big Tech comes from Trashfuture's Riley Quinn, who predicted that the whole thing could be settled by tech companies' boards agreeing to open every meeting with a solemn "stolen likes acknowledgment" that made repentance for all the shadowbanned culture warriors whose clout had been poached by soy content moderators.
And that's basically what happened. Trump's antitrust agencies practiced "boss politics antitrust" in which favored courtiers were given free passes to violate the law, while Trump's enemies were threatened with punitive antitrust investigations until they fell into line:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/29/bondi-and-domination/#superjove
Trump's antitrust boss Gail Slater talked a big game about "Trump Antitrust" but was thwarted at every turn by giant corporations who figured out that if they gave a million bucks to a MAGA podcaster, they could go over Slater's head and kill her enforcement actions. When Slater's deputy, Roger Alford, went public to denounce the sleazy backroom dealings that led to the approval of the Hewlitt Packard Enterprise/Juniper merger, he was forced out of the agency altogether and replaced with a Pam Bondi loyalist who served as a kind of politburo political officer in Slater's agency:
Bondi made no secret of her contempt for Slater, and frequently humiliated her in public. Now it seems that Bondi has gotten tired of this game and has forced Slater out altogether. As ever, Matt Stoller has the best analysis of how this happened and what it means:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-antitrust-chief-ousted-by-ticketmaster
Stoller's main thesis is that the "conservative populist" movement only gained relevance by complaining about "censorship of conservatives" on the Big Tech platforms. While it's true that the platforms constitute an existential risk to free expression thanks to their chokehold over speech forums, it was always categorically untrue that conservatives were singled out by tech moderators:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen
Conservative populists' grievance-based politics is in contrast with the progressive wing of the anti-monopoly movement, which was concerned with the idea of concentrated power itself, and sought to dismantle and neuter the power of the business lobby and the billionaires who ran it:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/
The problem with conservative populism, then, is that its movement was propelled by the idea that Big Tech was soy and cucked and mean to conservatives. That meant that Big Tech bosses had an easy path out of its crosshairs: climb into the tank for MAGA.
That's just what they did: Musk bought Twitter; Zuck ordered his content moderators to censor the left and push MAGA influencers; Bezos neutered his newspaper in the run up to the 2024 elections; Tim Cook hand-assembled a gold participation trophy for Trump live on camera. These CEOs paid a million dollars each for seats on Trump's inauguration dais and their companies donated millions for Trump's Epstein Memorial Ballroom.
Slater's political assassination merely formalizes something that's been obvious for a year now: you can rip off the American people with impunity so long as you flatter and bribe Trump.
The HPE/Juniper merger means that one company now supplies the majority of commercial-grade wifi routers, meaning that one company now controls all the public, commercial, and institutional internet you'll ever connect to. The merger was worth $14b, and Trump's trustbusters promised to kill it. So the companies paid MAGA influencer Mike Davis (who had publicly opposed the merger) a million bucks and he got Trump to overrule his own enforcers. Getting your $14b merger approved by slipping a podcaster a million bucks is a hell of a bargain.
HPE/Juniper were first, but they weren't the last. There was the Discover/Capital One merger, which rolled up the two credit cards that low-waged people rely on the most, freeing the new company up for even more predatory practices, price-gouging, junk-fees, and strong-arm collections. When the bill collectors are at your door looking for thousands you owe from junk fees, remember that it was Gail Slater's weakness that sent them there:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/business/dealbook/capital-one-discover-merger.html
Slater also waved through the rollup of a string of nursing homes by one of the world's most notoriously greedy and cruel private equity firms, KKR. When your grandma dies of dehydration in a dirty diaper, thank Gail Slater:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan
Slater approved the merger of Unitedhealth – a company notorious for overbilling the government while underdelivering to patients – with Amedisys, who provide hospice care and home health help:
The hits keep coming. Want to know why your next vacation was so expensive? Thank Slater for greenlighting the merger of American Express Global Business Travel and CWT Holdings, which Slater challenged but then dropped, reportedly because MAGA influencer Mike Davis told her to.
Davis also got Slater to reverse her opposition to the Compass/Anywhere Real Estate merger, which will make America's dysfunctional housing market even worse:
It's not just homebuyers whose lives are worse off because of Slater's failures, it's tenants, too. Slater settled the DoJ's case against Realpage, a price-fixing platform for landlords that is one of the most culpable villains in the affordability crisis. Realpage was facing an existential battle with the DoJ; instead, they got away with a wrist-slap and (crucially) are allowed to continue to make billions helping landlords rig the rental market against tenants.
So Slater's defenestration is really just a way of formalizing Trump's approach to antitrust: threaten and prosecute companies that don't bend the knee to the president, personally…and allow companies to rob the American people with impunity if they agree to kick up a percentage to the Oval Office.
But while Slater will barely rate a footnote in the history of the Trump administration, the precipitating event for her political execution is itself very interesting. Back in September, Trump posed with Kid Rock and announced that he was going after Ticketmaster/Live Nation, a combine with a long, exhaustively documented history of ripping off and defrauding every entertainer, fan and venue in America:
At the time, it was clear that Trump had been prodded into action by two factors: the incredible success of the Mamdani campaign's focus on "affordability" (Ticketmaster's above-inflation price hikes are one of the most visible symptoms of the affordability crisis) and Kid Rock's personal grievances about Ticketmaster.
Kid Rock is the biggest-name entertainer in the Trump coalition, the guy Trump got to headline a MAGA halftime show that notably failed to dim Bad Bunny's star by a single milliwatt. Trump – a failed Broadway producer – is also notoriously susceptible to random pronouncements by celebrities (hence the Fox and Friends-to-Trump policy pipeline), so it's natural that Kid Rock's grousing got action after decades of documented abuses went nowhere.
Ticketmaster could have solved the problem by offering to exempt Trump-loyal entertainers from its predatory practices. They could have announced a touring Trumpapalooza festival headlined by Kid Rock, Christian rock acts, and AI-generated country singers, free from all junk fees. Instead, they got Gail Slater fired.
Mike Davis doesn't just represent HPE/Juniper, Amex travel, and Compass/Anywhere – he's also the fixer that Ticketmaster hired to get off the hook with the DoJ. He's boasting about getting Slater fired:
https://x.com/gekaminsky/status/2022076364279755066
And Ticketmaster is off the hook:
https://prospect.org/2026/02/12/trump-justice-department-ticketmaster-live-nation-monopoly/
What's interesting about all this is that there were elements of the Biden coalition that also hated antitrust (think of all the Biden billionaires who called for Lina Khan to be fired while serving as "proxies" for Kamala Harris). And yet, Biden's trustbusters did more in four short years than their predecessors managed over the preceding forty.
Stoller's theory is that the progressive anti-monopoly movement (the "Brandeisians") were able to best their coalitional rivals because they did the hard work of winning support for the idea of shattering corporate power itself – not just arguing that corporate power was bad when it was used against them.
This was a slower, harder road than dividing up the world into good monopolies and bad ones, but it paid off. Today the Brandeisians who made their bones under Biden are serving the like of Mamdani:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/15/unconscionability/#standalone-authority
And their ideas have spread far and wide – even to other countries:
https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/public-options-full-plan/
They lit a fire that burns still. Who knows, maybe someday it'll even help Kid Rock scorch the Ticketmaster ticks that are draining his blood from a thousand tiny wounds. He probably won't have the good manners to say thank you.
Hey look at this (permalink)
- PROPOSAL FOR A STUDY ON TYPES OF BUSINESS MODELS AND ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES CREATED BY AND THROUGH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES (TPMs) https://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_47/sccr_47_12.pdf
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Wes Cook and the Centralia McDonald's Mural https://cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcdonalds-mural/
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why this, why now, why not? https://backofmind.substack.com/p/why-this-why-now-why-not
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Peter Mandelson Invokes Press Harassment Protections To Dodge Questions About His Support Of Jeffrey Epstein https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/11/peter-mandelson-invokes-press-harassment-protections-to-dodge-questions-about-his-support-of-jeffrey-epstein/
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The Philosophical Prospects of Large Language Models in the Future of Mathematics https://mxphi.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/FT.pdf
Object permanence (permalink)
#20yrsago Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users? https://memex.craphound.com/2006/02/13/google-video-drm-why-is-hollywood-more-important-than-users/
#20yrsago Phishers trick Internet “trust” companies https://web.archive.org/web/20060222232249/http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/02/the_new_face_of_phishing_1.html
#15yrsago With a Little Help: first post-publication progress report https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/46105-with-a-little-help-the-early-returns.html
#15yrsago Nokia’s radical CEO has a mercenary, checkered past https://web.archive.org/web/20100608100324/http://www.siliconbeat.com/2008/01/11/microsoft-beware-stephen-elop-is-a-flight-risk/
#15yrsago Scientology’s science fictional origins: thesis from 1981 https://web.archive.org/web/20110218045653/http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/126/
#10yrsago I was a Jeopardy! clue https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/13/i-was-a-jeopardy-clue/
#10yrsago Liberated Yazidi sex slaves become a vengeful, elite anti-ISIS fighting force https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-yazidi-sex-slaves-take-up-arms-for-mosul-fight-to-bring-our-women-home-a6865056.html
#10yrsago Listen: a new podcast about science fiction and spectacular meals https://www.scottedelman.com/2016/02/10/the-first-episode-of-eating-the-fantastic-with-guest-sarah-pinsker-is-now-live/
#10yrsago Politician given green-light to name developer’s new streets with synonyms for greed and deceit https://web.archive.org/web/20160213001324/http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2016/02/8590908/staten-island-borough-president-gets-approval-name-new-streets-gre
#5yrsago $50T moved from America's 90% to the 1% https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/13/data-protection-without-monopoly/#inequality
#5yrsago Broad Band https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/13/data-protection-without-monopoly/#broad-band
#5yrsago Privacy Without Monopoly https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/13/data-protection-without-monopoly/#comcom
#1yrago Premature Internet Activists https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/13/digital-rights/#are-human-rights
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Salt Lake City: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18
https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/ -
Montreal (remote): Fedimtl, Feb 24
https://fedimtl.ca/ -
Oslo (remote): Seminar og lansering av rapport om «enshittification»
https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/digital/seminar-og-lansering-av-rapport-om-enshittification/ -
Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/ -
Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/ -
Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow -
Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html -
Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435 -
America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas -
Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html -
How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo -
Enshittification (Jon Favreau/Offline):
https://crooked.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-the-internet-with-cory-doctorow/
Latest books (permalink)
- "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
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"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ -
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
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"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
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"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).
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"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).
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"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.
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"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
Upcoming books (permalink)
- "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
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"The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
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"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027
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"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "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 (1016 words today, 28750 total)
- "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
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"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
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A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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