- Israeli ad-tech business was a shipment scheme for "mercenary spyware": And they used Google, Facebook and all another important ad phase to do it.
- Hey appearance at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Big Mouth Billy Bass x Linux; No-Fly lists v average sense; Lemony Snicket advises the 1%; "Aloha From Hell"; KSR v Elon Musk; "Everything Belongs to the Future"; Trump's mail-servers run Win2003; Copyfraud v covid.
- Upcoming appearances: Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Vienna, Kilkenny, Oxford, Sheffield, Virtual, Oxford, Montreal.
- 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.
More than fractional of all net users have installed an ad-blocker; Doc Searls calls it the largest person boycott in history. As ample as that boycott is, everyone – yes, everyone – should obstacle every "programmatic" ad, since the complete scheme is so insecure that failing to do so could outcome in the total colony of any or all of your digital devices.
That's the inescapable decision of Citizen Lab's latest blockbuster investigative report, "Exposing AdFection," which reveals how the largest ad-tech companies in the world, including Google and Facebook, allowed themselves to be hijacked by a "mercenary spyware" business that used the ad scheme to find targeted individuals and assist "zero-click malware" that took complete their computers and phones without them having to obtain any action:
https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/
These tech giants amassed detailed surveillance dossiers on practically all net user, and they've assigned all of us unique, persistent identifiers, akin a Social Security Number for spying. These companies also authorize advertisers – or anyone pretending to be an advertiser – to assist blobs of code (which is all an ad is) to anyone according to those identifiers.
This allowed an Israeli spyware business called Discover-Tech (which masquerades as an ad-tech company) to market totalitarian governments and sleazy company mercenaries the capability to pluck idiosyncratic net users out of the billions who log in all day and afterward assist "malicious ads" (that is, blobs of arbitrary code) to those targeted users. These malicious ads contained "no-click, zero-day" attacks, which meant that they exploited earlier unidentified vulnerabilities to obtain complete devices without any person interaction. The uncomplicated act of loading a web-page or beginning an app that relied on one of these gigantic ad-tech companies to assist ads was adequate to colony your device. No clicks needed, and no warning.
Among the targets of this assault run were the computers of workers at Al Jazeera. They were attacked alongside malware from the mercenary spyware business Candiru (which now calls itself "Integrity Labs" since irony is not dead). Beyond Candiru, Discover-Tech additionally facilitates attacks by many offender mercenary spyware companies, serving ads on hundreds of thousands of sites and apps.
Discover-Tech was "certified" as a harmless provider by Google, Yandex, Microsoft, Beeswax (a division of Comcast) and IAB, the ad-tech industry's foremost expert association. Ironically, Discover-Tech equal attacked users by serving them malicious GDPR notices that appeared to let users opt out of business surveillance.
Because Discover-Tech was certified by all these industry bodies and firms, it had admission to additional than four billion ad-auctions, definition that on billions of occasions, it was capable to collect the identities of users loading apps and visiting websites, inspect them against the catalog of targets, and assault any victims it discovered through this dragnet.
Discover-Tech is an Israeli business alongside ties to another Israeli spyware and hacking companies, including through its board, whose members included Eric Banoun ("One of the pioneers of insulting cyber in Israel" –Haaretz). They have overlaps, relationships and affiliations alongside a rogue's exhibition of Israeli companies, including the notorious NSO Group, who routinely market cyber-weapons to the world's worst governments and whose products have been used to assault journalists, embassy workers, and activists.
The entire event highlights the monumental insecurity of the ad-tech industry, whose indiscriminate and voracious surveillance and manifestly insufficient vetting and safety auditing now exposes all net person in the earth to terrifying targeted attacks. These companies – including Google, a thrice-convicted monopolist whose surveillance tendrils are wrapped about the entire earth – assertion that they run their networks alongside prudence and oversight. But the evidence is in the pudding: for years, they've played presenter to a murderer's row of cyber-mercenaries who used their infrastructure to assault journalists and others.
The lone way to evade this is to obstacle ads. This is uncomplicated adequate to do in a browser (which is why the bulk of net users have installed an ad-blocker in their browsers), but it's illegal to reverse-engineer and modify an app so you can obstacle the ads in it:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/21/dickovers/#block-element
Many websites run anti-ad-block scripts that shove out nagging, guilt-tripping notices that call you a thief and a cheapskate for blocking ads. Ignore those notices: if a website is operating "programmatic" ads that authorize arbitrary third parties to spy on billions of group and mark individuals for malicious equipment takeovers, they are charging too elevated a cost to see their content.
Some sites go further: their notices petition that you either rotate off your ad-blocker or pay for a subscription. This "pay or okay" scheme is forbidden in Europe, California and another territories alongside powerful privacy laws, and they are morally bankrupt besides. Privacy shouldn't be a luxury item and everyone deserves to be safe from cyber-attacks:
https://noyb.eu/en/noybs-pay-or-okay-report-how-companies-make-you-pay-privacy
This study additionally provides the most thorough rebuttal to a hazardous idea that refuses to die: that we should enhance competition in the ad-tech field by assigning all net person a mandatory, government-issued promotion ID to "democratize" ad-targeting and followup (which the field calls "attribution"):
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve
Despite all this, none of it is an indictment of ads per se. The issue current isn't advertising, it's surveillance. The ad-tech field has convinced advertisers that targeting ads to users fairly than content volition massively enhance ad performance. The evidence for this is very poor: targeted ads enhance clickthrough rates by small than 5% (relative to content-based ads that connect to the matter of the leaf you're looking at), and they're incredibly costly (and very dangerous!) to serve.
On top of all that, surveillance-based ads change power distant from publishers (who cognize additional concerning the materials they publish than any ad-tech business always will) to spying ad-tech companies (who can spy on users in ways that no publishing company could always match). Whatever insignificant additional revenues surveillance promotion can wring out of the market are totally swamped by the disbursal of the ad-tech sector's own operations, which the ad-tech field makes up for by grossly underinvesting in safety and by colluding to cheat publishers and advertisers, charging additional for ads and paying small to the websites that run them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
If we desire to enhance competition in promotion services, the answer isn't to facilitate spying (which additionally allows the world's scummiest cyber-mercenaries to phase and assist targeted attacks). We should ban surveillance promotion altogether, restoring context-based ads to their function as the way that publishers create an honest living without marketing out their audiences:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/31/context-ads/#class-formation
- Philips updates instructions for ultrasound scheme connected to 4 deaths https://www.medtechdive.com/news/philips-updates-instructions-for-ultrasound-system-linked-to-4-deaths/832692/
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Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t logic https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/02/1145639/dont-be-fooled-llms-dont-reason/
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Beneath resilient financial markets, risks remain elevated and vulnerabilities persist https://www.imf.org/en/publications/gfsr/issues/2026/10/13/global-financial-stability-report-october-2026
-
Ultimate gridfinity drawer configurator https://makerworld.com/en/models/2737065-ultimate-gridfinity-drawer-configurator
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Is Blockbuster Video the Answer to Our Digital Privacy Woes? https://www.thenation.com/article/society/digital-privacy-salazar-paramount/
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Trump Is Encouraging Airlines to Scam Passengers in Every Way Possible https://newrepublic.com/article/216435/trump-airline-fees-fines-passenger-rights-scam
#25yrsago Linux on a Big Mouth Billy Bass https://web.archive.org/web/20010927153043/http://bigmouth.here-n-there.com/
#20yrsago No-Fly lists equal stupider than suspected https://web.archive.org/web/20061019002553/http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fstories%2F2006%2F10%2F05%2F60minutes%2Fmain2066624.shtml
#20yrsago Canadian MP booted for his blog https://web.archive.org/web/20061026153747/http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/18/turner-caucus.html
#20yrsago Recording industry shuts out Brazilian lawful scholars https://web.archive.org/web/20061103225020/http://www.a2kbrasil.org.br/ENG/SIGN-A-PETITION-FOR-AMENDING-THE
#20yrsago How pickpockets activity https://web.archive.org/web/20070110023812/http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2006/11/mystory.html
#15yrsago Why are additional group opting for lawful name-changes than always before? https://web.archive.org/web/20111020163908/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15333140
#15yrsago Advice to the 1% from Lemony Snicket https://occupywriters.com/works/by-lemony-snicket/
#15yrsago Proposed Australian law makes it an infringement to criticism Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien https://web.archive.org/web/20120507161803/http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/surely-this-is-a-joke/story-fn7x8me2-1226167552466
#15yrsago Aloha From Hell: Sandman Slim goes rear to Hell and kicks additional ass https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/18/aloha-from-hell-sandman-slim-goes-back-to-hell-and-kicks-more-ass/
#10yrsago California DMV thinks “INFOS3C” is a dirty term https://www.techdirt.com/2016/10/17/california-dmv-rejects-1nfos3c-vanity-plate-because-sexual-connotation/
#10yrsago Howard Stern won’t publish Trump tapes https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/howard-stern-on-replaying-his-donald-trump-interviews-it-would-be-a-betrayal-7542079/
#10yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson says Elon Musk’s Mars scheme is a “1920s science-fiction cliché” https://web.archive.org/web/20161018043554/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/why-elon-musk-s-mars-vision-needs-some-real-imagination
#10yrsago UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal says GHCQ illegally spied for 17 years https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13305270/uk-illegal-surveillance-gchq-investigatory-powers-tribunal
#10yrsago Project Include cuts off Y Combinator since Peter Thiel is a part-time capitalist there https://web.archive.org/web/20161019043240/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/horrified-by-trump-silicon-valley-leaders-debate-cutting-ties-to-peter-thiel
#10yrsago Islamophobic extremist division planned a “bloodbath” in Kansas, wanted to slay Muslim babies https://web.archive.org/web/20161018144035/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/15/it-will-be-a-bloodbath-inside-the-kansas-militia-plot-to-ignite-a-religious-war/?utm_term=.a9d769256cf6
#10yrsago Everything Belongs to the Future: a narrative of pharmadystopian, immortal gerontocrats https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/18/everything-belongs-to-the-future-a-tale-of-pharmadystopian-immortal-gerontocrats/
#10yrsago UK authorities proposes issuing Britons alongside distinctive porn-viewing ID numbers https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/a-database-of-the-uks-porn-habits-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
#10yrsago Donald Trump’s mail-servers are operating Windows 2003 https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#core
#5yrsago Copyfraudster censors inquiry of implausible covid gadget https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#copyfraud
#5yrsago Corporatism made John Deere ripe for a attack https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#deere-dash
- Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01 -
Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020 -
Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46 -
Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai -
Vienna: TED AI, Oct 28-30
https://tedai-vienna.ted.com/ -
Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
https://kilkenomics.com/ -
Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/ -
Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/ -
Oxford: Ministry of the Future, Nov 23
https://ministryforthefuture.co.uk/events.html -
Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation -
Virtual: Enshittification, AI, and the Future of Technology (UBC Master of Educational Technology), Nov 28
https://met.ubc.ca/2026/09/met-speaker-series-cory-doctorow-enshittification-ai-and-the-future-of-technology/ -
Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/ -
Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
https://montreal2027.ca/en
- Life After AI (Brain Bar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPa43-n0vI -
Terms of Service alongside Clare Duffy (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8 -
AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/ -
AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/ -
How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc
- "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a abbreviated publish concerning being a improved AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/ -
"Canny Valley": A constricted type gathering of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
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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," concerning 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," concerning prison-tech and another grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of anticipation 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 publish concerning 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 volition depart you knowing additional concerning how the earth plant 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, alongside Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for imaginative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
- "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 explanatory novel adapted from my novella concerning refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the explanatory novel), Firstsecond, 2027
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"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- “Once Is Enemy Action,” a discipline fabrication novel concerning the origins of contemporary technofascism. Today's words: 563 (26602 total).
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"The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," concerning the improved earth the remainder of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth outline completed. Submitted to editor.
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A Little Brother abbreviated narrative concerning DIY insulin PLANNING
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