Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Client Challenge

lemonde.fr

PubPeer - Ultra-processed foods and human health: the main thesis and...

There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Ultra-processed foods and human health: the main thesis and the evidence (2025)

pubpeer.com

What was not discussed (enough) at the colloquium of the French Research Integrity Office

I attended last Friday the colloquium of the French Research Integrity Office which took place in the impressive and solemn settings of the Palais du Luxembourg, the French Senate. The meeting was opened by the director of the French Integrity office, Michel Dubois, and the president of the French Research Evaluation agency (HCERES), Coralie Chevallier, and two senators, David Ros (the current vice-president of the Parliamentary Office for Scientific and Technological Choices, OPECST) and Pierre Ouzoulias, who is at the origin of French legislation on Research integrity. A third senator was in the programme, Karine Daniel, who was “rapporteur” of a law on academic freedom recently unanimously adopted in the Senate. Also in attendance and chairing the first session was Pierre Corvol, author of the famous 2016 report which has been the basis of most subsequent developments on this topic in France. Many other important actors of research integrity in France were presenting and some more were in the room. Antoine Petit, director of CNRS, was expected but was eventually replaced by the CNRS research integrity officer Claudine Pique. The whole event has been recorded and will be available on the OFIS website at some point. I’ll list here a few things I found interesting but will then highlight the blind spots: what I consider as central issues, which were not (or minimally) discussed. * In his opening words, Michel Dubois noted the progress of the past few years but also rightly warned against institutional complacency (“autosatisfaction institutionnelle”). * Corine Chevallier emphasized the ongoing transition in research evaluation practices from one focused on outputs to one focused on the conditions in which research is done. The promise of her talk was an evaluation designed to promote good governance, collegiality, space for open critical discussion, a supportive working environment, and, institutions that respond adequately to issues such as breaches of research ethics or research integrity. * David Ros mentioned a recent round table held in the senate on the consequences of attacks on scientific integrity by the Trump administration (video and verbatim available here). He concluded his presentation by saying that scientific integrity was not just a condition of trust in science, but also a condition of trust in future political decisions. * Pierre Ouzoulias argued that scientists should communicate more about their methodologies so that people could better understand the difference between the opinion (of a politician or else) and a scientific claim. He concluded by an appeal to renew the link between the French republic and scientists with a reference to Irène Joliot Curie who was undersecretary of state for research (one of the first three women to be member of government) in 1936, at a time where women did not have the right to vote. * Pierre Corvol raised the issue of the administrative and legal status of the institutions’ integrity officers and more generally of the means they have (or lack) to fulfil their missions (this was developed further later in the day by Françoise Lantheaume and by Marc Léger). He considered that the investigation procedure was now accepted routine but that what happens (or not) following investigations still required more work (corrections and retractions, sanctions, etc). He highlighted three other issues to be debated: the impact of AI, reproducibility and education to research integrity at a younger age (from secondary school). * Pierre Léna and Sylvie Pommier talked about the “serment doctoral” (but I won’t). * Claudine Pique highlighted that it was very important to contribute to clean the scientific literature, which is quite paradoxical since that is precisely what the office she is heading is not doing adequately. Given the complete silence of CNRS on a major affair reported in Le Monde nearly two and a half years ago, I was also surprised by her claim that it was necessary to communicate about how investigations were done. It was nice though to hear her say that they had ongoing work inspired by LORIER to improve the diffusion of a scientific integrity culture within CNRS. * Françoise Lantheaume was president of the association of research integrity officers RESINT, 2023-2025. Her thoughtful contribution aimed to flesh out the real life and challenges faced by a research integrity officer in their diversity of environments, multiple duties (by far not limited to the investigation of specific cases). She concluded by stressing the devastating effects of the current research economy focused on productivity and competition, the fear of PhD students about reporting (even though more do contact the integrity officers), and the difficulties concerning what happens after the conclusion of an investigation by integrity officers (although unfortunately she did not have time to say more about that). * Bert Seghers (current president of the European Network of Research Integrity Offices) was given the difficult task of answering the question of the uniqueness (or not) of the French scientific integrity landscape compared to other European countries. He concluded with a couple of words on some of the unique “French excellence” that we have and should build on, and, well, that one was totally unexpected (see picture of the slide below)! Thank you Bert ! * After lunch, Nicolas Fressengeas presided a session on new threats and new responses. Guillaume Cabanac talked about AI and you can already find his slides here. Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri discussed the complexities of the publishing landscape. Olivier Emond, science journalist at France Info, explained how they work with scientists and how they try to ensure that the information they share is reliable. Clotilde Combe presented the results of a recent study about science and society (Le baromètre de l’esprit critique) ; in particular the questions related to trust in science, ethics and integrity. * The second and last session of the afternoon was presided by Olivier Descamps. Stéphanie Ruphy and Alain Israel presented INADIS, the new procedure, that should become accessible after summer, and were people (complainant or author of the alleged misconduct) unhappy about the outcome of an investigation (or unhappy about the absence of an investigation) will be able to ask for a second (first) opinion. Karine Daniel talked about the law on academic freedom. For her, the link with scientific integrity is strong : “la liberté scientifique est encadrée par l’intégrité scientifique”. I unfortunately had to leave during the presentation of Marc Léger and therefore also missed Michel Dubois’ closing words. **Not discussed at all: the cases**. We spent the whole day talking about research integrity but no specific case of misconduct in France was ever mentioned (apart from my question about the protection of whistleblowers). Debating specific cases, what went right and what went wrong in the treatment of those cases, needs to happen in the laboratories and the universities (especially those home to those scandals) and in public spaces including in workshops and conferences about research integrity. Neither happens and therefore individually and collectively we fail to learn. There is another reason why it is important to be more open about specific cases, how they are investigated, and what specific corrective actions are taken. As Mahmud Farooque says (though in a different context): > And science gets especially lost when it forgets that public trust does not come from always sounding certain. It comes from being willing to correct oneself visibly. **Barely discussed:** what happens after an investigation. It was alluded by several speakers that there were issues there. But the problems were not stated very forcefully and the potential solutions were nowhere to be seen (apart maybe from the creation of INADIS, see above). What are the problems ? There are more, but here are two: 1) the correction of science does not happen, or happen too slowly and with a lack of transparency; 2) people who report misconduct are victims of retaliations (these happen also during the investigation of course); some, in particular PhD students or other young researchers, may feel that they just cannot report because they are too vulnerable and the institutions will not do anything to protect them (apart from anonymity which in many cases does not work). Those are difficult problems but by no means insoluble. If there was a real political will to solve them, it could be done. A slide from Bert Seghers at the OFIS colloquim on 05/06/2026 ### Share this: * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

raphazlab.wordpress.com

Fraudes et mensonges scientifiques - Regarder le documentaire complet | ARTE

Le monde de la science, loin d’être infaillible, est régulièrement éclaboussé par des scandales liés à des mystificateurs. Cette enquête met en lumière les failles du système et s’interroge sur l’efficacité de ses mécanismes de protection.

arte.tv

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

La fraude à l’édition scientifique se banalise avec l’achat de contribution pour embellir son CV

Deux études éclairent sur des entreprises qui proposent d’ajouter sa signature sur des articles à paraître ou en cours d’évaluation. Les chercheurs ont notamment identifié un pic pour des études conte...

lemonde.fr

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Negative data

http://theupturnedmicroscope.com/comic/negative-data/ ### Share this: * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

raphazlab.wordpress.com

Nanoscience is latest discipline to embrace large-scale replication efforts

Nature, Published online: 17 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00439-6 A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells.

nature.com

Guest post: The CDC hepatitis B study is unethical and must never be published

_Manjurul/iStock_ The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an international organization that establishes best practices for scholarly journals, has endorsed specific ethical standards for studies that involve vulnerable groups. Among these standards is this statement in the Declaration of Helsinki: “Reports of research not in accordance with this Declaration should not be accepted for publication.” The current controversy about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for a proposed study of hepatitis B vaccines in Guinea-Bissau must serve as a reminder of this core requirement of publication ethics. An unsolicited $1.6 million grant to the Bandim Health Project at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) would randomly assign more than 14,000 newborns into two groups, those who would receive the vaccine at birth and those who would act as a control group with delayed vaccination. The purpose of the controversial study was to assess the “broader health effects” of the vaccine for the control group. But we already know the most critical health effect beyond the 48-months of the study: Withholding vaccination will predictably result in an increased incidence of liver disease later in life, including liver failure, cirrhosis and cancer. Therefore, the true scale of the tragedy brought on by this study would never be fully be known. Arthur L. Caplan Already patently unethical, the study design would also exploit one of the world’s poorest countries, where more than 50 percent of its population live in poverty, according to the World Bank. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy of the University of Minnesota reports that about 1 in 5 people born in Guinea-Bissau has chronic hepatitis B, that 9 in 10 babies who are exposed at birth develop a chronic infection and that 1 out of 4 of them will die of hepatitis B-related liver disease. There is a larger bizarre context surrounding this now paused study: The Trump administration’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted in December to abandon a 30-year recommendation that all babies born in the U.S. be vaccinated for hepatitis B at birth. This is a recommendation that flies in the face of the best available evidence about the dangers of failing to vaccinate. The World Health Organization and pediatric and infectious disease groups uniformly recommend hepatitis B vaccination at birth. It is only Kennedy and his cadre of anti-vaccination zealots who see harm from a beneficial vaccine where none has been shown and sought to initiate a study to vindicate their dangerous view. Jonathan D. Moreno How, then, should science journals respond to efforts by the SDU investigators to publish results if the study goes forward? Following the COPE guidance, none of that data should be published. Unlike flawed analysis or intentional fraud, unethical research is a moral failure at the outset, one that is evident not only to the scientific community but to the world at large.**** Journal editors therefore have a special responsibility to ensure that studies that violate consensus moral standards do not find their way into their pages. In the last two decades there has been an uptick in retractions for ethical violations and lack of ethics approval — retractions that could be prevented by abiding by COPE guidelines and not publishing the research in the first place. This is not a matter of censorship or “cancellation” of results that do not square with biases. It is a question of ensuring that there are no incentives for unethical research. The responsibility of journal editors is clear: No “data” from any discriminatory and life-threatening study including this one should be published. The Guinea-Bissau Hepatitis B study is not a hard case. No study that is sure to expose newborns to a life-threatening involvement with a well-understood fatal disease that can easily be prevented is justifiable. Responsibility for even proposing manifestly unethical research falls on many parties, in this case not only the CDC funding agency which, before pushback, had contracted for the investigation but also the study group involved and Danish health and science authorities who approved it. The leadership of the University of Southern Denmark itself must also be called to account. To be sure, there are other ways to publish data these days, and there are plenty of disreputable outlets that might enjoy the attention that a prominent scandalous research project would attract. But that does not change the duties of responsible publication outlets. The community of legitimate journal editors recognized by their peers as upholding moral standards must, to maintain their legitimacy, draw a bright line. _Art Caplan is soon to retire as a Professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine._ _Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania._ * * * _Like Retraction Watch? You can make a _tax-deductible contribution to support our work_, follow us _on X_ or Bluesky, like us _on Facebook_, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your _RSS reader_, or subscribe to our _daily digest_. If you find a retraction that’s _not in our database_, you can _let us know here_. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected]._ * * * Sign up for our newsletterSubmitting form By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time. Processing… Success! You're on the list. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again. ### Share this: * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Share on X (Opens in new window) X * ### _Related_

retractionwatch.com

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Post doctoral Fellow: nanoparticle synthesis and characterisation for reproducible bionanoscience

nanobubbles.hypotheses.org

Pluralistic: The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating unoptimizability as a habit (22 Jan 2026)

# Today's links * The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating ungovernability as a habit: Get good at being on hold. * Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. * Object permanence: "Ventus"; Woody Guthrie v Trump's dad; Tory MP v poppers. * 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. * * * # The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating ungovernability as a habit (permalink) I am on record as being skeptical of the notion that if you shop very carefully, you can make society better. "Conscious consumption" is not a tool for structural change, and any election that requires you to "vote with your wallet" is always won by the people with the thickest wallets (statistically speaking, that's not you): https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/13/consumption-choices/#marginal-benefits Now, that's not to say that boycotts are useless. But a boycott is a structured and organized campaign. The Montgomery bus boycott wasn't a matter of a bunch of people waking up one morning and saying, "You know what, fuck it, I'm gonna walk today": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was an _organized_ project, put together by a powerful membership organization, the NAACP, that demanded far more of its members than merely shopping very carefully. The boycott was the _end stage_ of an organized resistance, not a substitute for it. The problem with "conscious consumption" is that it comes out of the neoliberal tradition in which every political matter is supposedly determined by your individual actions, and not your actions as part of a union or other political institution that works as a bloc to overthrow the status quo. "Conscious consumption" arises out of the tradition that gave us Margaret Thatcher's maxim, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first." Any attempt to change society by shopping very carefully is destined to fail, but it's worse than that. Because "shopping very carefully" never makes systemic change, its practitioners inevitably decide the reason they're not seeing the change they yearn for is that their allies _aren't shopping carefully enough_. This turns the careful shopper into a cop who polices other people's consumption, demanding that they stop eating some foodstuff or using Twitter or watching HBO Max. Squabbling over whether using a social media network makes you a Nazi generates far more heat than light – so much heat that it incinerates the solidarity you need to actually fight Nazis. Which is not an argument against boycotts! Boycotts work. If boycotts didn't work, then genocide apologists wouldn't be apoplectic over the BDS movement: https://bdsmovement.net/ But a "boycott" isn't the same thing as "you and your social circle deciding that buying the wrong product makes you a Bad Person and then devoting your energies to scolding your allies for choosing Coke instead of Pepsi." Boycotts are downstream of organizing; they are not a substitute for organizing. There is such a thing as society. Now, all that said, I will confess: I sometimes do something that looks a lot like "shopping very carefully," and when I do, I derive enormous satisfaction from it (but I am always careful not to mistake my tiny victories for political action). But I get it, honestly, I do. Sometimes, "shopping very carefully" is a way to eke out a tiny, personal victory in the face of overwhelming odds against a wildly overmatched opponent. That feels very good. One example would be patronizing my local repair shop (or fixing my stuff myself). The big structural barriers to repair are things like "parts pairing": https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification And manufacturers who abuse trademark law to get CBP to seize refurbished parts at the border: https://www.shacknews.com/article/108049/apple-repair-critic-louis-rossmann-takes-on-us-customs-counterfeit-battery-seizure The repair problem _isn't_ that your neighbors are "sheeple" who've had their minds warped by a "throwaway society." The problem is that technical and legal countermeasures have made repair so hard and unprofitable that getting your stuff fixed is more expensive and time-consuming than it needs to be. That said: I love going to my local repair shop. I love fixing things on my own. It's great. It makes me feel great. I think you should do it because it may make you feel great, too, and it'd be nice for you to support your local fix-it place, but let's not pretend that we'll change society that way. Here's another example: for the past couple years, I've been navigating a (thankfully _very_ treatable) cancer diagnosis. The fact that my cancer is very treatable doesn't mean it's _easily_ treated. America's shitty, for-profit healthcare system is terrible at the best of times, and nearly unnavigable when coping with a complex condition that crosses a lot of disciplinary lines and requires access to specialized, expensive equipment. I'm asymptomatic, so the hardest part of having cancer – so far – is fighting the Kaiser bureaucracy to make sure my treatment goes off as planned: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/05/carcinoma-angels/#squeaky-nail The fact that the different Kaiser departments drop so many balls when handing off care between them means that _I_ have to juggle those balls for them. I make extensive use of organizational tactics like "suspense files," which are a kind of inverted to-do list, in that they let you manage _other people's_ to-do lists, rather than your own: https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo (In case you're wondering, the _best_ part of having cancer is that Kaiser comps 100% of your parking! Free cancer parking!) Now, I also make sure to note each of Kaiser's failures and I raise grievances and California health ombudsman complaints for each one – not because I'm angry and want an apology, but because I'm a well-organized, native English-speaking cancer patient with no symptoms, which means that I can do the advocacy that other people can't, and help them (I also track these complaints with suspense files, calendar entries, etc, to make sure that they're followed through). Partly, I'm able to do this because I'm very organized. I'm not organized because I worship at the cult of "personal productivity"; I'm definitely Jenny Odell-pilled on that score: https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/09/how-to-do-nothing-jenny-odells-case-for-resisting-the-attention-economy/ I'm organized because I pursue The Way of Jim Munroe's "Time Management for Anarchists" ("once I learned how to make my own structure, I was able to kick my expensive boss habit and work on my own"): https://jimmunroe.net/comics/pamphlets/time_management_for_anarchists/time_management_for_anarchists.html Having invested a lot of energy into being organized, I now get _massive_ discounts on dealing with other people's shit. Remember: giant corporations and other remorseless bureaucracies throw up roadblocks on the assumption that you will be a "rational economic actor." The airline assumes that if it costs you 15 hours to collect on the $50 voucher you're entitled to, you will just let them steal $50 from you. But once you get organized enough, you can cut that 15-hour investment down to a 15-minute one, and I will absolutely trade 15 minutes of dealing with an airline's bullshit for $50 of that airline's money. (Why yes, Air Canada did fuck me over on Jan 3 and get me home at 5AM the next day, instead of 730PM the night before; and yes, they did deny my compensation claim; and yes, I have filed an appeal with the Canada Transport Agency; why do you ask?) One of my favorite podcasts is "An Arm and a Leg," which divides itself between deep dive structural analyses into how corrupt and ghastly American medical billing is, and enumerations of sweet hacks that ninja bill-fighters have come up with to slice through the billing labyrinth your insurer and hospital trap you in and cut straight to the bullseye: https://armandalegshow.com/ For example, the latest episode tells the story of med student Thomas Sanford, who figured out that hospitals were stealing billions of dollars every year from the poorest people in America, who were all entitled to have their medical bill canceled. He founded Dollarfor, a nonprofit that helps patients get their medical debt canceled: https://armandalegshow.com/episode/our-favorite-project-of-2025-levels-up-and-you-can-help/ Dollarfor now has an automated tool that guides you through a survey and then generates and files the completed, hospital-specific paperwork needed to get your medical debt canceled (they've made versions of this for every hospital in America!): https://dollarfor.org/ (If you're a health worker, here's a printable guide with QR codes that you can clip to your lanyard and show to patients while you deliver care): https://drive.google.com/file/d/14cfwK66A_mfBBBqn35_Lp7930uoY-73f/view Now, the real problem here isn't that hospitals steal billions from charity cases: it's that America has a garbage for-profit healthcare system that kills and bankrupts people at scale. Dollarfor is amazing, but it's not going to fix that problem. I don't know Sanford, but I bet if you asked him, he'd agree with this, and say something like, "Yes, and I'm helping people not have their lives destroyed by this garbage system, which is good unto itself; and also, it might give them the free time and wherewithal to participate in movements to overthrow the garbage system." I really dote on the fact that Dollarfor has literally built a different version of their tool for _every single hospital in the country_. It's a perfect example of how turning yourself into a highly organized adversary can overcome the time-based economics our enemies rely on to keep their garbage systems intact. Whenever I think of this stuff, I flash on two pop-culture references that made a deep impression on me. The first comes from 1985's _Real Genius_ , Val Kilmer's best ever movie (fight me!). _Real Genius_ is set at a fictionalized version of Caltech in which young prodigies slowly discover that their scumbag prof has tricked them into working on a weapons contract for the DoD. This being fictional-Caltech, there are all these scenes in which very smart people do weird and amazing things. At one point, we learn that there's a former child prodigy living in the basement under the dorms, a guy named Lazlo Hollyfeld who became a hermit after discovering that he, too, had been duped into working on a baby-killer project. We get these tantalizing glimpses of Lazlo in his subterranean redoubt, where he has built some kind of giant Rube Goldberg machine that is engaged in a mysterious mechanical process that involves manipulating cards of some sort. At the film's denouement (spoiler alert for a 40 year old movie), we discover what he was doing: > Lazlo: These are entries into the Frito-Lay Sweepstakes. "No purchase necessary, enter as often as you want" – so I am. > > Chris: That's great! How many times? > > Lazlo: Well, this batch makes it one million six hundred and fifty thousand. I should win thirty-two point six percent of the prizes, including the car. > > Chris: That kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn't it? > > Lazlo: They set up the rules, and lately I've come to realize that I have certain materialistic needs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6kBfBXZBdc Then there's a scene from the otherwise tepid (fight me!) _Batman Returns_ (1992) in which we encounter the Penguin in _his_ subterranean redoubt, brandishing pages full of kompromat that have been laboriously taped together: > The Penguin: What about the documents that prove you own half the firetraps in Gotham City? > > Maximillian 'Max' Shreck: If there were such documents – and that's not an admission – I would have seen to it they were shredded. > > The Penguin: Ah, good idea! [pulls out a sheaf of documents] > > The Penguin: A lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103776/quotes/ Both Lazlo and the Penguin are defeating the time-based security assumptions of their adversaries. Frito Lay treats filling in 1.65m sweepstakes entries as the same thing as filling in _infinity_ entries; Max Schrek treats the time needed to piece together shredded paper as infinite. Rounding a very large number up to infinity isn't entirely irrational, but once you get organized enough, you just might be able to find the time – or a system – to bring that very big number down to an entirely tractable value. Yes, this is a species of "careful shopping" but my point isn't to say that shopping carefully is useless – rather, that it's a drastic error to mistake this useful (and surprisingly satisfying) _tactic_ for a _strategy_ that will truly alter the system. * * * # Hey look at this (permalink) * Verizon Wastes No Time Switching Device Unlock Policy to 365 Days https://www.droid-life.com/2026/01/20/verizon-device-unlock-policy-365-days/ * CEOs say AI is making work more efficient. Employees tell a different story. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ceos-say-ai-is-making-work-more-efficient-employees-tell-a-different-story/ar-AA1UE3Tq * This is the End of the US Global Monetary System https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/this-is-the-end-of-the-us-global * Europe has more bargaining strength than it thinks https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/europe-has-more-bargaining-strength * U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947, at least https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-workers-just-took-home-214018586.html * * * # Object permanence (permalink) #25yrsago Karl Schroeder's "Ventus" https://www.mindjack.com/books/ventus.html #20yrsago Hollywood’s Canadian MP plagiarizes entertainment industry in op-ed https://web.archive.org/web/20060814015107/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1082 #20yrago Pope: Divine inspiration is copyrighted https://web.archive.org/web/20070219175621/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article717916.ece #10yrsago Gay Tory MP outs himself as a “poppers” user, slams proposed ban https://web.archive.org/web/20160122212659/https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/mp-crispin-blunt-admits-using-poppers-while-attacking-proposed-ban/ar-BBotElv #10yrsago Donald Trump’s dad was Woody Guthrie’s hated Klansman landlord https://theconversation.com/woody-guthrie-old-man-trump-and-a-real-estate-empires-racist-foundations-53026 #5yrsago How one of America's most abusive employers gets away with it https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#toothless #1yrago EFF's transition memo for the Biden admin https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#memo * * * # Upcoming appearances (permalink) * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937 * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/ * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/ * Salt Lake City: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18 https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/ * 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) * 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/ * Why Big Tech is a Trap for Independent Creators (Stripper News) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYDyz8AMZ0 * Enshittification (Creative Nonfiction podcast) https://brendanomeara.com/episode-507-enshittification-author-cory-doctorow-believes-in-a-new-good-internet/ * Enshittification with Plutopia https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/ * * * # Latest books (permalink) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "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). * "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). * "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). * "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. * "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) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 * * * # 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 (1023 words today, 12377 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. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING * * * 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. * * * # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic "_When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla_ " -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X ### Like this: Like Loading...

pluralistic.net

Original post on mastodon.top

mastodon.top

Pluralistic: Google's AI pricing plan (21 Jan 2026)

# Today's links * Google's AI pricing plan: From each according to their ability (to pay). * Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. * Object permanence: Disney buys Pixar; Bruces on "vernacular video"; Hickey paralysis; RIP David Hartwell; Personalized pricing; They were warned. * 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. * * * # Google's AI pricing plan (permalink) Google is _spending_ a lot on AI, but what's not clear is how Google will _make_ a lot from AI. Or, you know, even break even. Given, you know, that businesses are seeing _zero_ return from AI: https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/pwc_ai_ceo_survey/ But maybe they've figured it out. In a recent edition of his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller pulls on several of the strings that Google's top execs have dangled recently: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/will-google-organize-the-worlds-prices The first string: Google's going to spy on you a _lot_ more, for the same reason Microsoft is spying on all of _its_ users: because they want to supply their AI "agents" with your personal data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ANECpNdt-4 Google's announced that it's going to feed its AI your Gmail messages, as well as the whole deep surveillance dossier the company has assembled based on your use of all the company's products: Youtube, Maps, Photos, and, of course, Search: https://twitter.com/Google/status/2011473059547390106 The second piece of news is that Apple has partnered with Google to supply Gemini to all iPhone users: https://twitter.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2010760810751017017 Apple already charges Google more than $20b/year not to enter the search market; now they're going to be charging Google billions not to stay out of the AI market, too. Meanwhile, Google will get to spy on Apple customers, just like they spy on their own users. Anyone who says that Apple is ideologically committed to your privacy because they're _real_ capitalists is a sucker (or a cultist): https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones But the big revelation is how Google is going to make money with AI: they're going to sell AI-based "personalized pricing" to "partners," including "Walmart, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Gap, Kroger, Macy’s, Stripe, Home Depot, Lowe's, American Express, etc": https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/ Personalized pricing, of course, is the polite euphemism for _surveillance_ pricing, which is when a company spies on you in order to figure out how much they can get away with charging you (or how little they can get away with paying you): https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/# It's a weird form of cod-Marxism, whose tenet is "From each according to their desperation; to each according to their vulnerability." Surveillance pricing advocates say that this is "efficient" because they can use surveillance data to offer you _discounts_ , too – like, say you rock up to an airline ticket counter 45 minutes before takeoff and they can use surveillance data to know that you won't take their last empty seat for $200, but you would fly in it for $100, you could get that seat for cheap. This is, of course, nonsense. Airlines don't sell off cheap seats like bakeries discounting their day-olds – they jack up the price of a last-minute journey to farcical heights. Google _also_ claims that it will only use its surveillance pricing facility to offer discounts, and not to extract premiums. As Stoller points out, there's a well-developed playbook for making premiums _look_ like discounts, which is easy to see in the health industry. As Stoller says, the list price for an MRI is $8,000, but your insurer gets a $6000 "discount" and actually pays $1970, sticking you with a $30 co-pay. The $8000 is a fake number, and so is the $6000 – the only real price is the $30 you're paying. The whole economy is filled with versions of this transparent ruse, from "department stores who routinely mark everything as 80% off" to pharmacy benefit managers: https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen Google, meanwhile, is touting its new "universal commerce protocol" (UCP), a way for AI "agents" to retrieve prices and product descriptions and make purchases: https://www.thesling.org/the-harm-to-consumers-and-sellers-from-universal-commerce-protocol-in-googles-own-words/ Right now, a major hurdle to "agentic AI" is the complexity of navigating websites designed for humans. AI agents just aren't very reliable when it comes to figuring out which product is which, choosing the correct options, and putting it in a shopping cart, and then paying for it. Some of that is merely because websites have inconsistent "semantics" – literally things like the "buy" button being called something other than "buy button" in the HTML code. But there's a far more profound problem with agentic shopping, which is that companies _deliberately obfuscate their prices_. This is how junk fees work, and why they're so destructive. Say you're a hotel providing your rate-card to an online travel website. You know that travelers are going to search for hotels by city and amenities, and then sort the resulting list by price. If you hide your final price – by surprising the user with a bunch of junk fees at checkout, or, better yet, _after_ they arrive and put their credit-card down at reception – you are going to be at the top of that list. Your hotel will seem like the cheapest, best option. But of course, it's not. From Ticketmaster to car rentals, hotels to discount airlines, rental apartments to cellular plans, the _real_ price is withheld until the very last instant, whereupon it shoots up to levels that are absolutely uncompetitive. But because these companies are able to engage in deceptive advertising, they _look_ cheaper. And of course, crooked offers drive out honest ones. The honest hotel that provides a _true_ rate card, reflecting the all-in price, ends up at the bottom of the price-sorted list, rents no rooms, and goes out of business (or pivots to lying about its prices, too). Online sellers _do not want_ to expose their true prices to comparison shopping services. They benefit from lying to those services. For _decades_ , technologists have dreamed of building a "semantic web" in which everyone exposes true and accurate machine-readable manifests of their content to facilitate indexing, search and data-mining: https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm This has failed. It's failed because lying is often more profitable than telling the truth, and because lying to computers is easier than lying to people, and because once a market is dominated by liars, everyone has to lie, or be pushed out of the market. Of course, it would be _really cool_ if everyone diligently marked up everything they put into the public sphere with accurate metadata. But there are lots of _really cool_ things you could do if you could get everyone else to change how they do things and arrange their affairs to your convenience. Imagine how great it would be if you could just get everyone to board an airplane from back to front, or to stand right and walk left on escalators, or to put on headphones when using their phones in public. Wanting it badly is not enough. People have lots of reasons for doing things in suboptimal ways. Often the reason is that it's suboptimal for you, but just peachy for _them_. Google says that it's going to get every website in the world to expose accurate rate cards to its chatbots to facilitate agentic AI. Google is also incapable of preventing "search engine optimization" companies from tricking it into showing bullshit at the top of the results for common queries: https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse Google somehow thinks that the companies that spend millions of dollars trying to trick its crawler won't also spend millions of dollars trying to trick its chatbot – and they're providing the internet with a tool to inject lies straight into the chatbot's input hopper. But UCP isn't just a way for companies to tell Google what their prices are. As Stoller points out, UCP will also sell merchants the ability to have Gemini _set_ prices on their products, using Google's surveillance data, through "dynamic pricing" (another euphemism for "surveillance pricing"). This decade has seen the rise and rise of price "clearinghouses" – companies that offer price "consulting" to direct competitors in a market. Nominally, this is just a case of two competitors shopping with the same supplier – like Procter and Gamble and Unilever buying their high-fructose corn-syrup from the same company. But it's actually far more sinister. "Clearinghouses" like Realpage – a company that "advises" landlords on rental rates – allow all the major competitors in a market to collude to raise prices in lockstep. A Realpage landlord that ignores the service's "advice" and gives a tenant a break on the rent will be excluded from Realpage's service. The rental markets that Realpage dominates have seen major increases in rental rates: https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/09/pricewars/#adam-smith-communist Google's "direct pricing" offering will allow all comers to have Google set their prices for them, based on Google's surveillance data. That includes direct competitors. As Stoller points out, both Nike and Reebok are Google advertisers. If they let Google price their sneakers, Google can raise prices across the market in lockstep. Despite how much everyone hates this garbage, neoclassical economists and their apologists in the legal profession continue to insist that surveillance pricing is "efficient." Stoller points to a law review article called "Antitrust After the Coming Wave," written by antitrust law prof and Google lawyer Daniel Crane: https://nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-99-number-4/antitrust-after-the-coming-wave/ Crane argues that AI will kill antitrust law because AI favors monopolies, and argues "that we should forget about promoting competition or costs, and instead enact a new Soviet-style regime, one in which the government would merely direct a monopolist’s 'AI to maximize social welfare and allocate the surplus created among different stakeholders of the firm.'" This is a planned economy, but it's one in which the planning is done by monopolists who are – somehow, implausibly – so biddable that governments can delegate the power to decide what we can buy and sell, what we can afford and who can afford it, and rein them in if they get it wrong. In 1890, Senator John Sherman was stumping for the Sherman Act, America's first antitrust law. On the Senate floor, he declared: > If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity. https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/ Google thinks that it has finally found a profitable use for AI. It thinks that it will be the first company to _make_ money on AI, by harnessing that AI to a market-rigging, price-gouging monopoly that turns Google's software into Sherman's "autocrat of trade." It's funny when you think of all those "AI safety" bros who claimed that AI's greatest danger was that it would become sentient and devour us. It turns out that the real "AI safety" risk is that AI will automate price gouging at scale, allowing Google to crown itself a "King over the necessaries of life": https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space (_Image:Noah_Loverbear; CC BY-SA 3.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; modified_) * * * # Hey look at this (permalink) * The Line, a Saudi Megaproject, Is Dead https://www.thenation.com/article/world/the-line-neom-saudi-vision-2030/ * Mark Carney's full speech at the World Economic Forum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btqHDhO4h10 * A Grassroots Victory in the Golden Age of Bullies https://asupposedlylonething.net/blog/2026/grassroots-victory-golden-age-bullies/ * AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/forrester_ai_jobs_impact/ * The Long Now of the Web: Inside the Internet Archive’s Fight Against Forgetting https://hackernoon.com/the-long-now-of-the-web-inside-the-internet-archives-fight-against-forgetting * * * # Object permanence (permalink) #20yrsago Disney swaps stock for Pixar; Jobs is largest Disney stockholder https://web.archive.org/web/20060129105430/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/01/22/cnpixar22.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/01/22/ixcitytop.html #20yrsago HOWTO anonymize your search history https://web.archive.org/web/20060220004353/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70051-0.html #15yrsago Bruce Sterling talk on “vernacular video” https://vimeo.com/18977827 #15yrsago Elaborate televised prank on Belgium’s terrible phone company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxXlDyTD7wo #15yrsago Portugal: 10 years of decriminalized drugs https://web.archive.org/web/20110120040831/http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/01/16/drug_experiment/?page=full #15yrsago Woman paralyzed by hickey https://web.archive.org/web/20110123072349/https://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/01/21/new-zealand-woman-partially-paralyzed-hickey/ #15yrsago EFF warns: mobile OS vendors aren’t serious about security https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/dont-sacrifice-security-mobile-devices #10yrsago Trumpscript: a programming language based on the rhetorical tactics of Donald Trump https://www.inverse.com/article/10448-coders-assimilate-donald-trump-to-a-programming-language #10yrsago That time the DoD paid Duke U $335K to investigate ESP in dogs. Yes, dogs. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jan/21/duke-universitys-deep-dive-uncanny-abilities-canin/ #10yrsago Kathryn Cramer remembers her late husband, David Hartwell, a giant of science fiction https://web.archive.org/web/20160124050729/http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2016/01/til-death-did-us-part.html #10yrsago What the Democratic Party did to alienate poor white Americans https://web.archive.org/web/20160123041632/https://www.alternet.org/economy/robert-reich-why-white-working-class-abandoned-democratic-party #10yrsago Bernie Sanders/Johnny Cash tee https://web.archive.org/web/20160126070314/https://weardinner.com/products/bernie-cash #5yrsago NYPD can't stop choking Black men https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/21/i-cant-breathe/#chokeholds #5yrsago Rolling back the Trump rollback https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/21/i-cant-breathe/#cra #1yrsago Winning coalitions aren't always governing coalitions https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how-the-sausage-gets-made/#governing-is-harder #1yrago The Brave Little Toaster https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox #1yrago The cod-Marxism of personalized pricing https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor #1yrago They were warned https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough * * * # Upcoming appearances (permalink) * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937 * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/ * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/ * Salt Lake City: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18 https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/ * Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5 https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/ * 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) * Why Big Tech is a Trap for Independent Creators (Stripper News) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYDyz8AMZ0 * Enshittification (Creative Nonfiction podcast) https://brendanomeara.com/episode-507-enshittification-author-cory-doctorow-believes-in-a-new-good-internet/ * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet * Enshittification with Plutopia https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/ * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1EzM9_6eLE * * * # Latest books (permalink) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "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). * "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). * "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). * "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. * "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) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 * * * # 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 (1010 words today, 11362 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. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING * * * 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. * * * # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic "_When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla_ " -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X ### Like this: Like Loading...

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: AI is how bosses wage war on "professions" (20 Jan 2026)

# Today's links * AI is how bosses wage war on "professions": The only people *required* to tell their bosses to fuck off. * Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. * Object permanence: Enshittification v VC; Byrne v DRM; Forger does it for the exposure; Beach trash hotel; Mafia nicknames; Longbow puzzle; NIMBYs; No one should be on the No-Fly list. * 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. * * * # AI is how bosses wage war on "professions" (permalink) Growing up, I assumed that being a "professional" meant that you were getting paid to do something. That's a perfectly valid definition (I still remember feeling like a "pro" the first time I got paid for my writing), but "professional" has another, far more important definition. In this other sense of the word, a "professional" is someone bound to a code of conduct that supersedes both the demands of their employer and the demands of the state. Think of a doctor's Hippocratic Oath: having sworn to "first do no harm," a doctor is (literally) duty-bound to refuse orders to harm their patients. If a hospital administrator, a police officer or a judge orders a doctor to harm their patient, they are supposed to refuse. Indeed, depending on how you feel about oaths, they are _required_ to refuse. There are many "professions" bound to codes of conduct, policed to a greater or lesser extent by "colleges" or other professional associations, many of which have the power to bar a member from the profession for "professional misconduct." Think of lawyers, accountants, medical professionals, librarians, teachers, some engineers, etc. While all of these fields are very different in terms of the work they do, they share one important trait: they are all fields that AI bros swear will be replaced by chatbots in the near future. I find this an interesting phenomenon. It's clear to me that chatbots can't do these jobs. Sure, there are instances in which professionals may choose to make use of some AI tools, and I'm happy to stipulate that when a skilled professional chooses to use AI as an adjunct to their work, it might go well. This is in keeping with my theory that to the extent that AI is useful, it's when its user is a centaur (a person assisted by technology), but that employers dream of making AI's users into _reverse_ centaurs (machines who are assisted by people): https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington A psychotherapist who uses AI to transcribe sessions so they can refresh their memory about an exact phrase while they're making notes is a centaur. A psychotherapist who monitors 20 chat sessions with LLM "therapists" in order to intervene if the LLM starts telling patients to kill themselves is a "reverse centaur." This situation makes it impossible for them to truly help "their" patients; they are an "accountability sink," installed to absorb the blame when a patient is harmed by the AI. Lawyers might use a chatbot to help them format a brief or transcribe a client meeting (centaur)- but when senior partners require their juniors and paralegals to write briefs at inhuman speed (reverse centaur), they are setting themselves up for briefs _full_ of "hallucinated" citations: https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/ I hold a bedrock view that even though an AI can't do your job, an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job: https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete But why are bosses such easy marks for these gabby AI hustlers? Partly, it's because an AI can probably do your boss's job – if 90% of your job is answering email and delegating tasks, and if you are richly rewarded for success but get to blame failure on your underlings, then, yeah, an AI can totally do that job. But I think there's an important psychological dimension to this: bosses are especially easy to trick with AI when they're being asked to believe that they can use AI to fire workers who are in a position to tell them to fuck off. That certainly explains why bosses are so thrilled by the prospect of swapping professionals for chatbots. What a relief it would be to fire everyone who is professionally _required_ to tell you to fuck off when you want them to do stupid and/or dangerous things; so you could replace them with servile, groveling LLMs that punctuate their sentences with hymns to your vision and brilliance! This also explains why media bosses are so anxious to fire screenwriters and actors and replace them with AI. After all, you prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a clueless studio boss gives notes to a writers' room: "Give me ET, but make it about a dog, give it a love interest, and put a car chase in Act III." The difference is that the writers will call you a clueless fucking suit and demand that you go back to your spreadsheets and stop bothering them while they're trying to make a movie, whereas the chatbot will cheerfully shit out a (terrible) script to spec. The fact that the script will suck is less important than the fact that swapping writers for LLMs will let studio bosses escape ego-shattering conflicts with empowered workers who actually know how to _do_ things. It also explains why bosses are so anxious to replace programmers with chatbots. When programmers were scarce and valuable, they had to be lured into employment with luxurious benefits, lavish pay, and a collegial relationship with their bosses, where everyone was "just an engineer." Tech companies had business-wide engineering meetings where techies were allowed to tell their bosses that they thought their technical and business strategies were stupid. Now that tech worker supply has caught up with demand, bosses are relishing the thought of firing these "entitled" coders and replacing them with chatbots overseen by traumatized reverse centaurs who will never, ever tell them to fuck off: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/05/ex-princes-of-labor/#hyper-criti-hype And of course, this explains why bosses are so eager to use AI to replace workers who might unionize: drivers, factory workers, warehouse workers. For what is a union if not an institution that lets you tell your boss to fuck off? https://www.thewrap.com/conde-nast-fires-union-staffers-video/ AI salesmen may be slick, but they're not _that_ slick. Bosses are easy marks for anyone who dangles the promise of a world where everyone – human _and_ machine – follows orders to the letter, and praises you for giving them such clever, clever orders. (_Image:Christoph Scholz; CC BY-SA 2.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; modified_) * * * # Hey look at this (permalink) * Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots https://ploum.net/2026-01-19-exam-with-chatbots.html * Vein Finder Demonstration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS68ePykav0 * Author of ‘Don’t Say Abolish ICE’ Memo Is a Corporate Consultant https://prospect.org/2026/01/19/author-dont-say-abolish-ice-memo-corporate-consultant-westexec/ * Experiment suggests AI chatbot would save insurance agents a whopping 3 minutes a day https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/axlerod_ai_saves_insurance_agents_time/ * IMF Warns Global Economic Resilience at Risk if AI Falters https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/1423221/imf-warns-global-economic-resilience-at-risk-if-ai-falters * * * # Object permanence (permalink) #20yrsago Broadcast Flag is back, this time it covers iPods and PSPs, too https://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/20/broadcast-flag-is-back-this-time-it-covers-ipods-and-psps-too/ #20yrsago Nonprofit alternative to CDDB gets its first deal https://web.archive.org/web/20060128114433/http://blog.musicbrainz.org/archives/2006/01/introducing_lin_1.html #20yrsago David Byrne: boycott DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20060117084842/http://journal.davidbyrne.com/ #20yrsago Cozy blanket with sleeves: the Slanket https://web.archive.org/web/20060203040004/https://www.theslanket.com/ #15yrsago Safe-cracking robot autodials combinations to brute-force a high-security safe https://web.archive.org/web/20110709082726/http://www.kvogt.com/autodialer/ #15yrsago Forger never takes money, only wants to see his works hanging in galleries https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/arts/design/12fraud.html #15yrsago Hotel made of beach trash in Madrid https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/travel-news/new-hotel-is-complete-rubbish-20110120-19xjl.html #15yrsago Enfield, CT cancels screening of Moore’s Sicko after pressure from local gov’t https://web.archive.org/web/20110123033350/http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/63420 #15yrsago Best mafiosi nicknames from today’s historic bust https://web.archive.org/web/20110126120419/https://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/01/the_20_best_nic.php #10yrsago Very sad news about science fiction titan David G Hartwell https://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/20/very-sad-news-about-science-fiction-titan-david-g-hartwell/ #10yrsago Solving the “Longbow Puzzle”: why did France and Scotland keep their inferior crossbows? https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684231 #10yrsago Netflix demands Net Neutrality, but makes an exception for T-Mobile https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/19/10794288/netflix-t-mobile-binge-on-net-neutrality-zero-rating #10yrsago Research: increased resident participation in city planning produces extreme wealth segregation https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/data-analysis-reveals-that-us-cities-are-segregating-the-wealthy/ #10yrsago Independent economists: TPP will kill 450,000 US jobs; 75,000 Japanese jobs, 58,000 Canadian jobs https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/19/more-realistic-modelling-tpps-effects-predicts-450000-us-jobs-lost-gdp-contraction/ #10yrsago Howto: make your own fantastically detailed Star Trek: TOS bridge playset https://www.instructables.com/Star-Trek-Enterprise-Bridge-Playset/ #10yrsago Strategic butt coverings in video games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujTufg1GvR4 #10yrsago Company that pampers rich people at Burning Man won’t give up https://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/20/company-that-pampers-rich-people-at-burning-man-wont-give-up/ #5yrsago No one should be on the No-Fly List https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/20/damn-the-shrub/#no-nofly #5yrsago My letter to the FBI https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/20/damn-the-shrub/#foia #1yrago Enshittification isn't caused by venture capital https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis #1yrago Keir Starmer appoints Jeff Bezos as his "first buddy" https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter * * * # Upcoming appearances (permalink) * Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937 * Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25 https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ * Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28 https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/ * Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30 https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/ * Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5 https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/ * 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) * Why Big Tech is a Trap for Independent Creators (Stripper News) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYDyz8AMZ0 * Enshittification (Creative Nonfiction podcast) https://brendanomeara.com/episode-507-enshittification-author-cory-doctorow-believes-in-a-new-good-internet/ * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3) https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet * Enshittification with Plutopia https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/ * "can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1EzM9_6eLE * * * # Latest books (permalink) * "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 * "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). * "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). * "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). * "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. * "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) * "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 * "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 * "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 * "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 * * * # 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 (1002 words today, 10352 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. * "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING. * A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING * * * 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. * * * # How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic "_When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla_ " -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X ### Like this: Like Loading...

pluralistic.net