Top all-time · #338
Cory Doctorow
Personal blog · doctorow.medium.compoliticsculturewriting
Cory Doctorow's personal blog at doctorow.medium.com covers politics, culture and writing. Since 2021, 154 different Hacker News readers have linked it 202 times, most often “A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled Copyleft Trolls (2022)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Cory Doctorow's Medium posts for his writing on platform monopolies, enshittification, copyright and Creative Commons licensing, and the idea of chokepoint capitalism.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- One commenter calls a post 'pretty compelling'; another says one 'nails it'; another 'explains it perfectly'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled Copyleft Trolls (2022)10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2022-01-25
- I quit – Peak indifference, big tobacco6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-06-07
- About those kill-switched Ukrainian tractors5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-05-08
- Why none of my books are available on Audible5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-08-28
- /https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-11-vulgar-thatcherism-there-is-an-alternative-f1428b42a8fd4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-12-16
- Provocateur Copyrights a Magic: The Gathering Deck3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-08-15
- /https-pluralistic-net-2025-12-05-pop-that-bubble-u-washington-8b6b75abc28e3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-01-07
- The Big Lie that keeps the Uber bezzle alive3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-12
- Cory Doctorow: What Is Chokepoint Capitalism?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-10
- /como-is-infosec-307f870045633 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-10-18
What Hacker News says?
Also just bc the link is buried, see https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99 He traded smoking for buying a new laptop every year. Now that it's been years, I guess he could quit and not buy a new laptop. But also people do more wasteful things. I do understand though, I drive laptops into the ground over many years but still 4-5 years per laptop
Comment linking /i-quit-9ae7b6010c99
on “The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used”Submitted I quit – Peak indifference, big tobacco as a story · 285 points
HN discussionAs the other comments have noted, Cory addresses this further down in the linked post. He further expanded on this in the post he wrote when he quit smoking[0]: > That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason not to smoke. When I came back, I had my answer ready: “I spend two laptops per year on smokes. That money goes directly to the dirtiest companies on Earth, the literal inventors of the science…
Comment linking /i-quit-9ae7b6010c99
on “The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used”Submitted A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled Copyleft Trolls (2022) as a story · 281 points
HN discussionHe applies the word to more than just that kind of 2 sided market. https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2... In his own words the enshitificstion of Google is: “curse of bigness.” > With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, “growth” has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the n…
Comment linking /googles-enshittification-memos-2d6d57306072
on “FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations”Submitted An Open Letter to Pixsy CEO Kain Jones, Who Keeps Sending Me Legal Threats as a story · 231 points
HN discussionSee https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563 > This is the same failure mode of all security-through-obscurity. Secrecy means that bad guys are privy to defects in systems, while the people who those systems are supposed to defend are in the dark, and can have their defenses weaponized against them.
Comment linking /como-is-infosec-307f87004563
on “Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help”Submitted ISP announces 86% slowdown “in line with others” as a story · 215 points
HN discussionPlus the idea that if you pay someone to "purchase" and "own" (their terms!!) content, then it's yours forever. Unless, of course, they renegotiate something upstream and subsequently remove the content from your "library" or your device. Or perhaps they lock you out of those things altogether. This means it wasn't ownership, it was subscription. So as they say, “if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.” htt…
Comment linking /https-pluralistic-net-2023-12-08-playstationed-tyler-james-hill-2ba28bfdbefc
on “Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy”Submitted Facebook thrives on criticism of “disinformation” as a story · 198 points
HN discussionOddities in German copyright or related law don't just have that effect on piracy, they make certain forms of “copyleft trolling” by third parties (who may be in no way linked to the content creator) possible, or at least far easier. This isn't the only route to copyleft trolling, of course. Refs: https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyleft_trol…
Comment linking /a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator-5f6360713299
on “Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam”Submitted McKinsey taught Big Pharma how to price-gouge as a story · 170 points
HN discussionCory Doctorow makes a pretty compelling case it's just a bezzle: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-big-lie-that-keeps-the-uber-...
Comment linking /the-big-lie-that-keeps-the-uber-bezzle-alive-8d6e8c0ccde7
on “Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals”Submitted Why none of my books are available on Audible as a story · 133 points
HN discussion> Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head. They have a hard time dealing with those people that tell them their ideas are bad, unethical, or illegal. Now they have their Fisher-Price steering wheel hooked into the drive train of the business! https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-08-18...
Comment linking /https-pluralistic-net-2025-08-18-seeing-like-a-billionaire-npcs-7a7746fe64e8
on “It's still ok to enjoy programming”Submitted How to leave dying social media platforms as a story · 88 points
HN discussionIt didn't augment your skills, it replaced skills you lack. If I generate art using DallE or Stable Diffusion, then edit in Krita/Photoshop/etc. it doesn't suddenly cover up the fact that I was unable to draw/paint/photograph the initial concept. It didn't augment my skills, it replaced them. If you generate "music" like that, it's not augmenting your poetry that you wish to use as lyrics - which may or may not be o…
Comment linking /https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-11-vulgar-thatcherism-there-is-an-alternative-f1428b42a8fd
on “This is not the future”Submitted The Memex Method as a story · 82 points
HN discussionCory Doctorow article nails it https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-go... It is Google "do no evil" to blame.
Comment linking /the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205
on “Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host”Submitted The End of the Road to Serfdom as a story · 81 points
HN discussionThe technology has potential to be decentralized, but telephones were famously considered a "natural monopoly" and ended up centralized under Ma Bell. Government split Ma Bell into multiple smaller pieces, but they still operated as a cartel and kept prices high. They had centralized telephone switchboard operators etc. It is only when authors of decentralized file-sharing networks like Kazaa (who built them to get…
Comment linking /https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04-teach-me-how-to-shruggie-kagi-caaa88c221f2
on “Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?”Submitted Facebook shouldn’t be in charge of how you use Facebook as a story · 72 points
HN discussionOh, and there's the deadweight loss of those who would qualify for a benefit (under law) but fail either to jump through the proper bureaucratic hoops, or who do hoop-jump, but are still denied benefits, whether through bureaucratic error, inefficiency, corruption, or other reasons. TFA describes the first circumstance. Patio11 has noted that the optimum level of fraud is non-zero, a point picked up by Cory Doctorow…
Comment linking /https-pluralistic-net-2025-04-24-hermit-kingdom-simpler-times-d32d54f10415
on “I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt”Submitted How Palantir Will Steal the NHS as a story · 64 points
HN discussion> focus on writing content Cory Doctorow has a good take on this recently. It isn't just writing content but getting ideas out there that can later become something more. [1] Doctorow calls blogging like a Vannevar Bush Memex but publishing as a series of entries that can start to create a better idea and "nucleate". > If you’re a writer or an activist or anyone else engaged in critical synthesis, then the news-stor…
Comment linking /the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46
on “Building a personal website in 2021”Submitted A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled New Breed of Superpredator as a story · 60 points
HN discussionAll of my Twitter threads also appear as blog posts: Here's this one: https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#cornucopi... It's also available as a Mastodon thread: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/107179959514393968 And an ad-free, tracker-free, libre newsletter: https://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/2021-October/000... It's also mirrored to Medium: https://doctorow.medium.com/all-of-science-gets-a-ge…
Comment linking /dead-letters-73924aa19f9d
on “It's hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is”Submitted The Framework is the most exciting laptop I’ve ever used as a story · 55 points
HN discussionAll of my Twitter threads also appear as blog posts: Here's this one: https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#cornucopi... It's also available as a Mastodon thread: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/107179959514393968 And an ad-free, tracker-free, libre newsletter: https://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/2021-October/000... It's also mirrored to Medium: https://doctorow.medium.com/all-of-science-gets-a-ge…
Comment linking /dead-letters-73924aa19f9d
on “It's hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is”Submitted Uber’s Still Not Profitable as a story · 49 points
HN discussion
