I am posting this on the first full day of Decentralized Web Camp on July 9th, 2026. TLDR: Infographic! Doctorow named what we’re all feeling Cory Doctorow gave us the word: enshittification and a description of a pattern that keeps happening. His original framing, from his January 2023 Pluralistic post: “First, they are good to […]
Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet (01 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled "A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet" for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech.
Worse on Purpose
Investigative essays on corporate enshittification — how the brands you trusted made everything worse on purpose, and who profits when they do.
The Annotated Encyclical - a Hugging Face Space by society-ethics
Magnifica Humanitas, annotated with AI-ethics research
Pluralistic: Deplatform yourself (23 Feb 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The first time I met William Gibson – to interview him for the Globe and Mail on the release of 1999's All Tomorrow's Parties – there was one question I knew I wanted to ask him: "What happens to the counterculture in the era of instantaneous commodification?"
Enshittification, Despotification, and the Open Internet
It’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. Architecture shapes incentives; incentives shape outcomes.
Lexicon Service Docs - at:// pizza thoughts
Riffing on some ways to make network services more legible to humans and machines
Vibe Coding: The Final Form of Hyper-Individualism
A few days ago, I had to deal with the first "vibe coded" PR to my software. In this article, I reflect on this encounter, and analyze the social …
Defending my own brain against enshittification
If you haven't had Belvita breakfast cookies, you have probably had Biscoff cookies, which are similar. These are a classic airline snack. You've probably ha...
Your Body, Your Feed – Creating a bridge between consent and self-expression - What’s Happening on My Feed?
Recently, we’ve seen an increase in discussion around how adult content currently shows up on our platform. By adult content, we mean content that is usually labeled as pornography, non-sexual nudity, or sexually suggestive content. Labeling adult content (both text- and image-based) is an example of how we empower community members to share more of themselves with folks, without creating a non-consensual experience for other members that do not wish to engage with adult content. To solve this, we want to present you with options and invite you, as a member of our community, to decide how adult content shows up on Blacksky.
An Ode to Links
Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.
Assumed Audiences
Naming your invisible audiences to free yourself from unspoken obligations
The Death of DeviantArt and the art-site shaped hole haunting the Internet - Multi-hyphenate
Why every new "Art Community" fails. Equal parts eulogy, condemnation, and mourning.
ATproto: The Enshittification Killswitch That Enables Resonant Computing
Disclosure: I’m on the board of Bluesky, which was inspired by my “Protocols, Not Platforms” paper. But this post isn’t about Bluesky the app. It’s about the underlyin…
The Defender’s Window
The OpenAI-Hugging Face incident was a watershed moment for cybersecurity because it gave a peek into how the capabilities of a typical threat actor will evolve in upcoming months. I’ve spoken with many organizations over the past few weeks, and...
The Dark Mode Toggle Discourse
How the dark mode toggle discourse unfolded One designer's argument against the classic light/dark/system three-way switch turned into weeks of blog rebuttals, parody posts, and "do you even need a toggle at all?" takes. The timeline Aug 1…
Pluralistic: Model collapse (12 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
One of my favorite rhetorical and analytical moves is joining things together (showing that two different, seemingly unrelated ideas are aspects of the same phenomenon) and taking them apart (resolving a paradox by demonstrating that what appears to be one, contradictory thing is actually two different things that have been lumped together).