Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dogs-breakfast/
1/
Discussion
Loading...
@pluralistic
Concerning class actions against enshittifying companies, I've recently watched this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_UF_4gZclI
TLDW: Swedish gamer sues Mojang because they quote made-up ToS on in-game gun prohibition (but allow gambling and lootboxes), and because they threatened to delete users' accounts if they refused to migrate to Microsoft.
@pluralistic «Class actions are the only way that corporations can be held to account for actions that victimize vast numbers of people in relatively small ways. If you've been injured to the tune of less than, say, $500, you probably won't hire a lawyer to get it back. Bluesky has 36 million users, meaning – thanks to the ban on class actions – it could steal about $18 billion from them all without having to worry about a gigantic, business-destroying lawsuit.»
I have a new business idea
@pluralistic I’m now thinking: what is my Ulysses-pact for https://scheduleus.online. Thank you.
@pluralistic I like to use TTS to listen to your articles. Today is all about 'blooskee' apparently 🤣
Silly TTS voices!
TGIF
Silly TTS voices!
TGIF
@pluralistic That image of Ulysses with Bluesky sirens and a stowaway is spectacular. 😄
@joncounts Thank you! I *love* making these collages. They're all open access/CC and you can get high-rezzes of them on Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/albums/72177720316719208?sd
@pluralistic Superb. This is the way.
@pluralistic interesting. I may finally join bluesky after all.
@pluralistic The term "pro-enshittificatory" made me think of folks in that mode being "enshittiphiles". That must be out there somewhere, but search doesn't find it.
@fitzscott Enshittotrophes: people who gravitate toward enshittification.
@pluralistic @fitzscott
Enshitophagia: the gleeful and uncritical consumption of AI promotion and/or products.
@pluralistic hey cory, question for clarification: when you say that your sysadmin is going to be running Bluesky servers, what part(s?) of the atproto infrastructure are you talking about? I have a sense that this impacts whether or not you can avoid bsky's ToS
@pluralistic
It means they are evil and we should block them better and ask people stop posting links to it, tell people to get off it.
Get the hell off bluesky, its evil.
Evil is going down. Stop participating.
@pluralistic
☝️ Good balanced piece on the state of corporate Bluesky's battle with itself vis a vis enshitification.
My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
--
My next nonfiction book is "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," out from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 7:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
7/
Yesterday's threads: "Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115028207157886607
6/
#10yrago Pre-crime: DHS admits that it puts people on the no-fly list based on “predictive assessment” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/10/us-no-fly-list-predictive-assessments
#5yrsago AI, 1A and Citizens United https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/15/wish-youd-share/#clearview-1a
#1yrago Apple vs the "free market" https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig
5/
#20yrsago Babies on the no-fly list https://web.archive.org/web/20050910182032/https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/08/15/national/w115806D06.DTL&type=printable
#10yrsago AT&T was the NSA’s enthusiastic top surveillance partner https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html
#10yrsago Miami police union smears woman who posted video of cop beating handcuffed suspect in police cruiserhttps://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/police-union-smears-woman-who-posted-video-of-police-beating-on-facebook-7823262
4/
Hey look at this
* Sabot in the Age of AI https://algorithmic-sabotage.github.io/asrg/posts/sabot-in-the-age-of-ai/ (h/t JWZ)
* Bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler offers character naming rights in fundraiser https://clarionwriteathon.com/prizes/auction.php
* LLMs’ “simulated reasoning” abilities are a “brittle mirage,” researchers find https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/researchers-find-llms-are-bad-at-logical-inference-good-at-fluent-nonsense/
* Pank-a-Squith https://www.neatorama.com/2025/08/14/Pank-a-Squith-The-Womens-Suffrage-Board-Game/ (h/t Neatorama)
* Ray’s Day, what is it? https://raysday.net/en/
3
/
Open Science
We are a network of scientists, developers and organizations building the next generation of digital spaces for open science.
Automatic federation enabled