Six years ago today, after 19 years with Boing Boing, during which time I wrote tens of thousands of blog posts, I started a new, solo blog, with the semi-ironic name "Pluralistic."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A screengrab from the first episode of 'The Prisoner,' showing Number Six (Patrick McGoohan) lying unconscious on the beach after being bowled over by a giant white sphere (a 'Rover'). The image has been altered; my head has been superimposed on McGoohan's body; TV scan lines have been added, and the image has been given a vertical 'ripple' of the sort that appears in a badly tuned broadcast TV signal.
I wish I could have used the regular Bluesky service while I waited, but just setting up an account permanently binds you to totally unacceptable and dangerous terms of service:
What's the point of a service that has account- and data-portability if signing up for it makes you permanently surrender your rights, even if you switch servers? This might be the stupidest social media unforced error of the post-zuckermuskian era.
Recently the server staff received an e-mail telling them to moderate the Discord server and the server chat on what they deem to be "appropriate." ...
Shake Shack has changed the terms of service for its app, adding a "binding arbitration" clause that bans you from suing the company or joining a class action suit against it:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A black and white photo of man's hand holding a gavel over a wooden table. The photo has been tinted green and the Shake Shack logo has been inserted behind the scene. Beneath the gavel is a Shake Shack hamburger whose meat has been tinted green.
It will not surprise you to learn that arbitrators overwhelmingly find in favor of their employers and even when they rule in favor of a wronged customer, the penalties they impose on their bosses add up to little more than a wrist-slap:
One of the dumbest, shrewdest tricks corporate America ever pulled was teaching us all to reflexively say, "If a corporation blocks your speech, that doesn't violate the First Amendment and therefore it's not censorship":
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Two figures in royal robes seated back to back atop a pile of gold bars. One wears a tophat, the other, a crown in the form of a gilded crown. A forest of angled broadcast towers sits behind them. The sky is overshadowed by thunderheads.
One interesting (terrible) wrinkle here: Facebook didn't even have to go to court to bring Wynn-Williams to the precipice of financial ruin. They were able to get a private arbitrator (a random dude in Facebook's pay) to hand down a "judgment" fining her $50,000 every time she criticizes Facebook. That's because Wynn-Williams's employment contract contains a "binding arbitration" clause that says that she can't ever have her case heard by a judge:
If you have a sufficiently horrible boss, you might have heard them use the phrase, "One throat to choke," by which they mean, "We must arrange this project so there's one person I can blame and punish if it goes awry.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
An elderly white couple photographed in the 1960s. The man has his hand around the woman's shoulder. Both have had their mouths duct-taped shut. The man's gag bears a Google logo; the woman's gag bears a Meta logo. Over the man's shoulder rises the Mastodon mascot, blindfolded. Over the woman's shoulder rises the Bluesky butteryfly, also blindfolded. Emerging from the background is a 'code waterfall' effect as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies.
Bluesky's Terms of Service trap all of its users in a "binding arbitration" waiver that forces them to surrender their right to sue. That means that if Bluesky were to threaten Blacksky in a bid to force it to do age verification or engage in some other form of censorship, anyone involved with Blacksky who ever created a Bluesky account would be unable to use to courts to defend themselves:
Trump's stolen a lot of workers' wages over the years, but this week, he has become history's greatest thief of wages, having directed his FTC to stop enforcing its ban on noncompetes "agreements," a move that will cost American workers $400 billion over the next ten years:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A figure caught in a leg-hold trap. They wear a vintage orange McDonald's uniform, but their head is the Wendy's logo head, smile inverted, and face altered to a facsimile of Ronald McDonald's makeup. The background is a heavily distorted MAGA hat.
Today, binding arbitration has expanded into every kind of contract, even to the point where groovy, open source, decentralized, federated social media platforms are forcing it on their users:
"I happen to think pretty highly of the management of Bluesky (the company) at the moment. But Bluesky has outside investors – the distressingly stupid- and sinister-sounding Blockchain Capital – and if these people get it into their heads to enshittify Bluesky, they can force good actors off the board of directors, fire the management, and replace them with standard-issue corporate sociopaths.
What's more, the fact that users are hostage to Bluesky – that they have no way to part ways with the company without parting ways with the people they value on the service – means that new management can torment Bluesky users with impunity, so long as these torments are kept to a level such that Bluesky users hate the company less than they love one another."—Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic
Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause >
William Gibson famously said "Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion." But for every tech leader fantasizing about lobotomizing their enemies with Black Ice, there's 10 who wish they were Darth Vader, force-choking you while grating out, "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Combine the "agreements" we must click through after we hand over our money, wherein we "consent" to having the terms altered at any time, in any way, forever, and surrender our right to sue:
Just as Martin Niemöller's "First They Came" has become our framework for understanding the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, so, too is Wilhoit's Law the best way to understand America's decline into fascism:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The Gadsen 'DONT TREAD ON ME' flag; the text has been replaced with 'THERE MUST BE IN-GROUPS WHOM THE LAW PROTECTS BUT DOES NOT BIND ALONGSIDE OUT-GROUPS WHOM THE LAW BINDS BUT DOES NOT PROTECT.'
There's a pretty clever hack around binding arbitration: mass arbitration, whereby lots of wronged people coordinate to file claims, which can cost a dirty corporation more than a plain old class-action suit:
Of course, Wilhoit's Law provides corporations with a way around this: they can reserve the right not to arbitrate and to force you into a class action suit if that's advantageous to them:
Have you found a pop-up appearing on screen, requiring you to accept new terms and conditions (due to be implemented in September), before you can proceed?
Does anyone know of any tl:dr about what these changes are? It's putting me in a very "i ain't reading all that" state of mind.
(Note: this question does not relate to whatever BlueSky is doing in relation Mississippi.)
Six Years of Pluralistic ( pluralistic.net )
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The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft
Recently the server staff received an e-mail telling them to moderate the Discord server and the server chat on what they deem to be "appropriate." ...
Shake Shack wants you to shit yourself to death ( pluralistic.net )
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It's still censorship (even if it doesn't violate the First Amendment) ( pluralistic.net )
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No such thing as selective censorship resistance ( pluralistic.net )
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Trump steals $400b from American workers ( pluralistic.net )
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Darth Android ( pluralistic.net )
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By all means, tread on those people ( pluralistic.net )
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