Posts by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) Post #B2VvPSruTlpoPRzn2O by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:37:41Z
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For *decades*, technologists dreamed of building a "semantic web" where 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.htmThis 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.15/
(DIR) Post #B2VvPaPqQ08doivUP2 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:37:55Z
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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. 16/
(DIR) Post #B2VvPiVoJhfEvXmMoS by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:38:05Z
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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*.17/
(DIR) Post #B2VvPqSCmzX9Yg9bIu by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:38:16Z
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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-abuse18/
(DIR) Post #B2VvPyldsbppLHJEi8 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:38:28Z
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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.19/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQ6nM27xSEuAiUS by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:38:37Z
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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. 20/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQE62t24IstyF60 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:38:49Z
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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. 21/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQLMFtAC5PCbmpk by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:39:02Z
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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-communistGoogle'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. 22/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQSX9D449f0l5Hc by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:39:14Z
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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." 23/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQZkAP3di1Pu532 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:39:26Z
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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/24/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQhBij0q56tqgT2 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:39:34Z
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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.'"25/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQoJmDSRVDufiUq by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:39:43Z
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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.26/
(DIR) Post #B2VvQvXrLUrndcJYv2 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:39:57Z
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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/27/
(DIR) Post #B2VvR3Figp6tXftBku by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:40:07Z
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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."28/
(DIR) Post #B2VvRAUrkuNw0g1sps by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:40:15Z
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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-space29/
(DIR) Post #B2VvRHcZGfhm6agdJQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:40:39Z
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I'm coming to Colorado! Catch me in #Denver on Thu (Jan 22) at The Tattered Cover:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937And in #ColoradoSprings this weekend (Jan 23-25), where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine:https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/Then I'll be in #Ottawa on Jan 28 at Perfect Books:https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/And in #Toronto with Tim Wu on Jan 30:https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/30/
(DIR) Post #B2VvROg12FcdzJLz9s by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-21T14:40:46Z
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Image:Noah_Loverbear (modified)https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Mountain_View_California_-_panoramio.jpgCC BY-SA 3.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en--Image:Cryteria (modified)https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svgCC BY 3.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.eneof/
(DIR) Post #B2aXT44pAaOzZI1HNo by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-23T20:59:56Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
Having spent thousands of dollars on Cobra, only to have Kaiser terminate my account without notice or warning, and back-date the termination to December, I called Kaiser. It took 54 minutes to speak to someone, who could not resolve this issue. I have been waiting to speak to someone who may be able to resolve my issue for 71 minutes now.
(DIR) Post #B2gGYoW57UBy5hEJu4 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-26T15:15:47Z
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Proof that 99.98% of all conversations about bitcoin are nonconsensual.
(DIR) Post #B2jz1C5S3dHgl7zrMm by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2026-01-28T10:20:50Z
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I get email.