loading . . . Pluralistic: Meta's new top EU regulator is contractually prohibited from hurting Meta's feelings (01 Dec 2025)
# Today's links
* Meta's new top EU regulator is contractually prohibited from saying mean things about Meta: It's one thing to hire an ex-Meta lobbyist, another entirely if she's signed a non-disparagement contract.
* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
* Object permanence: Custom M&M restrictions; Vacuum-bag dust houses; Winner-Take-All Politics; Pre-mutated products; Disney World on strike; "Ship Breaker"; TSA patdowns a "homosexual agenda"; RÄT.
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* Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
* Colophon: All the rest.
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# Meta's new top EU regulator is contractually prohibited from saying mean things about Meta (permalink)
"Regulatory capture" is one of those concepts that can seem nebulous and abstract. How can you _really_ know when a regulator has failed to protect you because they were in bed with the companies they were supposed to be regulating, and when this is just because they're bad at their job. "Never attribute to malice," etc etc.
The difficulty of pinning down real instances of regulatory capture is further complicated by the arguments of right-wing economists, who claim that regulatory capture is inevitable, that companies will always grow to the point where they can overpower the state and use it to shut down smaller companies before they can become a threat. They use this as an argument for abolishing _all_ regulation, rather than, you know, stopping monopolies from growing until they are more powerful than the state:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/
Despite this confusion, there are times when regulatory capture is anything _but_ subtle. Especially these times, when the corporate world, spooked by the pandemic-era surge in antitrust enforcement, have launched a gloves-off/mask-off offensive to simply take over their governments, abandoning any pretext of being responsive to democratically accountable processes or agencies.
You've got David Sacks, Trump's billionaire AI czar, who is directing American AI policy while holding (hundreds of?) millions of dollars worth of stock in companies that stand to directly benefit from his work in the US government:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/technology/david-sacks-white-house-profits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5E8.Nb2d.3L204EF4nliq
Sacks has threatened the _New York Times_ , demanding that they "abandon" the story about his conflicts of interest:
https://protos.com/david-sacks-sends-silly-legal-threat-to-the-new-york-times/
And he's hired the law-firm that is at the center of a decades-long open conspiracy to end press freedom in America, bankrolled and overseen by the same people who planned and executed the destruction of American abortion rights:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/17/actual-malice/#happy-slapping
This isn't a strictly US affair, either. In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer rang in 2025 by firing the country's top competition regulator and replacing him with the former head of Amazon UK, one of the country's most notorious monopolists, whose tax evasion, labor abuses, and anticompetitive mergers and tactics had been on the Competition and Markets Authority's agenda for years:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter
Today, this same swindle is playing out in Canada. Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell – recently endowed with the most sweeping enforcement powers of any competition regulator in the world – has resigned early. Now, Canada's monopolists are openly calling for one of their own top execs to take over the office for the next five years, citing a bizarre Canadian tradition of alternating between civil servants and revolving-door corporate insiders in turn:
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/competition-commissioner-matthew
However, there is one country that always, always brings home the gold in the Regulatory Capture Olympics: Ireland. Ireland had the misfortune to establish itself as a tax haven, meaning it makes pennies by helping the worst corporations in the world (especially US Big Tech companies) hide billions from global tax authorities. Being a tax haven sucks, because tax havens must _also_ function as _crime_ havens.
After all, the tech companies that pretend to be Irish have no loyalty to the country – they are there solely because Ireland will help them cheat the rest of the world. What's more, any company that can hire lawyers to do the paperwork to let it pretend that it's Irish this week could pay those lawyers to pretend that it is Cypriot, or Maltese, or Dutch, or Luxembourgeois next week. To keep these American companies from skipping town, Ireland must bend its entire justice system to the facilitation of _all_ of American tech companies' crimes.
Of course, there is no class of crime that American tech companies commit more flagrantly or consequentially than the systematic, ruthless invasion of our privacy. Nine years ago, the EU passed the landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a big, muscular privacy law that bans virtually all of the data-collection undertaken by America's tech companies. However, because these companies pretend they are Irish, they have been able to move all GDPR enforcement to Ireland, where the Data Protection Commissioner could always be relied upon to let these companies get away with murder:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town
If you have formed the (widespread) opinion that the GDPR is worse than useless, responsible for nothing more than an endless stream of bullshit "cookie consent" pop-ups, blame the Irish DPC. American tech companies have pretended that they are allowed to substitute these cookie popups for doing the thing the GDPR demands on them (not spying on you at all). This is an obvious violation of the GDPR, and the only way an enforcer could possibly fail to see this is if they served a government whose entire economy depended on keeping Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai happy. It's impossible to explain something to a regulator when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.
Incredibly, Ireland has found a way to make this awful situation _even worse_. They've appointed Niamh Sweeney, an ex-Meta lobbyist, to the role of Irish Data Protection Commissioner. Her resume includes "six years at Meta, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was head of public policy, Ireland for Facebook before becoming WhatsApp’s director of public policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa":
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/09/17/ex-tech-lobbyist-named-to-data-protection-commission/
In their complaint to the European Commission, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties lays out a devastating case against Sweeney's fitness to serve – the fact that she has broad, deep, obvious conflicts of interest that should automatically disqualify her from the role:
https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/complaint-v-ireland-to-european-commission-re-process-appointing-ex-meta-lobbyist-as-data-protection-commissioner/#_ftn11
Among other things, Meta execs – like Sweeney – are given piles of stock options and shares in the company. The decisions that Sweeney will be called upon to make as DPC will have a significant and lasting negative effect on Meta's stocks – if Meta is banned from surveilling 500m affluent European consumers, they will make a _lot_ less money.
But that's just for starters. Meta execs also sign contracts that bind them to:
* Nondisparagement: ex-Meta executives are permanently barred from "making any disparaging, crucial or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning [Meta's] products, services or programs; its business affairs, operation, management and financial condition…"
* Nondisclosure: ex-Meta executives are broadly prohibited from discussing their employment, or disclosing the things they learned while working at the company.
* Forced arbitration: if Meta believes that a former exec has violated these clauses, they can order the former exec to be silent, and bill them tens of thousands of dollars every time they speak out. Former executives sign away the right to contest these fines and orders in front of a judge; instead, all claims are heard by an "arbitrator" – a corporate lawyer who is paid by Meta and is in charge of deciding whether Meta (who pays their invoices) is right or wrong.
We know about these contractual terms because they have been applied to Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former top Meta exec who published a whistleblower memoir, _Careless People_ , which discloses many of Meta's most terrible practices, from systemic sexual harassment at the highest echelon to a worldwide surveillance collaboration with the Chinese government to complicity in the Rohingya genocide, to the fact that Mark Zuckerberg cheats at Settlers of Catan and his underlings let him win:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/#zdgaf
Meta dragged Wynn-Williams in front of Meta's pet arbitrator over the statements in her book (without disputing their truthfulness). The arbitrator has fined Wynn-Williams $111,000,000 for speaking out ($50,000 per violation), and has barred her from promoting her book in any way. The company has ordered her not to testify before the US Congress or the UK Parliament. The clauses in Wynn-Williams contract are very similar (if not identical) to the clauses that the US National Labor Relations Board ruled unenforceable:
https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/employment-law/nlrb-rules-metas-7200-confidentiality-agreements-unlawful/499180
Wynn-Williams appeared on stage with me last month at London's Barbican Centre, in a book-tour event moderated by Chris Morris. Whenever we talked about Meta or _Careless People_ , Wynn-Williams would fall silent and assume a blank facial expression, lest she make another statement that would result in Meta seeking another $50,000 from her under the terms of her contract.
In their complaint to the EU, ICCL raises the extremely likely probability that Sweeney is bound by the same contractual terms as Wynn-Williams, meaning that Meta's top regulator in Ireland, the country where Meta pretends to be based, will be contractually prohibited from saying anything that makes Mark Zuckerberg feel bad about himself.
This isn't just a matter for Ireland, either. Given the nature of European federalism, most of Meta's violations of European privacy laws will start with the Irish DPC – in other words, all 500,000,000 Europeans will be forced to complain to someone who is legally barred from upsetting Zuck's digestion.
Tax havens are a global scourge. By allowing American tech companies to evade their taxes around the world, Ireland is complicit in starving countries everywhere of tax revenue they are properly owed. Perhaps even worse than this, though, is the fact that these cod-Irish American companies can always out-compete their domestic rivals all over the world, because those companies have to pay tax, while Meta does not. Ireland has been every bit as important in exporting US Big Tech around the world as the US has been.
But Ireland has another key export, one that is confined to the European Union. Because every tax haven must be a crime haven, and because Big Tech's favorite crime is illegal surveillance, Ireland has exported American tech spying to the whole European Union.
That's how things stand today, and how they've stood since the passage of the GDPR. If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said that this is as terrible as things could get. But now that Ireland has put an ex-Meta exec in charge of deciding whether Meta is invading Europeans' privacy, without confirming whether this dingo babysitter _is even allowed to criticize Meta_ , it's clear that things could get much worse than I ever imagined.
(_Image:Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified_)
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# Hey look at this (permalink)
* A Remarkable Assertion from A16Z https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/a-remarkable-assertion-from-a16z
* NYC Realtime Subway Clock https://nookwoodworking.com/products/nyc-realtime-subway-clock?variant=42620252717218
* Big Tech’s Invisible Hand https://apublica.org/especial/big-techs-invisible-hand/
* Santa plc https://open.spotify.com/episode/1HpeETwCsmYAUWM1g06lhI
* MAGA Antitrust Is Officially Dead: DOJ Sanctions Price Fixing With Slap on the Wrist Settlement Against Rental Housing Collusion Kingpin RealPage https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/12/maga-antitrust-is-officially-dead-doj-sanctions-illegal-behavior-with-slap-on-the-wrist-settlement-against-price-fixing-kingpin-realpage.html
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# Object permanence (permalink)
#20yrsago Custom M&Ms: just don’t mention the war, your hometown, or nouns https://memex.craphound.com/2005/11/28/custom-mms-just-dont-mention-the-war-your-hometown-or-nouns/
#20yrsago Sony CD spyware installs and can run permanently, even if you click “Decline” https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2005/11/28/mediamax-permanently-installs-and-runs-unwanted-software-even-if-user-declines-eula/
#20yrsago Programmers on Sony’s spyware DRM asked for newsgroup help too https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft.public.windowsmedia.sdk/c/kWKbc54lLxo?hl=en&pli=1#cf2c1677c4ce5138
#20yrsago Vacuum-bag dust houses sculpted by former house-cleaner https://web.archive.org/web/20051127031640/http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/001661.php
#20yrsago Sony knew about rootkits 28 days before the story broke https://web.archive.org/web/20051202044828/http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051129_938966.htm
#20yrsago How the next version of the GPL will be drafted https://gplv3.fsf.org/process-definition/
#20yrsago No Xmas for Sony protest badge https://web.archive.org/web/20051203044536/https://gigi.pixcode.com/noxmas.gif
#20yrsago HOWTO defeat Apple’s anti-DVD-screenshot DRM https://highschoolblows.blogspot.com/2005/11/take-screenshot-of-dvd-player-in-os-x.html
#20yrsago EFF: DMCA exemption process is completely bullshit https://web.archive.org/web/20051204031027/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004212.php
#15yrsago Paolo Bacigalupi’s SHIP BREAKER: YA adventure story in a post-peak-oil world https://memex.craphound.com/2010/11/30/paolo-bacigalupis-ship-breaker-ya-adventure-story-in-a-post-peak-oil-world/
#15yrsago Walt Disney World employees demand a living wage https://thedisneyblog.com/2010/12/01/disney-world-union-takes-offensive/
#15yrsago Hotel peephole doctored for easy removal and spying https://www.flickr.com/photos/kentbrew/5221903189/
#15yrsago DC-area county official says TSA patdowns are “homosexual agenda” https://dcist.com/story/10/11/30/loudoun-county-official-tsa-pat-dow/
#15yrsago Dmitry Sklyarov and co. crack Canon’s “image verification” anti-photoshopping tool https://web.archive.org/web/20110808200303/https://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/113010-analyst-finds-flaws-in-canon.html
#15yrsago TSA scans uniformed pilots, but airside caterers bypass all screening https://web.archive.org/web/20101125095532/https://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2010/11/22/tsa_screening_of_pilots/index.html
#15yrsago BP sued in Ecuador for violating the “rights of Nature” https://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/headlines/bp_sued_in_ecuadorian_court_for_violating_rights_of_nature
#15yrsago Four horsemen of the information apocalypse: Cohen, Fanning, Johansen and Frankel https://web.archive.org/web/20101126191152/https://time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_2032746_2032903,00.html
#15yrsago Winner-Take-All Politics: how America’s super-rich got so much richer https://memex.craphound.com/2010/11/29/winner-take-all-politics-how-americas-super-rich-got-so-much-richer/
#15yrsago EFF on US domain copyright seizures https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/us-government-seizes-82-websites-draconian-future
#15yrsago Where’s Molly: heartbreaking reunion with developmentally disabled sister institutionalized 47 years ago https://web.archive.org/web/20101129193304/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/28/sunday/main7096335.shtml
#15yrsago “Death-row inmate” seeks last meal advice on Amazon message-board https://web.archive.org/web/20101130212132/http://www.amazon.com/tag/health/forum/ref=cm_cd_pg_pg1?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1EO24KZG65FCB&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx3FNFNI6N592DI
#10yrsago You’re only an “economic migrant” if you’re poor and brown https://historyned.blog/2015/09/09/the-wandering-academic-or-how-no-one-seems-to-notice-that-i-am-an-economic-migrant/
#10yrsago Pre-mutated products: where did all those “hoverboards” come from? https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/29/pre-mutated-products-where-did-all-those-hoverboards-come-from/
#10yrsago Millennials are cheap because they’re broke https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/millennials-arent-saving-money-because-theyre-not-making-money/383338/?utm_source=SFFB
#5yrsago Attack Surface in the New York Times https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/30/selmers-train/#times
#5yrsago RÄT https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/30/selmers-train/#honey-morello
#5yrsago Open law and the rule of law https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/30/selmers-train/#rogue-archivist
#5yrsago Twitter is more redeemable than Facebook https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/30/selmers-train/#epistemic-superiority
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# Upcoming appearances (permalink)
* San Diego: Enshittification at the Mission Hills Branch Library, Dec 1
https://libraryfoundationsd.org/events/doctorow
* Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/neuroscience-ai-and-society-cory-doctorow-tickets-1735371255139
* Virtual: Poetic Technologies with Brian Eno (David Graeber Institute), Dec 8
https://davidgraeber.institute/poetic-technologies-with-cory-doctorow-and-brian-eno/
* Madison, CT: Enshittification at RJ Julia, Dec 8
https://rjjulia.com/event/2025-12-08/cory-doctorow-enshittification
* Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html
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# Recent appearances (permalink)
* We have become slaves to Silicon Valley (Politics JOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzEUvh1r5-w
* How Enshittification is Destroying The Internet (Frontline Club)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oovsyzB9L-s
* Escape Forward with Cristina Caffarra
https://escape-forward.com/2025/11/27/enshittification-of-our-digital-experience/
* Why Every Platform Betrays You (Trust Revolution)
https://fountain.fm/episode/bJgdt0hJAnppEve6Qmt8
* How the internet went to sh*t (Prospect Magazine)
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/prospect-podcast/71663/cory-doctorow-how-the-internet-went-to-sht
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# Latest books (permalink)
* "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
* "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
* "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
* "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org).
* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
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# Upcoming books (permalink)
* "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026
* "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
* "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026
* "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
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# Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
**Currently writing:**
* "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
* "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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