Smashing The Tech Oligarchy How To Fix The Internet podcast

Content provided by Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

How to Fix the Internet »
Smashing the Tech Oligarchy

6d ago 29:36

MP3•Episode home

Many of the internet’s thorniest problems can be attributed to the concentration of power in a few corporate hands: the surveillance capitalism that makes it profitable to invade our privacy, the lack of algorithmic transparency that turns artificial intelligence and other tech into impenetrable black boxes, the rent-seeking behavior that seeks to monopolize and mega-monetize an existing market instead of creating new products or markets, and much more.

Kara Swisher has been documenting the internet’s titans for almost 30 years through a variety of media outlets and podcasts. She believes that with adequate regulation we can keep people safe online without stifling innovation, and we can have an internet that’s transparent and beneficial for all, not just a collection of fiefdoms run by a handful of homogenous oligarchs.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

Why it’s so important that tech workers speak out about issues they want to improve and work to create companies that elevate best practices
Why completely unconstrained capitalism turns technology into weapons instead of tools
How antitrust legislation and enforcement can create a healthier online ecosystem
Why AI could either bring abundance for many or make the very rich even richer
The small online media outlets still doing groundbreaking independent reporting that challenges the tech oligarchy

Kara Swisher is one of the world's foremost tech journalists and critics, and currently hosts two podcasts: On with Kara Swisher and Pivot, the latter co-hosted by New York University Professor Scott Galloway. She's been covering the tech industry since the 1990s for outlets including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times; she is an New York Magazine editor-at-large, a CNN contributor, and cofounder of the tech news sites Recode and All Things Digital. She also has authored several books, including “Burn Book” (Simon & Schuster, 2024) in which she documents the history of Silicon Valley and the tech billionaires who run it.

64 episodes