Better Offline

Blame the tech industry for the rise of authoritarianism. Blame a news media handicapped by a deference to power and a fear of bias. Blame the fact that our digital lives are unchecked ecological disasters. In this episode, Ed Zitron draws a direct line from the rot of the digital ecosystem for what happened on November 5.

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Recorded live at Web Summit Lisbon, Ed Zitron is joined by William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, who is also the co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, to talk about how the incentives of shareholder capitalism and stock buybacks are destroying innovation. 

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In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Mike Masnick, CEO and Founder of Techdirt, inventor of the Streisand effect, and member of the board of Bluesky to...well...talk about quite literally that. A banger episode.

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Daron Acemoglu, MIT Economist and recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, to talk about his daring - and likely effective - plan to tax all digital advertising revenue over $500m at 50% as well as how we might adjust incentives to bring big tech under control.

Last week, Prabhakar Raghavan, The Man Who Destroyed Google Search, was removed from his position at Google and made a "Chief Technologist," benching him in favor of a McKinsey-Google Lifer. In this episode, Ed ZItron walks you through how the removal of Prabhakar Raghavan shows that Google is in deep, deep trouble - and may finally be falling apart. 

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