← Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams
Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams
How Big Tech Has Sold Us Out
00:57:38
The internet was originally seen as a tool of progress and innovation, but the reality has turned out to be economically, politically, and morally fraught. The question isn’t whether technology is good or bad. It’s who it serves, who it harms, and who profits. Our dependence hasn’t just created better gadgets, it’s created a new economic ruling class. Companies that don’t just dominate the market; they are the market. Platforms that don’t just reflect culture; they steer it. This week, Stacey is joined by former Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, law professor, and author of The Age of Extraction, Tim Wu to break down how these dominant platforms manipulate attention, extract wealth, and deepen inequality. Learn & Do More Be Curious: If you enjoyed Stacey’s conversation with Tim Wu check out his book, “The Age of Extraction” Solve Problems: Right now, Congress is again considering legislation that would prevent states from passing their own...
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- [00:00]
A
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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media. I'm your host Stacey Abrams. Before we begin today's episode, I want to give you a preview of next week's topic as we close out what has been a challenging year. I would like to hear from you about the actions you've taken in your communities to make a difference. Whether they were suggestions you heard here on the show or great ideas you and your loved ones have come up with on your own. And if you have any burning questions, I want to hear those too and I want to answer them on the show. You know the drill. You can start with an email to assist assemblyrequiredrooket.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the end of the Year Pod Mailbag. Our number is 213-293-9509 if you are a member of Cricket Media's Discord server, that is also a great place to submit a comment or question. Now onto today's show. Technology and innovation are the twin engines that that have mapped this current age. They've connected us, entertained us, made us more efficient, and reshaped the world in the span of a single generation. Yet the same ideas that connected us allow us now to curate our own narrative bubbles. Entertainment revolutions have also altered our attention spans and affected our mental health. Hyper efficiency has revealed unseen tensions between productivity and quality of life. Like any tools, technology and innovation have been used to build the future. But these forces that were once framed as pathways to liberation and progress have now become flashpoints. Economically, politically and morally.
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From the advent of the Internet to the proliferation of broadband to smartphones everywhere and AI that knows everything. Each leap forward includes skeptics who wondered about whether the transformations were necessary and profits warning us that we didn't understand what we were creating. And in hindsight, both groups had a point.
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Because today's debate is no longer just a question of whether technology and innovation are good or bad, the debate instead centers three who does it serve, who does it harm, and who profits from these answers? As much as we have focused on the political arm of authoritarianism, the speed of democracy's fall in America is directly linked to the ubiquity of technology and who wields it. Misinformation went from being the purview of Russian bots to the intentional distribution channels of Twitter and Meta. Billions have been spent to map how our brains process data and to game algorithms across social media to feed dopamine and to feed disdain for others. Why? Because part of breaking our faith in democracy requires fracturing our trust in the truth and each other. Step 6 in the authoritarian playbook and what better way to attack the truth than to use technology to manufacture believable lies? Beyond social media, our newest frontier of artificial intelligence promises convenience and creativity. But it also threatens something more sinister. Chatbots that purport to reduce human effort also serve as another entry point for platforms to collect data and shape behavior. Dystopian movies no longer feel like fiction they've become business plans. What has grown out of America's development of and dependence upon technology isn't just better gadgets. It's a new class of economic overlords, companies, and a short list of tycoons who don't simply dominate markets. They are the market platforms that don't merely reflect culture they design and direct it.
- [06:23]
Yet in an authoritarian regime where Money and politics unite to place an iron grip on power. This merger is extraordinarily dangerous.
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The most recent wave began with the rampage of Doge and the transfer of terabytes of data to surveillance companies by this regime. Instead of regulators and courts pushing back, the US Government is increasingly leaving the door open. And tech leaders are racing right inside. Take Trump's closed door September meeting with tech titans from OpenAI's Sam Altman to Meta's Mark Zuckerberg to Apple's Tim Cook, a conversation about American innovation that conspicuously omitted any discussion of of oversight, guardrails or public interest. Add to that the executive order that forbids the use of dei, diversity, equity or inclusion to understand how these technologies will affect nearly half the population. The same companies that once invested in social justice and had the internal motto don't be evil, are now eagerly aligned with the authoritarian regime promising the most freedom to plunder with the least accountability. Yes, technology and innovation shape the future. But whether that technology is equitable or yokes us to technological economic overlords depends on what we do right now. Fighting for democracy must go beyond the vote for who holds office and include a vote on who gets our data and and our loyalty.
- [08:06]
Joining me to break down how today's dominant platforms manipulate attention, extract wealth and deepen inequality is Tim Wu, former special assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy in the Biden administration, a law professor, and the author of the new book the Age of Extraction.
- [08:29]
Tim Wu, welcome to Assembly Required.
- [08:32]
B
Great to be here.
- [08:34]
A
Okay, Tim, so you are a tech regulation expert who served as special assistant to the President for Technology and competition policy from 2021 to 2023. You're also a law professor and the author of several books on technology and AI. So I want to start with a big picture question. What did we think the Internet was going to bring us compared to where we've ended up?
- [08:59]
B
That is exactly the right question to ask. Well, thank you. When the Internet first exploded into public consciousness in the 90s, I think there was a kind of a clear promise. It was going to make everybody rich, it was going to bring democracy to every corner of the world, and it was going to give everybody kind of individual an outlet for their creative ambitions and so on. It was going to be, among other things, the great leveler. It was going to portend a different kind of society.
- [09:36]
Where there was no difference between rich and poor, no difference between big media, little media. And at the risk of stating the obvious, it hasn't quite panned out, but that was the promise.
- [09:48]
A
Well, your new book is called the Age of Extraction, which means we kind of got a little astray. So can you talk about what it is that tech companies are extracting versus what we thought would happen?
- [10:00]
B
Yeah, I think the idea was that the big main platforms, Amazon, the promise of the Amazon marketplace is that you could, any small business come up with better mousetrap, better hair product, whatever you're gonna sell on Amazon, and an easy way to make a lot of money, reach a lot of customers. And honestly, to some degree, in the early days, it did work. It was kind of like that. The problem is that when the tech platforms monopolized their markets, when they were in a position where we became reliant on them, then they started the extraction stage. And really that's where we are today. To answer your question, what are they extracting? I mean, anything they can, I think money, most obviously in fees from not just us as consumers, but also all the sellers, all the people dependent on the platforms, data, time, attention.
- [10:57]
You name it.
- [10:59]
A
So you're most well known probably for coining the term net neutrality, and you argued that the Internet should be treated like a utility. So first, can you explain why the utility framework is such an important one in public policy?
- [11:14]
B
Oh, yeah, thanks. I think it's really important.
- [11:19]
To understand there are certain businesses or certain functions in society that we all depend upon, both as citizens, like the electric network or something, but also businesses or an economy, like bridges, roads, all these kind of infrastructure like.
- [11:40]
Like functions. And so I think it's very important for a thriving and prosperous economy that utilities not be allowed to use their power in a totally unrestrained way. Now, let me make clear what I mean by that. If you think about the electric company, if there were no limits on what the electric company could do at all, well, for one thing, they probably charge as much as you could pay, because who can live without electricity? For another thing, they probably treat different people differently for all kinds of random criteria. Who can pay more? Or maybe just, I don't like these people, I'm going to charge them more. We sort of take for granted that the. And look, electric companies aren't perfect. I'm not trying to say that, but you do kind of expect that you go and you can hook up and you'll basically be charged the same price as everyone. And also you'll have electricity service. Those kind of essentials are important, just make us, in some ways make it possible to live in a country like this.
- [12:45]
A
So let's take that framework of utilities, and I Like the fact that you use the example of electricity, because even though the electric companies, power companies sometimes run amok, we at least have the semblance of oversight that we call public service commissions or public utility commissions in almost every state. Can you now take that conversation and let's expand it to include what has gone wrong with net neutrality, because we don't treat it like a public utility. So can you describe what net neutrality is and if there's any hope?
- [13:18]
B
So net neutrality was a recognition, I think, early 2000s, that the Internet, the cable companies, the phone companies providing Internet service were really quite similar to electric companies. And they needed particularly to treat everybody the same. I think that was an important part. And also, I guess more generally, the government needed to have power over them to control potential abuses. For all the reasons I've suggested and a few more overcharging even, because the Internet is all about speech, the possibility for discrimination in speech at the level of the connection. I think this is a very important framework. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has abandoned net neutrality. There's no limits on Internet pricing. I also think the tech platforms have gotten worse, but broadband companies have just taken too much from everybody.
- [14:13]
A
You mentioned the tech companies and just how much worse they are. I remember when Google was famous for being the company that said, don't be evil. And there was a time when these tech companies had the public position that they were actively trying to make the world a better place. What went wrong?
- [14:33]
B
You know, that is a big part of this book is diagnosing what happened and where we went astray. Because.
- [14:42]
I will admit I was bought into it. I thought this. I mean, I was computer geek, I grew up mainly in the 80s, thought these things were cool. We're going to help everybody. And I think a lot of my friends, frankly, went into companies like Google and thought they were going to try to make the world a better place. I think the key turning point, in my view, was in the early 2000s when Google, which had said all this stuff and all the companies followed it, nonetheless decided they were going to go public as a normal kind of corporate, you know, for profit corporation, not like a nonprofit or a semi nonprofit. And I'll tell you part of the book, I went back, researched that period, and people may forget this, but they wrote a letter to future shareholders, but they said, oh, you know, we're not going to be a normal company. Don't expect it. We don't care about money. We're not going to sell your, like, data advertisers. I wouldn't sack that letter. I think they violated every single promise in it. So they kind of satisfied themselves that they were going to be good. But choosing the corporate form was really a big turning point for all of Silicon Valley, with a few exceptions like Wikipedia, let's say, which chose a nonprofit form. Yeah.
- [15:59]
A
So the United States has seen this before. We have a history of allowing monopolies to rise and to flourish, and then be surprised that there are monopolies that have risen and are flourishing. And whether we're talking about railroads or oil or steel. So given that we have seen this play out before, why did we give tech companies so much free rein?
- [16:22]
B
You know, I think so. I don't think it's just because we were, like, fooled or we were dumb. I think in a healthy way, the United States says, if you got a new idea, try it out. And our first instinct is not to try to crush you. You know what I mean? I think that's fair enough. And these companies, they were cute little companies back 20 years ago, 25 years, they were little pip squeaks. And in fact, we gave them breaks, honestly, legally. So they were not. And I think that is kind of the American way, which is you let companies start things, and then when they get really powerful, then the key is the government has to come back and say, all right, now you're no longer a little cute little kid. You got to play by adult rules. And I think the ongoing mistake we have made is to say, oh, no, no, these guys, tech companies are so cool. They're going to build the future. They're going to do. We failed at part two. Part two is where government is supposed to say, okay, we gave you a pass. You were little, you were cute, and now you're. But we failed at part two. We let them monopolize these markets, and now they're just taking all they can.
- [17:34]
A
So, Tim, in your book, you have a chapter entitled A Long Slow Bet on Laziness, which could have been the title of my 13 to 15 year old age range.
- [17:47]
But one of the tools for authoritarians is to make resistance inconvenient. And so many of us are willing participants in this golden age of convenience, whether we are ordering Ubers, Amazon packages that seem to arrive instantly takeout from a nap. So our kitchen just serves as a holding place for bags. Why do you believe that these conveniences are not just benefiting tech companies while ultimately hurting individuals? But I'd love for you to think about how convenience is playing into this regime change that we're facing.
- [18:26]
B
Oh, well, good. I didn't. I think that's taking it to the next level and I think a good level. So the convenience point is really an effort to try to understand how business works today and understand that at some level in our times, the most powerful force.
- [18:52]
Not necessarily money, it's not necessarily what people like. It is convenience. It's like what is easiest tends to win. And I think that the tech companies understand that very well. And I'm not saying I hate these things. I mean, everyone loves conveniences. I just want to say that we certainly are in a cocoon of conveniences that makes it very hard to switch to other things, and that tech companies have understood this and have done everything they can to try to do something about it or to use it to the maximum extent such that the monopoly is really quite sticky. If you try to. For example, when it feels like leaving Amazon to shop somewhere else feels like your arms feel like £10,000 because you have to type in some numbers, it's really a challenge. And I think that you are right that one of the ways in which authoritarian governments have been successful is to try, as you say, to sort of just deal with the fact that most of the country can't really be bothered. And as long as things are relatively okay, they're fine with that. I am worried in their current times. I mean, like you, I'm very concerned about the rise of authoritarianism.
- [20:08]
A
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- [21:59]
C
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- [22:07]
B
What about toys?
- [22:08]
A
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- [22:15]
B
Do you mean they have all the brands I adore?
- [22:17]
A
They have Nintendo, Nespresso, Apple and more.
- [22:20]
C
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- [22:33]
A
Well, part of the reason I really want to talk to you and think about your book in this moment is that we spend a lot of our time thinking about authoritarianism only from the vantage point of the politics. And at the top of the show I talk about the fact that it's not just the political leaders, it's the tech leaders. The ones who have been playing attendance at the White House but have been able to use your term. They've been able to extract so much from this administration and extract so much from this body politic that it is a duopoly of power. There is the political power and then there is the tech power. And one of the places I think we can see that becoming so dangerous is in the rise of tech driven conveniences that are radically reshaping the labor market. Because that's one of the reasons and one of the pillars for democracy. Who gets to participate in the economy often determines how much we are willing to fight back against any inconveniences. And so would love for you to talk a bit about the way that tech companies have contributed to the erosion of labor protections and workers quality of life.
- [23:47]
B
First of all, I think it is absolutely true that this federal government has in some way borrowed from business in its idea that you need to be constantly extracting all the time. I mean it's crazy that I think that we've had a change. I think there's like two Americas in terms of business. There's one that whose idea of business is you create a better product and you sell it for a good price and you make money. And that's like kind of more classic I think the newer form, it's been around in some ways but has come to dominate, is like, you look for some kind of angle where you can extract money and the other side doesn't really have a choice. Like they need your permission for something. Or for example, to clear a merger, you need some money. And this government has learned from that second type of business and thinks of themselves as like, okay, well, these people want to do a deal. What's in it for me? Sometimes it's individually, like me, the president, or me, like my family. Can they give some sideline? It is a terrible way for a country to be and is terrible for the basic incentive to build better businesses. So that's an aside. You also talked about labor.
- [25:02]
For this book. I did a lot of research back into the 1950s and there was a thesis from that era from John Kenneth Galbraith and he said, well, America has the most powerful companies in the world, so that's why they have the most powerful unions.
- [25:19]
This is 1953, I got to be clear. He said, well, of course they have to because you need something to balance that power and that's essential to the American capitalism. The book was called American Capitalism and it was about how American capitalism works because corporate power is balanced by union power. Now today we have the corporate power, but to say it's balanced by union power is crazy. And particularly in tech.
- [25:45]
Google has a small union and basically, I think Amazon, there was some efforts to unionize. But let's just face it, there's no really strong unions facing the power of the tech companies who are some of the most powerful companies in all of human history. So the system is entirely unbalanced. And it's not surprising that it's bad for labor to have the most powerful industry completely unbalanced by worker power.
- [26:11]
A
Is there a balance now? I mean, I talk about the fact that there's this duopoly that is currently running our country in running this authoritarian regime, and that's the duopoly of tech Bros. And oligarchs. And then your reference to John Kenneth Galbraith is there should be the balance of power between corporate and unions. Do these tech companies have a counterweight right now in our society and in our structure?
- [26:40]
B
That is a really great question. So I think the answer is no. And I think that's why I wrote this book. I am above all a believer in economics that balance is essential to a healthy economy. In fact, it's also healthy to democracy and a healthy government. That's what balance power stands for. But we have in some ways even worse problems in the private sector. I think there is no obvious balance. They occasionally balance each other out, but mostly they stay in their own lanes. And I think we have allowed, based on kind of this naive but understandable American love for technology and the future in progress, we've allowed just a completely unbalanced power to emerge. And what should be the balance? The last resort is the federal government and that has been, when you look at it, a total zero.
- [27:39]
A
Yeah, well, part of the reason, and I think you articulated it beautifully, part of the reason we gave such free rein to tech companies from the beginning was that we thought they would innovate, that they would provide real value. And yet recently your friend and former classmate and author Cory Doctoro coined the term inshidification to describe how these tech platforms are intentionally getting worse because they've stopped pretending to innovate, they have abandoned the idea of real value. So for those who aren't familiar, what exactly does that look like in practice?
- [28:16]
B
I would say that, you know, you have a captive audience and so you.
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While attempting to convince people or give people the impression that things are the same, you depreciate the quality of the experience and you increase all the net, all the factors that are ways of extracting money or other data and things like, I mean a great example is just like looking at Facebook or Google over the last 10 years. They used to be almost ad free and now they're absolutely dripping with the stuff and you know, nothing. You can, it's very hard to find what you're looking for. Amazon. I have a kind of case study of the insidification of Amazon for its sellers in particular. They used to spend the margins that Amazon took were about 20% and now they're 50, 60 or beyond. So the amount that they pay Amazon is just extraordinary to get their products out there. And the products have become harder to find thanks to advertising. Amazon's so called advertising, sponsored links for which they earned unbelievable $56 billion last year, more than double every newspaper on earth. So it's the same thing getting worse so that you get less and so that they take more. That isn't shitification.
- [29:43]
A
That's my definition that I think aptly sums it up. I mean, look, Corey also places some of the blame for our current subservience to tech companies on economists, namely the Chicago School of Economics. Not just the school itself, but that sort of approach to economic theory. And I heard him recently say that he would describe it as encouraging us to abandon competition for cartels.
- [30:11]
When you think about that, I know we have the tech company cartels, but who else should be on the list of culprits for why we find ourselves in this space? So they're economists and who else?
- [30:25]
B
Oh, or which. I mean, I think industry has actually answer both questions. Yeah.
- [30:32]
So I.
- [30:35]
Well, let me broaden the lens beyond tech a little bit. I think we have a problem with the monopolization, cartelization of the U.S. economy in general and that it is a major contribution to the affordability of crisis.
- [30:50]
And I mean you just any, anywhere you look, it's the same problem. It could be grocery stores, it could be. It can be. You know, we talked about cable broadband before.
- [31:01]
We, the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals. I mean for so many areas where people that people depend upon, there's basically is, you know, two or three big companies who in ways subtle and less so, collude. Now, do I blame that all on the Chicago, the Chicago School of Antitrust?
- [31:24]
I don't know if I could blame it all on them. I think I would blame it on.
- [31:30]
First of all a government culture which was influenced by the Chicago School. But to be completely academic and transparent, I think Harvard had a lot to do with it too. And so did just an entire generation of economists who for some reason had decided the government intervention even to help people, even in proven ways, was always a terrible idea. So I think there's a lot of blame to go around. I wouldn't just blame say Robert Bork and a couple of villains. I think it's a very widespread phenomenon. I worked in government in the Federal Trade Commission in 2012 and frankly, we could not find a way to stop a merger. I don't know what was going on back then.
- [32:15]
Facebook bought Instagram and somehow our agency concluded that they weren't competitors in any way. I guess for whatever reason Google bought ways the two mapping programs. It seems obviously emergent a monopoly. We couldn't find a way to stop it. So it was all of us in this sort of skepticism that government could do anything to control corporate power. That I think is where I would put the blame. Anyone who had the idea somehow that corporate power was not a problem because they would always do good things or because they'd control themselves and the market would work is to blame for our current situation, which is a massive imbalance, an extraction at all times and a population that is angry, resentful, many of them who feel left behind and has contributed to the insanity of our current politics. So excuse me for that little rant there, but no, I yeah, that is basically how we think we've gotten here.
- [33:19]
A
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- [35:08]
B
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- [35:41]
A
So Tad Sturmer, who is a resistance history scholar, recently made a comment about the fact that people who say that we're in a constitutional crisis are misreading the moment. And I'm paraphrasing him. He said they aren't breaking the Constitution. They're doing exactly what the Constitution allows them to do. That the Constitution had too many it relied too heavily on the sort of gentle person's agreement that we would not do wrong with the power that's available and just given what you said about your time at the FTC and during the tenure that you served at the White House, you really helped shape the Biden administration's antitrust agenda. You even got praise from the New York Times. But my question would be, given what has been revealed by this administration and by this court's position on this administration and by the inertia of Congress, if you'd had this sort of read on power during your tenure, what would you have done differently? And what do you wish the administration had pushed on even further?
- [36:52]
B
I think in retrospect, we were not aggressive enough in our fight against the rise of private power. There's other challenges that we had, but we were an administration not unlike the Obama administration, that was constantly debating these questions and to some degree torn up between.
- [37:17]
Essentially a pro business approach.
- [37:21]
And.
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Kind of a business can do no wrong. Not no wrong, but very limited. And I think we did a lot. But in fact, I think that Americans wanted more and they wanted more visibly done to deal with the kind of economic challenges that they were facing. And we thought it's one of those things that's a little bit like.
- [37:46]
Mike Myers where you think you're doing a lot, but you don't realize the scale of the problem you're dealing with.
- [37:53]
You know what I mean? So we thought we were kind of going all out. But honestly, and I think this administration good example is like pharmaceutical drug prices. What America thinks that there's nothing wrong with the way.
- [38:10]
Medicine is priced in this country. And I could see no disadvantage to going full hog on that issue. And I feel like we settled for some minor modifications to an already bad congressional scheme. And so I just think we should have been all out there fighting unaffordability for average Americans and using much more power, being less constrained.
- [38:36]
A
Do you think that a subsequent administration should take advantage of what's been revealed in this? I would say aggressive and grotesque misuse of not of the Constitution, but misuse of power for self enrichment. Would you think that it would be appropriate for someone who inherited this newly excavated power to use it?
- [39:00]
B
It depends what you're talking about. Pardoning obvious felons because of your friends, not a good use of powers.
- [39:08]
One thing I will say is making a little clearer that the Congress is supposed to really follow the President's lead.
- [39:19]
And inspiring.
- [39:22]
A greater loyalty and willingness to act in Congress.
- [39:29]
That I think that's not an abuse of power. It's definitely a use of power. But even playing harder ball with Congress to get in line, I think the real culprit for the last, say, 20 years of growing dissatisfaction and unfairness is the fact that Congress has honestly been asleep at the wheel. All Congress did when I was able to do was spend money. There's so many ways in which people wanted more, wanted the government to address the fundamental unfairness of the American economy. And Congress did nothing in my field. I mean, we were even trying to just pass legislation to protect children's privacy, for example. Couldn't get a vote, couldn't get a vote on issues that 99% of Americans believe and agree with. I think disciplining Congress, a new age of congressional discipline and no more secret get the leader to prevent a vote on anything has got to be a huge priority. As in terms of other powers, the one that is really interesting and worth asking about is the power. We know you can fire people in executive agencies. I think Democratic Party is quite split.
- [40:49]
On independent agencies, but at least I would use that power for executive agencies more thoroughly. There were executive agencies who were really not.
- [40:59]
Necessarily following what the President wanted to make the economy fair. And I do feel that.
- [41:07]
Some of this stuff is dark arts. But we need strong leaders who say, here's my agenda. I'm working for the American people, and if you're not with the program, you're going to get fired. And I don't think we've been willing as Democrats to do that.
- [41:23]
A
Well, I'm going to bring you back to tech companies for a second because I think this all is of a piece of. One of the conversations that we have on this show about authoritarianism is about the ability of authoritarians to attack the truth. And tech companies have played a major role in defining what information we consume. Social platforms are rife with unchecked misinformation and disinformation. You mentioned when Meta was able to buy Instagram and when Twitter became Twitter. The changes that Google search have made, they've decimated traffic to trustworthy news outlets and they've directly contributed to this continued death of our news ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about the structural realities that contribute to this problem? And because I have you, how do we fix it?
- [42:18]
B
Yeah. When I look at the how things got to where we are in terms of us being on the brink of an authoritarian country, I you know it. But.
- [42:30]
I would put both the things we've discussed first, this persistent economic unfairness and sense large parts of the country thinking that this country is no longer working for me and feeling like, wait a second, I'm going to grow up poor in my parents what is going on here? I need someone to help me out who's really working for me. So the economic unfairness and the number two is the loss of the anything like a shared informational experience, anything like an agreed set of facts, a complete system of tailored echo chambers that drives rage, dissatisfaction, anger, and it deepens the resentment. And with it is a lot of false information, a lot of lying. But I even think the segregation and just the cultivation of a business model which knows everything about people, tries to feed them anger inducing stuff and profits from it is a huge part of the problem. You know, I talked about congressional failures. One of the failures in this area was a failure to.
- [43:40]
Passed basic privacy laws even 20 years ago. That would have made this whole ecosystem of feeding off hate a little bit harder to do just because you just would know less about people. I mean, when you think about broadcasting, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s even, they didn't really know. They kind of guessed at who people were, but they didn't have these ability to grab a tailor dish of haters and feed them and crazy stuff. So what do you do? I think we agree on the diagnosis of the problem and it's such a distressing problem. It feels we're very deep. But.
- [44:17]
I do believe we can solve it. I do believe that there are a lot of Americans who are fed up and sick of it. Insane. Second, I think while this may sound crazy to some people, we have a history in this country of having a government role as to what counts for reasonable coverage. And I think we should return in some ways back to.
- [44:44]
Something more like the fcc.
- [44:48]
And I'm going to say this word which some people hate, which is some version of using the powers of the FCC that had in the Fairness Doctrine to try to make it clear that.
- [45:01]
When you occupy a position of great trust, you need to occupy that position.
- [45:06]
In a responsible manner. Now how you exactly get there, there's a lot of details in the in between, but I think we have a very broken media environment, frankly. I think. Sorry. The third thing I'd say is that I think other democracies benefit from having a more robust public broadcasting system. First of all, we've already done damage to it during this government. But second, I just think we should fund public broadcasting.
- [45:32]
Much more generously as they do in countries like Germany, England, Britain and others where you have at least a check on everything from having a public broadcaster and everyone will complain about the public broadcaster, but at least you got it.
- [45:47]
A
Exactly.
- [45:49]
So I recently published a legal thriller called Coded justice and it looks at the intersection of AI, DEI and veterans healthcare. And the AI system may or may not be a murderer. And so.
- [46:04]
Part of my goal in writing it was because I wanted to demystify AI and I also wanted to raise alarms about algorithmic justice, which is how these technologies are not actually designed to see and serve everyone. One example I use when I talk about the book these days is the week when Grok became a Nazi. Another one is the Medicare pilot that will allow AI to deny coverage based on some black box of insurance analysis. And so Tim, as part of policy shaping conversations around technology, you have always been at the forefront of understanding not just the technology we have, but what is to come. But you've also been just a clarion on why fairness and justice have to be a part of this. So can you talk a bit about why it's important that we have technologies that don't reinforce societal biases?
- [47:01]
B
Yes. First of all, I am incredibly impressed and it sounds like I have to go out and buy this book immediately that you managed to weave was it veterans benefits into veterans health care, veterans healthcare into that. That shows the level of writing that I can only aspire to.
- [47:19]
A
You're very kind.
- [47:21]
B
No, look.
- [47:23]
There'S this kind of terrible idea out there that technology just kind of evolves naturally towards some God ordained justice and is perfect. No, it's exactly what comes out of it is what we put into it and we get the kind of society out of it that we want. And as you said, if you just let it run free and feed on biased sources.
- [47:51]
Racist rantings in dark corners of the Internet, it's going to give you that back. And so yeah, I think we have to. This was a big in the White House, we spent a lot of time focused on exactly this issue, which is how could we promote training on non insane data sources and make sure that the best quality of information is being used.
- [48:20]
I couldn't agree more. I think as you said, there's this kind of, I think a lot of our problems in this tech industry kind of stem from almost a quasi religious belief that that somehow technology is outside of human control and it's just going towards some promised land and we need to bow down and obey our new masters. And I think that is the worst thing. It is a reflection of us. So it can be a reflection of our best selves or our worst selves, but mostly it's a reflection of the people who are building the stuff. So that's why we have to have some public input in what kind of society we want to live in.
- [48:55]
A
Well, I appreciate how thoughtful you've been in not only the book, Tim, but just in this conversation about diagnosis. One of the reasons I wanted you on the show is that you also do an exceptional job of offering solutions. So one of the solutions you talk about is that there are economic models that are not dominated by monopolies or by an extractive ruling class. And you use Denmark, which you describe as one of the wealthiest and most egalitarian nations on earth.
- [49:25]
B
Yeah.
- [49:26]
A
So what lessons can the US take from Denmark? And when you answer it, I want you to think about the counter narrative, which is the argument that the US is just too large and too powerful for something like Denmark's economic model to work.
- [49:42]
B
Yeah. I think there is a huge fallacy, frankly betrayed by our own history as well as Denmark that says you have two choices. Either you can be incredibly unequal and have rich people and poor people.
- [49:56]
And be a wealthy nation, or you're equal and you're poor. You know what I mean? That's kind of the fallacy out there. If we try and equalize, we try to. And I just think it could not be more wrong from the basic microec. It is one of the most pernicious mythologies of our time. It's like you have to let there be a super wealthy class and a super poor class for the country to be wealthy. It's just crazy. And I think when you look at Denmark, you look at countries, Taiwan's another one, even Japan to some extent Korea. All these periods are periods of enormous growth and wealth, but also equality coming from the fact you have distributed wealth. So I am a big believer and frankly, I think my next book is going to be about the miracle of distributed wealth. I think you have wealthier countries when you have a lot of people that have money, not a few. And in fact, when you. I think the basic economics, when you have sort of zeroed out a huge amount of the population, it doesn't go well. And frankly, I'll bring back to the American South.
- [51:04]
One of the reasons that ultimately the south was doomed is that plantation slavery was just not, among other things, first of all, very obviously cruel and inhumane and a horrible thing, but also ultimately, in the long run, not economically great system versus having a much more distributed economic model. So I think that the United States at its best is a country where there's a lot of people who are rich and we have a lot of productive citizens and not just a ruling class and essentially a serf class who works for everybody else. And these models, I think, really work for us. And we have been there. And when we've strayed away, we've gone back to it. Progressive era, New Deal being good examples, but we can even do better again. I mean, I feel like what we got to come out of this. One of the good things about everyone being angry is people are starting to say it's crazy to just have a class of billionaires and then everybody else. That's not who we are. And I am optimistic that we can have a return to what we have been at our best and what the other countries show is the most effective way to become a wealthy country.
- [52:17]
A
That is a perfect setup to my last question for you because here at assembly required, we like to leave the listeners with homework. And so your job, Tim, is to tell people what can they do to individually or together, end this age of extraction.
- [52:34]
B
Go they.
- [52:38]
Several things. So in the world of tech, even though I know it's really hard not to use Google, not to use Facebook, not to use the big guys, consider alternatives. There are a lot of really worthy companies that make good products and it'll make you realize, you know what I can live without, I don't know, Facebook or Twitter or something. You can use other alternative products that are extremely good. I myself use alternative browsers, search engines, mostly alternative products. Second, vote for candidates who are focused on the problems of affordability and economic unfairness, who have shown their commitment to these causes and don't get wimpy when it really matters. One real problem we have in the Democratic Party in particular is this kind of anxiety that if we are serious about taking over on wealth and making the country fair, that somehow everything's going to blow up. We have the progressive movement, we have the New Deal, we have the civil rights movement. We have done this before, and we need to recapture that spirit because I think it's pretty clear that in a few years people are going to say, boy, this Trump administration has been a total disaster. How can we rebuild this country? And that's where we need to start building, because I think the writing's on the wall. This insane clown car model is not going that much further. Until the tariffs, all the insanity crashes into itself. The corruption, the failure to deal with inflation. So we need right now to start thinking this is the homework, to start thinking about what kind of country you want starting right now, because it's all coming crashing down. We're going to rebuild.
- [54:19]
A
Tim Wuth, the author of the Age of Extraction and a Sage for Art, our Day. Thank you so much for being here. On Assembly Required.
- [54:34]
As always, on Assembly Required, we're here to give you real, actionable tools to face today's biggest challenges. Number one, be curious if you enjoyed today's conversation with Tim Wu. Check out his new book, the Age of Extraction. Number two, solve problems. Right now, Congress is again considering legislation that would prevent states from passing their own AI regulations, and Trump has floated an executive order that would override state laws. In contrast, Senator Richard Blumenthal has proposed a minimum set of federal regulations while also allowing states to add their own. So call your member of Congress and ask them to oppose any legislation that would block AI regulation. But in addition, urge your state legislature and your local leaders, like your school board or your city council, to pass legislation for policies that protect data and privacy. And do it now. Urge them to do it now before Congress takes action to prohibit it. Organizations like the Electronic Frontier foundation, the aclu and the center for Humane Technology can be resources for understanding good local tech policy. And number three, do good. After everything we just unpacked about AI and technology, here's my challenge to you. Take a tech mini break. I'm not here to guilt you into reading a book, although I'd absolutely endorse it. But go do something that exists off screen. See a friend in person, take a workout class, sit in a park, go for a walk, and if you're game, try and set some real limits for yourself. I personally have actually put a timer on my TikTok usage because our best intentions might not be enough without a little help. Assembly Required continues to grow its audience, but we need your help. We reach more people when you tell others about us, when you add us to your feed and you share your favorite episode. So make sure you actually subscribe on all of your favorite platforms, not just one. Boost our visibility by rating the show and leaving a comment. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. And please also check out my substack Assembly Notes where we dive deep and where I share more of my thoughts on how we understand and then fight back against this authoritarian regime. Thank you to the thousands of you who signed up for the Ten Steps campaign. @10stepscampaign.org we now have a toolkit where you can find concrete examples of the 10 steps to freedom and Power. We include links to organizations, recommendations for you regardless of where you are or what you're ready to do, and we're constantly adding new organizations in and examples of how to get involved. And don't forget to call or email for next week's episode, answering your questions and spotlighting all of the ways you've made a difference this year. That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Do good out there and I'll meet you here next week.
- [57:55]
Assembly Required is a crooked Media production. Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts and our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Kiril Palaviv is our video producer. This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Our theme song is by Vasilis Fotopoulos. Thank you to Matt de Groat, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote and Priyanka Mantha for production support. Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.
- [58:38]
C
Tis the season of gifting and holes to Deck and the who's in Whoville were in love with new tech. Where can we find Sonos and Samsung and Nintendo? They shouted. Would they find it in one place? This they questioned and doubted when suddenly a who yelled, walmart's the place to start. And each who added headphones, TVs and games to their carts. With Walmart, their shopping was done in a flurry. They cried out, who knew? And ordered their gifts in a hurry. Shop the latest tech gifts in the Walmart app.