"It's anti trust and big tech and all that sounds like kind of a boring policy conversation," he says. "I often think, just per the kind of frank lens sort of view of the world of language, don't call it an estate tax... Call it a death tax, ecause then people get riled up aboutt." Facebook allows political ads to be maliciously false so long as they're for government or 'base book' He asks: Why do we accept a broadband monopoly? You not do more to take money from the middle classes then?
An information system that relies on advertising was not born with the Internet. But social media platforms have taken it to an entirely new level, becoming a major force in how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. Columbia law professor Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants and The Curse of Bigness, takes us through the birth of the eyeball-centric news model and ensuing boom of yellow journalism, to the backlash that rallied journalists and citizens around creating industry ethics and standards. Throughout the 20th century, radio, television, and even posters elicited excitement, hope, fear, skepticism and greed, and people worked together to create a patchwork of regulation and behavior that attempted to point those tools in the direction of good. The Internet has brought us to just such a crossroads again, but this time with global consequences that are truly life-and-death.