Slate Money Money Talks: Don't Be Evil-ish
18 snips
Dec 9, 2025 
Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and author of The Age of Extraction, joins Elizabeth Spiers to discuss the troubling dominance of Big Tech. They explore how corporate greed has led to the erosion of ideals surrounding the internet as a democratizing force. Wu highlights the pressures from shareholders that drive extractive practices and the alarming shift toward monopolization, which he warns could lead to authoritarianism. He also touches on the potential impacts of AI and emphasizes the need for regulatory reform to combat tech concentration.
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From Internet Utopia To Platform Dominance
- Tim Wu was once highly optimistic the internet would democratize wealth and audiences for creators.
- His book investigates why platforms instead produced a few dominant winners and hollowed out many industries.
What Counts As A Platform
- Wu defines platforms as businesses that host interactions, like town squares for buyers and sellers instead of product makers.
- He traces modern tech platforms to IBM's System 360 and the later software industry spawned after DOJ intervention.
Extraction Is A Chosen Path
- Bill Gates and Microsoft pioneered an extractive platform model that invited usage then captured most profits.
- Extraction isn't inevitable, Wu notes Wikipedia as an alternative path that avoided monetizing users aggressively.
