Why Tech Platforms Have Gotten Worse – and What to Do About It

Cascade PBS Ideas Festival

In a live taping of WNYC’s On the Media, author and activist Cory Doctorow argues that tech giants have chased profits at the expense of users.

There’s no question that the products that giant companies such as Amazon, Google and Meta have developed now dominate many people’s lives. The road to that domination, argues author and activist Cory Doctorow, is paved with profit-driven actions that ultimately invade privacy, drive up prices and worsen the user experience.

As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Doctorow took the stage with Micah Loewinger, co-host of WNYC’s On the Media, to unpack this theory from his forthcoming book, Ensh–ttification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Loewinger and Doctorow discuss the ways that Amazon, Uber and other companies started by offering good deals to end users and business partners, but ultimately became “too big to care” as they drove out competitors and chased profits. Loewinger and Doctorow also dig into ways to combat these trends, such as the historic antitrust cases proceeding against Google and Apple in federal court, or how new tariffs could potentially promote a freer internet.

This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.

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Credits

Host: Paris Jackson

Producer: Sara Bernard

Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd

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