Big Technology Podcast

Uber is facing a difficult moment amid the coronavirus pandemic. The service, built on the belief that people would forsake car ownership in favor of its ride hailing service, is watching many of its customers buy cars and stay home. The new trouble for Uber comes after the company worked to right itself after years of turbulence under ex-CEO Travis Kalanick’s leadership. Emil Michael, the former...

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, and Instagram is in its sights. The agency is poised to revisit Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of the popular mobile app, and a long fight may await. Bloomberg reporter Sarah Frier wrote the most in-depth account of Facebook’s Instagram acquisition in her April 2020 book No Filter. She joins the Big Technology Podcast to...

Swati Mylavarapu is a tech investor and activist who spent $2 million in the 2020 election cycle on Democratic causes, in partnership with her husband, Nest co-founder Matt Rogers. Mylavarapu isn’t your typical Silicon Valley investor. She’ll explicitly admit that the tech industry has some culpability in the hollowing out of the middle of our economy, delivering wealth to the few while leaving th...

During Donald Trump’s presidency, tech products became explicitly political. Operatives from both sides picked apart their algorithms and features, examining how they shaped society’s beliefs. And the companies, meanwhile, made choices about what parts of the administration they’d work with. Hunter Walk, who spent nearly a decade at Google and is now a partner at Homebrew, has watched the evolutio...

As the election results come in, Noah Shachtman, the editor in chief of The Daily Beast, joins the Big Technology Podcast for an 'Emergency' show to dive into the results, the future of the Democratic Party, and how the tech platforms handled the election. Recorded on 11/4/2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Steve Schmidt was a senior advisor on John McCain’s campaign in 2008, Twitter was a curiosity. Now, he and a number of former Republican establishment members are using social media deftly to make the case against President Trump with the Lincoln Project. Their anti-Trump ads seem to go viral at least once a week, and may indeed influence the outcome of the election. Schmidt, a Lincoln Projec...

When I interviewed Tristan Harris about The Social Dilemma earlier this month, my mentions filled with people saying, "You should speak to the people who were critical of the social web long before the film.” One name, Meredith Whittaker, stood out. An A.I. researcher and former big tech employee, Whittaker helped lead Google’s walkout in 2018 amid a season of activism inside the company. On this...

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Google on Tuesday, alleging the company unlawfully maintained a monopoly in search and search advertising. The antitrust action was the most significant since the DOJ's case against Microsoft, and is sure to send ripples through Silicon Valley where Facebook, Apple, and Amazon will be paying close attention since they might be next. To talk about w...

As the Media Equation columnist at The New York Times, Ben Smith is covering an industry going through transformation and turbulence. And as the former editor in chief of BuzzFeed News — a place I worked until this June — he lived that change while managing a newsroom of reporters who lived online in a VC funded media company.    In this week’s edition of the Big Technology Podcast, I caught up wi...

You won’t find a more controversial film in Silicon Valley than The Social Dilemma. The film, now available on Netflix, features confessions from early consumer internet employees who rue the destruction their inventions have wrought.    To address the film and its critiques, Tristan Harris, its star and the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, sat down for an interview on the Big Techn...

When the Big Technology Podcast debuted last month, The Verge’s Casey Newton joined to talk about why people can’t stand the tech press. Our wide-ranging discussion explored how tech reporters should be more upfront about their values, how algorithms and social media reframe their work, and why some go astray in the quest for retweets. But there was more to discuss.  This week, three talented repo...

Venture capitalists, founders, and others in the tech industry are feeling pretty raw these days. Once admired as upstarts fighting the status quo, they now feel under siege, under attack for the negative things their products do without being appreciated for how they improve our lives. Bloomberg Beta head Roy Bahat, a veteran venture capitalist, joins the Big Technology Podcast for a nuanced conv...

China’s mass internment of Muslims in its Xinjiang region is one of the world's most under-covered stories The country has detained one million people there, putting them through a “re-education” program meant to erase their language and culture, sometimes through forced labor and sterilization. Though comprehensive, on-the-ground reporting from Xinjiang is sparse, BuzzFeed News reporter Megha Raj...

For years, Apple had a clear identity: It was the world’s best devices maker. Today, the company is trying to balance that identity with a new emphasis on software and services. To discuss this shift and what it means for Apple’s future, I sat down with my favorite Apple writer, GV Partner M.G. Siegler, who once covered the company for Techcrunch and continues to write about it on Medium while sti...

As the pandemic flattens much of the U.S. economy, many technology firms are doing just fine. Business is moving online, and they’re well positioned to benefit. For tech CEOs like Box’s Aaron Levie, the experience can be bewildering. While you’re riding a wave most companies can only dream about, you’re watching the rest of the economy — including many of your customers — struggle to get by. In th...

In May, Amazon VP and distinguished engineer Tim Bray said he was leaving the company. Amazon had just fired employees who spoke out against its working conditions, and Bray couldn’t tolerate it. He handed in his resignation and published an astonishing blog post detailing his decision—an unprecedented move for an executive inside the tech giants. “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,"...

The Verge's Casey Newton writes The Interface, a daily newsletter about social media and democracy. He joins the podcast to talk about the tech press, Facebook, and the newsletter life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social media-fueled protests are a force to be reckoned with in politics today. Movements like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter have drawn millions into the streets in protest of central authorities. But can these movements be effective in the long term? Alex sits down with the field's leading writer and researcher, Zeynep Tufekci, to talk it through. Learn more about yo...

Here's a little preview of what's coming your way on the Big Technology Podcast. Don't miss the BTP, subscribe today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices