Recode Decode: New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo explains the 'Frightful Five'

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Business, Technology

4.2 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2018

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Farhad Manjoo, a technology columnist for the New York Times, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher in front of a live audience at the University of California, Berkeley's journalism school. Manjoo explains why he refers to five of the world's largest tech companies as the "Frightful Five": Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube). He diagnoses long-running issues at several of those companies, but argues that solving the problems they've created or at least enabled would necessitate giving them even more power. Plus: Why Twitter's toxicity problem may be beyond saving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's show is brought to you by Netflix.
0:02.8	On Ricoh D-Code, we talk to tech giants about privacy and data all the time.
0:07.4	In the new Netflix film Anon, you'll enter a world where there is no such thing as privacy
0:12.4	and where authorities track your every move.
0:14.8	Anon stars Clive Owen and Amanda Sifred.
0:17.6	Grab a friend or a few and watch the hair-raising edge of your seat or well-earned thrill ride
0:22.4	available May 4th only on Netflix.
0:25.8	Hi, I'm Tara Swisher, Executive Editor of Ricoh.
0:30.2	You may know me as a screenwriter of the hit horror movie, The Frightful 5,
0:33.8	but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Ricoh D-Code from the box media podcast network.
0:39.0	Today we're going to play an interview I did back in March at the University of California at Berkeley.
0:43.8	I was sick at the time I think with pneumonia, which is why my voice is going to sound a bit off.
0:48.0	But this interview is part of a week of classes at Berkeley's journalism school.
0:51.8	I talked to the New York Times tech column, This Far-Hod Monshu, about being a journalist in 2018
0:57.0	and the growing power of The Frightful 5, which is his term for the five most powerful tech companies right now.
1:03.0	Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Microsoft.
1:06.2	Let's take a listen.
1:13.8	So, let's start about this idea.
1:15.8	You wrote how many years ago did you write this column about The Frightful 5?
1:19.8	I think it was two years ago.
1:21.8	It was after that hateful late, Tarantino movie came up.
1:25.8	Right, okay.
	...

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