We Didn’t Ask for This Internet

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ragebait, sponcon, A.I. slop — the internet of 2026 makes a lot of us nostalgic for the internet of 10 or 15 years ago. What exactly went wrong here? How did the early promise of the internet get so twisted? And what exactly is wrong here? What kinds of policies could actually make our digital lives meaningfully better? Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu have two different theories of the case, which I thought would be interesting to put in conversation together. Doctorow is a science fiction writer, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” Wu is a law professor who worked on technology policy in the Biden White House; his latest book is “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.” In this conversation, we discuss their different frameworks, and how they connect to all kinds of issues that plague the modern internet: the feeling that we’re being manipulated; the deranging of our politics; the squeezing of small businesses and creators; the deluge of spam and fraud; the constant surveillance and privacy risks; the quiet rise of algorithmic pricing; and the dehumanization of work. And they lay out the policies that they think would go furthest in making all these different aspects of our digital lives better. Mentioned: Enshittification by Cory Doctorow The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu “Fighting Enshittification” by Josh Richman Book Recommendations: Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher Manipulation by Cass R. Sunstein The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read Jules, Penny & the Rooster by Daniel Pinkwater Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Will Peischel. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Michelle Harris, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Natasha Scott.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The When was the last year that the internet felt good to you?
0:35.9	I think everybody's different answers to this.
0:38.6	Mine, I think, go fairly far back, maybe to the heyday of blogging, at least before
0:44.2	the moment when Twitter and Facebook went algorithmic. But whatever your answer to it is,
0:52.9	I have not found many people who think, 2026, right now, this internet, with all of its anger and its outrage and its AI slop, this is what we were promised.
1:02.7	This is living at the technological peak.
1:06.5	But even if there is this growing consensus, something went wrong with the internet somewhere,
1:11.5	and that it is driving our society somewhere we don't want it to go, there's not really a consensus
1:17.3	of what to do about it. What to do about these giant platforms increasingly spammed up with
1:23.0	ads and sponsored results, boosting content that will keep us hooked and angry, isolating and dividing
1:29.9	us and deranging our politics, so making a few billionaires ever richer, held up by an army
1:35.0	of low-wage workers and warehouses and on delivery bikes. Something has gone so wrong.
1:42.6	But what do we do about it? My guest today have two theories of the case.
1:46.8	Corey Doctero is a longtime blogger, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a
1:51.6	science fiction writer. His new book is In Shittification, why everything suddenly got worse and
1:56.5	what to do about it. Tim Wu worked as a special assistant to President Biden for technology and
2:01.5	competition policy. He's a professor at Columbia Law School and author of influential books on
2:05.8	technology, including his latest to the age of extraction, how tech platforms conquered the
2:10.5	economy and threatened our future prosperity, and shittification and extraction. Those are the
2:16.2	ideas I wanted to put in play together here.
2:18.7	And to also think about what solutions they might present.
	...

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