I want to say, however, one thing our media in America has done which didn't happen in other totalitarian states is it has very effectively stood up to Donald Trump who has obvious fascist tendencies and his - who's a temptation like all authoritarian figures to try to crush the media or make it obey him. As that - the media has, in fact, stood up to him and has refused to bow out or cower.
Tim WuNet neutrality is the principle that the service providers who control or access, who own the pipes, should not favor some content over another. It's, you know, an even playing field for stuff on the Internet, and, you know, I think it's very important to the medium that it have a rough quality among contents. Everyone has their shot.
Tim WuIf we generally like the way things are now, we must also ask whether our current situation is really so different from the open ages of radio, film, or the telephone. Might it not also have seemed in those times that the orgy of limitless entrepreneurism would never end? The point is that we are near the high end of a pendulum arc that, so far, has aways begun to swing in the opposite direction -toward greater integration and centralization- with a force that can seem inexorable.
Tim WuEvery time you click on a like button on another site, you've told Facebook that you're doing that. And so therefore advertisers know who their fan base is.
Tim WuWikipedia, a nonprofit, is an enormously popular website but has managed to operate without advertising. And, you know, maybe it's a little simpler than Google and YouTube, but it does show there's another way.
Tim WuI think, year in, year out, Google is starting to get worse instead of better. I think this is happening to a lot of the web companies, is as their demand to increase the payload they deliver in ads increases, they end up degrading and corrupting their own services. And you can see it with Google Maps, you can see it with Google Directions, where somehow Uber is, you know, always one of the options. And it's becoming exactly what they said was what they never wanted, which is a pay-for service where the highest bidder gets the best results.
Tim Wu