Internet trolls dubbed Catherine McKenna “Climate Barbie.” Over her term as environment minister, that online harassment escalated, making meaningful dialogue on what to do about climate change and tech governance almost impossible.

Most people say they care about their digital privacy. And yet we continue to use products and platforms that extract, and then sell, our personal data. Carissa Véliz argues that needs to change.

Much is made of Peter Thiel’s libertarian provocations. But Thiel biographer Max Chafkin says this framing belies the real scope of Thiel’s technological, and political, influence.

Afrofuturism is an aesthetic that centres the Black diaspora in imaginings of the future. What can Silicon Valley learn from Afrofuturists’ concerns with questions of power and about how tech is never neutral?

Since concluding the last season this past August, a lot has happened in the big tech governance and regulation space. Whistle-blower Frances Haugen and the Facebook Papers shone light on social media’s harmful impacts on our society and reignited the debate over how we regulate platforms. There have been employee-led labour movements at Amazon, Uber and Netflix. And Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his vision for a Metaverse and a new company name, Meta. Join host Taylor Owen in conversation with leading experts as they make sense of how technology is transforming our world.

Big Tech returns on Thursday, November 25, 2021. New episodes will be released weekly, every Thursday morning. Subscribe now on your favourite podcasting application.

Taylor reflects on six themes that emerged this season in conversations about big tech’s transformation of our economy, society and lives.

The US First Amendment protects free speech, but how does that protection extend to online content moderation?

China has created a technology-driven Orwellian surveillance state, where AI pre-crime systems and social credit scores can decide your fate.

Western nations often paint the Chinese tech sector as a threat to freedom, an attack on surveillance and an extension of the state. Big Tech’s guest in this episode, Hong Shen, argues this simplistic framing isn’t quite accurate.

If we consider the history of the US news industry, it’s clear that journalism has never fully achieved its potential. Now that the traditional model is faced with a complete market failure, it’s time to rethink the business of journalism.