Last month, the veteran journalist Julia Angwin wrote an op-ed, “Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time,” which details the ways in which Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp have become a kind of zombie business: Think Yahoo, Myspace, and AOL after their dot-com peaks. On this episode, we invite Julia on the show to discuss her op-ed and dance on Meta&#x27;s grave—just a little, because it turns out a dying company can still be a dangerous one. From Meta&#x27;s money-burning forays into the metaverse, failed acquisition sprees, and gross exploitation of fraudulent ads on their marketplace, we discuss the ways Meta is losing reach and influence, while still maintaining vast power over politics and the gatekeeping of information.<br><br>Then, we pivot to talking about Julia&#x27;s new book, now available for pre-order: “On Courage: How to be a Dissident in an Age of Fear,” a reported account of how dissidents from around the world fight against authoritarianism and how we can learn from them in our own struggles. Fighting autocrats doesn&#x27;t just mean holding up signs and storming the capital; it can also mean small acts of resistance we can all practice in our own way to make big change in our communities.

Meta Is Dying

Organized Money

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Organized Money

## Transcript

Our producer just informed us there's a sequel to The Social Network coming out? There is a sequel to The Social Network coming out. Instead of Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg, it's now method actor Jeremy Strong from Succession playing Zuckerberg. Which I guess is sort of appropriate because he's the creepiest man alive. Strong, that is. I'm a free speech absolutist. I'm not the one who's lying. And I'm not stopping them from seeing someone who is.

So I'm going to watch the trailer after this episode. But what I'm assuming it's taking a dark turn. We're going to talk about Meta or Facebook. I mean, it still should be called Facebook. But he stupidly called it Meta. We're going to talk about it today. And because there's this great op-ed like last month by someone we admire very much, Julia Angwin, who's our guest.

She wrote this article on how Meta is dying as a business. You see this in the fact that their user base is now contracting. You see this in the fact that they are no longer, they don't have as much free cash flow. They're debt financed now for the first time in their history. And you see it culturally, that Facebook is just not in the cultural conversation anymore, nor is Instagram to a certain degree.

So there are a lot of ways in which the company is dying. But I think what's really interesting about Julia's point is she says that dying companies don't actually go away. And they can even get more dangerous when they are in the death throes. Right. So today we're going to talk about a world without Meta. And our guest, Julia, she's an award-winning investigative journalist.

She's a New York Times contributing writer and the founder of the Independent Media and Audience Project at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy. She's also an author. She's got a couple of books, but her latest one, which is going to be released later this book, we also talk about it, is called On Courage, How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear. And it is a reported book. It's not just her thoughts. And that's actually a very cool story as well. So here we go. Organized Money.

I'm David Dayen. I run the American Prospect magazine. And I'm Matt Stoller. I write about monopolies in a newsletter called Big, and I'm the research director for a think tank called the American Economic Liberties Project. On Organized Money, we're going to go beyond supply and demand curves and odes to visionary entrepreneurs and tell you how the business world really works. We'll talk to business leaders, journalists, policymakers, people on the front lines who are dealing with monopoly power,

competing with it, winning, losing, but ultimately fighting back. It's a podcast about all the money and power in the world. And we know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.

Thanks for joining. It's great to be here. So we...

Meta Is Dying

Transcript

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Meta Is Dying

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.