Skip to content
he monetized the web. now he has a plan to fix it

he monetized the web. now he has a plan to fix it

kill switch
Mar 25, 2026 38 min
Open in Clue

About this episode

<p>Ethan Zuckerman helped design the amateur web as we know it. In the 90s, he worked at Tripod, providing free web space for anyone to build their own site. His invention, pop-up ads, helped make that possible. The industry ran with it, and the Internet was never the same.<br><br>Since then, Ethan&rsquo;s been on a mission to fix the Internet and bring it back to what he hoped it would be &ndash; he even sued Facebook over it. Dexter talks to Ethan about how to make advertising less surveillant, a &ldquo;free-trade coffee&rdquo; model of the web, and why ad blockers might hint at a way to make Facebook a better place.</p> <p>Hit us up: <a href="mailto:killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc">killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc</a>, or @killswitchpod and @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.</p> <p><strong>Links:&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li aria-level="1">Ethan Zuckerman and Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci&rsquo;s proposal on Forgetful Adveritising: <a href="https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/isp/documents/zuckerman.pdf">https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/isp/documents/zuckerman.pdf</a></li> <li aria-level="1">Ethan&rsquo;s op-ed in the New York Times: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/05/opinion/facebook-court-internet-meta.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/05/opinion/facebook-court-internet-meta.html</a></li> <li aria-level="1">Ethan and Isaac Brickman&rsquo;s proposal for middleware: <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/JMYZ3GJKPE7UTCN8ZR3K/full">https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/JMYZ3GJKPE7UTCN8ZR3K/full</a></li> <li aria-level="1">kill switch on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod">https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod</a></li> </ul><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p>

Listen to this episode in English to learn English

Podcast episodes are one of the highest-density ways to absorb English at native pace. he monetized the web. now he has a plan to fix it from kill switch gives you natural dialogue, unscripted speech, and vocabulary that actually appears in real conversations.

In the Clue app, every word in the transcript is tappable. Tap an unknown word, see the translation in your language instantly, and keep listening without breaking flow.

Episodes to Learn English

More podcasts in English