Last month, 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. In this episode, we invite Angwin on the show to discuss her op-ed and dance on Meta’s grave—just a little, because it turns out a dying company can still be a dangerous one. From Meta’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.

Then, we pivot to talking about Angwin’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’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.

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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90.

Matt Stoller is research director at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.