Prospect Podcast

Ethan Zuckerman: How to escape the internet hellscape

Prospect’s tech columnist on AI, evil tech bros, and resisting digital ‘enshittification’

June 11, 2025
article header image

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify

How do you resist the ‘enshittification’ of the internet?

This week, Prospect tech columnist Ethan Zuckerman joins Ellen and Alona to talk about artificial intelligence, social media and the state of the online world. Ethan, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, shares how AI has shaped his students—and how his teaching has had to adapt.

Ethan discusses the dystopian visions of billionaire tech bros. Will AI achieve superintelligence? Is it transforming our world for the worse? But he also explains how to seek out better, more wholesome corners of the internet, and why his students give him hope.

To read more of Ethan’s thinking, click here

And to read his column on the invention of the pop-up ad, click here.