A weekly newsletter that tells the story of how tech companies became unelected governments and what to do about it, by former Google executive and 30-year Internet veteran Jonathan Bellack.

Posts

Sep 5, 2025

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9 min read

Account Terminations Are Easy, But Unjust

Violate a policy, lose your account. Simple, right? A tactic born to handle mass fraud has ended up hurting real people who are dependent on platforms for community and storage.

Aug 29, 2025

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10 min read

Summer Field Trip 3: Of Platforms And People

It’s the super-sized finale of our trilogy: everything gets bigger, true motives are revealed, and hope returns to the galaxy.

Aug 22, 2025

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8 min read

Summer Field Trip 2: Publishers and Middlemen (The Dark Middle Episode)

How the rise of the Internet unleashed sharks, short-term thinking, and shady practices.

Aug 15, 2025

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6 min read

Summer Field Trip Part 1: Sell-Side Superhero Spectacular

Join me for an IMAX-sized epic of online advertising. Perverse incentives! Corporate culture clashes! Ad blockers! It’s all here, for three weeks only.

Aug 8, 2025

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7 min read

Five classic business books about tech failures to read after you finish “Yield”

Get your schadenfreude fix (and some useful insights) from the blunders of a previous generation of tech leaders.