kill switch

For a while, the internet felt like it might actually work. Dexter talks with legal scholar and author Tim Wu about his new book The Age of Extraction and how that early optimism faded as companies learned how to extract value from just about everything.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
Tim’s Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691177/the-age-of-extraction-by-tim-wu/
kill switch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod
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When an editor at a local magazine in Toronto received a pitch from a promising new freelancer, he didn’t expect it to spiral into an obsessive investigation. What followed was a deep dive into a web of fake interviews, impossible bylines, and fake reporting. Dexter talks with Nicholas Hune-Brown to trace how he uncovered an AI journalist and what it reveals about journalism today.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
Nick’s articles:
“Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era” https://thelocal.to/investigating-scam-journalism-ai/
“The Fallout From Our AI Freelancer Investigation” https://thelocal.to/fallout-from-ai-freelancer-investigation/
The Local’s recent issue, “The Cost of Care” https://thelocal.to/winter-2026/
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In 2005, Myspace pages were flooded with the saying “Samy is my hero” and then suddenly, the platform went dark. Dexter talks with Jack Rhysider, host of the podcast Darknet Diaries, about Samy Kamkar, how he accidentally took down the biggest social media platform at the time, and how it changed the modern Internet.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Listen:
Jack’s Darknet Diaries episode with Samy: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/61/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From language learning to investments to Amazon leaderboards, it seems like everything has become a game. But are these gamified things actually fun, or are we the ones being played? Dexter talks to philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, who recently wrote a book about why gamification can suck the life out of things called The Score. They talk about why the same mechanism in games and gamified metrics – the scoring system – works so differently, why gamification can trick you into caring about the wrong thing, and how this phenomenon hits everything… even baptisms.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
C. Thi Nguyen’s book, The Score: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735252/the-score-by-c-thi-nguyen/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Journalists, public figures, and just about anyone with an online presence today can suddenly face harassment: ranging from nasty posts and replies to real life threats like doxxing. Dexter talks with Ramy Ghaly, a security professional, about how online harassment has gotten worse, how to respond if it happens to you, and what you can do, right now, to prepare and protect yourself.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read:
Pen America’s Online Harassment Field Manual: https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.