Better Offline - FTC Chair Lina Khan: The Better Offline Interview

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

FTC Chair Lina Khan joins Ed Zitron to talk about competitiveness in the tech industry, controlling the cloud giants, and what should give you hope as we head into 2025. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you. you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with

the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi

on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th.

You might have seen the skits. my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard,

but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strength,

strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multi-million dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zittron.

Today I am joined by the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan. Lena, thank you so much for joining me. Great to be here. So, on a simple level, what does the FTC actually do? So the FTC enforces America's antitrust and consumer protection laws. And so these are the laws that try to ensure that our markets are fair and honest and competitive. And so that means we're looking to protect people from illegal monopoly. We're trying to protect people from all sorts of frauds and scams. We're trying to protect people's privacy and wanting to make sure that they're not subjected to all sorts of unfair practices.

We were created 110 years ago, and so it's a pretty big mandate. We have oversight across markets, across the entire economy for the most part, with some exceptions, like in areas such as banks and airlines. So it's a really big job that this agency does, and it's been thrilling to do. get to do it. And it feels like you're a lot more aggressive than perhaps anti-monopoly and anti-consolidation has been in the past. What led to them? So I came into this job wanting to make sure that we were, A, fully using the tools that Congress gave us. As I noted, this agency's been around for over a century. Our agency was given some pretty important authorities and tools,

but over the decades, there had been a drift away from fully using all of the tools that we have, from fully embracing the law on the books. And so the first thing we did was kind of come in and just make sure that we are mapping out what are all the tools we actually have and how do we make sure we're faithfully using those. The second thing that's been important is wanting to make sure that we're enforcing the law and taking action in response to how markets actually work today. And that meant making sure we were having top expertise internally. We started a new Bureau of Technologists that brought data scientists, data engineers,

people who fully understand the ins and outs of how algorithms work. Previously, companies would view lawsuits as just a cost of doing business, and especially in digital markets where there's such a focus on chasing scale and chasing growth, you know, there was a bit of a ask for forgiveness later mentality rather than everybody abiding by the law and making sure Americans were getting their rights on the front end. So how do you curtail that instinct where they have so much money that they can just kind of absorb the fee? Sorry, the fine, I mean. Yeah, it's a good question and it's especially important because a few months before I came into

this role, the courts had actually further limited the FTC's ability to get money. We mitigated that in a couple of ways. First, we used the tools we did have to their full extent to still get record-breaking sums. We also made sure we were looking at things like individual accountability. And so if a specific individual executive was involved in directing or participating in the lawbreaking, the lawsuit can be brought not just against the company, but also against the individual executive. And so we've done that in several instances where we had evidence that high-level execs knew what was going on, had the ability to stop it and didn't. And there's been a lot of empirical work that shows that actually holding individual executives accountable is really important

for deterring lawbreaking in the first instance. So we've done that. And we've done that. we've also made sure that when companies, for example, have used illegal practices to hoard people's data, that they're having to actually get rid of that data or get rid of the models that were trained on the data. So we're actually getting remedies that make sense for today's markets. So you filed a case against Amazon. What is the case? What's going on over there? Because I know you have some history. At Yale law school, you wrote that the antitrust paradox, I believe. What's the case against Amazon? So just to step back, what we see with digital platforms in particular is that there can be a life cycle. Initially, when a digital platform is entering the market, they're really

focused on chasing scale and building up a large customer base on one side of the market, so then they can also attract a big customer base on the other end. And they want to basically achieve the flywheel of accelerated growth and momentum, that especially in digital markets, once you've kind of hit that sweet spot of sufficient scale, there can be enormous acceleration. But what we've seen is that once firms achieve that accelerated growth, and if they're successful at knocking out their arrivals, we can see a different phase kick in where the platform starts looking to milk the monopoly, right? And we can see that in a few ways. The company can start charging higher prices. Sometimes they can make service worse. Corey Dr. O has coined this term

and shittification around just the degradation of the services that you see. And so the lawsuit that we've brought is about Amazon as it is in this second phase, where basically we allege they have high prices for both buyers on Amazon's platform, as well as the small businesses that sell through its platform, where Amazon now collects one out of every $2. We also note that Amazon has kind of cluttered its search results page with irrelevant ads as a very deliberate strategy to be able to basically milk more ad revenue from the platform, even when it's not serving shoppers and serving consumers. And so we allege that Amazon's only been able to make things worse in this way for people

because they've architected this anti-competitive scheme to block out rivals through illegal tactics. And so that's what the lawsuit is about. It's going to go to trial in a couple of years. And we brought it with a whole bunch of state attorneys general as well. Lovely. So one of the core thrusts you made in your paper, Amazon's antitrust, paradox is that they prioritized growth over being a profitable company. This feels like a problem across the tech firms, all of them. They all seem to be growth hungry. Do you feel that this is

anti-competitive at its core? Because growth doesn't seem to be about better. It just seems like more. Yeah, it's a really good question. And the antitrust laws in no way say that chasing scale or chasing growth is illegal or even that being big is illegal, is really comes down to what are the mechanisms of chasing that growth or the mechanisms of becoming big, right? And so in the same ways that we would recognize, hey, like going across, you know, if you have a pizza shop that goes across the street and sets fire to its rival pizza shop, you know, that's not fair competition. That's an extreme example. But there are all sorts of other mechanisms that the laws say are not fair means of competing. And so that's what the law does. It tries to distinguish what is fair play

versus not when you're looking to, you know, compete and grow and get big. And so chasing scale and chasing growth is not in any way by itself illegal and instead is a really kind of, you know, core part of what incentivizes business is what we have seen, though, is if law enforcers are not effective and are not timely, chasing growth can happen through playing fast and loose with the rules, especially if companies know that, okay, sure, I might get hit with a lawsuit in five years, but guess what, I will have hit my targets by then. I'll be the biggest firm. I'll have achieved dominance. And so I can worry about that later. From a business perspective, it's actually better for the company to play fast and loose with the rules so that they gain that dominance and then

deal with it later. That's really problematic as a mindset for law enforcement. And so that's something that we've been trying to figure out, how do we devise strategies to be much more assertive, be much more forward-leaning, be much more timely, so that we're not having to do that cleanup five years, ten years after the fact. So what powers does the FTC have to actually tackle antitrust violators? And indeed, within those shortened timescales? So we oversee various facets of of firm's behavior. One is if they are looking to merge or pursue an acquisition, if it's above, you know, $19 million, it gets reported both to the FTC and to the antitrust division. And we can figure out, is this an anti-competitive transaction? Is this basically going to reduce competition?

And then we can also look at companies' business tactics, especially, you know, if they've become monopolies or are kind of using their dominance in illegal ways. And so we can, bring lawsuits. We can also issue rules, and we've been very active in issuing rules, including in areas like fake reviews, you know, taking on things like government impostors. We just finalized a rule taking on junk fees in the economy, these, you know, hidden fees that companies just show at the very end that you don't know what you're exactly paying for, but suddenly the price of the ticket is almost doubled and you have no choice. And so we've issued a series of rules. We've brought a series of lawsuits. We can also do various studies of the market, including in areas where things

are moving very quickly. So we a few months ago launched a study into surveillance pricing, this idea that firms could be charging every single individual, a standalone price based on the data they have on you. So these are just some of the tools and authorities we have. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because, Your parents made a huge donation.

The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yardt. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle age.

One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's IHeartadvertising.com. Life throws hurdles big and small.

The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WMBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star, Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain.

It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like. you don't belong. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeke. The ability to show gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard.

Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.

I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fantine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing

and we're still chasing it and we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid?

Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free IHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. So let's talk artificial intelligence. From a regulatory perspective, what are your major concerns? So the biggest concern for me just right at the beginning

was making sure we were making very, very clear to the market that there was no AI exemption from the laws on the books. And this can sound like a basic point, but it seemed incredibly important because we have seen, especially when new technologies come onto the market, we can see an effort by firms to say, okay, sure, you have these age-old laws on the books, but this new technology is different. And that means these laws don't apply or they have to apply in dramatically different ways. And it's really important for enforcers to hear out those arguments, you know, make sure we understand how the technologies are working, but not get so dazzled by the novelty to say,

okay, well, I guess we can totally abandon our core laws, and suddenly we're saying, okay, fraud is illegal, but if you do fraud with AI, somehow that's okay, right? That's not a position we want to be in. And companies are making this argument, like that kind of argument, they're attempting to cite. Not that specific ones, but they're trying to dodge. Yeah, we do see arguments that, you know, the traditional laws around unfair practices or deceptive practices apply differently.

The other big thing is, you know, America has been so fortunate to be such a key home of breakthrough innovations historically. And to my mind, a key ingredient of that has been making sure we have fair competitive markets where you actually do have somebody with a great new idea. an upstart that's able to come in, that's able to fairly compete and knock out the incumbents, that's how historically we have gotten real major technological progress in our country. And what I wanted to make sure we were being very clear-eyed about is the risk of a few large dominant incumbents locking in the market in a way that shuts out a lot of that innovation and a lot of that next generation breakthrough that historically we've seen come purely from fair competition and open markets. So it was about wanting to make sure that

companies are not using their existing heft to immediately lock up the market and shut out the innovation that we should be able to see. So with that in mind, are you worried about the consolidation we're seeing right now in the generative AI market? because to build these models, the foundation models like Claude 3 or GPD or Lama or what have you, it requires financial heft. How do you avoid the monopoly that naturally comes out, the fact that you need billions and billions of dollars to even make one of these? Yeah, it's a key question. And one approach that we've taken is making sure that we are actually going layer by layer in the market. Right.

And so you want to understand, okay, what's happening? with chips, what's happening with cloud and compute, what's happening with the models. You want to understand what are the key economic properties of each point in the stack and then understand, okay, do we see this consolidation purely because there's such high fixed costs and, you know, that's just going to be the state of the market? And how do we make sure that to the degree you do have dominant players in some of these layers, they're not using that dominance to then squelch out competition in a layer where you should actually be able to see more innovation, more competition. And so we're looking at, for example, some of the partnerships and investments between the

big cloud providers and some of the newer firms, famously, you know, the Microsoft Open AI Partnership, Amazon and Google have also made some investments. And we want to understand, you know, are these truly kind of independent companies, are these able to be independent firms in terms of the competitive decision making, some of the key strategic calls, when so much investment is being made, what is the structure of the contracts, what are some of the key requirements? Are there kind of interlocking directors here in ways that create conflicts that are problematic? are there contractual, you know, tying provisions here? So that's just the universe of what we're looking at. But of course, it's a fast-moving market. And we're very fortunate to have just top-tier technological talent in-house to be letting us push forward here. So consolidation is a concern, though, in generative AI. It's certainly something we have to be vigilant about to make sure that

to the degree we do see, you know, monopolies or firms with enormous market power. we want to make sure, A, that that's not being achieved through illegal tactics or that it's not being used illegally to snuff out competition somewhere else. So that's incredibly important. How about the training data situation? Because that feels like a mixture of different parts of the government would be involved, but that also feels like a massive anti-competitive issue. Is this something the FTC is looking into or would have to partner with other parts of the government potentially? So we are looking into it. Actually, last year we convened a roundtable with creators from all sorts of different sectors.

So we had artists, authors, graphic designers, even people who work in fashion, sharing how their core creations had actually already been scraped in many instances. And suddenly they were waking up where their life's creation having been ingested by this machine. and spitting out outcomes that they had never consented to and suddenly felt like they had no control over. And so that's something we've heard a lot about. Interestingly, these creators, many of them were acknowledging that these technologies could be quite fruitful for them as well. They're not kind of reflexively and viscerally anti-AI. It's really about wanting to make sure that the terms on which their creations are being used, that those are actually fairly negotiated.

And it's not some type of opt-out model after the fact that they actually should be able to consent, that they should actually be getting compensation that's, you know, to measure it with the value of what they're getting. So that's a lot of concerns we've heard. The FTC submitted a comment to the Copyright Office, which is considering some of these issues kind of relaying what we had heard. And so it's certainly a live issue. And to the extent the FTC can share expertise on it, we've been looking to do that. So, generative AI is being crammed into every tech product. Do you see any potential for consumer harms from this happening? Well, generally, we've brought a set of lawsuits that fall into a few categories. One of the big categories is around this idea of AI hype. So as more and more products are adopting generative AI services, they're making oftentimes commitments or promises about what these services can actually deliver. And sometimes we see that those claims are inflated. And so, you know, for example, the FTC a few months ago brought a whole sweep of enforcement actions against, for example, a company that was claiming to be the world's

first robot lawyer, do not pay, but the product failed to live up to its claims that the service could substitute for the expertise of a human lawyer. Now, don't get me wrong, to the extent that these types of services and advances can bring things like way low cost legal services to people, that's a great thing. But just we want to make sure companies are not inflating or hyping or falsely overstating what those services can actually do. So that's been a big strain of the cases that we brought so far in this area. So do you see any anti-competitive issues in the cloud and compute industry in general, even outside of AI? Because it really is just a few big players.

It is, yeah, it is a relatively small number of firms. The FTC did do a inquiry here. We got a lot of comments. And some of the complaints that we heard about focused on things like, how easy is it to exit the cloud? service and transfer your data elsewhere? And are you having to pay these egress fees to the cloud providers in ways that inhibits, you know, switching? We also heard just more generally about some of the software licensing practices where some people suggested that some of the cloud providers limit their ability to use certain software in other cloud infrastructure provider environments

so that you can imagine could lead to lock in, or if one cloud provider is effectively degrading the ability to use other third-party software is on that cloud. You could see some issues there. And then we also heard some concerns that some provisions in cloud computing contracts could be incentivizing customers to consolidate their use of cloud services to just one provider that could further hasten consolidation. More generally, we looked at this not just from the competition lens, but also from a resiliency lens. I think we've all seen how when you have extreme

centralization that can also create a lot of fragility where you have a single point of failure, right? And we've seen how if a single data service center somewhere goes out, sometimes a corner of the internet also goes out. And so how do we make sure, We're also thinking about the resiliency element here. And then they're kind of similar data security concerns as well that we heard about. Another podcast from some SNL, late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman,

help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged.

One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only I-Hart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think I-Hart. streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-heart to get started. That's 844-8-4-Ehart.

Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions, to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout, Kate Martin, and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that.

Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel long. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me.

And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world, Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports.

Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast, Superhuman, documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I put on 10 pounds, I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardweight with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games.

And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience. in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough.

Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust.

I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keer Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose. On my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free, our heart radio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. So you've been an I'm editorializing here. A tact I would describe some of the clammyest men alive. A lot of people in venture capital and within tech have come for you.

How do you deal with that? How has that affected you? So as a general matter, you know, I focus on making sure we're hearing from Americans across the country. And sometimes it's very easy in these jobs to actually become very insulated and only hear from the people who have access to power or kind of know, you know, where to be ranting in a way that it gets to public enforcers very easily. So it's really about just making sure that you're keeping good perspective, keeping a broad purview of who it is that we serve. So we've done listening sessions across the country, for example, going to places like Baraboo, Wisconsin, or Ames, Iowa, hearing from, you know, the gig drivers that use some of these ride-sharing platforms to understand what are they seeing, what is their experience.

We talked to a lot of farmers who are concerned about the ability to repair their own tractors and why there has been, you know, increasing friction there. And so keeping just a broader set of voices in mind as we're making our decisions, I think has been incredibly important to just keep a North Star that's properly focused on, you know, the public as a whole rather than a handful of well-resourced, well-connected individuals that can, sometimes have an outsized role in policy decisions. So what do you think, what are some of the big wins, what are the ones you most proud of in your time? Well, we, because of the FTC's work, Americans saw the cost of inhalers go down from hundreds of dollars, which is just $35. In the digital space, you know, we've really helped set new rules of the road. I mean, one trend that we've seen is as more companies have become reliant on service-based revenues, they've introduced subscriptions and become much more reliant on subscription revenue.

And so we see firms make it very easy to sign up for a subscription, but then extraordinarily difficult to cancel. We brought a whole bunch of lawsuits, including against Amazon, including against Adobe, for their illegal subscription practices that were thwarting Americans from being able to cancel in ways that resulted in people, you know, overpaying for months and months. We had people tell us, the only way I could cancel my subscription was to cancel my credit card, right? I mean, just deeply anti-consumer practices. We also finalized a rule that will go into effect next year, such that all companies would

have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as, it is to sign up for one. We've also been very active in taking on data brokers. You know, there's been a wild, wild west out there and how people's personal information is bought and sold. And we've brought a whole set of law enforcement actions when data brokers are illegally using or collecting people's health data, people's precise geolocation data, sensitive data, like browsing data. Just to make clear that the default assumption is not that all of the, this sensitive data can be bought and sold, even if people have not affirmatively given permission. We just brought the other week to cases against significant data brokers, Mobile Walla and Gravy

Analytics for some of their illegal practices involving geolocation data. The Mobile Walla case was especially interesting to my mind because it involved a count about real-time bidding data. And there's been all this research suggesting that the online auctions of real-time bidding end up exposing people's sensitive data. And we brought a case noting that that exposure could be, you know, and companies using the real-time bidding data unlawfully is problematic. And so those have been, you know, some of the advances that we've made. So you were confirmed with broad bipartisan support.

J.D. Vance spoke fondly of you. Do you have hope that your kind of your legacy continues in some level? Well, I can't predict what the future holds. I do know that there has been strong bipartisan support for taking on unchecked private power. That's true in technology markets. That's been especially true when it involves people's privacy, when it involves kids' privacy. I think we've seen, you know, people recognize that if you're freaked out by unlawful surveillance when the government does it, you should also be freaked out by surveillance when private companies do it because the line there can be quite porous. And so I do think there are a set of areas where there is

strong bipartisan concern and commitment to taking on corporate lawbreaking. And so I hope that will continue. All right. One last question. So right now, I would describe the mood as not great out. I think the people are feeling a little dark, feels like the ultra-wealthy are kind of gaining speed and seeping into the government, what would you tell people to give them hope? Oof, that's a tough one. I mean, you know, I'm a patriot. You know, I really believe in America. I think there have been moments before where the path ahead was not clear. And one approach that I've taken to this job is there are no inevitable outcomes, right, be it in terms of how our markets evolve, be it in terms of what our government does or doesn't do, and how people in positions

like at the FTC Act have huge consequences for, you know, whether you have markets that are premised on on-check surveillance or whether you can imagine people's data and privacy being protected, right? There can sometimes be an effort to say, well, there's just this inevitable march of technological progress where outcomes are sort of already baked. And I don't believe that. I think how we use our laws, how we use our policies is incredibly important. A priority for me at the FTC has been to engage with the public. And that's partly so that we hear from them, partly so that we share with them what we're doing. But it's also to make sure that people know that they can hold future people at the FTC accountable as well for what decisions are not being made. So I think

we've seen that having a strong government that's focused on protecting people. people is important and people should be expecting that. Lena, thank you so much for joining me. It's been such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for doing this. Thanks so much. You've been listening to Better Offline. Nearly forgot the name of my own podcast day.

Lena Kahn, chair of the FTC. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Rosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-K-I-com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.

Where's Your Ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to R-S-Better-O-Line to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolzoneMedia.com, or check. Check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything.

Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliver Show.

This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multi-million dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets,

billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the game. and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.

Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.