Cobun Zweifel-Keegan

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

When I was at the FTC, I heard from various people that social media companies were hiring tons of psychologists. So I asked our law clerk to go on LinkedIn to try to figure out how many they had. She came back to me and told me there were too many to count. She suggested I focus on PhDs, and I said sure let's try that. A day later she came back and told me that just three or four companies had 180 or 190 PhD psychologists and brain scientists, and that one company, alone, had around 150. So I then asked her to figure out what these people were doing. For that, we looked at job postings. And the sad fact we saw was that while a minority of the open posts were for jobs that would mitigate or prevent addiction and other harms, the large majority of those posts were aimed at maximizing "engagement" -- at keeping people hooked for longer. So, with the support of Chair Khan, we started building the first behavioral team at the FTC, and hired on our first pediatrician, our first psychologist, and a human-computer interaction specialist (a technologist). This was the scrappy, brilliant group that was starting to help us assess the public allegations against these companies. I always wished that more of my parent friends could talk to -- and learn -- from Dr. Radesky, the pediatrician and youth development expert who was the anchor of that group. And now she has generously agreed to field questions from @thefairfightpod listeners -- details on how you can submit a question are below. If you have a question about your kids, teens (or yourself) and AI chatbots and social media, this is a rare chance to get that answered by a top expert in the field.

Pam Bondi has sued Washington state to get sensitive voter data. I’m standing strong against efforts to undermine our voting system. Democracies don't grow on trees. They need to be protected, defended, and fought for. My letter to AG Bondi ⬇️

It snowed one day. Five days ago. I almost fell twice today @MayorBowser

Now is a very good time for people who believe in American democracy to speak out about the importance of a free press.

ICE isn’t just brutal. It’s also big business. From 2008 to 2021 ICE spent *$1.2 billion* on geolocation tracking, $561M on data analysis, $252M on government databases, and $97M on data brokers. Most of that went to companies who will lobby for this system to stay in place.

Today, Federal agencies began releasing their 2025 AI Use Case Inventories. This is American AI leadership in action! In the coming days, my team will post a consolidated Federal inventory. I am looking forward to sharing some of my favorite use cases with all of you! github.com/ombegov/2025-F…