Decoder Live: Fired FTC commissioners fight back
58:59 Share

Support for this show comes from Roomba Robots. If you haven't checked out Roomba Robots in a while, you might want to look again. Roomba Robots have completely reimagined their lineup. It's smarter, sleeker, and stronger than ever before. The

This podcast is supported by Google.

Hi, I'm Dave, one of the product leads on Google Gemini. We just launched Gemini Canvas. It's my new go-to for real-time collaboration with Gemini. Write docs, edit code, get feedback, iterate.

Support comes from ServiceNow. We're for people doing the fulfilling work they actually want to do. That's why this ad was written and read by a real person.

Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.

We have something special for you today. A few days ago, I hosted a panel with Federal Trade Commission commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C. We recorded that conversation, and we're bringing it to you today. Now, that's pretty normal decoder stuff, you might be saying, except these are anything but normal circumstances. Right from the jump, you're going to hear me struggle to even introduce Becca and Alvaro correctly.

They were working FTC commissioners until Donald Trump up and fired them. But the thing is, he doesn't appear to have the legal authority to actually do that. As you'll hear them discuss, by law, the Federal Trade Commission needs to have commissioners from both parties. On top of that, there's a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent which explicitly says the president can't fire FTC commissioners in the way that Trump just did. So given all that, they're both suing the administration to get their jobs back. And as you'll hear, they're both committed to taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court.

That whole situation puts them both in a deeply weird, Schrodinger's cat kind of position. They both are and are not currently working as FTC commissioners, and that creates some strange tensions that you'll hear us get into. On top of all that, of course, there is the actual work of the Federal Trade Commission going on in the background.

The antitrust trial against Meta was going on basically just down the street from where we sat talking, so I spent some time asking them how that case was going, and why things like Mark Zuckerberg's donation to the inauguration and frequent appearances in the Oval Office haven't seemed to dissuade the FTC from trying to break up Meta.

You'll hear Becca in particular point out that even if you think Mark is bad at bribes, it still means the government is open for bribery and corruption, and that creates all kinds of other problems for the economy. There's a lot going on in this conversation, from how the president fires you to the attempt in Silicon Valley to build AI into digital god. We also somehow ended up taking printer recommendations from the audience. It's a good one. Okay, liminal FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. Here we go. ♪

Hi, everybody. I am Neil Patel. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of The Decoder podcast. I have two excellent guests with me today. I'm going to say former Federal Trade Commission chairs, but... That's up to you, man. That's your call. Litigious. We would not. We would politely disagree. Current liminal FTC commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter, Arpuro Bedoya. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. I have a million questions for the both of you. Let's start...

I think with the elephant in the room, normally in a conversation about privacy and consumer protection with FTC commissioners, it would be a fairly predictable set of topics, especially now with AI. How are we going to do all of this? It is not a predictable time in America. It is not a predictable set of circumstances.

So let's start with your status with Donald Trump. He fired both of you. It appears to be illegal. Tell us how that happened. Did he call you? He did not call us. So I think I'll start by noting that Donald Trump actually originally appointed me in 2018 to the FTC. I was appointed as a minority commissioner, a Democrat. The agency is by statute composed of members

bipartisan members, five members, no more than three from any one party is what the statute says. So I was appointed in 2018.

As a minority commissioner, I served as a minority commissioner, and then I was briefly the acting chair at the beginning of the Biden administration, and then a majority commissioner, along with Commissioner Bedoya, who joined us in 2022, and then became a minority commissioner again in January of 2025. And on March 18th, which was a Tuesday, I had finished a day at the office meeting with a bunch of staff in the agency, and was at my kids' elementary school, thought

on a drama club project. And we always joke that we like to keep the drama on the stage and out of our house. But no, then the drama came and found us that day. I checked my email and I had an email from someone I'd never heard of in the presidential personnel office saying,

with a message purportedly on behalf of Donald Trump announcing that I was terminated effective immediately. So I stood up and I walked out of drama club to the courtyard and I called Alvaro and I said, hey, man, have you checked your email? And you can take the story over. So I had very I was very proudly not checking my email because I just arrived at my daughter's gymnastics class and

And she gets really annoyed when I'm not watching her. She does a cool trick, and I'm just looking at my phone like an idiot. And so I got a call, and I picked it up. And Becca said, have you seen your email? And I said, actually, I haven't seen my email. And she said, well, you should check your email because I just got an email purporting to fire me. And sure enough, same email was in my inbox right there. Okay, I have a number of tech reporter questions in the context of this government. Did you receive a plain text email saying you had been terminated?

Was it a plain text email? I'm just imagining Donald Trump creating a PDF. That's in my head. No, that did not happen. There was no PDF. There was no signed letter. There was no signature. It was a text email. There was no indication there was any additional level of security associated with email. I'm curious about the mechanics of how these decisions are made. It literally felt like somebody typed an email in their Outlook and didn't send. Very good. Very on brand.

You guys are both in litigation against the Trump administration, against the current chair, Andrew Ferguson. That litigation, I mean, this is a room full of lawyers, right? They are in violation of what appears to be a violation of a 90-year-old Supreme Court case called Humphrey's Executor.

I don't think a district court is going to overturn that precedent. Are you prepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court on this one? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is not a complicated case. There's no dispute about the facts and there's no dispute about what the law says. The law says very explicitly that commissioners can only be removed for neglect, malfeasance or inefficiency. So what we generally call cause. You got to do something wrong.

The email purporting to fire us did not allege any cause. And I just feel like it's important to say there is no cause. Neither of us have engaged in neglect, malfeasance or inefficiency. Alvaro is one of the hardest working people in

in, I would say, not just Washington, but in the country. And I try to follow close behind him. So there is no cause. The statute says we can only be removed for cause. That statute was passed 111 years ago. And 90 years ago was, well, 92 years ago was the last time a president tried to remove an FTC commissioner. FDR tried to fire Commissioner

William Humphrey for also no cause. And he sued, challenging his removal. And then he died before the case was settled, which is why this famous case is called Humphrey's Executor. And his estate pursued the lawsuit, and it went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And a unanimous Supreme Court said, yes, that statute says commissioners can only be removed for cause. And yes, that statute is constitutional.

And that precedent has been undisturbed, unchanged, unchallenged. Well, it's been challenged, but not effectively challenged for 90 years. So, yes, I would be shocked if a district court judge decided to unilaterally

overturn 90 years of Supreme Court precedent. And yes, I think we are very prepared and expect this to be a case that is litigated up to the Supreme Court. And indeed, I think that's what the administration is trying to do. They are unsettling trying to challenge this 90 year old precedent under the theory that the president

should be able to fire whoever he wants. And they argue that that is necessary for democratic accountability. I find that argument a little ironic because I think what bipartisan commissions provide is accountability and transparency, even while allowing the president to execute his agenda by naming the chair, by having the majority of the commission. So there are lots of legal nuances, but it's not a close case.

There is the theory of the unitary executive. The Supreme Court, in many ways, over the course of all of their individual careers, has pursued that theory of the unitary executive. It does feel like maybe they want to overturn another precedent. They're on a spree of overturning. I'm not sure I learned anything in law school. Well, nothing we learned in law school remains relevant, I think, is a fair point. What is a tort? Let's find out. It's a real situation. Do you think you have a good chance with this court?

Sure. I think we do. Yes. What else would be answered? My other mechanical question. Look, I think it is very important for people to realize that, yes, in a sense, it is about Commissioner Slaughter and I and our continued service on the commission. In another arguably much more important sense,

It is about agency as a commission's independent institutions like our own being able to serve without fear of favor. And if the president can remove Commissioner Slaughter and I for no reason at any time,

He can do the same to Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve. He can do the same for commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has done the same at the National Credit Union Administration. He could do the same at the FDIC. These are bedrock institutions of our financial life. And so this, yes, to a degree is about privacy. This is to a degree about cybersecurity, but this is also about, do you have a retirement account? Do you have a checking account? And will those...

Things that you hold quite dear be subject to the same stability and stable regulatory and enforcement environment that is provided in a world where the leaders of these institutions are protected by for-cause removal protections. And I think it goes even further than that, honestly, because...

These institutions, Alvaro named a bunch of them. They also include the FCC, the SEC, the CFTC, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, you know, a whole panoply of institutions that have been built up over the last hundred years by Congress explicitly to be bipartisan. If you

if they effectively challenge removal protections, then what meaning do the appointments requirements have? And then can these institutions actually even continue to exist because they would be so divorced from what Congress designed and built? So I think understanding that the stability point that Commissioner Bedoya is making goes beyond are you going to have wild swings in policy at these agencies from

From administration to administration, it goes much deeper into can these agencies even exist? Can markets rely on the stability that they provide is a really important one. Are you taking anything from the chaos this week around Trump threatening Powell and walking it back as the market reacted? Yes. I mean, I think what we are seeing is exactly what we've been saying, which is that he thinks he can fire whoever he wants.

that he chooses not to, doesn't create stability. We are still in the same position of instability and uncertainty that markets have been reacting to with these wild fluctuations. I mean, I guess it's good that he's responding to market panic, but I would prefer not to panic the markets by following the laws that Congress passed the way our Constitution says that we should.

There's another piece of this, which is the FCC continues to operate. It's in court right now against Meta, filed a case against Uber. The current chair, Andrew Ferguson, he told one of our reporters, Lauren Feiner, the other day at a conference that he has to obey lawful orders and he will pull those cases if the president asks him. But he would be surprised if the president asked him to stop prosecuting Meta or anyone else. Do you think that's a viable position? Is he saying what he has to say? Is he managing Donald Trump? Is that what he really believes?

I'm happy to go. For the audio listener, they both looked at each other very, very knowingly. Let's just state, let's just add a little meat to that bone. Yeah. Okay. Let's just add some words to what you described. You have the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission say, I think this trial is important.

I think we are in the right in suing Meta. I think the law is on our side. And he said this to his great credit early on in his tenure. I want to bring, I want to keep on going with this lawsuit. So you have a law enforcement official making that statement. You also have a law enforcement official say at the same time, but if the president gives me an order to drop that lawsuit, I shall do so.

Okay. Who is being served by that world? Is competition being served by that world? Are startups being served by that world? Who is helped by that scenario? The other thing that I think it's very important to underscore is that just because he has not been fired does not mean he is not being influenced.

Okay, just because the people who haven't been fired haven't been fired doesn't mean that they haven't changed their behavior as a result of this very clear commandment that if you obey, you will stay, and if you don't, you won't. Every single person serving in government will tell you in some form or another that that's what's happening right now. And so for me, I look at that and I don't see law enforcement being served by that in the slightest. I don't see the mission of the Federal Trade Commission being served by that in the slightest.

It is notable that Mark Zuckerberg paid a bunch of money, I believe, to build a library. He was on stage at the inauguration. He was in the Oval Office in the run-up to the meta-trial. But then he was on the stand the other day, or last week, giving testimony. Kevin Sistrom is on the stand. Why do you think that happened? Was he just not effective? Do you think, Mark, that Trump doesn't like the bling?

Look, Trump, what does he doesn't like the bling? He likes the bling. He's more of a classic necktie guy. And, you know, he's shown up. I shall not speculate on that point. Let's just talk about the meeting. You know, not so recently in any Republican or Democratic administration, a mega donor visiting not the White House, but the Oval Office.

to meet with the president after having donated a million dollars to the inauguration to ask for a law enforcement action to be dropped against them, that would be front page news for days. It would be considered wildly inappropriate. And it would be considered antithetical to the mission that the commission was charged with doing. I don't really care what happens after that. The simple fact of that meeting is

is observed and noted by everyone serving in these positions of leadership. I'm going to put it a little bit more bluntly. Bribery is bad, even if it doesn't work. Bribery is a problem, even if it isn't effective. We have

a system of laws that are based on the idea that you prevail if the facts and the law are on your side, not because you tried to bribe anyone in the system. And if we do not resist this,

even efforts at bribery with every fiber of our being, we are doing an enormous disservice to the rule of law, to the administration of justice and to the operation of our democracy. I mean, genuinely and fundamentally, I think it's that serious. So, um, bribery is bad, even if it doesn't work. Okay. I just want to call out that started a scattered applause, you know, everyone's got it. I get it, but it should have been louder. Okay. Um,

But let me push on that just a little bit. Do all these guys just suck at bribery? Because they're all in there. So let's— Right, but, you know, the medic cases go in, Google's, those cases. Let's talk about another gentleman who was on the stage at the inauguration, Mr. Bezos. Mr. Bezos gave a million dollars to the inaugural fund. Mr. Bezos, his company cut a deal that would benefit the first lady, according to the New York Post, to the tune of $29 million. Wow.

Mr. Bezos also, his company separately licensed recently the rights to The Apprentice, which, as you might imagine, don't cost a small amount. Subsequent to most of these things, the new nominee for workplace safety in the United States was a former Amazon executive.

This is a company that has, according to numerous studies, a 2x injury rate vis-a-vis its other large warehousers. This is a company that has so many injuries in the warehouse floor that the vending machines on the warehouse floor dispense painkillers. This is a company that, according to a Senate investigation, was denying outside referrals to medical care of its own warehouse employees for up to 21 days, allegedly as a matter of policy.

And so after you flow in a minimum of $30 million plus into those coffers to have the nation's leading workplace safety law enforcer be a former executive of your country, I think is astounding. So I don't know if these donations are not working necessarily. I also think that bribery, if it doesn't work, the reason it doesn't work is because the

says, no thanks, I don't do bribes. If they say, cool, give me your dollars, and then you don't get what you want, your message is give more dollars. That's what I think we expect to see. And to Commissioner Bedoya's point, that company, Amazon, is also in not one, but two active litigations with the FTC right now and is under order for a number of different other things. And in one of those cases, we saw...

an FTC attorney go into court and say, because of the doge cuts and resource constraints, we're going to have to delay this trial. Now, Chair Ferguson had him walk that back very quickly, but nothing that attorney said in that courtroom was wrong, right? It was all true in terms of the resource constraints that the agency is facing and the effect that has on active cases and active investigations. Is it direct investigation?

Influence? I don't know. I am not in the minds of the influencers here, but I think it's all stuff that should make us pay very close attention and be very concerned. We have to sneak in a short break here. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Support for Decoder comes from LinkedIn. There are those people who seem to know everyone in the world. They have someone for game tickets. They have someone for nice suits. They have eight people for IT. They know actuaries and ballerinas and the best fishmongers. Unfortunately, if you don't know everyone in the world, recruiting talented people quickly can be a challenge.

That's where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn wants you to feel confident that you're hiring the best. Based on LinkedIn's data, 72% of small and medium-sized businesses using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. LinkedIn says they make it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. And LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly

Terms and conditions apply.

It's been reported that one in four people experience sensory sensitivities, making everyday experiences like a trip to the dentist especially difficult. In fact, 26% of sensory-sensitive individuals avoid dental visits entirely.

In Sensory Overload, a new documentary produced as part of Sensodyne's Sensory Inclusion Initiative, we follow individuals navigating a world not built for them, where bright lights, loud sounds, and unexpected touches can turn routine moments into overwhelming challenges.

Burnett Grant, for example, has spent their life masking discomfort in workplaces that don't accommodate neurodivergence. "I've only had two full-time jobs where I felt safe," they share. This is why they're advocating for change. Through deeply personal stories like Burnett's, sensory overload highlights the urgent need for spaces — dental offices and beyond — that embrace sensory inclusion. Because true inclusion requires action with environments where everyone feels safe.

Watch Sensory Overload now, streaming on Hulu. Missions to Mars, driverless cars, AI chatbots. Feels like we're already living in the future. Well, Robinhood is built for the future of trading. Robinhood's intuitive design makes trading seamless. Spot opportunities and take control of your trades with tools like screeners, simulated returns, and strategy builder.

On Robinhood, traders have access to hundreds of popular stocks and ETFs, 24 hours a day, five days a week, so you can keep up with today's fast-paced markets. You can now even trade stocks and crypto all in one place with a new desktop platform, Robinhood Legend. The future of trading is fast, powerful, and precise. Experience it now on Robinhood.

Thank you.

Welcome back. Before the break, I was talking live on stage with Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya about what's happening to the FTC in the Trump administration. Next, I had to ask them about what the FTC is doing now. Let me ask about the Amazon case specifically. I think of the Amazon case and I instinctively think of Lena Kahn, right? She came to prominence writing Amazon's antitrust paradox. She became the chairman. She was a flash rod of controversy. She was a

Ferguson got his job by insisting that he would throw out all of her ideas. He hasn't, right? He's kept the merger guidelines. That's right. He's stayed in litigation against these companies. It's the Amazon case that's the hard one, right? That's the one where maybe we're going to actually litigate the consumer welfare standard and maybe we'll win or lose and change that precedent. Do you think that one is at the most risk or is it the meta case? Because I associate the Amazon litigation with Chair Kahn so directly that it feels like the first one to go.

I think it's hard for us to know what's at the most risk. I see risk, big flashing red danger signs all over the agency's agenda right now. I think that case, it's important.

Chair Kahn wrote a piece, a very influential piece about Amazon. That is not what that case ended up being about. And I actually really think everybody should read that case because what that case says, and Commissioner Bedoya and I both supported that case, and I think we're very proud to do so, was that maybe you associate in your mind Amazon with cheaper, lower prices, but actually the evidence shows that their conduct was raising prices for

across not only on their own platform, but across the Internet, hurting not only consumers, but also the sellers. So it was, you know, exercising monopoly power in both directions. And I think it reads much more like a traditional antitrust case than many people might have expected it to. And we'll see what happens in litigation if it gets to litigation, if it's properly resourced.

And it's very, very hard to know if you're not in the middle of the case team what is actually happening behind the scenes. So I think we'll see. But what everybody should want is the confidence that the...

the law is being administered without fear or favor and not with some thoughts about whose donors are going to be mad or when the phone might ring and ask you to totally change directions. That's just bad. Like, you can think the FTC is right or you can think the FTC is wrong, but you should want that case to be litigated on the merits, period, full stop. Let me also speak to something else you said, Nellie, like,

I think it's very easy, and I say this as someone who's lived in D.C. for 17 years, 16 years. I think Chair Kahn was controversial in Aspen, in Davos, and Sun Valley.

You go and talk to a rural grocer in Utah. You go and talk to the urban grocer in North Tulsa. You go talk to corn growers and cattlemen in Iowa about the work that she led and that we worked with her on. It is the opposite of controversial. The response you get is, what took you guys so long? Thank God. Where have you been all this time? I'm so glad you're doing this.

I think it's very easy when – and I get the same news source. I'm not saying it's coming from the Verge, but you get rained on by all this press that is focused on the stock market, that is focused on Wall Street, saying all sorts of things about someone who – and half my family lives in Louisiana now, right? You go talk to them about the work we did, it's a whole lot of nodding and a whole lot of support. And so I think we –

There's a certain picture of Chir Khan that's been painted that's true in very specific circles of this country. That's the first thing. Let's talk about that Amazon case and what that Amazon case is about because I think some of the details get lost in like this big title, Amazon. This is what we allege in that complaint. Number one, we allege that Amazon is a monopolist in that online retail market.

We allege it has so much market power that if you're a small retailer, a small seller, you need to be on Amazon. So once they have you because of that market power, we allege they slowly started jacking up the price of selling your goods on Amazon so much so that eventually almost 50 cents of every dollar you made on that site had to go to Amazon. So what happens?

Find me a small seller who can afford to have a 50% haircut on every dollar they sell. So people start saying, oh, wait, I can sell for lower off the site and make a bigger margin because I'm not taking a 50% haircut on every sale I make on that site.

And so we allege that when those small sellers moved off the site to sell for 10%, 20%, 30% less, that Amazon had a surveillance system to find those people who were lowering their prices and then would penalize them by knocking them out of the preferred placement on the platform. And so...

you say, Oh, we turn the consumer welfare standard on its head. I think consumers are hurt by this. And that is emphatically part of the argument that's being made here. I also think small sellers are hurt by this very much so, but this is something that hurt people who wanted cheap to pay less. And it was, it was hurting the small retailers as well. All right. I promise not to do another 20 minutes on hipster antitrust in this room. We're ready to do it. Um, let's talk about meta, which is indeed on a cutting edge of privacy and exciting ways. Um,

They're at trial right now. That case was filed in 2020 under the first Trump administration. It was dismissed, I think, in 21 under Biden, refiled. It's back now. The heart of that case to me is like an extraordinarily complicated market definition, right? Personal networking services. There's no one in that category except Snap and a thing called MeWe.

How did we get there? Because it feels like that's what Meta is really keying on as being nonsensical. I'm just saying you're doing hipster antitrust again. We're back in it. Look at me. So I think what that case is actually – look, all antitrust cases to a degree are about market definition, and it's like a very tortured thing that makes people hate lawyers, honestly. It's like when you try to understand the concept of antitrust law, very simple. The administration of it gets very –

complicated. So yes, most antitrust cases are about market definition. Market definition is always hard. Everybody has a different view about what the right way to define a market is. That gets litigated. What that case is really about is whether Meta bought

competitors to eliminate the risk of competition, fundamentally. That's the argument at the end of the day. Did it want to not compete on the merits, but take out potential competition through acquisition and in order to build and maintain a monopoly in a way that's illegal? And that's what's going to get litigated, but it's not a lot more complicated than that, even if

there's going to be hours of debate around what an appropriate market definition is. Well, the reason I ask that in this context, Kevin's sister is on the stand right now just dunking all over his acquirer. By the way, if all of us can have the confidence to sell our companies for a billion dollars, show up seven years later and say, that sucked, that'd be great, I think, for all of us to resolve steam. Because it's clear he didn't like it. He's saying very loudly they wanted to smother Instagram. That's how I felt when I was running Instagram as part of Meta.

But it still feels like, well, Instagram got huge anyway. And had Instagram been a separate company, I'm not sure it would have competed on a better privacy policy or less personalized advertising or privacy.

Like Kevin's system showing up on my super being like, I'm not listening to you does not feel like a likely outcome of Instagram being an independent company. And I'm wondering, as you think about this landscape, all of the problems of consumer protection, what competition solves there and what you need to

regulatory regime to actually solve? So that's a really, really good question. I mean, I think the point that you're making about what the counterfactual looks like is the hard question antitrust agencies grapple with every time they're faced with a merger, right? Every time you have to review a merger, the question is what happens if this company gets acquired and what happens if it doesn't? And you have to make predictions about what will happen in the market. And that's hard, right? That's a hard thing to do. That's okay. We can do hard things.

So I think that the counterfactual is hard to do here. That's true everywhere. And it's just impossible to know, honestly. So the question is, did they do the acquisition to eliminate this risk of competition more than what would the counterfactual universe of Instagram look like? The question that you asked about, why does this matter for privacy? Why does it matter for consumer protection? I think is a really, really important one. Yeah.

Not for nothing, Meta is also under order with the FTC for privacy violations, a renewed order that was issued in 2019 from which I dissented, for which they paid $5 billion. And they're currently in an administrative proceeding at the FTC over whether or not that order should be modified. Okay.

because there are further questions about privacy practices, including involving children. One of the reasons competition matters, and one of the reasons I think you see so many consumer protection cases against companies where we also have competition concerns, is because without meaningful competition and the ability of customers to vote with their feet and take their business to

to companies with better products that are less violative, you have an incentive to commit these violations, including to build market share. I'll go back to an Amazon example. One of the orders that Amazon is under with the FTC right now involves

The Amazon Alexa devices, illegal collection of children's voice recording, collection and retention of children's voice recording info. Why? Why did they do this collection of children's voice data? It was in order to train their AI. Okay.

So that's, to me, a very clear example of a consumer protection violation that was orchestrated to build market share and market power. And I think one of the things that is special and important about the FTC, and going back to why you should care about us or our jobs, I mean, maybe you don't care about our jobs, but why you should care about the institution existing is because it does have this cross-jurisdictional lens where it can look at competition and consumer protection

I will say, historically, we haven't done that very well. I think we have really treated these issues as siloed. But over the time I've been at the agency, we've been working really hard to integrate those functions better and understand the actual market dynamics that are leading to the kinds of problems that we're seeing both in competition and consumer protection. Let me push that again. If this case is successful,

the government succeeds in spinning off Instagram and WhatsApp. Do you think there'll be a meaningful benefit to how consumers experience privacy on these platforms? Um, one would hope, uh,

One of the things that's very frustrating about antitrust law is that ex post enforcement is long and slow, takes forever. And it's very difficult to fix problems once they've started. I think one of the important purposes of bringing these cases is to prevent the next round of problems and to send clear signals to the market about the kinds of transactions that are illegal and should not happen to begin with. So I think that...

Yes, I would love to see healthy, thriving competition in social media platforms. But I would also like to see that competition continue with new entrants, new innovation and organic growth that isn't just orchestrated through acquisition. Do you think anything short of a breakup would be effective there, like a long compliance regime?

I've been talking a lot. You talk. No, I mean, I think you're most familiar with the case having voted it out. And the only thing I mean, we're answering a lot of questions about a case that right now is in trial. And so I don't feel particularly eager to expound even more on it myself. Yeah.

you know what you're talking about, so you should. Well, I'll talk generally about remedies though, which is everybody talks about what we call structural remedies. Breakups is this radical, radical approach. I find that very confusing. I actually think structural remedies are a much more like small C conservative approach because they keep the government out of the business and it has the businesses operating independently.

My impression over the time I've been at the FTC has been that complicated compliance regimes are very difficult to administer and less likely to be effective and can, in fact, interfere with the operation, free market operation of companies. That's a weird thing for a Democrat to say, right? Like, I generally like government.

I think it can be a force for good, should be a force for good. But I do think that administrability is a real concern in what we call behavioral remedies. And we've seen some of that in the privacy space.

Going back to the privacy focus, we've seen a lot of that concern in privacy remedies, where we have complicated compliance regimes. Figuring out if they're actually working and fixing the problem is not always that easy or clear. We have to take another quick break. We'll be back in a minute. We'll be back in a minute.

This episode is brought to you by Chevy Silverado. When it's time for you to ditch the blacktop and head off-road, do it in a truck that says no to nothing. The Chevy Silverado Trail Boss. Get the rugged capability of its Z71 suspension and 2-inch factory lift. Plus, impressive torque and towing capacity thanks to an available Duramax 3-liter turbo diesel engine. Where other trucks call it quits, you'll just be getting started. Visit Chevy.com to learn more.

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Everyone has a reason to change. Growing old, heartbreak, a fresh start, whatever it may be. Peloton is here to get you through life's biggest moments with instructors that speak your language and workouts that move to your own rhythm. Peloton's Tread and All Access membership help you set your targets, track your progress, and get stronger, making your fitness goals a reality. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit onepeloton.com.

At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our FlexPath learning format.

Take one or two courses at a time and complete as many as you can in a 12-week billing session. With FlexPath, you can even finish the bachelor's degree you started in 22 months for $20,000. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. Fastest 25% of students. Cost varies by pace, transfer credits, and other factors. Fees apply.

Welcome back. I spoke last week with maybe former, current, something, FTC commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. Before the break, we were talking about the big antitrust case the agency is currently litigating against Meta. So, of course, because it's 2025, I had to ask what AI.

There's a lot of reasons to feel nihilism in 2025 in America. One of them that I get from our audience, the verge all the time is that privacy is just lost, but it's, it's over, right? That everyone is listening all the time. The data has been scraped. It's gone. Apple should just give in and make a better AI system by scraping everyone's data. And it's, it's the fact that they won't do it. That's holding them back and that you can't put this genie back in the model. I hear this from our audience all the time. And then I see things, uh,

that I find very amusing, I guess, in a dark way. Like everybody on Instagram is going to post a screenshot saying, I command Mark Zuckerberg to not take my data. Like they're just like an incantation. And it's great. And I look at that as like the clearest market signal anyone can ever get, right? Everyone on my platform is like, I hate you. And they can't go anywhere. And then the terms of service do not change. They do not get renegotiated in the face of that.

That is where the regulator should come in and say, look, everyone wants you to change your terms of service. Do you think it's just litigation that gets this done? Do you think that there is an ability through regulation to put this genie back in the bottle?

I mean, I have said for a long time that Congress should pass a more specific privacy law. The contours of that law, what it should look like, like my own views about it have evolved. I think when Congress started talking about it, it looked a little bit more like a notice and consent regime. And I think we all think that's a terrible idea. Like we do not need more cookie banners. I think a minimization focused policy.

approach would make a lot more sense. And in fact, Congress got pretty close last year. And I think, you know,

My commissioner Bedoya and I both worked on the Hill. My experience of the legislative process is that it is absolutely torturous and everything is impossible until it's a law. Like it just is never going to happen. And then it's a law. So, you know, I think that fight needs to continue. I think the best evidence that people actually really do care about privacy comes from the data out of Apple's ask not to track system. The number of people who, when they're given the simple option of,

ask to track or ask not to track, who elect, no, please ask the app not to track. It's over. I can't remember what the numbers are, but it's overwhelming. And that is a clear market signal that people actually would prefer, given the option, not to have their data shared. Where the trade-offs come up in that, when they're willing to get a free service in exchange for sharing data, you know, that's both...

personal and complicated. But I think as a general approach, even though people do feel like sometimes it's a lost cause, I think they don't want it to be. And we have agency and we can work to change that process. I agree with everything that Becca just said. I think I would add these thoughts. The first is we haven't lived in a world, I think, in recent memory where

People have experienced what it is to have a meaningful online life with privacy. And so I think we've lived in a world where you've got like a bucket with nine holes in it and a bucket with 10 holes in it. And both of those buckets suck, right? No one wants a leaky bucket. And so it's hard to get excited about the bucket with nine holes in it as opposed to 10 holes in it.

And so I don't think we've really lived in the world where we can say, oh, look, people don't care about it. I don't think they've ever experienced it. That said, I would point to two things that show me that people are changing their behaviors in response to what they perceive as the threat to their privacy. First of all, I have no idea how old you are, Nolay, but I know that Commissioner Saldana and I are roughly the same age. And

You remember when we were in law school, the stuff people would put on Facebook was crazy. People would put everything up there. Now you go up there, there'll be like one thing about politics, one like, hey – I always ask them for movie recommendations. I'm like, hey, guys, I'm going to go for a long ride. What should I play for the kids in the back? Right?

People are much more guarded on social media now than they were before. Secondly, look at the uptake in encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. You know, especially in Washington, D.C., it is quite prevalent. But it's not just in Washington, D.C. Increasingly – And not just for war plans. Exactly. Exactly.

Um, you know, you see a lot of people in business using signal by default, uh, and, and not just in, in, in areas where, uh, you know, there might be some actual commercial espionage, so to speak. And so I do think you see very clear indications that people care about their privacy. Um,

even though they're living in that world of leaky buckets. I also think, you know, I'm being a little flip and making jokes, but I think we're also in a moment where privacy has very real, serious implications for people's safety, security, access to health care, religious worship, all of these things, political activity. And we're seeing real

Very real, very scary consequences happening to real humans who are not able to operate with privacy. And that's something that I think is going to change behavior, too. That is connected to this administration and its attitude towards data, to Elon Musk and Doge.

Do you think this administration is positioned to advocate for privacy while they are interlinking databases and using AI tools to surveil Americans? No. I guess that was the answer. I was hoping that you both would say that. I can't tell if you're baiting us, but it's just a no. But like in a fun way.

My friend Casey Newton has this phrase he uses called the splinternet. He says our internets are going to fragment not for technical reasons, but for political and social reasons. And what I see is, okay, we're about to build a very different kind of internet in the United States that has many fewer privacy protections while Europe begins to regulate tech platforms much more strongly. They've issued fines just this week against Apple and Meta. That's the sort of thing that breaks down, right? That breaks down data sharing across our different internets, across our different platforms.

How do you see that playing out? Do you think we can put that genie back in the bottle and make it possible for European governments to trust our companies? Sorry, what genie again? If our government starts allowing just widespread data sharing within itself and stops advocating for privacy, stops pursuing a privacy law, lets platforms share data more openly, which it appears to be doing. So let me speak very frankly here. What this administration is doing in terms of data sharing is a direct response.

air of everything that President Biden did, everything President Trump did in his first presidency, everything that President Obama did. In terms of law enforcement sharing of information within the federal government, it has been an upwards trajectory arrow every single administration.

It is not like this administration, for example, in immigration enforcement is building from scratch a system that was previously non-existent. That is the opposite of what's happened. These systems have been ready for many, many, many years. And so I candidly don't think that in terms of data, the data sharing that's being discussed today is radically different than the data sharing the federal government has enacted prior to this administration. There's a lot of

other areas in which I disagree, but, but I, I think we need to be fair about, about this and the trajectory that intra US data sharing has taken in recent years. But I, but I, well, I'll push back on that a little bit because I think there is a substantial difference, which is at least in the previous administrations, there was support for independent oversight of some of that data use and sharing, you know, the existence of the P club, the,

the checks on national security surveillance and that independent oversight, including at the FTC has been part of what supported adequacy decisions in Europe and the ability of us companies to process the data of Europeans. I do think we're headed in an air into a direction where that is going to be challenged. And it's hard for me to see how those challenges are not effective in

Who suffers when that happens? Who suffers if we have like a different European internet? Humans. Humans suffer. People who want to use the internet and communicate with each other. That's a problem. But also American businesses suffer. It is when I was working on the Hill, the biggest lobbying that we got over what was then the umbrella agreement or the predecessor to the umbrella agreement was from U.S. companies who wanted to be able to do business in Europe.

The threats to cut off U.S. companies from access to European markets, sure, that'll penalize Europeans, but it will really penalize U.S. business. That is a profitable market for them. And that's going to be a problem that I think they will not be quiet about, is my expectation. So, yeah, I think we're headed in that direction. You know, fundamentally, there's a big difference because privacy is a...

uh, legal value in Europe in a way that it is not in the U S um, it's not enshrined in the same way in our constitution here. Um, and so there's always been this sort of differential view, how it plays out in practice, I think, um, is going to be the subject of a lot, a lot of debate, discussion, parliamentary debate and discussion, um, litigation, debate and discussion. And I don't think it's going to get resolved anytime soon. Yeah. Um,

AI companies make a lot of promises. They're building digital God. They will replace your doctor. I had an AI executive. Did you say digital what? Digital God. Digital God. It's just a phrase that I get to hear in my job. Totally normal. That's awesome. I run a magazine about cell phones. Super normal thing for me to hear all the time. AI executive literally last night told me there would not be doctors and lawyers in the future because AI could just do it. This is the level of claim that I hear on the regular from these companies. Yeah.

I don't think they can do it. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. It seems like they're going to make a lot of people a lot of promises about the efficacy of their products. How would you address that in the trade context? Let me address it in the regular human context. That is idiocy. The idea there will be no doctors in the future. You know, how long have we had printers? How long?

40 years, how well does your printer work? Okay? You're going to let a doctor, an AI doctor, diagnose you for life or death matters, let alone, you know, a wart? I think this idea is inane and should not be treated with any degree of respect. I have been shocked by some of the things that these AI execs get away with saying, right?

Someone who runs a company that is valued at something like half a trillion dollars should not be able to say that sentience will be an emergent property of matter in the near future. That is something that anyone who's familiar with the technology, unless there's other things going on, does not think is a serious take.

And I think we need to treat some of these boasts like – have you ever been to a cook-off, like a chili cook-off? Like a guy arrives like, oh, I don't know what's going to happen here. I could get pretty crazy with my chili. It's these claims. These claims are what lawyers would call puffery and need to be treated as such. Sorry, can I just –

It's also nothing new, right? If you are like the work of the Federal Trade Commission for a century has been to police misleading claims about what products can do. We do it with, you know, medicine, like so-called medicinal products, dietary supplements, technology products. This is not new. Like one of the things that Commissioner Bedoya, Chair Kahn and I have been saying for years now is there is no AI exception to the law.

It doesn't create special rules for AI. We apply the same rules, which are you can't misrepresent what your product can do. You can't lie about it. You cannot commit deceptive or unfair acts or practices. And that's true with AI products, too. And so, you know, of the body of work that the FTC has brought around AI products,

in the last several years. Some of it has been with an eye towards competition so that there is healthy competition in this, I think, incredibly important and valuable technological tool that is not the same as saying a replacement for doctors. But a lot of it has also been about misleading claims, business opportunity scams, people saying it's a, you know, get-rich-quick schemes thing.

that are just the same sort of thing we've seen with every other technological iteration over the last hundred years. So some of what I think is important to recognize is to sort of take a step back and see through what is new, interesting, different, innovative, a valuable tool, and what is just the same stuff we've been seeing, you know, for decades. Yeah.

I would say very few people thought their laser printer was alive, which is a meaningful difference. It's a thing that comes up over and over again. The point is, how well does your printer work? Does your printer work awesome? I'll give you, I write a printer recommendation every year. I'll send you some. Please, please. Raise your hand if your printer works awesome. This guy right here. Yeah, thank you. One hand, two hands. Seriously, raise your hand if your printer is awesome. Two hands. What's that? What printer?

Yeah, so you know. Brother laser printer. I hate the recommendation otherwise because the other 98% of the room does not think their printer is awesome. Well. But I think your point. There's affiliate links on theverge.com. The promo code is promo code.

I think your point is, like, AI, generative AI is messing with people's brains because it looks human and it's not human. And are we confused about how to deal with this technology? That is very true. Understanding how to relate to the technology is a challenge for people and how to process what's real and not real. But I also remember when...

AirPods first came out and you'd see people walking down the street and they'd be talking to themselves and everyone would be like, what is happening? This is a very weird social scene. And they did not understand. And then we become accustomed to it and we learn how to interact with it. I remember when smartwatches came out and all of a sudden you'd have people in meetings going like this constantly.

And I, and I remember the first time it happened to me and I was like, am I so boring? Are they just counting the seconds until they can get out of this meeting? And I realized that they were getting messages and just like peeking down, you know, and that's just a, it's just a different evolution. So I do think there's some of that. And, and this is a particular push for people. Um, I think we need to be extra sensitive and careful about what it means for children. Um, you know, where we think about, um, judgment is available, uh,

to do some of that processing, that social processing. And I'll go back to a really important case that the FTC publicly announced it was referring to the Department of Justice in January against SNAP. We didn't make the complaint public, but we made the referral public and the

general series of allegations involving the way Snap's AI chatbot interacted with children. And now Chair Ferguson, when he was a commissioner, dissented and he wrote a very long and public dissent that was basically about like the First Amendment rights of chatbots. That was weird to me and concerning. And that's the kind of thing I think we do need to have real meaningful debate and discussion about.

I am being told we're out of time. Thank you so much, commissioners. This was excellent. Thank you. I'd like to thank Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter for taking the time to speak with me. And thank you to the IAPP Global Privacy Summit for hosting us. I'd also like to thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about the show or really anything else, drop us a line. You can email us at decoderattheverge.com. We really do read all the emails. You can also hit me up directly on threads or blue sky. And we have a TikTok and an Instagram. Check them out. They're at decoder. They're a lot of fun.

If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Stapp. Our editor is VersaWrite. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.