"This is not just telling the court what their views are, but trying to put a thumb on the scale for prediction markets," said Todd Phillips, a Georgia State University professor who focuses on financial regulation. www.npr.org/2026/04/02/n...

As they angle for a presidential pardon in television interviews, Sam Bankman-Fried’s law professor parents file “pro se” motions for their adult son, leave voicemails with the judge, and sign documents claiming they're from him in prison.

Juries in both New Mexico and California found social media giants to be liable for harm to children. Today on the show, NPR technology correspondent @bobbyallyn.bsky.social explained both cases and their potential consequences. www.wnyc.org/story/two-ve...

NEW: The jury has just come back with punitive damages following their verdict against Meta and YouTube, awarding plaintiff KGM $3 million for designing social media platforms negligently, bringing total damages to KGM to $6 million.

NEW: After eight days of deliberations, jury in Los Angeles social media trial finds Meta and Google are liable for contributing to the mental health issues of plaintiff KGM through the defective design of its social media platforms, awarding her $3 million in damages.

after $375M verdict today in New Mexico, another jury verdict expected this week in LA, and 2,000 other consolidated cases pending against Meta, this is potentially a really big deal www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/ma...

At social media addiction trial, after seven days of deliberating, the jury says they are having difficulty coming to a consensus on one defendant, and they ask how to move forward. The judge read them instructions to keep deliberating.

just imagine: Google's AI puts a slop headline on a credible source stating the opposite of what happened, causing a prediction market to resolve. handwringing ensues over AI warping reality and the financialization of everything, only after traders have cashed out www.theverge.com/tech/896490/...

Wow: DHS officers taking out Q-tips and swabbing inside the cheeks of people they’re arrested to have their DNA on file?! www.npr.org/2026/03/18/n...

3.5 days into jury delibs at social media addiction trial in LA and jury just asked if there’s evidence of how often plaintiff KGM used Instagram. KGM testified that she used it quite a bit starting at age 9. Jury may see Q as relevant to filling out verdict form on Meta’s potential liability:

Peek into the twisted life of a prediction market trader: Engaging in heated debates on Discord over whether JD Vance said “American made” or “American-made” at his Michigan speech today.

Congress passes law to split China from TikTok. Trump cuts a deal that gives Larry Ellison and Emiratis majority control of TikTok and China keeps minority stake. And for brokering that deal, WSJ now reports, Trump admin gets a $10B fee for service www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-...

Hours into jury deliberations at social media addiction trial and they have questions. They want to see two research surveys that were presented as exhibits, and they asked about a “social media feedback loop” exhibit about when various platform features were introduced.

not one to complain about air travel, but after sitting on the tarmac for hours at JFK, Delta pilot announces that there’s “no routes” to LA and is taxi-ing us back to the terminal ?? how is this a thing ?

“Epstein said, "when hawking came to my island. and said his dream was to go diving … i [duct-taped] his head to a high back chair and loaded him in a private sub, great fun." www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

“Epstein said, "when hawking came to my island. and said his dream was to go diving … i [duct-taped] his head to a high back chair and loaded him in a private sub, great fun." www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

"Reached by phone, Thomas Florsheim Jr. said he was unaware of the president’s shoe orders." www.wsj.com/style/fashio...

"I mean if you're 40 or 50 and a 9 or a 10 who's 20 years old shows up at an event and is interested in you, she's probably with James O'Keefe." www.npr.org/2026/03/04/n...

Anthropic's lawsuit against the Trump administration: "No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the Executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation." www.documentcloud.org/documents/27...

Strait of Hormuz vessels at a standstill has made prediction market traders excited about a more traditional type of futures contract: the price of crude oil. “Geopol” bets related to the Iran war are “printing” and resulting in “free money,” traders are saying on Discord.

Suit over the Khamenei death carveout claims Kalshi has "unclean hands and should not be permitted to invoke policies designed to prevent profiting from death to shield themselves from liability for a market that was, in substance, a trade on that very outcome" www.documentcloud.org/documents/27...

“Yo brother, legal team confirmed that we can’t work with minors rn" is the best way to summarize this article, an impressively deep look at Kalshi and Polymarket's relentless nationwide campaign to recruit college students and get them hooked to prediction markets early.

At the center of the prediction markets boom is a bitter rivalry between two 20-something billionaire fintech bros vying for their companies to be distinct, despite everyone constantly lumping them together "For them, it's existential," a former Kalshi employee told me www.npr.org/2026/03/06/n...

New: I talked to the traders who bet Khamenei would die. One, an Israeli ex-pat, would've won $63,000 before Kalshi froze the bet: “I was booking my trip to Courchevel.” “American commercial immorality on steroids," @chrismurphyct.bsky.social told me www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

"Prediction markets are promoting opportunities to bet on events that can only be seen as a proxy for war or assassination," said former SEC chief of staff Amanda Fischer www.npr.org/2026/03/01/n...

“So this is more or less offering a proxy market on assassination,” Amanda Fischer, a former chief of staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission” www.wsj.com/world/middle...

a masterclass AND a textbook case? this post is giving written by Claude ngl

Trump blacklisting Anthropic from all government contracts is *quite the gift* to David Sacks’ Craft Ventures, a huge investor in Musk’s xAI, which has been trying to elbow out other frontier labs for lucrative government work.

SCOOP: A White House staffer appears to be operating the anonymous pro-Trump X account JohnnyMAGA with nearly 300,000 followers. More here: www.wired.com/story/a-whit...

NEW: A video editor working for MrBeast is accused of trading on insider information on Kalshi, which has fined, suspended and reported the editor to federal regulators in the first public instance of the platform disclosing an insider trading investigation www.npr.org/2026/02/25/n...

NEW: Per source familiar with meeting: Hegseth threatened to terminate Anthropic’s $200M contract by Friday if it does not comply to Trump admin's terms. Amodei reiterated Anthropic’s red lines around AI- powered weapons and domestic surveillance.

Immigration courts by the #’s: - 25% less judges - 400 less legal assistants + clerks - 12 courts lost over half their judges, two have no full time IJs - supervisors spread across several locations We break down a clear picture of what is happening across the country: www.npr.org/2026/02/23/g...

This did not happen. The judge issued a general warning about not recording with smart glasses, but she didn’t “upbraid” or call out Meta’s legal team Bookers: Getting nuances like this right is why talking to reporters who actually witnessed something, not professional pontificators, is important

the tail that wags the dog that caught the car

New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF

Went on WAMU’s 1A to talk about the unhinged state of prediction markets and whether the casino-ification of every aspect of modern life will ever stop (spoiler: probably not) open.spotify.com/episode/6Vql...

with the 30th anniversary of Section 230, here's a profile i did of the Seattle man whose quixotic campaign against AOL in the 90s over a tasteless Oklahoma City bombing phone prank became the tech industry legal immunity precedent everyone still can't stop fighting over www.npr.org/2021/05/11/9...

In the 90s, Epstein and Maxwell used to visit an elite Michigan boarding school and would walk around with a cute little Yorkie "to help break the ice" before Epstein would "dangle the prospect of financial support for their education" www.npr.org/2026/02/19/n...

There are different estimates among Meta trial attendees about exactly how massive a poster was that a team of lawyers held up in front of Zuckerberg as he sat on the witness stand showing hundreds of selfies taken by the plaintiff. Her lawyer Mark Lanier clarifies it was a 35-foot-long poster.

Zuckerberg’s big day in court, where he faced questions like: "People who join Facebook at 11 years old? I thought y'all didn't have any of those?" www.npr.org/2026/02/18/n...

From the witness stand, Mark Zuckerberg was asked about media training and how Meta comms staff are asking him to portray himself, to be more “human” and “relatable” and less “fake,” “corporate,” and “cheesy.” Zuckerberg adds: “I think I’m known to actually be pretty bad at this.”

The degree to which MAGA world is embracing prediction markets because Polymarket called the election early for Trump should not be overlooked.

The social value question of prediction markets is an important one. Until this admin, the CFTC wouldn't allow futures contracts that were "contrary to the public interest," and would block all that are "readily susceptible to manipulation." But that's all being bulldozed today.

retail traders colocating for physical edge in prediction-market bets, now i've seen it all

Prediction market traders are “seeking alpha” by buying TV antennas for a millisecond of speed, timing the Super Bowl national anthem rehearsal in person and uncovering not-yet-public press releases hiding in the HTML of websites. Anything for an edge! www.npr.org/2026/02/17/n...

In 2021, I reported on an internal meeting at Facebook about discussions to put facial recognition on new smartglasses. One of their execs complained about the coverage and said the co would have a "very public discussion" about the tech. They never did. And now: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

New story up on the Homeland Security Department’s new tactic: flood social media companies with subpoenas to unmask anonymous accounts that criticize ICE or monitor the movements of ICE agents. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

During the social media addiction trial today in LA, a lawyer for Meta pressed psychiatrist Anna Lembke on the witness stand about what apps besides Instagram can hook people. “Can people become addicted to Netflix? Can someone get addicted to outtakes of American Idol?”

Meta's plan for launching glasses that people can use to secretly identify strangers on the street is to do it "during a dynamic political environment" when people who care about why that's bad are "focused on other concerns." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

The Tel Aviv indictment is the first publicly known instance of people being accused of leveraging military secrets to place bets on the popular prediction market. n.pr/4kvG3yW