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A
This podcast is brought to you by audiohook, the leading independent audio dsp. Audiohook has direct publisher integrations into all major podcast and streaming radio platforms, providing 40% more inventory than what could be accessed in omnichannel DSPs. What's more, audiobook has full transcripts on more than 90% of all podcast inventory, enabling advanced contextual targeting and brand suitability. Audio Hook is so confident that in addition to CPM buys, they offer the industry's only pay for performance option, where brands can scale audio and podcasting with peace of mind mind knowing they are only paying for outcomes. Visit audiohook.com to learn more. That's audiohook.com welcome to the Monopoly Report. The Monopoly Report is dedicated to chronicling and analyzing the impact of antitrust and other regulations on the global advertising economy. Alan I'm Alan Chappelle. This week my guest is Shoshana Wodinski, a former reporter covering ad tech and privacy issues who most recently served as a senior FTC advisor on all things tech. Shoshana has viewed the digital media world from the POV of the press, the public, and national regulators. One of the things that I really appreciate about people working on the tech side of privacy, and I think this applies to Shoshana, is there's very little spin, all direct answers. I think this will be a really fun discussion, so let's get to it. Hey Shoshana, thanks for coming on the pod. How are you?
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B
I'm doing all right. You know, it's a little early, but I'm rallying for the pod.
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A
Well, fantastic. Yeah, I appreciate you getting up so early at the, at the crack of 9.
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B
11 at the crack of 9am so.
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A
You were a tech and ad tech reporter, you know, for, for a number of years, like roughly from 2019 to 2023, and most recently spent almost a year at the Federal Trade Commission. So what drew you to work at the FTC and then perhaps more broadly to some of the privacy regulatory issues?
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B
Oh, gosh. Well, you know, kind of famously in the us unlike regions like the EU or some parts of, like Latin America or Canada, we don't have something even approaching a national privacy law. We have a patchwork of different kind of state laws that all vaguely kind of require similar provisions, but like, not really the same thing. That said, I, I've always thought that the closest thing, you know, for a while that we got to sort of a nationally set privacy standard was always set by the ftc. And a lot of that has to do with like the Past administration. You know, say what you will about Lina Khan, she did kind of make her mark in establishing a lot of like national privacy rules that really hadn't been set before. And I'd always kind of admired that. As for why I made the jump from journalism to that, I'm not sure if you've heard, but money in journalism is kind of tight these days.
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A
I am aware.
- [03:21]
B
And I think you asked, why did I get into privacy more broadly? Why not? It's, you know, it's a kind of a. I love tricky sort of moral dilemmas that can have simple technological answers. And I feel like privacy is sort of the epitome of that. You know, I always say if you ask two people what privacy is, you can get like three different answers. But the thing is, there's only one way to like set up like a properly compliant CMP or like, there's only one way to like do pre bid in a way that like, doesn't leak data everywhere. Well, actually there's a few ways, but you get what I mean.
- [04:03]
A
Yeah. Well, what was it like working with or nearby Lina Khan? Because she's such an interesting figure. I mean, the FTC as long as I can remember, and I'm probably overgeneralizing here, but I'm going to go with it anyway. You know, has been much closer to a laissez faire approach when it comes to the business community. Like, they set the bar, like, if you go above a seven, we're going to come after you. And then Lina Khan came in and said, oh no, it's not going to be a seven, it's now going to be a two or three. And so that sounds to me like a pretty fundamental change within an org that for almost a generation had been used to doing things a little bit differently. So, you know, as you watched Ms. Khan work, you know, what's your impressions?
- [04:51]
B
What I can say is at the ftc, I worked on a desk called the Office of Technology and we reported straight to the chair. So we used to report to chair Lina Khan, now we report to Chair Andrew Ferguson. And in that role, you kind of get a front row seat into what the chair sort of agenda is, how they want to steer the agency, like what they see the role of the FTC as doing. So here's what I can say. Even on the outside, Lena was kind of a controversial figure in a lot of ways, particularly in the realm of consumer protection. So, you know, the FTC kind of famously, you know, protects consumers from unfair business practices and make sure that competition is fair. The sort of consumer protection side of that kind of famously, you can kind of interpret it in very different ways. And Lena famously kind of stretched that in some ways that, you know, were really interesting. That's why the FTC was able to handle so many privacy cases, because they were able to say, we're protecting consumers from privacy invasive practices that had never been done before. And just kind of seeing how a single agency could take like a centuries old framework about consumer harm and be able to say, no, it's not just physical harm, it's not just financial harm, but it's actually this. There are potential harms. That, that was the big thing. A lot of privacy cases involved the potential for harm. And you know, it wasn't always clear cut. There were cases that were controversial both inside and outside the agency. Some folks thought that she kind of stretched that definition a little bit, but that was something that it was really exciting to see up close. And I will say, one time I was taking a break on our office couch and she busted into the office and I didn't know what to say, so I shook her hand and just said, I know who you are, instead of like greeting her like a normal person.
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A
Yeah, but on some level you met Bono, right?
- [06:59]
B
I met, I met the regulatory body kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And she was like so friendly and nice and I'm just like, yeah, I know who you are. What the hell? It was, I was just so. It was, it was honestly, it was very shocking to be working in that, in an agency with like that level of importance and just see like the head of it just kind of like running around like milling about. During my time working under Andrew Ferguson, I can tell you that he definitely ran the ship a very different way.
- [07:30]
A
So I want to go back to the ethereal harm because I can remember Leibowitz. So this is now what, you know, 15, 20 years ago, FTC Commissioner Leibowitz and David Vladek, who was, I think the head of the Consumer Protection Bureau at the time, were really pushing the ethereal harm. So I guess what I'm saying with respect to the Khan FTC doing that, it isn't new, but what is new is that they managed to push that through. So I guess I'm wondering if you have thoughts as to, you know, was it just the internal vigor, like, you know, we had a, you know, Lina Khan as Teddy Roosevelt in terms of just the, the energy level, or is there something else going on over there?
- [08:16]
B
Oh, gosh, I should have brushed up on My FTC history before hopping on this pod, I was unfamiliar with that. Although here's what I will say. The Office of Technology where I worked that was formed under Lena Khan. Like she was the first person to like the FTC, I believe since the 90s had been kind of approaching not only like issues about privacy, but issues about technology in general, like since the dawn of the Internet. But Lena was really the first one to kind of sit down and say we need a team of like tech savvy people because otherwise we're going to get our butts kicked when we like take the Amazons and Facebooks and Googles of the world Accord. And I still remember we would have occasionally we would have sort of like bi monthly meetings with the other sort of technologist groups of other agencies like the doj, the cfpb, yada yada yada. And ours was one of the largest.
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A
No, very cool. And there's something to be said for you know, not bringing a, a knife to a gunfight.
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B
Not, not, not bringing a legal theory to a tech fight.
- [09:22]
A
So what were the issues that you were really focusing on While at the FTC?
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B
So we were like a team of like 13 people and our job was broadly not to just like assist on current cases, but to kind of help them pitch new ones. We called it issue spotting, helping them like figure out new potential targets for like unfair deceptive practices, that sort of thing. And some folks on the team had really kind of specific levels of expertise in like microprocessors or chips. There were a few folks that had a lot of expertise in artificial intelligence. I was brought on to assist with cases mostly. Well, you know, we're all sort of generalists at the end of the day, but my expertise was definitely in cases involving ad tech and privacy. And I noticed that, you know, as sophisticated as the FTC appeared from the outside, that kind of expertise was definitely, it was kind of like condensed in like very specific teams. So part of my job was to hold like agency wide sort of calls. I like held like presentations. I did like meetings with folks just to sort of like introduce into sort of the basics. I was the unofficial RTB ambassador@the FTC. I gave so many presentations on real time bidding. I was also kind of a liaison between the Bureau of Economics and the Bureau of Consumer Protection. So for cases involving like unfair ad auctions and they didn't know who else to throw on the case they threw me on, obviously there's like a lot of other stuff that falls under that very wide bucket, but that's broadly speaking.
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A
So what was it like then? Trying to sit in between the economic eggheads and the technology and privacy compliance eggheads. Oh, and like trying to negotiate.
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B
Famously, our team, our old cto, did not get along with the Bureau of Economics that well. It was definitely a rocky star getting acquainted with that team. But, you know, they were all like economics PhDs that really sort of assumed that people would behave in a certain way in their best interest. And they kind of made all these sort of models based on that. Whereas the Bureau of Consumer Protection and especially like with the Office of Technology's help, we were figuring out like, no, people don't always act in ways that you would expect. And in fact, like, tech companies can sort of exasperate that. So we would have to go to BE and be like, hey, your model is great. And it is like right, like 75% of the time, but not right now. Have you ever tried to like talk to like a high level PhD and tell them why their research is wrong? It doesn't go well?
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A
No, I can only imagine. And by the way, when I say egghead, I mean it with love. I mean, I'm a. Clearly a regulatory.
- [12:22]
B
Yeah, I do too. I mean, on our team we all had like PhD level computer scientists. Like, like everybody at the FTC was so, so brilliant. The folks that are still there for the most part still are, in spite of like, what current leadership is trying to do. But that's a whole nother discussion.
- [12:42]
A
So were there examples of things that you thought you knew as a journalist, but then you had your eyes open while at the ftc?
- [12:50]
B
Oh, gosh. You know how they say, what is it? Tech moves fast, but the wheels of justice move slow. Oh my God. I like, in a newsroom, newsrooms move fast. Like, you know, you pitch an idea because the news moves fast. Something happens in the news, you pitch it, it's on the page. Later that day at the ftc, if we had like a sort of like a major, like text settlement that was reached, oftentimes, like, I, like one of us would be asked to like write a blog and oftentimes I would have sort of a part in that. I have never gone through that much red tape to like put out a basic factual sentence. Just saying, here's what we found, here's what we did, here's why it matters. I think there it was like a two month process to put out what would have been like less than a day's work in a newsroom, and we had to go through not only editing on our team, but we had to go through levels of legal, like it had to get signed up from the chair. It was, it was insane. And you know, everybody, especially when you're talking about something like privacy where folks have very strong feelings one way or the other, it's really hard to kind of mitigate some of the biases that folks can come in with. So you have to kind of account for that and like be like, okay, well what's, what's in the public interest versus, like, what's kind of like overstating what we found. And it's just, I do not miss that at all.
- [14:19]
A
Yeah, it's, it's so, it's funny. I, I do most of my work historically with sort of smallish VC funded, you know, Martech and ad tech companies. And so we can move really quickly and like, I can make a decision. I can tell the CEO this is what I think. And then it happens in like in half an hour.
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You, you don't need 12 lawyers standing over your shoulder to make sure what you're proposing is correct.
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A
Usually. Yeah, usually there just isn't that level of bureaucracy. Every once in a while I find myself working with somebody bigger and I have like an idea and then, you know, by the time the, the telephone game gets played before it reaches, you know, the C level person, it's just the, the whole message is sort of dilapidated.
- [15:03]
B
Yeah, exactly. And like, don't get me wrong, like, I, I get it, but in some ways it feels, it felt kind of like counterproductive. I was like, guys, come on, we all agree with like the messaging that should be put out there.
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A
So you touched on the, the word bias a minute ago. And it comes to mind that there was a, there was an issue as, between the FTC and some advertiser groups recently. And I would love it if you would frame that for me because I think that really gets to the type of issue we, we really like talking about here on the Monopoly report.
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B
Yes. So, okay, the news recently leaked that the FTC under Andrew Ferguson sent a bunch of CIDs, sort of like investigative, like demands to a bunch of news rating groups and brand safety vendors about potential bias against conservative publishers. So what they were asking for in these CIDs was just like, hey, what are your policies surrounding hate speech and misinformation and, and that sort of thing. I'm speaking kind of like generalities because these CIDs haven't been made public. Even I don't really know what was in them. I only Helped with, like, the initial drafting. I don't know what made it to the final cut, but the case itself is super interesting because if you're talking about sort of Lina Khan having kind of a reputation for going rogue, this is definitely going rogue. Like, it has such a vague sort of affiliation with what we would call consumer harm or competitive issues. Why is the FTC getting involved with this? I. I didn't know then and I don't know now.
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A
Interesting. Okay, and so was this just. I mean, was this just a political statement or. It's just hard to really say because you never didn't read them.
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B
I could tell you internally this was first pitched to me, like, oh, gosh, I want to say, let's see, the CIDs, I think, got sent out last month. We started on that project back in, I believe, like, February. And when it was pitched, they actually. I was the lead technologist on the case, and they were just like, hey, tell us if you don't want to work on this. And that had never been, like, proposed to me at the FTC before that. They were like, hey, I've never had, like, a content warning before. A assignment was, like, given to me. And at the time, the word that kept being used was censorship. We want to figure out how ad tech companies are censoring conservative publishers. Now you tell me if that's, like, politically motivated. Like, that sounds like a politically motivated argument to me. But what I was able to do that I'm kind of proud of was that I took that ship. And again, I don't know how much of this made it to the final cut, but I was just like, guys, this is embarrassing. Can we please make this more of a discussion about brand safety and, like, maybe expand our scope of investigation or from just, like, the news cards and, like, Media Matters of the World to companies like Double Verify, for example, and kind of move from just here's who's rating the news to here's who's implementing brand safety at a tech level. Because, like, not only will that be, like, less embarrassing absent investigation, I think you would agree it would actually give us something useful that could be applicable not just to a study with, like, conservative publishers, but just publishers in general. Because brand safety is opaque and often unfair.
- [18:43]
A
So this is sort of an interesting one. Do you have a sense of the legal theory that they were relying on? Because even. Even in your characterization of it, I'm struggling to see a Section 5 violation, by the way, like, you know, Double Verify and the brand safety folks and the industry associations that Support them are certainly not above criticism. That said, it's hard for me to see, you know, it's sort of one of those areas that like, can you really demonstrate fraud? They may screw up and they may screw up a lot, but that's not fraud.
- [19:20]
B
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. And to a certain extent, like the companies are doing the best they can. They're just relying on frameworks that like we've kind of set up that are imperfect. I believe, if memory serves, I believe it was like an anti competitive sort of argument, essentially saying you brand safety vendors are working with advertisers to, you know, say, hey, don't spend money on, you know, particular publishers. And in so doing, like that itself is an unfair practice. It's not dissimilar to the argument I believe Elon Musk made with his Garm lawsuit. And I believe that's still, that kind of argument is still ongoing. But I do remember the lawyers that we worked with. I do remember some of them, like you were also kind of. This case kind of fell in all of our laps and we were kind of, you know, struggling to kind of piece together. There is a legal theory there, but I'm not a legal expert and even the legal experts that we were working with were kind of at a loss for words. Again, that said, that's really all I, all I know about the case. I only know about the genesis of the case. I don't know how it's going to shake out. I don't think. Well, I don't really think anything productive is going to come out of it, but we'll see.
- [20:39]
A
Well, we'll see. I mean, look, you know, when, when the FTC sends you a cid, it's not optional, so you have to respond to it. And, and the problem with responding is is that then everything that you provide to them, you know, on some level, and not to sound like a paranoid lawyer, but everything you provide them can be used against you. And so that's a, that's not fun.
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B
I mean, here's the thing. So the New York Times and Adweek both got their hands on a copy of these cds and you know, they had said that apparently one of the respondents that had gotten it had said this is one of the most broad or vague CIDs we've ever received, or it's improperly broad. And now granted, part of the job of the Office of technology, when we're involved on a case like this, our job is to help draft CIDs. It's to help make sure that you're asking the right questions that are answerable and take the least amount of paperwork because we don't want to have to go through the paperwork reduction act. And the fact that this, obviously I was dumped off the case for Elon Musk reasons, but the fact that something that is vague and could be interpreted as unanswerable, the fact that made it to print that to me says that the new chair isn't taking input from on technologists the same way that the previous share was. I think you can agree with me, it just, it reads like sloppy work.
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A
Yeah, I, I would say look, and I, I just to, just to give a little bit of a counter narrative here. The Ferguson FTC is not the first FTC ever to go on somewhat of a fishing expedition. And that does sound like what this is. You know, I guess we'll see if it bears any fruit.
- [22:28]
B
Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I was part of a fishing expedition under the con FTC that was also kind of like tumultuous. I was a part of their investigation into what was known as surveillance pricing. I don't like to call it that. A lot of folks don't like to call it that, but that's what it was called.
- [22:44]
A
Oh, we love that in the advertising world.
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B
Oh God. It was. I remember hearing that and I'm like, do we really have to call it that? But no, but I remember, you know, I joined the FTC when like the targets were already picked out. We had already started sending civil demands and we started getting like kind of like responses back. You know, we were looking for folks using personal data to alter the prices of what people were seeing. That was sort of like the pitch that we were looking for. And this wasn't like a, like a subpoena thing. This was what was known as a 6B study. So that is a literal fishing expedition. That's like we're curious about a practice, we want to look into it. We're going to write up a report at the end. So yeah, and they've done those.
- [23:29]
A
Like I remember there was 1 in 0708 for just for targeted advertising. They didn't call it surveillance advertising at that point. That's a, that's another con ism. But the FTC was interested in that. And like, I don't know, from my perspective, I get that it comes off as a bit of a fishing expedition, but like, you know, they need to learn more about the marketplace and so that's their mechanism to do so.
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B
Right, right, right, exactly. But, but the Thing is, when you say you're launching a sort of investigation into companies that might use personal data to alter prices, and that's not what you really find in the.
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A
In the.
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B
Investigation, well, what do you do? So here's what we did. We put out a, we called it an interim report. The plan was eventually to follow up on it. Everyone involved with the report has now left the ftc, so who knows if that's going to happen. But in this interim report, we more or less said, hey, we found people using personal data for like couponing and discounts. We found people using really granular personal data for that reason. We found people altering like the items that people would see, like items above or below a certain price point, like on the front page or second page of search results. Results. But we didn't find prices being altered, but we had to kind of thread the needle to say, well, like, here's what could happen. Like, there is that potential for like a very scary future that was initially pitched in this study. And like, despite what we found, like it's, these practices are still sort of in their infancy when like, some of them are, some of them aren't. What I realized towards the end of the study, it was like a lot of what we were calling surveillance pricing was just like basic e commerce practices. And I was just like, God.
- [25:20]
A
Well, fair enough. And again, not to be. I find myself now defending the FTC here. But, but, but I'll just say, like, as much as you know about how auctions have been manipulated in the ad space over the last 10 years, the idea that pricing might also be subject to, you know, the whims of somebody's algorithm doesn't sound like too big a stretch.
- [25:45]
B
No, no, absolutely not. And here's the thing, it might sound like I'm a Debbie Downer on the ftc. I am not. I joined them for a reason. And these are just like one or two cases that like made a big splash as opposed to like the dozens and dozens of, of actually groundbreaking cases that like made a substantial difference in people's privacy. Like here's an example. There was a case against Mobile Walla, this like data vendor. Maybe you've heard of that?
- [26:16]
A
Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, I've read all about that.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. So that was the first kind of case, that was the first example where the FTC or any regulatory agency said, hey, because mobilewallow was getting data improperly via real time bidding auctions that they hadn't won.
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A
So if you're violating your contract.
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B
Yeah.
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A
To Say it was obtained illegally may not be a stretch.
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B
Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. Well, I want to be careful there. So they were getting this real time bidding data in kind of a surreptitious way. And this was the first time that a major regulatory agency was like, hey, that is still improper data brokerage. You can't do that. And I remember because I wrote sort of like the public facing blog about that. I remember I was literally like crying. This is going to sound so dorky because I remember writing about RTV and its potential for data abuse in like 2020. And I was just sitting there at the tail end of 2024 and I'm like, oh my God. The regulators actually do listen to like for as many cases as an FTC might launch, kind of a politically motivated or some vague case, they do make genuine strides. And I am, let me just say this about Ferguson. He's definitely more of a classic return to form for the ftc. But he has also been involved in the, before the DOJ case against Google, I believe a bunch of state AGs kind of hopped on that case as well. And he was involved in that. That I forget exactly how. But like that to me kind of signals that he does view ad tech as an anti competitive issue. And that to me is, you know, for such a classic FTC guy, that's pretty, you know, forward thinking.
- [28:08]
A
Well, yeah, I mean I, I keep harping on this, but Mark Madar, the current FTC commissioner, has. Well, no, the, the, the statement, you know, basically repudiating the Bork Chicago school when it comes to antitrust. And number one, that, that suggests that there's not as much daylight as between the Lina Khan approach to antitrust, at least as it pertains to big tech, and the Ferguson approach to antitrust. But also like that's a hard statement to walk back. So even if you want to say, yes, we have a rather mercurial administration right now, boy, that's still a difficult statement to walk back because you're, you're taking aim at the Reagan era. Man, that's a sacred cow here.
- [28:49]
B
Oh gosh, I am, yeah, I am, I am less familiar with that side of sort of like political.
- [28:55]
A
No, fair enough.
- [28:57]
B
But yeah, it's, it definitely, there was definitely internally a strong sense of whiplash when Ferguson took over. And that's like not necessarily a bad thing. I remember they asked me to go through all of his past, like dissents and all of his public statements on like Twitter and like social media. And I think he was like on Rumble once or twice to go through and figure out what his priorities for tech might be. And I had to give that as a doc to my team because there's going to be things that Ferguson really wants to chase after that Lena doesn't, and vice versa. I was just sitting there just like, damn, it is insane that a lot of, I mean, obviously we weren't expected to just drop all of our investigations, but we definitely had to pivot a lot of them very strongly in a way that like, whiplash is the best way I can describe it.
- [29:57]
A
Well, and that brings me to what's going to be my final question. So FTC commissioners are sort of, they're almost like Supreme Court justices and that they're very smart, they have very strong opinions and that they generally fall into, know certain political archetypes. And so when you think about a particular FTC's vision, and I'm viewing vision in air quotes, how much of that is driven by the conflict and collaboration amongst different commissioners and how much is driven by whomever happens to be sitting in his chair at any particular time?
- [30:29]
B
I mean, did you not see how Trump illegally fired the two Democratic commissioners from the ftc? I believe one of them, Bedoya, I believe, just officially stepped down. So this at least, well, he had.
- [30:45]
A
To get another gig. I mean, the, you know, at some point you've got to feed your family. And so.
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B
Yeah, oh yeah, right, right, of course. But like the whole point of the FTC was that it is to a certain degree like the dream is a bipartisan agency where you have Democratic commissioners, Republican commissioners, and then you have the chair. But the point is you, you have voices sort of speaking out against you from like the lower rungs. How seriously you take those voices, that's your choice. But at least right now it is fully a chair run shift, you know, and like, say, say what you will about that. I personally like think that a little bit of dissent is better for everyone because it makes your ideas and arguments stronger. But you know, if you want to surround yourself with yes men, then that's your prerogative, I guess.
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A
Yeah, no, that makes sense. I, it's interesting though because I, I think that from the outside looking in the con, FTC was also very ideologically driven. And so, and you may agree with that ideology, but it still was rather, rather driven. And I guess I'm curious to know, was Khan's vision tempered by the views of the other commissioners or was, was sort of, you know, all con, all time.
- [32:13]
B
I should be more fair looking back, it Certainly was to a certain degree. It was all con all the time. But even then, we were at least. At least when I was under her there, we were kind of comfortable with a certain level of pushing back. And they're like Republican commissioners not shy when they disagreed with her about a certain point. And again, like, you know, they can put out dissents, but she's still gonna, like, issue a ruling on something or whatever, and the FTC is still gonna chase whatever she wants it to chase. So you are kind of restrained by the ideological stance of whoever the chair is. But, you know, the reason that I didn't leave when Trump was elected and the reason that we still have a bunch of technologists from the Khan administration that are still there now. Well, not a bunch. We have like, three. The reason that they're still there is because we had, like, a long conversation before the new chair came in. And in that conversation, we all came to the agreement. Like, if we just leave a purely ideologically driven team, then again, arguments and sort of cases are going to suffer for.
- [33:22]
A
For it.
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B
So, you know, it was kind of our duty as civil servants to be that voice of both, like, dissent and agreement internally. So, like, even if we might not agree with, like, the ideology of, like, the current administration, and don't get me wrong, we didn't always agree with what was going on under Khan as well. But the fact that we were able to push back as much as we could, I believe made. Made for a stronger sort of commission. I could be wrong about that. But.
- [33:55]
A
Yeah, well, that's always been the ideological dream or the idealized dream for the. For the Supreme Court, where you have, you know, two really strong visions that, that, that argue and argue, and it goes into a whole variant of five, four decisions, and. And that the world is a better place as a result of that. That doesn't always happen. But. But I can get. If you had a similar vibe going at the ftc, that would certainly make for arguably better policy.
- [34:22]
B
I mean, look, it's. When I was there working on the surveillance pricing 6B in the background, the FTC was also facing a lawsuit from a previous 6B that it had done into. I believe they're called pharmacy benefit managers, PBMs. And that lawsuit was sort of alleging, like, hey, this is an ideologically, like an. What's it called, like, hit piece against us. You're claiming that we did things that we didn't do. And that case was ongoing in the background. As I was looking at the surveillance pricing study where I was told to kind of present an argument that kind of aligned with what we found, but not entirely. So the fact that like, folks like me were there, not only did R6B, like not lead to a lawsuit, which I'm very proud of, it also I believe was more honest. And it actually like, it genuinely like furthered like public knowledge of these issues in a way that something that might have been closer to the chair's vision might not have done as well. And like you could say, like, oh, that, you know, it's, it's your job to kind of uphold the chair's vision. But like, frankly, I think it's our job to uphold the truth.
- [35:37]
A
So that's funny. Well, let's leave it there. This has been a great discussion. I really appreciate you coming on. Shoshana Wodinski, that's me.
- [35:48]
B
Thanks for pronouncing it right.
- [35:50]
A
Take care. Thank you so much. That was an interesting conversation. Not just the policy discussion, but Shoshana was pretty unfiltered in her willingness to give a bit of a behind the scenes perspective of her time at the ftc, whether it was giving a presentation on real time bidding and how the ad space works to her attempting to act as sort of a translator between the different groups within the commission. I feel like I got some nuggets out of this conversation that I don't always get. I've had a bunch of other guests who've dug deep into the policy issues, but Shoshana was able to offer a window, a behind the scenes view and I really appreciated that. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I did, Tom. We've got a bunch of other fantastic guests coming up on the Monopoly Report podcast over the next few weeks. Please subscribe to the show and leave us a review@monopolyreportpod.com or on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
- [36:53]
B
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