The deal was too good to be true, because it was: A few years ago, MoviePass started offering users unlimited movie tickets for $10 per month. It was an unworkable, growth-focused business model even more extreme than most startups subsidizing post-recession online life, and MoviePass knew it. A Federal Trade Commission investigation found all sorts of shady tactics the company used to keep its most movie-addicted viewers from getting tickets. We’ll talk about it, plus electric trucks, game show history and a new ocean (??) on this not-so-hollowed-out Thursday.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Amazon Faces Possible $425 Million EU Privacy Fine” from The Wall Street Journal
- “Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Fund the IRS” from The New York Times
- “MoviePass Deceived Users So They’d Use It Less, F.T.C. Says” from The New York Times
- “Museum to Create a National Archives of Game Show History” also from The Times
- “Farewell, Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy” from, you guessed it, The New York Times
- “National Geographic adds 5th ocean to world map” from NBC News
For more on millennial lifestyle subsidies, space travel and the trade war with China, check out our newsletter! It comes out every Friday morning. Subscribe and read the latest issue here.
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