Ronan Farrow

Private equity is buying America's hospitals and nursing homes. The playbook: pile on debt, sell the building, cut staff.

The result, one landmark study found: patient deaths up about 11%.
#news #information #privateequity

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The reporting on OpenAI and Sam Altman I've been working on for the past year and a half, for @newyorker.com, with Andrew Marantz: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI.

The US government recently bought powerful spyware that could make hacking your phone easier—and shape the way Trump executes some of his campaign promises, including mass deportations. My latest in
@newyorker.com: www.newyorker.com/news/news-de...

The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone

Other Western democracies have been roiled by the use of spyware to target political opponents, activists, journalists, and other vulnerable groups. Could it happen here?

For nearly a year, the administration has said that DOGE had no unauthorized access to your Social Security data. A new government filing admits that was false.

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JD Vance holds a JD from Yale Law (and so do I). Presumably, he knows that he is disregarding the law here, and being deceptive about the protections it affords. (1/6)

Reply to @ronanfarrow.bsky.social

(11/11) In this new normal, costs are individually adjusted to a consumer’s maximum threshold and wages to a worker’s minimum floor.
The next time you see a price, know that it may not reflect what the item is worth—but what the algorithm believes *you* are worth.

Reply to @ronanfarrow.bsky.social

(2/11) You know dynamic pricing—think Uber rides, flights, or concert tickets that surge based on supply and demand. “Surveillance Pricing” takes this to the next level: using your data to set a “price for you” based on your predicted breaking point. This is, increasingly, everywhere.

Reply to @ronanfarrow.bsky.social

(7/11)This individualized targeting marks a departure from a 150-year old retail standard. Since John Wanamaker popularized the price tag in 1861, fixed prices have functioned as a de facto social contract. It ensured a market standard: the same cost for every customer, regardless of background

Reply to @ronanfarrow.bsky.social

(5/11) Walmart, Whole Foods, and Kohls are switching to electronic shelf labels that can display dynamic prices. Kroger deployed them with Microsoft AI—a setup a 2024 Senate inquiry warned could enable “surge pricing” via facial recognition. (Kroger claims it will only lower prices.)

Your phone is a spy. "Surveilled" is coming up at 9pm on HBO. (Or Stream it on @streamonmax.bsky.social, cable cutters.)

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Reply to @ronanfarrow.bsky.social

(8/11) Now, we’re going back to the Bazaar. But this time you’re not up against a shopkeeper. You’re up against a massive digital infrastructure calculating your personal price tolerance.

Coming up—airing 9pm EST on HBO and streaming on Max.

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(3/11) A December 2025 Consumer Reports investigation found that Instacart prices for identical items varied by as much as 23% between different users. Instacart characterizes these discrepancies as routine ‘A/B testing’. www.consumerreports.org/money/questi...

Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds - Consumer Reports

Exclusive: Instacart’s AI pricing may be inflating your grocery bill.

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(6/11) Uber tracks battery life. Former exec Keith Chen noted in 2016 that users with low battery are statistically more likely to accept surge pricing. Uber says it doesn’t use that data to set prices, but the correlation remains a point of regulatory scrutiny. www.npr.org/transcripts/...

This Is Your Brain On Uber

This week we feature Keith Chen, a behavioral economist at UCLA and the head of economic research at Uber. Keith explains why surge pricing makes us nuts and discusses our weird economic choices.

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(10/11) Dubal’s research showed that dynamic rates are coming for wages too, with Uber drivers with identical workloads and performance getting different pay based on the lowest amount the algorithm calculated they’d accept. www.columbialawreview.org/content/on-a...

ON ALGORITHMIC WAGE DISCRIMINATION - Columbia Law Review

INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, technological developments have ushered in extreme levels of workplace monitoring and surveillance across many sectors. These automated systems record and quant...

Turns out so many of you are worried about your data getting into nefarious hands, HBO had to schedule a whole encore airing of “Surveilled.” Catch it at 9pm tomorrow or stream it on @streamonmax.bsky.social.

ICE just reactivated its contract with an Israeli firm that makes phone-hacking spyware. Here's what you should know.
#ICE #NewsUS #Hacking #spyware

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“The most advanced spyware can turn your smartphone into a spy in your pocket.” #Surveilled, premiering November 20 at 9 pm on HBO and Max, uncovers the multi-billion-dollar spyware industry in a real-world horror story. Trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rh...

Surveilled | Official Trailer | HBO

YouTube video by HBO

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post offering “financial runway." This month it gutted its newsroom—more than 300 layoffs.

Whatever you think of legacy news, the hard data shows us that newspaper closures hurt Americans. Here's how: 🧵

Someone is buying up American starter homes and pricing you out. But it’s not who you’ve been told. #EconSky #Housing #PolSky #RonanFarrow

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What a recent policy reversal by Attorney General Pam Bondi on confidential sources means and why it threatens press freedom—and, in turn, democracy. Through rigorous, fair, and factual reporting, we can make the world more informed. @newyorker.com #journalism #news #US #press #pressfreedom

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Don Lemon and Georgia Fort have been released.

But the procedural history now emerging is unusual. Before the arrests, a federal magistrate judge found no probable cause to arrest them. The government appealed anyway.

Here’s why that matters—and what it signals more broadly.

The reporting on Elon Musk I've been working on for The New Yorker over the past year: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule

How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

Seven years after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the world is being asked to forget what happens when governments decide reporters are disposable—and to turn away from what that precedent means for all of us.

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