December 19, 2025

Brendan Carr is a dummy

2 hours 5 minutes

Åhead of our last Friday episode of 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr did The Vergecast an enormous favor: he went in front of Congress and said a bunch of wild things about regulation. So, of course, Nilay and David have to talk about them. For a really long time. After that, the hosts look at all the ways YouTube and Netflix are becoming more like one another, and then update the Go90 Scale of Doomed Streaming Services to round out the year. Finally, in the lightning round, there's talk of web apps, EVs, Bluesky, and the metaverse.

Further reading:

The Vergecast live at CES

Brendan Carr doesn’t regret his threats to broadcasters

Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell: ‘Cable companies are at the mercy of content companies’

The Oscars will stream on YouTube in 2029

Netflix’s next big TV game is FIFA soccer

My Favorite Murder and The Breakfast Club podcasts are ditching YouTube for Netflix

Warner Bros. wants its shareholders to reject Paramount’s latest offer

Netflix is “100% committed” to releasing WB films in theaters.

Even Jared Kushner thinks the Paramount WB bid sucks.

Peacock will bombard you with ads as soon as you open the app

HBO Max’s new channels keep Friends and Game of Thrones playing 24/7

Instagram is putting Reels on your TV

LG forced a Copilot web app onto its TVs but will let you delete it

Mercedes-Benz discontinues feature that syncs music to driving

Ford’s big bet on EVs didn’t pan out — now it’s pivoting to hybrids and energy storage

Bluesky claims its new contact import feature is ‘privacy-first’

Gemini 3 Flash is here, bringing a ‘huge’ upgrade to the Gemini app

The ChatGPT app store is here

Alexa Plus’ website is live for some users

Meta pauses third-party Horizon VR headsets program

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