The Download

Morning Brew Inc.

TL;DR: The company that helped kill cable is considering rebuilding it. Netflix is weighing live channels and streaming bundles to claw back slipping engagement, according to the Wall Street Journal. But attention-grabbing instincts—the redesigns and constant reranking meant to keep you hooked—are now backfiring across the industry as regulators circle.

What happened: Netflix executives have reportedly discussed introducing always-on live channels and bundling third-party apps like NBCUniversal’s Peacock directly into its platform, where they’d appear as tiles on the homepage (the same playbook rivals Disney, Amazon, and Apple have run for years). The discussion comes amid a backslide in Netflix’s user engagement—its share of total US TV viewership fell to 7.8% in April, its lowest since May 2025.

Just one more: Netflix, a company synonymous with the word “binge,” has already made changes and refined its recommendation engine over the years to keep users engaged. Its homepage redesign last year included real-time recommendations, navigation shortcuts, and a personalized hub keeping track of things like where you left off or what you plan to watch next. Earlier this week, the company said it’s adding videos from publishers like BuzzFeed and Condé Nast. Yet retention remains a stubborn problem: Data from Bloomberg indicates Netflix viewers are abandoning its biggest shows after just one season.

Birds of a feather: The features keeping users hooked are the same ones drawing fire—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Netflix in May, accusing it of a bait and switch by addicting families and collecting data without consent. Netflix said the lawsuit “lacks merit” and is based on inaccurate information.

And across the pond, the European Commission preliminarily found Meta in breach of its digital laws yesterday, citing the addictive design of Facebook and Instagram. The EU took aim at (familiar) specific features: infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and personalized recommendation systems. Regulators have asked Meta to make major design changes. A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the findings. (In March, a California jury found Google and Meta liable for designing YouTube and Instagram to be addictive and harming a young user’s mental health.)

Bottom line: As these platforms race against the one fear they all share—losing user interest—they’re reaching for everything they can. Now the same features keeping you watching are landing them in court. —LC

      

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How I made a “run my life without me” file in one chat

I was on the phone with my brother last night and a cheery thought came up: If I ended up in the hospital tomorrow, who would he contact to tell them I can’t work? The same goes for my dog Asteria—who would look after her and how would they know what food she gets when (or the fact that she only accepts head scratches in an elevator going up)? I am the single point of failure for my life.

So, for this week’s tip, have your chatbot interview you to build a “just in case file”—the document your household needs to run without you (or so someone can take over if necessary), whether you’re in a hospital bed or just phoneless overseas. Here’s the prompt to get you started:

I want to create a “just in case file”: a document my family can use to run the household if I were unreachable for a few weeks because of an emergency or unexpected event.

Act as a patient but critical interviewer. Ask questions one topic at a time and wait for my answers. Cover: who to contact at my work to say I can’t work, bills and due dates (and how they’d actually get paid if my accounts or phone are locked), where important documents physically live, insurance policies, key contacts (doctor, lawyer, landlord, plumber), any healthcare proxy or power of attorney and where those documents are, pet and dependent care routines, subscriptions, and anything else that breaks if ignored.

Do not ask for passwords, PINs, or account numbers. Instead, ask where my family would find them (like in a password manager or that the master key is in the safe, and whether accounts have 2FA turned on). Ask follow-ups to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. Then compile it all into a clearly organized PDF document a stressed family member could follow easily, with a “review by” date one year out.

Before you start, here are three more things to note:

Never type secrets into a chatbot. Record where passwords live, not what they are.

Export the result. Save the PDF and print it or drop it in a shared drive your family has access to.

Short on time? Tell the AI to start with “just the five most critical things first” and then continue to build from there.

Now, if anything sidelines you, the only thing your family has to worry about is you. —SM

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The Zeitbyte

Wall Street’s new anti-Elon fund

Morning Brew Inc., Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

However you feel about Musk, Wall Street has a way for you to make some money off it. On the one hand, if you’re extremely bullish on Musk’s latest public venture, there are already plenty of SpaceX-focused ETFs that let you bet on the stock soaring. And for the Musk-wary: One company will soon offer two funds that are the usual bundles of big-name stocks probably already nestled into your 401(k)—but minus every Musk company.

You can invest in these ETFs if you think Musk’s companies come with too much noise, from political risk to governance headaches (like a board that signs off on $1 trillion pay packages)—or you’re just queasy about a stock price that’s as unpredictable as a Chicago spring. It’s something at least a few people have an appetite for, if all the Reddit posts asking how to avoid SpaceX are anything to go by. But experts warn that the anti-Elon funds should be taken as “fun marketing, not a real investment thesis,” per Bloomberg. Buy Elon or short him; just don’t put all your eggs in one almost-trillionaire’s basket. —WK

• The Fed just formed a task force on how AI (and other emerging technologies) will affect jobs, and it includes two names you’ll recognize—one of whom shared plans to lay off 3,200 workers just days before the announcement.
• Atlas is being shrugged—OpenAI just killed ChatGPT’s browser, though the ambition isn’t dead.
• Apple is reportedly in talks with a startup that squeezed one of the biggest AI models yet onto an iPhone.
• An automaker teaming up with Crayola (yes, that Crayola) for its new EV was not on our 2026 bingo card.
• A major role just freed up at OpenAI after a top executive stepped back into an advisory position.
• We’ll take “Things we never expected to hear for $1,000, please.” This time, it’s Nvidia trading cards.

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This time two weeks ago...

Last Friday was a public holiday in the US, so two weeks ago, readers’ most-clicked story was about an Apple leaker saying an iRing is in development.