Thoughts on Tech News of Note - 02-13-2026

• Adam Mosseri says Social Media Not “Clinically Addictive’
• Free Claude Users Can Now Use Skills
• US FTC Threatens Apple Over Apple News Content

I managed to squeeze in one story that isn’t AI this week. This is going to get harder in the future, I think, but fortunately Mobile World Congress and Samsung Unpacked are on the horizon, so there is hope for gadget news and other things only indirectly connected to AI.

Adam Mosseri Says Social Media Not “Clinically Addictive”

The multiple legal cases against Meta and its addictive and manipulative features read awfully similarly to the allegations against TikTok from the EU that I wrote about last week. Specifically called out are infinite scrolling, video autoplay, and rewards similar to playing slot machines. With the exception of that last item, these are the same traits that has TikTok in trouble with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). And of course, Adam Mosseri says this is all hogwash but in very certain terms. He chose the word ‘clinical’ intentionally, I am sure.

There are diagnostic criteria for clinical addiction and most specifically, substance use disorder. A person may be considered clinically impaired if they show 2 of the eleven criteria, which include things like:

1. Use in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended

2. Craving or strong desire to use the substance

3. Continued use despite persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems caused or worsened by the substance

4. Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of use

5. Continued use despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem likely caused or worsened by the substance

The list goes on as you can probably imagine. Exhibiting 2-3 tendencies from the list indicates mild severity, 4-5 is moderate, and 6 or more is severe.

If we consider social media as a substance, then it seems obvious to normal people that it would be absolutely possible to be considered clinically impaired based on even just this partial list. However, declaring someone clinically addicted to social media hasn’t yet been done in any official capacity. Some psychologists and psychiatrists have observed patients whose behavior follows the pattern of addiction and/or substance abuse, but there is no official diagnosis that has been codified, so it’s all unofficial and subjective. I would expect there to be a lot of activity in this area over the next several months and years because this would seem to be a giant hole that needs to be filled.

Surely Mosseri knows this, so he went that route. The issue at stake from a legal perspective then is whether having an official diagnosis for social media addiction is required to prove the case against Meta. Will the testimony of psychiatrists who have noted addictive behavior matter? We have already seen examples from inside Meta that they knew about the real and potential harms their platforms could have on young people and they forged ahead anyway. Does that matter? I do wonder what it would take to win this case and if Meta comes out triumphant, what recourse there would be possible to deal with this issue. As AI tools become more prevalent across all aspects of our lives, it would seem that there will be more opportunities to define addictive behavior towards things not typically considered substances and where no official diagnoses have yet been instantiated.

Free Claude Users Can Now Use Skills

Premium services like Claude Code and Claude CoWork have been big news as more and more non-technical users begin to use the tools to create all matter of applications, websites, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and more. People have been happy to connect Claude to their personal data and allow it to help them manage files and deal with messy email inboxes. But much of the fun has been left to those who could afford to pay for subscriptions to get access to all Claude has to offer. But with the addition of broadened capabilities under the free plan, more people can now use Claude for more tasks. On the free plan, users can now have Claude create files and can connect Claude to Microsoft365, Google Workspace, Zapier, Canva, WordPress, and many other popular software tools. Anthropic defines the integrations as Connectors and Skills. Connectors allow for Claude to access calendars and other personal productivity tools. Skills train Claude how to perform tasks in a specific way, and these abilities persist across sessions. It is in a way, the easiest way to access some of the power of OpenClaw without the security drama OpenClaw presents. Having connectors and skills means Claude is working within guardrails that you set as opposed to being able to roam free on your computer and the internet, potentially wreaking havoc and wrecking things along the way.

Up until now, all of the normal people in my life think of AI as starting and ending with ChatGPT. It has become the Kleenex of the AI world, probably more for the worse than for the better. There is a real window here for Anthropic, especially with OpenAI adding ads to ChatGPT and Anthropic capitalizing on that with their Super Bowl commercials. More people know that Claude exists now, and with this expansion of capabilities on the free tier, more people will probably try Claude, and many may come to find it more useful than ChatGPT for many of the things they want to get done. Of course, that then would seem to put Anthropic in a tenuous scenario where traffic increases, but the revenue stream may not increase along with it. They will have to figure out how to monetize the new attention in a way that doesn’t put them in the financial situation OpenAI is in and that everyone is starting to notice they’re in. Anthropic can win here but figuring out the path forward will be exceedingly tricky. They may find they need to add another subscription tier that can entice people to move from free to something just below the current tiers that gets them hooked and perhaps they upgrade over time. But time is short.

US FTC Threatens Apple Over Apple News Content

I have always paid at least tangential attention to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) because I’ve been a phone nerd for years and news around device approvals and spectrum sales were of interest to me. But the Federal Trade Commission wasn’t really an agency I considered much until the cases against Meta and Amazon. And now the FTC is apparently after Apple as it recently sent a letter to Tim “Apple” Cook about concerns that Apple News favors liberal news sources over conservative ones.

I do not use Apple News. Sometimes, on my iPad, I will note the headlines that are in the news widget that Apple placed on the home screen for me when widgets became a thing on the iPad and they wanted everyone to know it was a thing. But I never have clicked on the widget because I’m pretty fanatical about getting my news where I get my news. But out of interest in this story, I pulled out my iPad and clicked on the widget. It showed me articles from APNews, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Fox News, Washington Post, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, etc. In other words, there was what I considered to be a nice variety of outlets.

But that’s only my opinion. I searched online to see what outlets most Americans consider trustworthy, and I was told most Americans trust The Weather Channel (this has to be the least politically controversial choice, right?), BBC, PBS, and the Wall Street Journal. Well, PBS is being decimated, BBC is being sued by Trump, and WSJ is probably just trying to stay below any political radar right now. Now, in searching out trusted outlets, it was noted that Republicans do tend to prefer Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN but these outlets are not generally considered trustworthy

by the majority of Americans. So, if you view Apple News from a strict Republican lens, it may in fact look like it’s cherry-picking when what it may be doing is trying to surface articles form outlets that more Americans will trust. After all, Apple users aren’t just Republican. Apple device usage in the United States cuts across all demographics.

I am not sure what remedy the FTC would consider acceptable here. The government should not be in a position to tell Apple what stories and news outlets to include in its service but I can imagine a scenario where they might want an “equal time” type of strategy where Apple includes sources that the current administration feels present the news as they believe it should be presented along with sources that they feel are too liberal or leftist. This would be an unacceptable overreach, but I can clearly see it playing out that way and leading to a court case that it would seem Apple would be able to win. After all, Apple News is a paid service. People are paying to see the news stories Apple shows them and if they don’t like what the service surfaces, they are free to pay for other and different news services. It’s not that far off from people who want to watch Fox News vs MSNOW. People have choices. The continued attack of this administration against choice is just strange. There are so many other terrible things they could be pursuing to greater effect.

I guess I should be glad they’re wasting their time like this.