Instead, Sohn found herself the target of an aggressive campaign funded by a conservative group that doesnt have to disclose its donors. The American Accountability Foundation called Sohn too partisan, anti-police and soft on sex trafficking. The attacks landed to the point that even some Democrats abandoned her. Sohn withdrew her nomination, ditching her fight for a five-year term as an FCC commissioner.

Look, Im not naive. Ive been a consumer advocate my whole career. I knew I was going to get some opposition, Sohn told The Associated Press. Now, did I expect what was to come the dark money, the lies, the caricatures? No.

The battle over the nomination is the latest example of how organizations with political and financial agendas have been able to sway public opinion by deploying donations that are impossible to trace. It is also emblematic of how nominees missteps even on matters wholly unrelated to their prospective jobs can become fodder for attacks.

In Sohns case, the stakes were high. Her confirmation wouldve ended a 2-2 split on the commission, enabling Bidens administration to pursue its agenda of making communication networks more equitable. Sohn has been a vocal advocate of such regulations, which have been aggressively opposed by the telecom industry.

Sohn was not likely to coast to confirmation. Moderate Democrats were going to have trouble justifying their support for a nominee who had assisted controversial liberal groups, seemed to endorse tweets critical of police and accused Fox News of being state-sponsored propaganda.

When Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced his opposition to the nomination in March, the moderate Democrat cited Sohns partisan activism, inflammatory statements online, and work with far-left groups.

Even so, outside groups left nothing to chance. Just two of those organizations spent at least $420,000 on ads seeking to torpedo Sohns confirmation, a sum that is likely a fraction of the total spent.

Central to the advertising offensive was the American Accountability Foundation, which produced an advertising blitz assailing the nominee on Facebook, as well as in newspapers and on billboards.

Another group, co-founded by a former Democratic senator, said it spent six figures on ads arguing that Sohn was the wrong choice for the FCC and rural America. The National Fraternal Order of Police also joined the fray, chastising Sohn over endorsing social media posts that were critical of law enforcement.

Opposing nominations is hardly new in American politics. But a 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns and nomination fights. The Citizens United ruling also opened the door to an influx of untraceable donations, known as dark money, to special interest groups seeking to influence policy, elections and nominations.

Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, said such dark-money groups are growing so powerful that they can hamstring or stymie an entire administration by discouraging qualified people from accepting nominations.

Sohns nomination was meant to be historic. If confirmed, Sohn would have been the FCCs first openly LGBTQ+ commissioner. When the White House announced her nomination in October 2021, it hailed her trailblazing biography and called her a consumer advocate who would defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous.

When Congress failed to confirm Sohn during its last term, Biden didnt give up. In January, he renominated her to the post.

Sohn was a favorite of progressives and had served as a top adviser for Tom Wheeler, the Obama-era FCC chair who enacted net neutrality rules that were jettisoned during the Trump administration. Such regulations would have required AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. The telecommunications industry has battled such rules, arguing they are illegal and overly burdensome.

Some business groups pounced at the possibility of Sohn joining the FCC. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the worlds largest business federation, said this year that it opposed Sohns confirmation due to her longtime advocacy of overly aggressive and combative regulation of the communications sector.

Telecommunications companies and their trade organizations took a less combative approach, at least in public. Some even congratulated her on her nomination.

It is not known whether those companies donated dark money to groups that attacked Sohn. A spokeswoman for USTelecom, a national trade association on broadband, said the group and its members did not take a position on Ms. Sohns nomination.

Behind the scenes, however, the industrys lobbyists worked hard to kill the nomination, according to Sohn and her allies. Telecom companies are among the nations biggest spenders on lobbyists, with the industry shelling out $117 million last year to influence lawmakers and administration officials, according to OpenSecrets.

In her withdrawal letter, Sohn blamed her failed nomination on legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money political groups with bottomless pockets.

It was a perfect storm of, you know, industry interests, Sohn told the AP in an interview last month at Georgetown Law School, where she is a fellow at its Institute for Technology Law & Policy.

At least three Democratic lawmakers agreed with Sohns assessment, describing her nomination as a proxy fight over the future of free broadband.

If affordable broadband gets deployed anywhere, then somehow more affordable broadband might get deployed everywhere, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at Sohns February confirmation hearing. So I think theres probably billions of dollars at stake here, and that is why the vitriol is coming at you.

Sohn took particular umbrage with the campaign waged by the American Accountability Foundation. The nonprofit boasted it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising to educate the American people how wrong she was for the position.

The AAF dished out more than $320,000 on Facebook advertising, according a review of advertising data by the AP. Such ads blasted Sohn over her connections to two liberal groups and suggested she opposed stiffening sex-trafficking laws. An ad alleged she was a complete political ideologue.

The organization targeted most of its advertising in states where moderate Democratic senators are up for reelection next year, including Nevada, Arizona and Montana. In the closely divided Senate, nominees have little margin for error. They can lose only one Democratic vote if all Republican senators oppose them.

It is unknown how much AAF spent on traditional advertising, which included ads in newspapers and on billboards. One of those billboards was on the Las Vegas Strip, looming above an illuminated sign of two showgirls replete with feathered headdresses.

The billboard called Sohn too extreme for the FCC and provided information for people to contact AAF. The likely target of that ad was not tourists but Sen. Jacky Rosen, a moderate Democrat seeking reelection next year.

AAF also promoted criticism of Sohn over Twitter posts in 2020 that suggested she supported the defund the police movement and agreed with a tweet that alleged police were armed goons with tear gas.

Tom Jones, the groups executive director, declined an interview request. In an email, he declined to name the the organizations donors, noting only that they are G-d fearing Patriots!

Were guided by traditional American values, wrote Jones, a veteran Republican operative who led opposition research for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during his failed 2016 presidential run. His group has led similar campaigns against other nominees who later withdrew from such posts as Federal Aviation Administration administrator, vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the comptroller of the currency.

Jones group was joined in its campaign against Sohn by other organizations, including one led by Heidi Heitkamp, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota.

Heitkamps advocacy group, the One Country Project, announced in 2022 it was spending at least $100,000 on a campaign to oppose Sohns nomination by highlighting her purported disregard for rural broadband.

The former senator, who lost her reelection bid in 2018, did not respond to requests for comment about the source of her groups funding. Heitkamp collected more than $106,000 in donations from the telecommunications industry during her last Senate campaign, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks U.S. election spending.

The National Fraternal Order of Police also opposed the nomination, a move that surprised Sohn and her allies because the police union has no business before the FCC. Citing Sohns social media posts about police, the group said in February that a vote for Sohn would show a complete disregard for the hard-working men and women of law enforcement.

Jim Pasco, FOPs executive director, acknowledged it was unusual for his organization to take sides on an FCC nominee. But he said Sohns Twitter presence was too incendiary to ignore. He said no telecom companies influenced the unions decision to oppose the nomination.

You know, we dont we dont oppose people lightly, Pasco said. The more we looked into it, the more we saw that this person is really, vocally opposed to just basic public safety efforts in the United States.

Sohn said she knew her nomination was dead at her February confirmation hearing. Thats when Rosen, the Nevada Democrat, said police concerns about the social media posts do give me pause. Other Democrats, Sohn said, put little effort into parrying Republican attacks.

It was a bloodbath, Sohn said.

Three weeks later, she withdrew from the fight.

The brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, creators of the supernatural world of the Upside Down, posted to social media they are downing their proverbial tools after collective bargaining talks between writers and studios collapsed earlier this month.

Writing does not stop when filming begins, the Duffer Brothers tweeted on Saturday. While were excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike.

The duo are not the only big name creatives to oppose studio pressure to remain behind their desk. J.J. Abrams, the filmmaker behind the latest Star Wars trilogy and a Star Trek reboot, took to the picket line to protest as has Ted Lassos Jason Sudeikis in solidarity with other writers.

The strike comes at a sensitive time for Hollywood. Traditional workhorses like the Marvel Cinematic Universe have disappointed, investors are pressuring studios like Disney to focus on profitability rather than subscriber growth, and media giants like Warner Bros. and Discovery are consolidating to combine their respective content libraries to better compete.

Duffers here. Writing does not stop when filming begins. While were excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then over and out. #wgastrong

stranger writers (@strangerwriters) May 6, 2023

Stranger Things meanwhile is Netflixs golden goose, a critical and commercial success that has become a cultural phenomenon.

It became the streaming services most watched English-language show ever, when the fourth season pulled in 1.35 billion combined viewing hours in the first 28 days of its release, far eclipsing other well-known stalwarts like Bridgerton and The Crown.

Kate Bushs song Running up that Hill, which features prominently in the latest installment, returned to storm the billboards, and fans even celebrate Stranger Things Day on Nov. 6 when fictional protagonists Eleven and Mike met for the first time. 

Last strike proved disastrous for film and TV

In April, the creative minds behind the entertainment industry voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike as negotiations over their next three-year contract with the studios began to break down. 

Unlike in 2017, last minute attempts to broker a deal with the studios failed, and union leaders agreed to strike.

That means that writers are picketing for the first time since a 100-day walkout in November 2007 that brought Tinseltown to a grinding halt. Hollywood star Daniel Craig blamed his entirely forgettable second outing as fictional British spy James Bond on the writers strike, which forced him to help out on the script while shooting Quantum of Solace. 

It also led to numerous truncated TV series debuting, and many claim it helped killed off Tim Krings hit series Heroes after just one season.

While this years strike will disrupt work on Stranger Things, the show that began in 2016 is set to conclude anyway when the final episodes air.

We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work, the Duffer Brothers wrote. Until thenover and out.

#May4thBeWithYou #WGAStrike pic.twitter.com/X3CGssmsrs

JJ Abrams (@jjabrams) May 4, 2023

After all, with as many as 300 million olfactory receptors, a dogs ability to scent or smell something is about a hundred thousand times what ours is, Glaser told me recently. Theres an analogy Ive seen: You could take a teaspoon of something and put it in a body of water the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools, and a dog could detect it.

It made for a great theory: dogs as a sort of frontline COVID detective agency. But Glaser is no mere theorist.

As the medical officer for the Center for Laboratory Sciences at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), Glaser was able to martial both resources and funding (via the CDC Foundation) to road-test the idea. Although its still early, the results are promising enough that they may alter the sway the U.S. gets in front of outbreaks of several viruses, not just Covid, in the years to come.

And while the first tests were conducted in schools, Glaser and those working with her now are moving the process to the place where it could have the greatest impact: Californias skilled nursing facilities, home to some of the states worst infection and mortality rates during the first two years of the coronavirus.

There is a huge need in our nursing homes, Glaser says. Nursing homes and other skilled facilities continue to experience outbreaks all the timeand, of course, they are the most vulnerable population. Were making a big shift into nursing homes.

The canines are soothing to the residents, and therefore welcomed. They work fast, needing only seconds to sniff a person. And several primarily laboratorybased studies have shown that medical detection dogs are quite accurate at identifying samples from COVID-infected people, suggesting that they could serve a valuable, mobile screening role going forward.

In short, theyre good dogs.

The genesis of the project, the details of which recently appeared in a research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics, was CDPHs experience with antigen tests in its public school system. Though that program eventually received solid buy-in, Glaser said regulatory requirements necessitated lots of training of school staff, which took teachers and administrators away from their core duties, and the kids were getting a little sick of those swabs.

Enter the doggos. Glaser was already familiar with reports that dogs were being trialed to detect COVID at airports in Finland, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as some sports facilities. She reached out to Carol Edwards, executive director of the Northern California-based Early Alert Canines (EAC), which for more than 20 years has been training sugar alert dogs to warn insulin-dependent diabetics when theyre about to experience a significant swing in their blood sugar level.

Glaser wanted to know if Edwards could train dogs for Covid detection. I said, Sure. Lets do it, and then I had a panic, Edwards says with a laugh. But its similar scent training to what the diabetic-alert dogs do. It was just a matter of getting COVID samples and training the dogs on that.

The science involved is remarkably straightforward. As a result of metabolic processes, people infected with COVID emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These gas molecules can have a unique odor, which the dogsin this case, yellow labs named Rizzo and Scarlettare able to discern after rigorous training. Thats what the dogs are actually smelling, says Edwards, who co-authored the JAMA study. They are not smelling the virus itself.

The CDPHs Glaser set about gathering worn socks from people who were infected with COVID, the better to preserve the VOCs that collected there as a result of sweat forming. Edwards, at the EAC, then taught the dogs to placed socks on a scent-detection wheel through which she trained Rizzo and Scarlet to distinguish the Covid-related compounds from other odors, rewarding them with Cheerios or a small liver treat each time they didthe same general regimen dogs undergo as they learn to sniff for any particular scent or substance.

It is certainly not a new technology. Beyond the aforementioned uses, dogs have been found to be able to detect melanoma cells and other tumor types such as lung, ovary, bladder, and large intestine, says Molly McAllister, chief medical officer of Mars Veterinary Health, a global network of more than 2,500 vet hospitals and clinics. They can be used to distinguish patients with malaria, and have also been found to be able to detect hypoglycemia, impending seizures, and narcoleptic episodes.

In the controlled setting of the lab, results for Rizzo and Scarlett were excellent, with the dogs getting it like 98%, 99% of the time. They found the positive socks and ignored everything else, Glaser says. In a pilot program in live school settings with more than 3,500 screenings last year, the overall accuracy numbers dropped to 90% with the dogs correctly identifying 85 infections and ruling out 3,411 infections. They inaccurately signaled infection in 383 cases and missed 18 infections, yielding a sensitivity of 83% and specificity of 90%.

Glaser suspects the performance drop in the field was due in part to a comparatively chaotic environment, including things like wind, noise, and multiple other smells on the participants, including a burrito in one childs backpack. Further study is needed to know more about those factors and whether they might be mitigated as the dogs become more familiar with their surroundings.

The process was decidedly old-school. Wed have the kids line up outside for us, and the dogs would walk along and sniff their ankles, says Edwards. If they encountered the VOCs they would sit. To them, it was just another scent. Theyd get a treat. All the children and staff in the study also underwent a rapid antigen test for purposes of comparison.

The advantages over swab testing are numerous, including time savings (dogs can sniff potentially hundreds of subjects in an hour), convenience, and the potential to reduce by 80% the number of swab test kits since swabs would only be used as a follow-up for those whom the dogs have alerted as infected. And while the dogs must be trained, fed, and kept, they may be the most affordable front-line protection against the virus yet considered.

Theres another considerationand its particularly compelling when applied to a skilled nursing setting: The residents enjoy the interaction. The dogs have been in 10 to 12 nursing homes in Northern California so far, some several times, and theyve been warmly embraced, just as they were in the schools. There are some people who literally try to follow the dogs around videotaping them, and they want pictures, says Glaser. She and Edwards have considered adding a third, social dog that would come in after the other dogs have done their work, just to be petted and played with to help streamline the process.

It sounds like a feel-good development because it isbut the business at hand is serious. I really think this is the tip of the iceberg, says Edwards. Were going into the skilled nursing homes now because thats where the outbreaks are. And a potential next step is also significant: learning whether the dogs can successfully identify two strains of influenza, another important cause of illness and death in nursing homes.

Edwards, who has trained so many canines for special scent detection, is cautiously optimistic. Ive seen cardiac-alert dogs, seizure dogsThe dogs noses are phenomenal, and were just tapping into that. Everything theyre smelling, theyve always smelled. We just put a purpose to it.

Just as Edwards dogs have sometimes alerted diabetes patients to a change in their sugar level before it actually bottoms out, the hope is that canines like Rizzo and Scarlett might eventually be able to ward off viral outbreaks of COVID or influenza by quickly determining how many nursing home residents or staff are harboring an infection. To Glaser, the fact that the dogs are charming is simply a bonus. Weve still got things to sort out, so Im very cautious, but I want people to take the dogs seriously, she says. Most people say, Arent they cute?, which is fine. I think theyre cute, toobut Im really about trying to ensure that we do this the same way as any rigorous study.

Carolyn Barber, M.D. has been an emergency department physician for 25 years. Author of the book Runaway Medicine: What You Dont Know May Kill You, she has written extensively about COVID-19 for national publications, including Fortune. Barber is co-founder of the California-based homeless work program Wheels of Change. 

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Now, with the biggest thorn in its side TikTok facing heightened government scrutiny amid growing tensions between the U.S. and China, Facebook could, perhaps, position itself as a viable, domestic-bred alternative.

Theres just one problem: young adults like Devin Walsh have moved on.

I dont even remember the last time I logged in. It must have been years ago, said Walsh, 24, who lives in Manhattan and works in public relations.

Instead, she checks Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook parent company Meta, about five or six times a day. Then theres TikTok, of course, where she spends about an hour each day scrolling, letting the algorithm find things I didnt even know I was interested in.

Walsh cant imagine a world in which Facebook, which she joined when she was in 6th grade, becomes a regular part of her life again.

Its the branding, right? When I think of Facebook, I think ugh, like cheugy, older people, like parents posting pictures of their kids, random status updates and also people fighting about political issues, Walsh said, using the Gen Z term for things that are definitely not cool.

The once-cool social media platform born before the iPhone is approaching two decades in existence. For those who came of age around the time Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com from his Harvard dorm room in 2004, its been inextricably baked into daily life even if its somewhat faded into the background over the years.

Facebook faces a particularly odd challenge. Today, 3 billion people check it each month. Thats more than a third of the worlds population. And 2 billion log in every day. Yet it still finds itself in a battle for relevancy, and its future, after two decades of existence.

For younger generations those who signed up in middle school, or those who are now in middle school, its decidedly not the place to be. Without this trend-setting demographic, Facebook, still the main source of revenue for parent company Meta, risks fading into the background utilitarian but boring, like email.

It wasnt always like this. For nearly a decade, Facebook was the place to be, the cultural touchstone, the thing constantly referenced in daily conversations and late-night TV, its founding even the subject of a Hollywood movie. Rival MySpace, which launched only a year earlier, quickly became outdated as the cool kids flocked to Facebook. It didnt help MySpaces fate that it was sold to stodgy old News Corp. in 2005.

It was this weird combinationno one knew how technology worked, but in order to have a MySpace, we all needed to become mini coders. It was so stressful. said Moira Gaynor, 28. Maybe thats even why Facebook took off. Because compared to MySpace it was this beautiful, integrated, wonderful engagement area that we didnt have before and we really craved after struggling with MySpace for so long.

Positioning himself a visionary, Zuckerberg refused to sell Facebook and pushed his company through the mobile revolution. While some rivals emerged remember Orkut? they generally petered out as Facebook soared, seemingly unstoppable despite scandals over user privacy and a failure to address hate speech and misinformation adequately. It reached a billion daily users in 2015.

Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with Insider Intelligence whos followed Facebook since its early days, notes that the sites younger users have been dwindling but doesnt see Facebook going anywhere, at least not any time soon.

The fact that we are talking about Facebook being 20 years old, I think that is a testament of what Mark developed when he was in college. Its pretty incredible, she said. It is still a very powerful platform around the world.

AOL was once powerful too, but its user base has aged and now an aol.com email address is little more than a punchline in a joke about technologically illiterate people of a certain age.

Tom Alison, who serves as the head of Facebook (Zuckerbergs title is now Meta CEO), sounded optimistic when he outlined the platforms plans to lure in young adults in an interview with The Associated Press.

We used to have a team at Facebook that was focused on younger cohorts, or maybe there was a project or two that was dedicated to coming up with new ideas, Alison said. And about two years ago we said no our entire product line needs to change and evolve and adapt to the needs of the young adults.

He calls it the era of social discovery.

Its very much motivated by what we see the next generation wanting from social media. The simple way that I like to describe it is we want Facebook to be the place where you can connect with the people you know, the people you want to know and the people that you should know, Alison said.

Artificial intelligence is central to this plan. Just as TikTok uses its AI and algorithm to show people videos they didnt know they wanted to see Facebook is hoping to harness its powerful technology to win back the hearts and eyeballs of young adults. Reels, the TikTok-like videos Facebook and Instagram users are bombarded with when they log into both apps, are also key. And, of course, private messaging.

What we are seeing is more people wanting to share reels, discuss reels, and were starting to integrate messaging features back into the app to again allow Facebook to be a place where not only do you discover great things that are relevant to you, but you share and you discuss those with people, Alison said.

Facebook has consistently declined to disclose user demographics, which would shed some light on how it is faring among young adults. But outside researchers say their numbers are declining. The same is true for teenagers although Facebook seems to have stepped back from actively recruiting teens amid concerns about social medias effects on their mental health.

Young people often shape the future of communication. I mean, thats basically how Facebook took off young people gravitated toward it. And we we see that happening with pretty much every social platform that has come on the scene since Facebook, said Williamson. This year, Insider estimates that about half of TikToks users are between the ages of 12 and 24.

Williamson doesnt see this trend reversing, but notes that Insiders estimates only go as far as 2026. Theres a decline, but its slow. That year, the research firm expects about 28% of U.S. Facebooks users to be between 18 and 34 years old, compared with nearly 46% for TikTok and 42% for Instagram. The numbers are more stark for teens aged 12-17.

I think the best thing they could do is get away from being a social platform. Like theyve lost that. But hey, if they want to become the new Yellow Pages, why not? said Gaynor, who lives in San Diego, California and works in government. I really like Marketplace. I recently just moved, so that was where I got most of my furniture.