Watch: The Future of Content Moderation Online

Annie Burford

Annie Burford is dot.LA's director of events. She's an event marketing pro with over ten years of experience producing innovative corporate events, activations and summits for tech startups to Fortune 500 companies. Annie has produced over 200 programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City working most recently for a China-based investment bank heading the CEC Capital Tech & Media Summit, formally the Siemer Summit.

Watch: The Future of Content Moderation Online

As Big Tech cracks down on moderation after the Capitol attack and Wall Street braces for more fallout from social media's newfound influence on stock trading, legislators are eyeing changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. On Wednesday, February 10, dot.LA brought together legal perspectives and the views of a founder and venture capitalist on the ramifications of changing the way that social media and other internet companies deal with the content posted on their platforms.

A critic of Big Tech moderation, Craft Ventures General Partner and former COO of PayPal David Sacks called for an amendment of the law during dot.LA's Strategy Session Wednesday. Tyler Newby and Andrew Klungness, both partners at law firm Fenwick, laid out the potential legal implications of changing the law.


Section 230 limits the liability of internet intermediaries, including social media companies, for the content users publish on their platforms.

"Mend it, don't end it," Sacks said.

Sacks said he's concerned about censorship in the wake of companies tightening moderation policies. In the case of Robinhood's recent decision to freeze users from trading certain stocks— including GameStop's — for a period of time, he said we're now seeing discussions about Big Tech's role in censorship unfold in nonpartisan settings.

"Who has the power to make these decisions?" he said. "What concerns me today is that Big Tech has all the power."

Social media sites including Twitter pulled down former President Trump's account after last month's attack on the U.S. Capitol. But critics have said that these sites didn't go far enough in stopping conversations that provoked the violence.

To provide some external standard, he called for the "reestablishment of some First Amendment rights in this new digital public square" — which is to say, on privately owned platforms.

Newby pointed to a series of recent bills aimed at reigning in the power of tech companies. Changes to moderation laws could have sweeping impacts on more companies than giants like Facebook or Twitter.

"It's going to have a huge stifling effect on innovation," said Klungness, referring to a possible drop in venture capital to new startups. "Some business models may be just simply too risky or may be impractical because they require real-time moderation of content."

And if companies are liable for how their users behave, Klungness said, some companies may never take the risk in launching these companies at all. "Some business models may be just simply too risky or may be impractical because they require real-time moderation of content," he said.

Watch the full discussion below.

Strategy Session: The Future of Content Moderation Online

David Sacks, Co-Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures

David Sacks, Co-Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures

David Sacks is co-founder and general partner at Craft. He has been a successful tech entrepreneur and investor for two decades, building and investing in some of the most iconic companies of the last 20 years. David has invested in over 20 unicorns, including Affirm, Airbnb, Bird, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, Opendoor, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter and Uber.

In December 2014, Sacks made a major investment in Zenefits and became the company's COO. A year later, in the midst of a regulatory crisis, the Board asked David to step in as interim CEO of Zenefits. During his one year tenure, David negotiated resolutions with insurance regulators across the country, and revamped Zenefits' product line. By the time he left, regulators had praised David for "righting the ship", and PC Magazine hailed the new product as the best small business HR system.

David is well known in Silicon Valley for his product acumen. AngelList's Naval Ravikant has called David "the world's best product strategist." David likes to begin any meeting with a new startup by seeing a product demo.

Kelly O'Grady, Chief Correspondent & Host and Head of Video at dot.LA 

Kelly O'Grady is dot.LA's chief host & correspondent. Kelly serves as dot.LA's on-air talent, and is responsible for designing and executing all video efforts. A former management consultant for McKinsey, and TV reporter for NESN, she also served on Disney's Corporate Strategy team, focusing on M&A and the company's direct-to-consumer streaming efforts. Kelly holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. A Boston native, Kelly spent a year as Miss Massachusetts USA, and can be found supporting her beloved Patriots every Sunday come football season.

Tyler Newby is a partner at Fenwick

Tyler Newby, Partner at Fenwick 

Tyler focuses his practice on privacy and data security litigation, counseling and investigations, as well as intellectual property and commercial disputes affecting high technology and consumer-facing companies. Tyler has an active practice in defending companies in consumer class actions, state attorney general investigations and federal regulatory agency investigations arising out of privacy and data security incidents. In addition to his litigation practice, Tyler regularly advises companies large and small on reducing their litigation risk on privacy, data security and secondary liability issues. Tyler frequently counsels companies on compliance issues relating to key federal regulations such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

In 2014, Tyler was named among the top privacy attorneys in the United States under the age of 40 by Law360. He currently serves as a Chair of the American Bar Association Litigation Section's Privacy & Data Security Committee, and was recently appointed to the ABA's Cybersecurity Legal Task Force. Tyler is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and has received the CIPP/US certification.

Andrew Klungness is a partner at Fenwick

Andrew Klungness, Partner at Fenwick 

Leveraging nearly two decades of business and legal experience, Andrew navigates clients—at all stages of their lifecycles—through the opportunities and risks presented by novel and complex transactions and business models.

Andrew is a co-chair of Fenwick's consumer technologies and retail and digital media and entertainment industry teams, as well as a principal member of its fintech group. He works with clients in a number of verticals, including ecommerce, consumer tech, fintech, enterprise software, blockchain, marketplaces, CPG, mobile, AI, social media, games and edtech, among others.

Andrew leads significant and complex strategic alliances, joint ventures and other collaboration and partnering arrangements, which are often driven by a combination of technological innovation, industry disruption and rights to content, brands or celebrity personas. He also structures and negotiates a wide range of agreements and transactions, including licensing, technology sourcing, manufacturing and supply, channel partnerships and marketing agreements. Additionally, Andrew counsels clients in various intellectual property, technology and contract issues in financing, M&A and other corporate transactions.

Sam Adams, Co-Founder and CEO of dot.LA

Sam Adams, Co-Founder and CEO of dot.LA 

Sam Adams serves as chief executive of dot.LA. A former financial journalist for Bloomberg and Reuters, Adams moved to the business side of media as a strategy consultant at Activate, helping legacy companies develop new digital strategies. Adams holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and an MBA from the University of Southern California. A Santa Monica native, he can most often be found at Bay Cities deli with a Godmother sub or at McCabe's with a 12-string guitar. His favorite colors are Dodger blue and Lakers gold.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/annieburford
annie@dot.la

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The Creator-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready To Explode

Nat Rubio-Licht
Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
The Creator-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready To Explode
Evan Xie

It’s no secret that men dominate the podcasting industry. Even as women continue to grow their foothold, men still make up many of the highest-earning podcasts, raking in massive paychecks from ad revenue and striking deals with streaming platforms worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But a new demographic is changing that narrative: Gen-Z female influencers and content creators.

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nat@dot.la

NASA’s JPL Receives Billions to Begin Understanding Our Solar System

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

NASA’s JPL Receives Billions to Begin Understanding Our Solar System
Evan Xie

NASA’s footprint in California is growing as the agency prepares for Congress to approve its proposed 2024 budget.

The overall NASA budget swelled 6% from the prior year, JPL deputy director Larry James told dot.LA. He added he sees that as a continuation of the last two presidential administrations’ focus on modernizing and bolstering the nation’s space program.

The money goes largely to existing NASA centers in California, including the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory run with Caltech, Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

California remains a hotspot for NASA space activity and investment. In 2021, the agency estimated its economic output impact on the region to be around $15.2 billion. That was far more than its closest competing states, including Texas ($9.3 billion) and Maryland (roughly $8 billion). That same year, NASA reported it employed over 66,000 people in California.

“In general, Congress has been very supportive” of the JPL and NASA’s missions, James said. “It’s generally bipartisan [and] supported by both sides of the aisle. In the last few years in general NASA has been able to have increased budgets.”

There are 41 current missions run by JPL and CalTech, and another 16 scheduled for the future. James added the new budget is “an incredible support for all the missions we want to do.”

The public-private partnership between NASA and local space companies continues to evolve, and the increased budget could be a boon for LA-based developers. Numerous contractors for NASA (including CalTech, which runs the JPL), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Northrop Grumman all stand to gain new contracts once the budget is finalized, partly because NASA simply needs the private industry’s help to achieve all its goals.

James said that there was only one JPL mission that wasn’t funded – a mission to send an orbital satellite to survey the surface and interior of Venus, called VERITAS.

NASA Employment and Output ImpactEvan Xie

The Moon and Mars

Much of the money earmarked in the proposed 2024 budget is for crewed missions. Overall, NASA’s asking for $8 billion from Congress to fund lunar exploration missions. As part of this, the majority is earmarked for the upcoming Artemis mission, which aims to land a woman and person of color on the Moon’s south pole.

While there’s a number of high-profile missions the JPL is working on that are focused on Mars, including Mars Sample Return project (which received $949 million in this proposed budget) and Ingenuity helicopter and Perseverance rover, JPL also received significant funding to study the Earth’s climate and behavior.

JPL also got funding for several projects to map our universe. One is the SphereX Near Earth Objects surveyor mission, the goal of which is to use telescopes to “map the entire universe,” James said, adding that the mission was fully funded.

International Space Station

NASA’s also asking for more money to maintain the International Space Station (ISS), which houses a number of projects dedicated to better understanding the Earth’s climate and behavior.

The agency requested roughly $1.3 billion to maintain the ISS. It also is increasing its investment in space flight support, in-space transportation and commercial development of low-earth orbit (LEO). “The ISS is an incredible platform for us,” James said.

James added there are multiple missions outside or on board the ISS now taking data, including EMIT, which launched in July 2022. The EMIT mission studies arid dust sources on the planet using spectroscopy. It uses that data to remodel how mineral dust movement in North and South America might affect the Earth’s temperature changes.

Another ISS mission JPL launched is called ECOSTRESS. The mission sent a thermal radiometer onto the space station in June 2018 to monitor how plants lose water through their leaves, with the goal of figuring out how the terrestrial biosphere reacts to changes in water availability. James said the plan is to “tell you the kind of foliage health around the globe” from space.

One other ISS project is called Cold Atom Lab. It is “an incredible fundamental physics machine,” James said, that’s run by “three Nobel Prize winners as principal investigators on the Space Station.” Cold Atom Lab is a physics experiment geared toward figuring out how quantum phenomena behave in space by cooling atoms with lasers to just below absolute zero degrees.

In the long term, James was optimistic NASA’s imaging projects could lead to more dramatic discoveries. Surveying the makeup of planets’ atmospheres is a project “in the astrophysics domain we’re very excited about,” James said. He added that this imaging could lead to information about life on other planets, or, at the very least, an understanding of why they’re no longer habitable.

https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

Behind Her Empire: Margaret Wishingrad On Creating A Low Sugar Cereal Brand

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Behind Her Empire: Margaret Wishingrad On Creating A Low Sugar Cereal Brand
Provided by BHE

On this episode of Behind Her Empire, Three Wishes founder and CEO Margaret Wishingrad talks about creating brand awareness and shares the key component to running a successful business.

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