Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 05/16 – F It! Netflix Is Doin’ It Live! (Maybe)

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Is Netflix about to experiment with actual live broadcasts? Where did all the bitcoin go in the whole Luna/UST backstop debacle? Spotify is testing NFTs. Uber Eats gets into the ankle robot delivery game. And the Texas law that has all of big social media platforms worried. Sponsors: AltoIRA.com/techmeme Superside.com/techmeme Links: Netflix Exploring Live Streaming For First Time; Plans To Roll Out For Unscripted Series & Stand-Up Specials (Deadline) LFG Reserves Dwindle to Just 313 Bitcoins From 80K After UST Crash (CoinDesk) Exclusive: Spotify tests letting artists promote NFTs on their profiles (MusicAlly) OpenSea is adding NFT copy detection and verification features (The Verge) Uber Eats pilots autonomous delivery with Serve Robotics, Motional (TechCrunch) Tech groups ask Supreme Court to block Texas social media law (Washington Post) Just How Incredibly Fucked Up Is Texas’ Social Media Content Moderation Law? (TechDirt) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the tech meme right home for Monday, May 16th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is Netflix about to experiment with actual live broadcasts.

Where did all the Bitcoin go in the whole Luna UST backstop debacle? Spotify is testing NFTs. Uber Eats gets into the ankle robot delivery game and the Texas law that has all of big social media platforms worried. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. It's another thing they swore they would never do. that is doing it live. Sources are telling Deadline

that Netflix is exploring live streaming its unscripted shows and stand-up specials alongside live voting for competition series and talent contests. Quote, Deadline understands that the streamer is exploring the launch of live streaming. It plans to roll out the capability which Netflix confirmed was in the early stages of development for its swath of unscripted shows and stand-up

specials. It would mean that Netflix would be able to use it for live voting for competition series and talent contests, such as its upcoming dance competition series, Dance 100, from the Circle producer, Studio Lambert. Similarly, it could use it if it decides to bring back its Netflix is a joke festival. The live comedy event featured around 300 stand-up performances across L.A., including Dave Chappelle, Larry David, and Pete Davidson. Many of the shows were being filmed with plans to air around 12 of them on the service. In future, it could potentially air shows live, albeit with a few seconds delay in case things get saucy. Other options include for live reunions for shows such as Selling Sunset, which just aired a

reunion special for its fifth season. Move opens up the potential to order a whole new raft of unscripted series to use the technology, bringing it into line with the linear networks, which often air live specials for big competition series such as ABC's American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, which is moving to Disney Plus. The company has already experimented with different release patterns for its unscripted series and social experiments such as The Circle and Love is Blind, and the move would add further intrigue to such shows. The inevitable next question is whether such a move could be rolled out to cover sports, which has been a hot topic of discussion given its recent success of F1 series Drive to Survive.

However, Deadline understands that this is unrelated to those suggestions. There's no timeline and sources cautioned that it's early days for the live rollout, but a small group within Netflix is in the preliminary stages of development. developing the product, end quote. The Luna Foundation Guard says its Bitcoin reserves have been depleted from around 80,000 Bitcoin to around 300, and the remaining UST and Luna tokens out there will be used to compensate investors, quoting CoinDesk. In a tweet on Monday, LFG said it sold off most of the BTC in its reserves for UST as Terra's

ecosystem was beginning to collapse early last week. LFG said it transferred over 50,000 BTC, quote, to trade with a counterparty on May 8th, as the UST price was originally starting to slump. It said the funds were used for, quote, directly executing on-chain swaps and transferring BTC to a counterparty to enable them to enter trades with the foundation in large size and on short notice, end quote. On May 12th, LFG says another 30,000 BTC from its reserves were sold off by Terraform Labs, the original company behind Terra, in a last effort to defend the peg. LFG confirmed the remainder of its reserves, which once totaled over $3 billion, have sunk almost completely as a result of the unsuccessful effort to defend U.S.T.

LFG says these funds will be used, quote, to compensate remaining users of U.S.T., smallest holders first, end quote. Monday's statement from LFG comes amid criticisms that Terra's reserve funds, which were supposed to belong to the decentralized Terra community, were handled with a lack of transparency by Terra's centralized leaders and investors. It also comes after leading figures in the blockchain space, including Ethereum founder of Vitalik Buteran, have called for Terra to compensate smaller holders of UST and Luna before its largest investors. UST's price plummeted further in response to Monday's announcement from 15 cents to 7 cents, end quote. So this whole ugly blowup looks like it's coming to some sort of denouement. But here's a potential bright side to all this, quoting Dan Crypto

trades on Twitter. The fact that all that 80,000 plus BTC got swept up at low $30,000 price points is promising to me. That's a lot of liquidity soaked up with little to no slippage, which would otherwise need a huge grab towards the downside. Strengthens the bull case, in my opinion, but these are just my thoughts, end quote. And quoting Dan McArdle on Twitter. Wow, sold over 80,000 BTC in a couple of days starting May 8th when BTC was trading around $34,000. And here we are a week later, around $30,000, having fully absorbed a rapid, massive, distressed cell. Pretty good all things considered, end quote. Spotify is confirming it is running a test that lets select users use NFTs on their profiles, mostly musical artists. Quoting music glee,

Steve Ayoki and the Wombats appear to be two of the artists taking part in the test, both of whom have been among the early adopters of NFTs. The test is currently running for select users on Spotify's Android app in the U.S. who will be able to preview NFTs on the artist profile pages. They will then be able to tap through to view and buy them from external marketplaces. Spotify is running a test in which it will help a small group of artists promote their existing third-party NFT offerings via their artist profiles. A Spotify spokesperson told Music Alley,

we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve artists and fan experiences. some of those tests end up paving the way for a broader experience, and others serve only as an important learning, end quote. We understand Spotify is not taking any cut of NFT sales as part of the test, so let's be clear. Spotify isn't selling NFTs here. It's just testing a way to let artists who are selling NFTs promote them on its service. The data will help it decide whether to roll this out as a full feature for all artists, but it will also clearly inform whether Spotify decides to do anything more ambitious and on platform with NFTs in the future, end quote. Does anyone know if music fans are as hostile to NFTs as gamers have been? Somewhat related, OpenC is trying to, quote,

improve authenticity by revamping its account verification processes and debuting a system to detect, remove, and prevent copies of authentic NFT content, the dreaded copyments, quoting the verge. copy mints are tokens ripping off other NFTs and have proved to be a problem for platforms like OpenC. Last year, the platform banned two collections that mimicked Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs by flipping them so the image is mirrored. And though the owner of an NFT is recorded on the blockchain fakes are rampant. In February, OpenC said that over 80% of items it removed for violations were created with its free minting tool. OpenC says it's implementing a new two-part copy detection system, noting copies, make it harder for users to find authentic content. The company says it will use image recognition

tech to scan NFTs on the platform and compare them with authentic collections looking for flips, rotations, and other variants. OpenC says human reviewers will also look at removal recommendations. We're committed to threading the needle between removing copyments and giving space for those substantively additive remixes to prosper. The blog post reads, OpenC says it's already started removing offending content and will scale up the removal process in the coming weeks. Account verification on OpenC is also getting an update. An invite-only verification application will be available to accounts with a collection of at least 100-Eath volume, and the company says it plans to broaden eligibility soon. Collections can get a blue badge when owned by a verified

account and meeting the 100th trading volume, end quote. Uber Eats is set to launch two autonomous delivery pilots in Los Angeles with robotic, sidewalk, delivery startup serve robotics. and Autonomous Tech Startup, Motional. Something, something, my burrito delivery wager, quoting TechCrunch. The new programs are part of a range of new products. Uber is launching across its ride hail and delivery platforms, which are being announced on Monday at the company's global product event. The Motional partnership was originally announced in December and marks the first time Uber is partnering with an AV fleet provider, as well as the first time Motional is trying its hand at autonomous delivery. Until this point, Motown has focused on Robotaxies securing partnerships with companies like Lyft and Via.

Serve Robotics is actually an Uber spin-out, so seeing the two partner in the delivery space isn't surprising. But it's notable that Uber isn't working with Aurora on this, given the two companies' partnership in the freight space and their shared history and the fact that Uber is a major investor in Aurora. Aurora acquired Uber ATG, Uber self-driving arm in 2020. And under the terms of the deal, Uber invested $400 million in the company, giving it a 26. percent steak. Uber told TechCrunch, the company is looking at partnering with more than one player in the space and that the public might start to see more partnerships in the future. Both of the pilots are starting out small and delivering food from only a few merchants, including an organic cafe and juicery called Creation. Serves program will focus on shorter trips in West Hollywood.

Motionals will handle longer distance deliveries in Santa Monica, according to an Uber spokesperson. Customers will be charged for deliveries with both serve and Motional, including the cost of food, according to Uber. It's not entirely clear how Uber and Motional will swing that, though, in California, to be able to charge a fee for autonomous delivery, Motional would need to be granted a deployment permit from the Department of Motor Vehicles. So far, it only has a permit to test with a safety driver on board. In answer to this, Uber said only that Motional and Uber expect that certain delivery fees, which might normally be applicable, might not be charged during this initial phase.

Motional clarified further, saying, during the pilot, there will not be fees specific to the delivery orchestrated by the emotional vehicles. There don't appear to be any laws restricting companies from charging for deliveries made by sidewalk robots, so serve is in the clear. Uber said that if a customer decides to tip a serve robot, they'll be reimbursed, and quote. Finally today, something that catch you up on because it might become a big deal in coming months. Two groups representing meta, Google, and other social media platforms have asked the Supreme Court of the United States to block a Texas social media law, which prohibits content moderation, arguing that the law is unconstitutional, quoting the Washington Post. The Texas law took effect on Wednesday after the U.S. Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans lifted a district court injunction that had barred it. The appeals court action shocked the industry, which has been largely successful in batting back Republican state leaders' efforts to regulate social media companies' content moderation policies. In their filing to the Supreme Court net choice and the computer and Communications Industry Association, or CCIA, argue that the law is unconstitutional and risks causing irreparable harm to the internet and businesses, according to a news release. The law, quote, strips private online businesses of their speech rights, forbids them from making constitutionally protected editorial decisions, and forces them to publish and promote objectionable

content. Net Choice Council Chris Marchese said in a statement, left standing, the Texas law will turn the First Amendment on its head to violate free speech. The government need only claim to be protecting it, end quote. The Texas law, which was signed by Governor Greg Abbott in September, reflects a growing push by Republicans and statehouses to advance their accusations that tech companies are biased against their ideology. The law enables Texas residents and the state's attorney general to sue social media companies with more than 50 million users in the United States if they believe they were unfairly banned or censored. The law also requires tech companies, including Facebook and Google's YouTube, to build a complaint system.

so that people can challenge decisions to remove or flag illegal activity. Florida last year passed a similar social media law, which was blocked from taking effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit heard the state's appeal last month, but has not ruled. Legal experts and tech groups have largely argued that such laws run afoul of the First Amendment. They also warned that they could make it more difficult for companies to remove harmful and hateful content, end quote. When it comes to speech rights on the internet, I've long trusted Mike Maznick's takes in tech dirt, and of this law, Mike says it is, in his opinion, clearly unconstitutional and would also force social media services to allow a torrent of spam or else face a deluge of frivolous litigation.

Quoting from Mike's essay on this. Let me tell you something about aggrieved users. They always insist that any moderation, no matter how reasonable, is because of their viewpoint. Always. And it is especially true of malicious actors and trolls who are in the game of. trolling just to annoy in the first place. If they can take that up a notch and drag companies into court as well, I mean, the only thing stopping them will be the cost, but you already know that a cottage industry is going to pop up of lawyers who will file these cases. I wouldn't even be surprised if cases

started getting filed today. And as Ken notes in his thread, the law seems deliberately designed to force as much frivolous litigation on these companies as possible. It says that even if one local court has rejected these lawsuits or blocked the Attorney General from enforcing the law, you can still sue in other districts. In other words, keep on forum shopping. Also, it has a non-mutual claim and issue preclusion, meaning that even if a court says that these claims are bogus, each new claim must be judged anew. Again, this seems uniquely designed to force these companies into court over and over and over again. Making it even more fun, the law forbids any waivers, so social media companies can't just put a new thing in their terms of service saying that you waive your rights

to bring a claim under this law, they really, really, really just want to flood every major social media website with a ton of purely frivolous and vexatious litigation. The party that used to decry trial lawyers just made sure that Texas has full employment for trial lawyers. And that's not all. Remember, last week when I was joking about how Republicans wanted to make sure your inboxes were filled with spam, I had forgotten about the provision in this law that makes a lot of spam filtering a violation of the law. I only wish I was joking. For unclear reasons, the law also amends Texas's existing anti-spam law. There are many more problems with this law, but I am perplexed at how anyone could possibly think this is either workable or constitutional.

It's neither. The only proper thing to do would be to shut down in Texas, but again, the law treats that as a violation itself. What an utter monstrosity. And yes, I know. Very, very clueless people here will comment here about how we're just mad that we can't censor people anymore, even though it's got nothing to do with me or censoring. But can you at least try to address some of the points raised above and explain how any of these services can actually operate without getting sued out of existence or allowing all garbage all the time to fill their sights, end quote. If you want to hear me on another podcast, expand and expound upon my ideas of entrepreneurship, I encourage you to seek out the most recent episode of the Founders Forge podcast.

The gang there answered my bat signal when I said I should probably go on more podcasts, and theirs is a great one. They focus on the struggles and triumphs of early stage founding, which I, of course, had some things to say about that. So search for the Founders Forge right now in your podcast app and listen to the most recent episode. And look, folks are continuing to report troubles with the ad-free feed of this show from Glow FM. You might recall that I couldn't post the Glow FM for a whole about 72 hours. Couldn't even log in at all for an entire day. They gaslit me several times and told me everything was fixed when it was not.

And even though it looks like everything is working on my end now, folks are still complaining of missing episodes. I'm sorry, but again, this is out of my hands. I would consider signing up for the working ad-free feed at tech.com. But please don't do so until you can confirm your subscription at glow.fm is canceled first. Ugh. Talk to you tomorrow.