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If Congress wants to write laws that effectively regulate companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, it needs to change the ways it interacts with those companies, because these hearings ain’t it. They’re a waste of everyone’s time, and no one is even pretending otherwise. To truly put Big Tech on the spot, future hearings need to do — at the very least — these three things.

Change the format

Five minutes of free-form questioning by 60 or 70 representatives sequentially is the current format for House hearings, and it’s a disaster — especially on Zoom or Bluejeans or whatever Congress uses.

Over and over again we get representatives who spend three-fourths of their time on de facto opening statements that are as likely as not to be pandering bloviations redundant with what’s already been said. Once that’s finished, the short remaining time forces them to require yes or no answers to poorly posed questions about complex topics.

Because there’s nothing compelling these CEOs to actually respond with yes or no, they always, always respond with a longer answer. Have done for years, yet representatives still complain about it, even when their questions can’t conceivably be answered with a yes or no without over-committing or self-incrimination.

When you ask, and this was an actual question, “Do you think the law should allow you to be the arbiters of truth, as they have under section 230?” — you cannot seriously expect a yes or no answer. It’s the tech equivalent of “Have you stopped beating your dog?”

Faced with pointless or impossible questions, Zuckerberg maintained a sort of perpetually aggrieved countenance, looking more like the dog than the beater. Pichai tuned out, missing questions or offering obvious platitudes when called on. Dorsey, plainly bored, tweeted his way through the hearing and answered in monosyllables even when it was not required of him.

As irritating as this political theater is to watch, it must surely be more so to take part in. Seeing that nothing worthwhile can be said or done in these five-minute abuse sessions, the highly visible chief goal of the CEOs is to run out the clock — safe and incredibly easy to do. Sometimes they appeared to be barely paying attention, secure in the knowledge that they can respond “these are nuanced issues… we take this very seriously, Congresswo—” before being cut off. Begging off based on being “unsure about the exact details” and saying you’ll follow up is another zero-commitment option.

The format needs to be changed to allow for substantive discussion, firstly by extending each member’s questioning time limit to eight or 10 minutes at least; secondly, by providing some kind of guideline for answering, for instance guaranteeing 10 seconds but silencing them after 30. So much is lost to crosstalk in these video hearings that ultimately it’s better to allow a bad answer to go for 20 seconds than to object to it for 25.

It may also pay to limit the participants, allowing the leaders of the Committee to allocate time as they see fit to a smaller number of representatives who have more than boilerplate outrage to put on the record. How exactly this could be accomplished is probably subject to a raft of rules and procedural things, but seriously, there’s no point in having most of these people involved. Keep it fair, keep it bipartisan and let each party either exclude its cranks or own them.

Real consequences or legally extracted promises need to exist as well. One questioner brought up an independent audit Jack Dorsey promised — on the record, to Congress — in 2018. It never took place, with Dorsey saying they decided to do something else instead. So it wasn’t a promise, it wasn’t a requirement and there was no legal compulsion to do anything at all. Why even bother asking if all you’re doing is asking for a favor? Lawmakers need bite to back up their bark, and if that doesn’t exist, they should refrain from barking so much.

Have a real agenda

If the format changes, the agenda needs to as well. Because if we simply allow these clueless lawmakers more time to read their scripts, the scripts will, like legislative goldfish, expand to fill the time allotted to them.

We’ve seen hearings that have made a difference, usually because the people involved have evidence to present and arguments to accompany it. Vice President Kamala Harris was great at this, having a background as a prosecutor — she made it pretty hot for Zuckerberg back in 2018. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and David Cicilline (D-RI) made Jeff Bezos look like he was either ignorant or had something to hide last year by confronting him with incriminating testimony and requiring a real answer.

Unfortunately, we can’t trust our legislators to be informed (or truthful) on these issues or really to even care. Most of the time their questions come off like something anyone could throw together an hour before the hearing with some quick background searches. Some of it (like hammering on the long-settled NY Post/Hunter Biden debacle) is so out of date that it proves beyond a doubt that the questioner had no intention of addressing the issues ostensibly at hand. Why let them waste everyone’s time on irrelevant topics?

Subpoena power comes with its own problems — no one wants to fight a court battle every time they want to ask a few questions — but if Congress is not going to use the tools available to it in the pursuit of legislating these issues, what exactly do they bring to the table?

If hearings don’t have a driving force behind them, such as an event, investigation or document release, they are almost by definition just a way for representatives to generate sound bites and appear concerned to their constituency. Today’s event is very much an example of this.

Bring in principals, not figureheads

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens during a joint hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg took personal responsibility Tuesday for the leak of data on tens of millions of its users, while warning of an “arms race” against Russian disinformation during a high stakes face-to-face with US lawmakers. (Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are very smart. Very well-informed. Very important. But their roles as figureheads as well as decisionmakers in their companies and industries makes it nearly impossible for them to say anything that hasn’t been drafted and cleared ahead of time, and they are also free to not remember or defer to an absent colleague.

There’s no blood to squeeze from these stones, so invite someone else. This was a hearing about disinformation — these companies have people making everyday decisions and directly overseeing projects on that topic. They should be the ones being asked to answer Congress’s questions.

It’s conceivable, if almost certainly untrue, that Zuckerberg “doesn’t recall” conversations about hiding abuse of Facebook data from users. Getting him to take that position is a victory of a sort, but it would be better to have the person whose responsibility this actually was, someone who can’t take refuge in hysterical ignorance.

Certainly these VPs and heads of what have you would also be media trained and prepped with canned statements, but it’s better than the alternative. These CEOs are Teflon-coated and this isn’t their first time in front of the shouting squad. They no longer care about anything but keeping the hearings as boring as possible and avoiding a news cycle. (Dorsey’s weird clock was a great blow-off valve for this. Pichai’s aggressively ordinary background gave you nothing to focus on but his answers — wrong play. And Zuckerberg’s high-quality camera setup only made him look more damp and robotic.)

Every time one of these hearings takes place, the overwhelming impression one gets from them is of a lost opportunity. Here are elected lawmakers given a chance to speak directly to some of the most powerful people in the tech industry, and perhaps nine out of 10 use that time to retread old topics, thrust dubious information into the record, or simply relish their chance to push around someone like Mark Zuckerberg. The temptation is understandable but legislators must put the country first.

Though some representatives raised important issues today, the format prevented them from extracting substantive answers; the lack of a cohesive agenda or central documents meant they had no compelling evidence to put forth; the subjects of their questioning were bored and had no reason to say anything beyond what they put in their carefully prepared opening statements. If future hearings — concerning this or other industries — don’t change things up, no one should be surprised if they, like this one, yield nothing but hot air.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey got called out by Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) for tweeting during today’s congressional hearing on disinformation and extremism. The tech exec’s tweet was likely expressing frustration with the format of the hearing, which once again saw the tech CEOs forced to boil down their answers to complicated questions into simple “yes” or “no” answers — or otherwise be cut off from responding. Cryptically, Dorsey this afternoon tweeted out a Twitter poll with just one question: “?” that had only two answers to choose from: either a “Yes” or “No.”

His post — or social commentary, if you will — did not go unnoticed.

Before Rice moved into her line of questioning, which focused on platforms’ ability to radicalize U.S. veterans’ and military service members, she asked the Twitter CEO about his tweet.

“Mr. Dorsey, what is winning — yes or no — on your Twitter account…poll?,” asked Rice, who sat in front of colorful wallpaper covered with flowers, butterflies, bugs and maybe snakes (??), which we agree was one of the better web conferencing backgrounds of the day — perhaps even besting Dorsey’s decision to zoom from his kitchen with a cleverly placed blockchain clock behind him. (Because of course it’s a blockchain clock. Of course.)

“Yes,” Dorsey answered simply, in same monotone he used throughout the hearing, which tends to give the impression of someone who just can’t get worked up over yet another congressional dog-and-pony show.

“Hmmm,” Rice admonished.

“Your multitasking skills are quite impressive,” she snarked, in a tone that did not seem to indicate she was actually impressed.

In case you’re wondering, “Yes” was winning then and continues to win now, with 65.7% of the 65,626 total votes so far, compared with the just 34.3% who voted “No,” as of the time of writing.

Perhaps there’s some optimism left for social media after all?

Matt Salzberg, who co-founded and served as CEO of meal kit startup Blue Apron until 2017, is back in the startup business with a new venture studio called Material.

Along with Salzberg, Material is led by partners Andy Salamon (formerly a general partner at Atomic Labs who backed Hims and Terminal) and Danielle David Parks (co-founder of Jane Strategy). The studio has been operating for the past year and just closed its first $25 million fund.

Salzberg told me that Material will have “a very slow and deliberate approach to company creation.” That means deeply researching an industry (“We do more private-equity-style due diligence than venture-capital-style diligence”), identifying an opportunity and recruiting an executive to found the company alongside the Material team.

“We act as their co-founders, literally, whether with respect to talent and recruiting or resources at our fund, we help very much with investor connections, we help with strategy, we help with relationships,” he said. “We let the co-founding CEOs handle the day-to-day decisions and as they bring in outside capital in future rounds, we transition into being more like board members.”

Salzberg added that his goal “isn’t to be a factory that churns out five companies a year, six or seven companies a year,” he said. And instead of being slightly involved in a lot of companies,”We like to have a lot to do with very few companies.”

Specifically, the Material team plans to launch two new startups every year. For the most part, Salzberg said the ideas for these companies will “almost always” originate within Material, because the goal is to start the companies “from scratch” rather than make seed investments. He admitted that this approach allows him to “derive personal satisfaction” from the process, but he argued that it’s financially sound as well.

“It’s also the right investment strategy to create great risk-adjusted returns,” he said. “We de-risk the startup process with better vetted ideas, more experienced founders and we’re giving them a good amount of capital, $2 million to $4 million, from day one.”

Startups launched from Material include delivery-focused restaurant startup Kitchen to Kitchen (led by former FreshDirect CEO Dean Furbish), an Amazon brand acquirer called Suma Brands (led by former Dolls Kill COO Andrew Savage) and a sales startup that’s still in stealth mode.

New Material startups could be in any industry, but Salzberg said the team is particularly interested in e-commerce (not too surprising, given his background and Salamon’s) and the future of work.

It might seem like everyone and their mom is selling a non-fungible token (NFT) these days, but Pussy Riot co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova is one of the few strategizing beyond the hype cycle.

“I’ve been using cryptocurrency before this,” Tolokonnikova told TechCrunch, noting Pussy Riot members have been interested in blockchain technology since around 2015. “Masha [Alyokhina, Pussy Riot co-founder] had problems with her bank accounts. Whenever she would open one, the government would shut it down because she would use some of her money for protestors. Right now she can’t even have her own credit card.”

Now Tolokonnikova is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ether this month by dropping a four-part series of NFTs for the group’s newest music video, “Panic Attack.” She says these profits will be donated to a clandestine women’s shelter in Eastern Europe, which caters to women who violated social norms.

“Women in this region are still being treated as property. There’s a stigma. A lot of these women are queer or did something like smile at a stranger, things that are associated with shame on the whole family. If we publicized the location of this shelter, it would motivate people to find the shelter and try to destroy it,” Tolokonnikova said. “As an activist, it’s really exciting to see a tool that’s not controlled by any government.”

It might be easy to dismiss this NFT initiative as a publicity stunt for Pussy Riot’s first studio album, “Rage,” scheduled for release in May. Plus, the NFT platform the group is using, Foundation, could censor the group and make it difficult for buyers to view or trade NFTs. Crypto collectibles, and any corresponding cryptocurrency earnings, are only censorship resistant when held in a creator’s personal wallet, not on a private company’s platform.

On the other hand, Tolokonnikova said her “interest in the technology is long-lasting,” and that she’s already exploring ways to utilize crypto tools to subvert sexist power structures. In addition to donating cryptocurrency to activists, Pussy Riot is also sponsoring an NFT scholarship program to cover the Ethereum transaction fees for feminist artists.

“Right now it’s now only for activists and political art works,” she said. “It’s also about educating the Pussy Riot community … we are looking at ways to make NFTs more accessible at a lower price point.”

Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot performs in Birmingham, Alabama. Image Credits: David A. Smith/Getty Images)

In the meantime, the group is working on collaborations with other NFT artists like Viktoria Modesta, known for avant-garde fashions for people with disabilities. From Tolokonnikova’s perspective, NFTs offer a way for women artists to gain recognition from the traditional art world. She said that because Pussy Riot focused on performance art and digital art, traditional galleries and collectors rarely took her work seriously. Now, with crypto collectibles, museums and galleries are taking note.

“That is a game-changing dynamic for so many artists who, for the first time in their careers, will be recognized as artists,” Tolokonnikova said. “Before, as part of Pussy Riot, I would use speaking fees or other types of event fees and use that to fund the performance art. I was never paid for the art directly. Now I’m focused on these NFT drops and I’m treating it really seriously.”

While many of the NFT boom’s breakaway stars are white men with traditional credentials and years of professional experience, like Beeple and Trevor Jones, women like Tolokonnikova are a fast-growing segment of the crypto ecosystem. Crypto exchange surveys show women make up roughly 15% to 50% percent of tallied users, depending on the region. Organizations like Metapurse, She256 and Meta Gamma Delta offer some mentorship and funding opportunities for women, as well.

“Metapurse is already doing some of this work, but we want to make our own tiny steps to bring more female and queer artists in the space,” Tolokonnikova concluded. “I think it provides amazing tools for the business of the creators’ market. It’s more than just for art. It enhances a creator’s power.”

Electric vehicle manufacturers are pushing back against a decision to delay penalty increases for automakers who fail to meet fuel efficiency standards.

A lobbying group representing legacy automakers – many of whom are now making substantial investments in zero-emissions vehicles – said the increase would have a significant economic impact during a time when the industry is facing mass disruption from the COVID pandemic. But new EV entrants say the penalty mechanism is a powerful performance incentive to decrease tailpipe emissions and encourage investment in lower- or zero-emissions technology.  

The decision, issued in January by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), postpones imposing a penalty increase from the beginning of model year 2019 to model year 2022. Tesla is petitioning the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to review the ruling, saying that the delay “inflicts ongoing, irreparable injury” on the company and creates an “uneven playing field” by reducing the consequences of non-adherence.

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) penalty has been increased just once – from $5 to $5.50 for every 0.1 mile per gallon that doesn’t meet the standard – since its instatement in 1975. Congress acted to rectify the effects of inflation on the penalty by raising it to $14 in 2015, but NHTSA and the courts have ping-ponged about the increase ever since. A decision from the Second Circuit last August seemed to settle the issue in favor of instating the higher penalty starting with model year 2019, but automakers last October successfully petitioned that the increase be delayed.

The CAFE penalty can be a huge boon for zero emissions automakers, who receive credits that they can then sell to other OEMs who fail to meet the fuel efficiency target. In a recent report to regulators, Tesla said it earned $1.58 billion from selling regulatory credits to other automakers in 2020, up from $594 million in 2019. Delaying the increase harms companies that have made economic decisions on the basis of an increase to the credit, Tesla said.  

EV start-ups Rivian and Lucid Motors told TechCrunch they also oppose any delay to increasing the CAFE penalty.

“The credit market is very beneficial for the entire EV industry, so every company that is looking to start building EVs, either as a startup or the existing manufacturers, when they build EVs it’s to their benefit to have robust credits,” Kevin Vincent, Lucid Motor’s Associate General Counsel, told TechCrunch. “A lot of existing manufacturers end up selling credits themselves, so it benefits the forward-thinking companies that are improving fuel economy.”

James Chen, Rivian’s VP of Public Policy and Chief Regulatory Counsel, said in a statement to TechCrunch that any rollback of the CAFE or other emission standard “only sets the U.S. backwards in terms of emission reductions ([greenhouse gas] and criteria pollutants), increased fuel efficiency, reduction of dependence on foreign oil, technology leadership and EV proliferation.” He added that the company “strongly supports efforts to bolster EV adoption that includes more stringent emission standards and higher penalties for failure to meet those standards.”

NHTSA postponed the increase on the grounds that the penalty should not be retroactively applied to model years that had already been manufactured. As manufacturers have no way to increase the fuel economy level in these vehicles, “it would be inappropriate to apply the adjustment to model years that could have no deterrence effect and promote no additional compliance with the law,” NHTSA said.

Automakers, in a petition filed by the lobbying group Alliance for Automotive Innovation and in supplemental comments, also cited economic hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mercedes-Benz told NHTSA that the pandemic caused disruptions to its supply chain, workforce and production.

“We believe that retroactively applying an increased penalty rate in such a tenuous financial climate is unconscionable and inconsistent with this Administration’s efforts to promote regulatory relief in light of the economic consequences of COVID-19,” the automaker said.

Tesla maintained in its court filing that relying on the COVID pandemic “falls flat” in the absence of specific evidence as to why it warrants the delay.  

Attorney generals from 16 states, including California and New York, as well as environmental groups Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have also objected to the delay.

The NHTSA decision was issued in docket no. NHTSA-2021-0001. Tesla filed with the second circuit under case no. 21-593.