The Brief

Like most kids, Aahil Valliani has been frustrated by the filters that his school uses to block inappropriate websites. Often, he has no idea why certain sites are blocked, especially when his web browsing is tied to his schoolwork.

Many students in this situation find a way around their districts’ web filters. They access the internet on their phones instead, or use proxy servers or virtual private networks to essentially access a different, unfiltered internet. Aahil, searching for a more systemic solution, teamed up with his younger brother and father to start a company called Safe Kids, raise almost $2 million in venture funding, and design a better filter.

As The Markup, which is part of CalMatters, reported in April, almost all schools filter the web to comply with the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act and qualify for discounted internet access, among other things. Most schools The Markup examined used filters that sort all websites into categories and block entire categories at once. Others scan webpages for certain off-limits keywords, blocking websites on which they appear regardless of the context. In both cases, the filters are blunt tools that result in overblocking and sometimes keep kids from information about politicized topics like sex education and LGBTQ resources.

Aahil, now 17, points out that schools’ overly strict controls disappear as soon as kids graduate. “That’s a recipe for disaster,” he said. Kids, he contends, need to learn how to make good choices about how to use the internet safely when trusted adults are nearby so they are ready to make good decisions on their own later.

The Safe Kids filter turns web blocking into a teachable moment, explaining why sites are blocked and nudging students to stay away from them of their own accord. It uses artificial intelligence to assess the intent of a student’s search, reducing the number of blocks students see while conducting legitimate academic research. One example: if a student searches for Civil War rifles for a class assignment, Safe Kids would allow it. If a student tries to shop for an AK-47, it wouldn’t. Other filters would block both.

The filter also keeps student browsing data private, storing only categories of websites accessed, not URLs or search terms themselves. And it works through a Chrome browser extension, which means students can’t simply get around it with a proxy server or VPN while using that browser.

Safe Kids got its start during the early COVID-19 lockdowns. Sitting around the dinner table with his father, a tech entrepreneur; his mother, a self-employed fashion designer; and his younger brother Zohran, a budding computer scientist, Aahil got his family to strategize how to help all the kids getting sucked into dark corners of the web and battling the mental health consequences of their internet use.

Their idea, building off of the invasive and ineffective filters the brothers saw in school, essentially puts better training wheels on the internet. Aahil said his father did a bit of hand-holding in these early days, helping find board members and angel investors, as well as the data scientists who would train the AI machine learning model behind the filter and psychologists who could craft and test the filter’s hallmark pop-ups directing students toward more appropriate browsing. The company also spent time and money getting their designs patented. Aahil has three patents under his name and Safe Kids has five.

As Aahil and his family were preparing to chase seed funding for Safe Kids, the ACLU of Northern California was demanding the Fresno Unified School District stop using a product called Gaggle, which districts use to monitor students’ internet use, block potentially harmful content, and step in if student browsing patterns indicate they may need mental health supports. The problem, according to ACLU attorneys, was that Gaggle amounted to intrusive surveillance, trampling on students’ privacy and free speech rights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation levied similar accusations against another web filter called GoGuardian after getting records from 10 school districts, including three in California, that revealed the extent of the software’s blocking, tracking and flagging of student internet use during the 2022-23 school year, when Aahil was piloting Safe Kids. Jason Kelley, a lead researcher on EFF’s GoGuardian investigation, The Red Flag Machine, looked into Safe Kids in response to an inquiry by The Markup. Accustomed to pointing out how bad filters are, he offered surprised praise for Safe Kids, commending its focus on privacy, its open source code that offers transparency about its model, and its context-specific blocking.

“This is, really, I think, an improved option for all the things that we are generally concerned about,” Kelley said.

So far, Safe Kids has not been able to break into the school market. Still, Aahil hopes to one day sign a contract with a school district, and he is marketing to parents in the meantime, offering them a way to put guardrails on their kids’ home internet use. While Safe Kids started out charging for its filter, Aahil said an open source, free version will be released next month.

One of the company patents is for a “pause, reflect, and redirect” method that leans on child psychology to teach kids healthy browsing habits when they try to access an inappropriate website.

“When kids go to a site the first time, we consider that a mistake,” Aahil said. “We tell kids why it’s not good for them and kids can make a choice.”

For example, if a student tries to play games during a lesson, a pop-up would say, “This isn’t schoolwork, is it?” Students can click a “take me back” button or “tell me more” link to get more information about why a given site is blocked. When students repeatedly try to access inappropriate content, their browsing is further restricted until they address the issue with an adult. If that content indicates a student might be in crisis, the user is advised to get help from an adult, and in a school setting, a staff member would get an automated alert.

The teen expects to keep building the company, even as he shifts his focus to college admissions this fall. A rising senior at the selective Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the nation’s best public high schools, Aahil plans to major in business or economics and make a career out of entrepreneurship.

Safe Kids stands out in a web filtering market where products’ blunt restrictions on the web have barely become more sophisticated over the last 25 years.

Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility LLC, has worked on issues of youth online safety since the mid-1990s. She submitted testimony for the congressional hearings that resulted in passage of the Children’s Internet Protection Act in 2000 and describes the filtering company representatives that showed up as snake oil salesmen, selling a technology that addresses a symptom, not the root of a problem.

“We need to prepare kids to manage themselves,” Willard said. When traditional filters block certain websites with no explanation, kids don’t learn anything, and they’re often tempted to just circumvent the software.

“This approach helps increase student understanding, and hopefully there’s a way also in the instructional aspects (to increase) their skills,” she said about Safe Kids.

Students on Chromebooks in particular can’t circumvent Safe Kids and its design aims to keep them from wanting to. Now Aahil and his family just need to find buyers.

Kelley said he’s not surprised Safe Kids hasn’t been able to yet, given the “hardening” of school security and student safety efforts over the last decade. “We’ve gone from having cameras and some pretty standard filters to having metal detectors, and locked doors, and biometrics, and vape detectors in the bathrooms, and these much more strict filters and content moderating control software,” he said, “and all this is hard to undo.”

On Friday, Southern California Edison filed lawsuits against Los Angeles County and several other agencies over their alleged roles in the Eaton Fire.

Two lawsuits were filed.

In one suit, the utility company alleges Southern California Gas delayed shutting off gas in the burn area for several days after the fire, making the blaze worse.

“SoCalGas’ design and actions caused gas leaks, gas fires, reignition of fires, gas explosions and secondary ignitions during the critical early stages of the Eaton Fire,” according to the suit.

The claim goes on to say this contributed to the spread of the fire and made firefighting and evacuation efforts more difficult.

In the second suit, the utility company alleges the Eaton Fire was made worse by the local government response, “including due to the failures of LASD, LACoFD, OEM and GENASYS in issuing timely evacuation alerts and notifications,” the claim reads.

The same filing says L.A. County was to blame for vegetation and overgrown brush in the Eaton Canyon area that fueled the blaze.

It also named the city of Pasadena and its utility system, Pasadena Water and Power, the city of Sierra Madre, Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Cañon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company and Lincoln Avenue Water Company as parties responsible for water systems running dry in Altadena as the fire broke out.

Edison says hydrants running dry compounded the extent of the disaster.

Those claims will be heard in the L.A. County Superior Court, which is also handling L.A. County’s lawsuit against SoCal Edison.

Edison itself is the subject of hundreds of lawsuits from survivors of the Eaton Fire, which could cost the company billions of dollars in settlements.

Edison has said its equipment likely sparked the Eaton Fire and filed these suits, in part, because it believes these various entities should share some of the blame for the disaster, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of buildings and the deaths of 19 people.

A compensation program Edison established for fire survivors who forgo suing the company has made settlement offers to more than 80 of those who applied.

A new organization is taking over production of the MLK Day Parade, almost 40 years after the first parade was held in South L.A. to commemorate the civil rights leader.

Bakewell Media, publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper (a partner of The LA Local), was granted the permit in September to organize the parade for the first time by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Formerly called the Kingdom Day Parade, the parade has been rebranded as the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade. The parade was previously produced and organized by Adrian Dove and the L.A. chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality California (CORE-CA).

With less than a week before the parade kicks off, LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters sat down with Danny Bakewell Jr., president and executive editor of the LA Sentinel, to discuss the details and what attendees should expect.

This Jan. 12 interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you decide to produce the MLK Day Parade this year?

Bakewell: It all started because Adrian Dove, who was the previous promoter, had announced that he was retiring. When he announced he was retiring, LAPD, city council offices and other people said, “Hey, we still want to do the MLK Day parade. Would you guys be interested? You have the infrastructure to put it together.” And we said yes.

What’s different about this year’s production?

We’re going to start the parade with a singer performing “Lift Every Voice.” We’re going to play the message from Bernice King at the start of the show. Obviously, we have Cedric the Entertainer as our grand marshal to add the entertainment value, but the community has always been and will continue to be a major part of this parade.

Is ABC 7 covering the parade this year? 

It’s still going to be televised by ABC. We’re working diligently on how the show is going to be, but ABC has been a great partner.

What was the preparation for this parade?

Thanks to our corporate sponsors, we have a number of bands. The truth is, particularly in LAUSD at this time, and other school districts, they don’t have the funding to just get a bus and get here. I can’t say enough about Airbnb to Bank of America, all of our corporate sponsors, who are supporting all of the youth organizations.

Were there any unexpected challenges while preparing for this parade? 

This [The LA Sentinel office on Crenshaw Blvd.] is usually our command center during The Taste of Soul. It dawned on me last week that we’re going to be a mile away [from the parade route]. So, we made the decision to bring in a trailer to be our office at the corner of King and Crenshaw boulevards.

Any special guests this year besides the grand marshal?

I’m working on a surprise guest to be the singer for the national anthem. No matter what, we will give tribute to the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice” as loud as we can next Monday.

What’s the long-term vision for this parade, if Bakewell Media continues to produce it?

We see the MLK Day Parade, and we want the world to see and expect to see this parade, the same way they see the Macy’s Parade, the Hollywood Parade or the Rose Parade. BET has come in this year as a partner. So there’s an opportunity to possibly do a national broadcast on BET. Not that we would lose our local television, but we see this as a major parade in this community and in the national African American community, celebrating the great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, we are very excited.

Bits of conversation drift out of Aladdin Used Books as people lined up at the register with stacks of books.

The bustle of activity is bittersweet as the Koreatown bookstore will close its doors at the end of January after 13 years in the neighborhood.

Jina Lee, store manager, said declining sales at the Koreatown branch led to the decision to close the store. In recent years, staffing at the 5,000-square-foot store on the third floor of Madang Mall dropped from six to two, Lee said.

“This was a happy place for everyone,” she said, “but we were struggling.”

On a recent January afternoon, the shop looked lively as customers took advantage of the clearance sale on Korean and English books, CDs, DVDs and other media.

Koreatown resident Jin Lee wishes he visited the bookstore more often.

“It would have been great if it had been this crowded all the time,” Lee said. “But nowadays, people don’t read paper books and prefer devices, so it’s hard for all bookstores.”

Some customers traveled from as far as Orange County and the Inland Empire to visit one last time.

Minjung Kim, who moved from Koreatown to Fullerton five years ago, still made trips to the bookstore after she moved away.

“It’s the only place that sells this many new and used Korean books,” she said.

Each visit to the bookstore was important to David Artiga of Pomona, because it gave him a chance to connect with friends over literature.

“I feel like this is really negative for the community,” he said. “The importance of having a well-versed society, keeping in touch with literature and art is so important. And now this place is just going to be gone.”

South Korea-based Aladdin Used Books opened its first U.S. brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles in 2013. The store carries around 50,000 new and used books, with a majority in Korean.

Customers will still be able to order books through Aladdin’s website after the store closes.

Ken Derick, a Koreatown resident, walked around the store aisles with a stack of books.

“It’s like we’re kind of moving towards a new technology, like everything’s virtual and online,” he said.

Longtime customer Anthony Kim said he’s enjoyed looking for gems in the English-language shelves.

“My Korean ability is rather limited but I’ve always enjoyed browsing their English language sections,” he said. “And now that I have a niece and nephew, their children’s book section has always been a great place to pick up new books for them.”

Valerie Laguna perused the shop’s CD section, a bygone experience in the era of streaming.

“I really like their CD collection and their literature collection they have in English,” she said.

“I was so sad about it, I immediately texted my friend,” she said. “I’ve gotten so many of my favorite books and my favorite CDs from this place. I feel like losing a place like this is just so sad and makes a huge dent in the community and culture.”

Less than a mile away on Western Avenue, Happy Bookstore owner Jung Jae-seung said it has been difficult for bookstores for some time now. His Korean-language bookstore is also struggling in an era when so many people have abandoned print media.

“It’s really about how long printed books can survive,” Jung said. “From that point of view, it’s hard to be optimistic.”

South L.A. or South Central? More than 20 years ago, that question came with high emotions for some residents who were sick of the stereotypes they saw in media coverage of their neighborhoods.

So in 2003, the Los Angeles City Council renamed the collection of communities south of the 10 freeway in an attempt to cut ties with the connotations of poverty and crime that some believe came to represent South Central after the turbulence of the 1980s and ‘90s. Today, you see South L.A. on official documents, maps and even historical and cultural districts.

Even though city officials moved to wipe away the old name, some locals never stopped calling the area South Central — a name that for them represents history, resilience and Black and Latino culture.

“I think it will always be South Central for its residents and for the people that were born and raised here,” said Evelyn Alfaro-Macias, a social worker who was raised in Historic South Central and whose office is on Hoover Street. “It means home. It means culture. People should respect the name South Central.”

What and where is South LA, anyway?

By the early 2000s, television news and pop culture had given South Central a reputation for violence and chaos that some were eager to shake.

Helen Johnson, a resident of Vermont Square, helped lead the campaign to change the name.

“I think the media can make you or either break you,” 72-year-old Johnson told reporters in 2003 after the city council approved the name change, according to the L.A. Times. “This is what you’ve done to us. You’ve broke us.”

Supporters of the change included then-Councilmember Janice Hahn, who is now a county supervisor and said at the time that the South Central name had become “mostly derogatory.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who was working then as executive director of the nonprofit Community Coalition, said the area’s image problem wasn’t just about its name.

“If the media paid a little more attention to covering positive things in the community, that will also help,” Bass said, according to an L.A. Times report.

The LA Local has reached out Bass and Hahn’s offices, as well as L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

The exact borders of South Los Angeles, or the area formerly known as South Central, are fuzzy.

The South Central name originally only applied to the neighborhood around Central Avenue south of downtown Los Angeles, but it spread west as populations grew.

City planning documents today designate a strip of neighborhoods between Interstate 110 and Arlington Avenue as South Los Angeles and tag the Central Avenue neighborhood as Historic South Central. Others, including academics and the city tourism board, use a map of South Los Angeles that stretches to the border of Culver City.

This is what the community told us

Some businesses in the area adopted the South L.A. name, notably South LA Cafe, the coffee shop that has grown to five locations and become a local institution.

More recently, some groups have made a concerted effort to embrace South Central, like the South Central Run Club or South Central Clips, an Instagram-based group that sells skatewear-inspired “South Central” apparel. (Even South LA Cafe today sells some merch with the South Central name.)

Several locals told The LA Local the official designation never changed anything for them.

“It’s South Central for me. That’s where my roots are,” April Brown said. “When you go anywhere across the country, across the world and you say South Central, they know exactly what you’re talking about.”

To Emily Amador, the name change erases the history of South Central, including “the Black migration that occurred, redlining that created what we know today to be South Central and the demographics, which are here today, which is Black and brown and undocumented.”

Ulysses Alfaro, who was born and raised in the Historic South Central neighborhood, said he uses South L.A. with people from out of town but South Central with locals.

South L.A. is a geographic designator, he said, but he considers South Central to be an identity: “That’s where the grinders are, the hard-working people that work their butts off, their asses off. The ones that keep the city running.”