SIO138: BJ Mendelson on Internet Privacy

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Thomas: Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. For $30 off your first week of HelloFresh, visit HelloFresh.com and enter promo code SeriousPod30.

0:00:38 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 138, I'm your host Thomas Smith, myth. Today I'm speaking with BJ Mendelson about online privacy, data, all kinds of cool stuff, and also he's got just a really interesting story, he went viral in 1998, didn't even know that was possible but he's gonna tell us about that, he also quickly amassed 1 million Twitter followers, for a weird reason, which you'll find out, but also it wasn't really quite what you would expect. Top of that he also has got some interesting insight into the darker side of some Silicon Valley origin stories. Seems like there's potentially a lot of whitewashing that goes on in the stories these companies tell about themselves.

0:01:26 Thomas: So lots to talk about. Then of course we also got to talk privacy, Cambridge Analytica, that kind of thing. With those teasers aside though, I want to tell you about something very important. I will be speaking to NOSHA, that's the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, and that's going to be on May 19th, coming right up. So if you're anywhere near the New Orleans area, please come out and see me or email me or something if you want to find out more, but you can go to nosha.info and that has more details. If you're anywhere near that area, I'd love to see you. I'm going to be giving a very, what I think is a very interesting talk about And I'm super excited, so that's nosha.info, n-o-s-h-a.in-f-o, please check it out if you're anywhere near. Let get over to my Conversation with BJ Mendelson. We'll be right back.

0:02:30 Thomas: BJ, how you doing?

0:02:31 BJ: I'm well. I'm fighting a cold so if you hear me snuffle or sniffle a little bit you'll know what that's from but otherwise I'm great.

0:02:37 Thomas: Yeah, that's podcasting for you. It's like half the time.

0:02:40 BJ: That's right.

0:02:42 Thomas: Well, you've got a book that I think right around this time after, you know, in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and just God knows how many other stories, you have a book called Social Media is Bullshit.

0:02:56 Thomas: So that's going to be very interesting to talk about. And then you've also got a new book in the works, is that right? Or you just published one? One.

0:03:04 BJ: So, I just published a new one called "Privacy and How We Get It Back," and the audio edition is called "The End of Privacy," and the reason for that is the audio addition has more dick jokes in it, and so I wanted to have like this clear line of demarcation. Okay, if you want like a quick serious read or somewhat serious, then you can get the imprint as "Privacy and How You Get It Back." And if you want the dick jokes, you can get on Audible, at "The End of Privacy."

0:03:29 Thomas: Awesome. So before we get to that, though, I'm curious what your background is. How did you become interested in this and what's your expertise?

0:03:36 BJ: So I tend to fall ass backwards into things. I had a comedy website in high school go viral back in like 1998 before going viral was like a thing. It

0:03:44 Thomas: Wow. Oh tell me about that. What did it mean to go viral at that time even?

0:03:48 BJ: Was kind of crazy because I didn't know It was originally just me and a friend of mine who I had to change his name in the book because he's a doctor now. He didn't want his patients to know that he and I had this comedy website.

0:03:57 Thomas: Wow.

0:04:04 BJ: It And for whatever reason, it just spread from the high school kids to their parents, to the local media, to like the largest surrounding media. So at that point, like the big radio station in my area was 92.7 WRRV and they were talking about us on their morning show. Yeah.

0:04:21 Thomas: That's funny.

0:04:22 BJ: So from there, just people start, you know, companies like Sears and Local Media Matter and Sprint and a few other ones just sort of came to me and said, hey, you seem to understand this Internet thing. How does it work? So uh yeah, I guess I just sort of made a career of doing that. I understood viral marketing without necessarily knowing what it was until much later, and uh I had that advantage of watching in 2008 all these people kind of come out of woodwork and explain the way social media works. I'm kind of like, uh, yo, that that's not how this stuff works at all. And so that's what the book was about. The book isn't saying, you know, the platforms are bad. The book is saying just, you know, you've got a lot of charlatans out there who are kind of peddling this bad advice in the in their own financial self-interest as opposed to actually helping people out.

0:04:43 Thomas: Wow. How Interesting. Yeah, I mean, there's so much of that self-help or, you know, manual on how to do X, how to be a podcaster, how the bit of it, and it's like, I think it's a good way to make $20, because it's it's just telling you a bunch of stuff you could figure out on Google in five seconds. And it's not necessarily like an actual in-depth anything, but but it has such a great feeling of like, well, I'm gonna start this project, okay, I'm going to buy the book, because that's what you got to do. But it's like so often they're they're bullshit, but in what way was social media bullshit back then, that you're, or what people's explanation of it, I guess?

0:05:26 BJ: Right. Yeah.

0:05:50 BJ: Back then they were convinced that the number of followers you had mattered. So I was lucky in that I was on Twitter as far back as 2007. So they used to promote my account. And through a crazy set of circumstances, I had applied to be a secretary at Twitter, didn't get the job, but then told them, hey, I'm going to go and do like this nationwide breast cancer awareness tour. You guys used to promo my account, could you promote it again? Again, so they rolled out this suggested user list and there was like twenty eight, thirty celebrities. And at the very bottom was me.

And so if you signed up for Twitter back then, they didn't give you a choice like you ought to follow all these people. So, yeah, at one point I had about a million followers. I was right behind Ashton Kutcher, Oprah and CNN, which was kind of crazy in its own right. Right. But even then, I kind of saw, OK, when I tweet something, people didn't necessarily act on it. So I'll give you a couple of examples. When I did the breast cancer tour, I teamed up with Dunkin' Donuts. And every time I would go to a Dunkin Donuts, they would tweet out and say, hey, Brandon, Amanda.

Amanda's my now ex-wife who was with me on the tour. They're going to be at the Dunkin'Donuts in Washington, D.C. by the Verizon Center. Come say hi. You could share their stories about breast cancer, what it means for your family, and what you want others to know. And nobody came out. And this is, you know, with close to a million followers, if not a million. And then later we did a fundraiser where we're like, all right, well, if like a fraction of these people donate money, then okay, we'll donate money to not-for-profits, they'll be fine. And uh, do you want

0:06:23 Thomas: Oh. Wow. Yeah.

0:07:28 BJ: To guess how much money we raised? Oh,

0:07:28 Thomas: Somewhere in the the neighborhood of zero?

0:07:33 BJ: Yeah, so you're the, so I've done this question on a lot of interviews, you were the closest. So the answer is one dollar, and uh the one dollar was from Amanda, bless her soul, uh, for donating. And so uh yeah, you know, I found really early on that there was something weird with what the social media marketers were saying, uh, and then by a twist of circumstances, this Marine Corps colonel calls me up after the tour is over, and he's like, hey, could you could you do that again for my not-for-profit, which is called Wounded Warrior Family Support. And uh, they're now on their seventh, I think it might might even be the eighth year of doing my tour, which is now called the High Five Tour.

And the reason why that was successful and the breast cancer tour wasn't was because I went back to what I know works. So I knew that, you know, it's all about PR. It's all about big visuals. So the colonel set like the world record for the most high fives given at the Philadelphia Independence Day Parade. And he was driving around this custom Shelby Mustang that people could come out and sign to thank the troops, and so that became a big success, and I realized then that

0:07:40 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Wow.

0:08:38 BJ: It can't just be me who has this story, like it has to be other people who tried what the Gary Vaynerchuks and Seth Godin's and Chris Bergen's and Guy Kawasaki's have said and found that it doesn't work the way that they say it does. And so I did a tremendous amount of research, as a quarter of the manuscript for Social Media is Bullshit it's all interviews and end notes, and that's what brought that book together. Oh.

0:09:02 Thomas: That's such an interesting story. So you really do have that experience from all the way back in 98 when I didn't even know you could go viral.

0:09:11 BJ: Yeah, I mean, that, you know, people forget, like, there was the Million Dollar Website, uh, where this kid was like selling little pixels for a dollar or whatever it was, when there was a million pixels, and he sold it out. Uh, he became like one of the web's earliest millionaires. And then Netscape is like an early example of something that was being given away for free, um, but it was also creeping on people, by the way. Like a lot of people don't know that that Netscape was one of first to like collect data on people and sell it. But but that's another example of something that went viral on the web back before we called it viral.

0:09:42 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. So I guess, do we want to transition over to what your focus is on now, now which is uh privacy and

0:09:49 BJ: Yeah, I mean, it's all the same, really. So just by way of background, I've written three books. The first one was Social Media is Bullshit. The second one was Ghostwritten for a Tech Company Executive. I don't know when or if that's ever coming out, but it was basically about how engineers in Silicon Valley, they cheat to become these multi-billion dollar success stories. Like, you know, Airbnb's story isn't what they tell you in the book that's about Airbnb. You know, they actually hired a noted spammer and spammed the shit out of people. And then not only did they do that, but they also found a way to more or less break Craigslist and kind of push in all these updates from their site and get the traffic coming back to them. So that's what that book was about.

And then the new one, or new, quote unquote, because I started in 2015, was about privacy and what's going on in the news right now is what I was talking about in the book. I couldn't have timed it any better. So what you hear about in the New is about these data breaches and why they happen, why Facebook takes advantage of you, and why people are reluctant to change. Those are all things that I talked about. So it's really one consistent theme throughout all the books.

0:09:50 Thomas: Yeah, okay, sure. Huh. Yeah.

0:10:58 Thomas: Definitely. Do you want to, I, I mean, I just assumed that Airbnb was a pretty good concept, and like I I have all kinds of friends who talk about using it and stuff, so in what way were they, what do you mean that they're not really what they're saying, or I guess I don't understand that part.

0:11:13 BJ: Sure. So it means definitely a great company. Full disclosure, you know, they wanted me to do consulting for them, so um, I know people there, and I'm not looking to bash employees, but they're, if you read any of the origin stories about Airbnb that's on the web or in the books, there's a bunch of books that have come out recently that's detailing like these unicorns and their stories, Airbnb was kind of like, oh, you know, we're scrappy upstart, uh, we were broke and we scrapped this money together, and we did publicity stunts, like, uh, I don't know if anyone, what remembers this, but during the 2008 election they had cereal boxes, and uh, one was like Captain McCain Crunch and the other was like Barack Obama Owes, uh, I don't, I don't know if that was the actual names, but that was like their big story was, we did this stunt, we were Air Bed and Breakfast, and people loved us because it is a good product.

I don't want to, I'm not disputing that, but they edited out this whole part about the CTO being a notorious spammer, and in fact being on a watch list of people who had broken spam laws, and, you know, were not supposed to be hired because there's some practice that they did. And one of the things they did early on to grow was basically spam the crap out of people, and that's also something that Facebook did too. Like it's not, this behavior isn't limited to

0:11:13 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:12:28 BJ: Airbnb. Uh, most of the quote-unquote unicorns that people talk about have all done stuff like this. You know, like, uh, my favorite part of the Facebook story that's not in A social Social Network is how they bought a overseas email scraper, and, you know, it was a company called Octazin that no one really knew about, and from there they just took all those emails and then spammed it. And I'd said, hey, you should go and check out Facebook. And, like, we never talk about that, but, uh, that's, that's what that book, that second ghost written book, was about. Airbnb is just one of the examples of that. Yeah.

0:13:00 Thomas: Okay, so it's not, it's, it's people trying, trying to get a start or get noticed or, get, you know, that first step of, of into the spotlight. It's not necessarily like the company, you're saying? Yeah.

0:13:13 BJ: It's, so what, how I, how I think it's framed in the book, and he's probably changed it since then, again, because I don't know, I, you know, I handed him the manuscripts. I don't know what happened after. But we were kind of saying, you know, it's not that these tactics are illegal, but they're kind of shady. And so we wanted to point them out because we wanted point out that there was a little bit of an ethics gap, which is something that I expand on in the next book, which has privacy and how we get it back. Because if you dangle a billion dollars in front of a bunch of 18, 19, 20 year olds, they're not going to think about your privacy.

0:13:44 Thomas: Right.

0:13:44 BJ: They're just going to say, how can I get that billion dollars, and how can, can I get more of it. And so at least sort of like ethics goes right out the window if it means collecting more and more of their data to turn that money into a profit. Sure.

0:13:56 Thomas: So, then, I, do you want to talk about Facebook? Because, I mean, that's what's it's been a, I guess it's probably been a month by now, but, uh, you know, uh, Zuckerberg testifying, I found highly frustrating. I don't know about you. I don't have, I don't have the background you have, but what was so frustrating is, I mean, a, he's a robot. I don't want to be racist toward robots, but he is Data from Star Trek.

0:14:00 BJ: Right. Right.

0:14:22 Thomas: I know it's bizarre.

0:14:18 BJ: He, really? Is I, I, that, was my favorite meme that came out of that, was the picture of him as Data.

0:14:26 Thomas: Data, but not as likable. Anyway, what me was it really made me notice, and this is more the political angle of it, and you can talk more about the data and the technical angle, but it really really made me, for one, notice how important it is, as if we shouldn't have known this already, but how important is it to elect good people and smart people and not just buy into bullshit, not just elect people that you want to have a beer with.

0:14:29 BJ: Right. Sure. Right.

0:14:52 Thomas: Elect someone who's going to do the research to actually ask a question that makes sense of this tech mogul who's got all of our data. The questions the senators were asking were like, so do I turn the router off and then on, or on and just what, somebody do some research or find a millennial or something to help you. But, uh, then the, the House actually, which was weird, the, the House of Representatives, they actually, I think they must have seen the bad news coverage that the Senate got, because they actually tried a little bit harder. So that

0:15:09 BJ: That's Right. They, Did, yeah.

0:15:26 Thomas: Was what I observed, uh, at least politically. Now, what, what about, what about the actual technical privacy stuff going on? Do you want to break down kind of what you think about all that? Hmm.

0:15:35 BJ: Well, So there's one thing I wanted to add on, on the political side, was I was in touch with Senator Grassley's office. I was touch with a number of the senators that were asking questions. Unfortunately, the information that comes into their offices about privacy is not great. I think that they, for whatever reason, just sort of went out there and winged it. But I did certainly try to get in touch with all of them and say, this is what's going on. Because that's why I did the privacy book. It's this small little thing, that just sort of quickly outlines what's going on. So, uh, there's that.

But the other issue that we, that we have, and more in the technical data side, is that Facebook and Google, and, you know, I don't want to just say Facebook, because it's all of them, and we're being honest, you know, it's Apple, it's Microsoft, it's Amazon, it's Twitter, it's Snapchat, uh, they make their money by presenting this stuff as magic. And so when you see Zuckerberg come up and ask these ridiculous questions, uh, he's, he's able to just sort of skirt away without there being any real consequences. And so what's frustrating to me is that the FTC did issue a dissent decree in 2011 that said, hey, Facebook, knock this shit off. We know what you're doing. Otherwise, we're going to fine you. And here we are in 2018 and no one, you know, they're still doing the same thing that they're doing. And in particular, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg saying, oh, you know, the company was started, uh, in, in my dorm room.

0:15:51 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:00 BJ: As if that somehow excused the behavior, I really bothered me, uh, because there's no secret to what Facebook is. Facebook is just a repository of your stuff, you know, and they create these privacy in terms of use policies that nobody reads. And in people's defense, those things are designed not to be read, you know, they're deliberately designed to be impenetrable so that you just sort of go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and click accept, and no one really knows what they're getting into. And so just, yeah, I think your point about not having a millennial president to grill them is really what bothered me most about that, because there's really nothing sophisticated about Facebook. It's just there's no teeth to the regulation in the United States. And even overseas, they found a loophole for the GDPR laws that are going to go into effect this month, where they now have all the European users as if they're managed by the the American side of the company, which, sure.

0:17:01 Thomas: Right. Okay.

0:17:55 Thomas: Can you explain the GD, whatever you just said, what is that? Okay.

0:17:59 BJ: So it's basically, it's their universal privacy law that governs, this is how your data is collected. This is what you must consent for.

0:18:03 Thomas: Is it more strict than here? Okay.

0:18:08 BJ: Yes, it is. It's absolutely more strict. You can be fined upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars for a data breach. You must give the user consent to opt in to the sort of data practices that Facebook has. So instead of just going into Facebook and having them do whatever, you actually have to say, that's my data, you can't have it anymore. And Facebook has to give you the right to delete it. It's called the right-to-be-forgotten. And so that's over in the European Union and over in Canada, they're starting to clone the GDPR legislation. Legislation. But here in the United States, because we have a system and, you know, it's not meant to be a political statement, but we have system that's always been geared more towards the wealthy as opposed to everyone else. So there's really no one at the wheel to say, all right, well, we want GDPR in the united states.

0:18:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:57 BJ: So every time that we we've talked about a data privacy bill rights, like under the Obama administration, the tech companies come in and just dump millions of dollars into lobbying. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are some of the biggest, and even Apple, are some the biggest lobbying firms, or lobbying companies in the country now, and people don't realize that. So our system is not really set up to provide that sort of control of your data. And so that's what the book is about. The book is just saying, this is what's going on. This is why this issue hasn't been fixed. And here's the three or four things you, you can do to fix it. Yeah.

0:19:06 Thomas: So, You're, you're saying your book is along the lines of the individual, okay, here, you know, don't rely on whatever the hell is happening in Congress, here's what you can do? And is it, I mean, is it, uh, more than just, uh, here's where you can turn your computer and your phone off. You know, is there, is there a way to, is there a way, salvage some sort of social media presence and experience without having your data compromised in, in, in the way that you're outlining?

0:19:39 BJ: So, I, So, Well, The short answer is no. Like, oh, it's General Data Protection Regulation, by the way, like for people that want to know what GDPR stands for. So, um, what I described in the book is it's like this sliding scale of privacy, right? So, uh, there's always gonna be people that are just gonna use Facebook to use Facebook and not care, and that's fine. But one of the things I propose is there's no reason why for eight dollars a month, nine dollars a mouth, you couldn't and have a version of Facebook that doesn't creep on you. There's no technological impediment for them to roll that out. In fact, Sheryl Sandberg, after those hearings were over, has started to say the only way to get your privacy protected is if you pay for it. So I think that they're starting to kind of pave the way towards, you're going to have to pay to not be creeped on. There's other things people could do. I always tell them to cover up their web camera, which sounds rudimentary, but no one does it. Or use Tor.

0:19:59 Thomas: Oh, Okay.

0:20:24 Thomas: Well, What, okay, well, that's a difference. So now, now we're branching out into something else. So, a second ago, we were talking about, you know, Facebook and the fact that we all, they're tracking you. Well, actually, we should cover the basics. In what ways are they creeping on you? Can you outline that?

0:20:56 BJ: Yes. Yeah. Sure. So it doesn't matter if you use Facebook or not, they have a profile on you. And the reason why is that if you've used the site and let's say you have a friend that doesn't use Facebook, then they've got, they have the world's largest data set of faces. That's something people don't realize. And so they already sort of know what these people look like who don't use Facebook, and they can infer from the data they've collected from you who that person is.

And then they can go to like an Experian or Equifax or any of the large credit bureaus or some other companies out there and purchase that data to fill in the blanks. So even if you are not a Facebook user, they have what's called a shadow profile of you. So there's that, right? There's that aspect. And then there's the aspect of people that use Facebook are just volunteering information.

The reason why I roll all these things together as, you know, cover your webcam and also you have no privacy when you use social media is to me, it's all one problem. Them To me, I house it all under, right now there's really no guardrail for how your data is collected, and that's, you know, if we look at local grocery stores, they do the same, I don't want to let them off the hook either, you know, your data's constantly being collected and sold without your consent and without your knowledge, and people turning a profit on it. So to me, it's all, it's really one issue.

0:22:21 Thomas: But I guess what is going into that file they have? I mean, because I think if someone makes a file on me, you Know, that could mean something or it could be nothing. And so I don't just saying those words. Well, they have a profile on you or they have whatever on you. Even if you're not on Facebook, I mean, well, what does that contain? And like, why is that valuable to me or harmful to me?

0:22:45 BJ: The short answer is everything, uh, and that's, that's not in the book, I kind of lay out, like like, there's 12 or 13 different sets of data that they can collect. Something like your social security number, your driver's license, your mailing address, you know, those are the big ones. But they also know your taste preferences. In some cases, these sites might know your sexuality before you come out and talk to your family.

0:23:08 Thomas: Yeah, I think I heard about some of the ways that they're able to predict things that, yeah.

0:23:13 BJ: So, I mean, I don't want to sound reductive or basic when I say everything. But it's quite literally, if there's data to collect on you, then they have it in one way or shape or form.

0:23:21 Thomas: And so let me all give an example. I mean my address has never been anywhere near Facebook, but they have it. But my address is obviously on Amazon or something. And so is it just because I'm using Amazon as well, they're able to somehow get at that data or how are they doing this?

0:23:24 BJ: Sure. But they probably have it. Yes.

0:23:39 BJ: Yeah. So how it works is there's a lot of companies that just package and sell data from these companies to other companies. And the reason why your data is so valuable in the first place is that 19% of America's GDPR is tied up in the advertising and marketing business. And so to them right now, they've been sold basically a big bill good saying, you know, Google and Facebook are the things you want to invest your money on because they have all this data and we can target this and we could, you know, we can micro target this segment of customers. And so there's this obsession which fuels the value of your data. So your data on its own really isn't worth that much. What makes it worth something, and the reason why they have your address when you've never given it to them, is because the advertising business has said, we want that data, we want to be able to target these customers, even though it's not clear that this targeting actually works.

0:24:29 Thomas: That's interesting. I'm just curious about the address part specifically because like, how does that even, so what are they even using that for? Just like, okay, geographically, you're building a profile to, okay.

0:24:39 BJ: Yeah, for the most part, it could just be they want your zip code more than anything else. So your street address might not matter, but the zip code does. So that they can turn to an advertiser and say, we have a high concentration of people that live in the 109.5.0 zip code. And they have, based on what other data points they've collected on you, they could say, "Well, we know Thomas likes NPR." And so there's a high consultation of people like NPR that are in the zip code that you can target.

0:24:47 Thomas: I see. Gotcha. Yeah, I see. So it's offering these micro-targeting opportunities. Okay. I guess what part of that goes over the line for you? I mean, is there, I, I Guess if you could categorize stuff into legal, but shady, you know, or totally legal because we just signed an agreement that says, sure, you can do that versus, I mean do you have any knowledge of like the Cambridge Analytica kind of thing where it's like, no, that's definitely shouldn't be legal or must be illegal.

0:25:07 BJ: Uh, Yes, Yeah. Right, Yes.

0:25:35 Thomas: You know, like, what range is this all? Is this all legal because we haven't done a good job regulating it because Congress doesn't know what the hell it is or doesn't care?

0:25:45 BJ: Uh, that's the short answer is that it's not it's not illegal. Yeah, It's that illegal, but I call it in the book creepy, uh, because they're doing it and they really, so another example of creepiness, right, and I use this example in the in the privacy book, is that there was a reporter in Germany, uh, because she falls under the eu EU regulation, she's able to request the data that's been collected on her from sites like Tinder. And so Tinder, which you figure would just be your likes and dislikes as the data they collect, sent her 800 pages worth of data. And in the 800 pages was like

0:25:46 Thomas: OK, I got I got there eventually. Yeah, OK. I don't

0:26:20 BJ: Every...

0:26:20 Thomas: Even think there's 800 pages of things about me. But yeah, anyway, go on.

0:26:23 BJ: But that's the crazy thing is you figure they would just collect your likes or dislikes, but they're collecting your SMS messages, your Facebook likes and dislikes. They're collecting messages that you've sent on Facebook, other data that's been collected off of your phone, other data that has been sold to them from some of these third-party data brokers.

So yeah, I mean, again, I don't want to sound reductive when I say everything, but even a company like Tinder has like 800 pages on this one reporter in Germany, and that wasn't all the data. They actually withheld some of the data because they didn't want her to know what their likability score is. So when you use Tinder, they actually match and show you people based on how likable they think you are.

And so they withheld stuff like that from her as well, so, uh, it's creepy is really what I what I try to drive home, and what was crazy to me is that, Kate, like the Cambridge Analytica thing, they weren't doing anything, uh, how do I want to phrase this, like it's shocking when we see it and a lot of Americans are upset about the outcome of the 2016 election, so it makes for a great story, but what Cambridge Analytical and the researchers who they got the data from were doing is not, not abnormal. Uh, in

0:27:31 BJ: Fact, if you Google the term, right,

0:27:31 Thomas: Yeah, no. I agree. I think people did really want. I think there is certainly a segment of people who want there to be some nefarious reason Trump won, and there may be nefarous things, but I think that I agree with you that, you know, in my impression as well, as well people were already doing this. However, that's not to say, though, that it wasn't wrong what they did, because they lied, they stole the data based on false pretenses. And if, you know, if the Trump administration or if the if the trump campaign or if anybody knew or was a party to that, I would want to know, you know?

0:27:40 BJ: That's right. That's right, oh, for sure. And I think that there should be legal consequences. So I don't, I don't want to sound like I'm, I'm excusing it, but what I am, yeah, oh,

0:28:08 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Just just want to make sure to clarify, because I think it there has been a lot of muddle on that that issue.

0:28:18 BJ: Sure. Um, but the thing I want to point out is that anyone can take a trip down memory lane through Google and search the term "growth hacking" and "growth hacking success stories." And, and like all that nonsense that was bubbled up between 2014 and 2017, and that's, that's what Cambridge Analytica did was you had this entire group of people that were downloading all this information off of Facebook and downloading all this information awful LinkedIn and then finding creepy ways to target those people in order to grow their companies and become unicorns, become these multi-billion dollar success story. So the good, the good thing and the bad thing of Cambridge Analytic is the bad think is that it's not illegal, legal, but it should be. The good thing is that gave, finally gave us a reason to talk about growth hacking and why these people, because I, I tell I'm telling you like

0:29:02 Thomas: Yeah. What's what's growth hacking? Is that when you say growth hacking, is Is that an annoying dork term for people who want a shortcut to a billion dollar company or something?

0:29:11 BJ: Yeah it's yeah basically, I mean it's like social media, right? Like social media is just a new term to describe stuff that's been on the web since 1994. Uh, we just came up with a cute term for it, and growth hacking was sort of the same deal where there was just

0:29:15 Thomas: Okay, yeah. Sorry, no offense. I consider myself a dork as well, but I just was like growth hacking. Everything has to have a fancy like, you mean just trying to get, anyway, sorry.

0:29:26 BJ: No, you know what, this is, it's a tangent, but it's, uh, worth pointing out, well

0:29:36 Thomas: There's so much like Silicon Valley, like language that you're just like, all right, okay.

0:29:41 BJ: It's all bullshit, you know, and that's, that's what I tried to hit on in the first book was it, it's in their benefit to present this stuff as magic, right? So if we say social media marketing, there's a lot of people that don't know what that means. If you say growth hacking, there's all people who don't know what it means and will buy those books because they, you know, they want to find out more. My favorite thing though was the, the head guy that was pushing that nonsense, uh, he was doing an interview on a marketing blog and they're like, "What's the difference between marketing and growth hacking?" And there's this long pause and finally he goes, "It's just marketing done better." It's just like, you man, like, come on, that's, that's

0:29:43 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, Uh, that's

0:30:17 BJ: The kind. Yeah, so that's a long way of saying is that everything that, that we've talked about so far is just these tech companies and the people that enable them know that there's a financial benefit to cladding this stuff in secrecy, and the, the less we know about it, the more they can get away with being creepy.

0:30:18 Thomas: Awesome right It's like the cloud all over again. Like, what's the cloud? It's just a hard drive somewhere, that's all. Everything is, oh,

0:30:36 BJ: Exactly, yeah, you know what's crazy is that the cloud is something that dates back to 1965. It's not even new technology. There was a patent for it by Western Union back in the 60s where they were like, this is how things will work in the future,

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0:32:34 Thomas: Alright, back over to the interview. Thought I had was, A, shit, somebody needs to do something about this. Like, there needs to be regulation, there need to be regulations. And then, when questioning that went on in Congress, I thought, well, these are the people that are going to be doing the regulating? Like, I don't know if that's going to work. Like, they don't even know what the hell they're talking about. Now, I would hope they would have more staff that would actually write a good bill, but what is the solution? How are those people going to give us regulation that's going to do anything? Think.

0:32:47 BJ: Right.

0:33:09 BJ: So I'm a little bit of a historian. I was working on a PhD in American history. I haven't finished it yet, but I tell you that to point out that Whenever we have change in America, it's always come through increments. And more often than not, it is driven by what happens on the state level. And we have seen that with serious issues like slavery. And we've seen that of less serious issues throughout our history. So I honestly think that the federal government won't do anything until the states start to come in and say, you know what, if you live in New York State, here is the data bill of rights. And we had that. Attorney General and Eric Steinerman has been pushing a data bill of rights. And over in Washington, they have an office that's set up and dedicated towards managing the privacy for the people of Seattle.

And so that's the solution, is that we'll have things like even in New York City right now, there's a law that passed that said if you're discriminated against by an algorithm because of all this data that's been collected, you could appeal that. That because there's a huge social justice issue right now involving the collection of data and using it against people who have historically been discriminated against.

0:33:13 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm, yeah.

0:34:17 BJ: And so that's where we'll see the changes. And so if anyone's listening to us, I know it sounds corny. I know It sounds like schoolhouse rock, but it really makes all the difference of on the local level and the state level contacting your representatives and saying, you know, I don't know what's going on in the federal level and it doesn't matter. Matter. But in my home state, I think we should have laws protecting my data.

0:34:40 Thomas: All right, so laboratories of democracy, you say. Well, But ultimately, though, while I do see what you're saying, and I hope that states do that, because I agree, you know. A lot of the things I talk about over on my legal podcast involves so many of the cases are, yes, there was a state law, and then, you know., it gets to the Supreme Court because it's challenged, and it goes one way or the other, And then that's, that's a precedent for everybody to be like, oh, okay, maybe this is a good idea. But like with something like this, how much can a state do? I guess, because these companies, you know, it's the internet.

0:34:43 BJ: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So just a couple of quick things. I do think that, you know, obviously the issue isn't as major as something like slavery or discrimination, but there are long term consequences. And we are seeing that now where people are discriminated against based on the data that's been collected and algorithms are making decisions on these people that they have no idea.

0:35:23 Thomas: Do Yeah. Hmm. Right.

0:35:32 BJ: And that data is coming from what you put in on Facebook and what you you put them on social media, so there are consequences to this. The like, other thing is, you know, on the state level, yeah, the short answer is yes. And the reason why I say yes is because during the dot-com bubble, uh, the New York State Attorney General's office was very active in prosecuting a lot of the companies that scams people out of their money. I think of like Stanley Media as my favorite example, where the guy basically bilked Stanley and everyone out of hundreds of millions of dollars. But under California law, they were able to prosecute him and put him in jail. And so the big issue is that there's no teeth to any of these things right now. And all I'm really advocating for is the addition of some teeth. So

0:35:39 Thomas: Get it.

0:36:01 Thomas: Wow. Hmm.

0:36:15 BJ: If you are a company like SunTrust Bank and you had a data breach, there should be financial consequences for not securing your data properly. And that's something that could be done on the state level in the state that SunTrust Bank resides in, you know, like, so there's... there's one avenue to protect your data, because that's where a lot of stuff comes from, too, is a black market for, for different data points about people.

0:36:35 Thomas: Right.

0:36:35 BJ: So I'm optimistic.

0:36:36 Thomas: We haven't really even touched on that because there's so many of these hacks where they They don't tell us, but then it eventually comes out and it's like, well, okay, yeah, we knew in 2015 that we were hacked and all your data was compromised, but now we're going to tell you, you know, so that's another component of it we didn't even touch on, which is securing data properly, I guess. But even is there such a thing as being able to secure the data enough to where it could never be hacked?

0:36:40 BJ: Right.

0:37:04 BJ: I think so. I mean, anything that can be hacked will be hacked, or could be hacked. I should say. So, I mean that there's always that possibility. But I think that it's convenient for the companies to kind of say that and be like, oh, it's gonna be hacked anyway. Anyway, so my favorite two examples was Sony during the infamous Sony hack. The reason why the hack was as bad as it was is they had a folder on a desktop that was labeled passwords.

0:37:16 Thomas: Oh, I see. Oh,

0:37:31 BJ: So once they broke into the system, that's all they needed. They just needed that one folder.

0:37:35 Thomas: Man.

0:37:35 BJ: It's like, come on, guys. That's something they tell you in middle school not to do. They tell you to keep your password safe. But it's still like that's that's honestly the level that a lot of multimillion dollar companies operate on when it comes to securing your data. And there's no and the reason.

0:37:44 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Yeah. There's just some old guy, some like in the company within the, there's, there's always a weak link. Like there's just Some 65 year old man that's a doesn't know shit about this and then keeps a passwords folder.

0:37:53 BJ: Right. Yeah. I mean, that's what happened with Target. I mean Target wasn't breached, but it was a third party vendor who was using like Windows 95 or whatever it was. And so, you know, he didn't update the software and the hacker got in and he had access to Target's main system. And that's how they got in. So these things don't happen because, I mean, again, there are very sophisticated people out there that are hackers, but a lot of these hacks don't happened for that reason. They happen because the companies just don't invest the money in properly securing their stuff. I

0:38:01 Thomas: Oh man.

0:38:29 Thomas: Okay. One thing I want to ask you is if you were a, a Congress person, what would you have wanted to ask Mark Zuckerberg?

0:38:38 BJ: Don't think I would have asked him anything. I think I would have said, hey, you remember that FTC decree that you signed in 2011? Well, we're enforcing it. I honestly...

0:38:45 Thomas: Okay. Okay. So, well, little bit. What are some of the things you would have said and then explain what you just said.

0:38:50 BJ: Sure. So, the thing I would ask is is it possible to offer a paid version of Facebook where my privacy is secure? That, I think, is a very simple question, and I know the answer is yes. But I want him on the record saying it, because so far he hasn't said it. Sheryl Sandberg has said it, And one of the downsides of Sheryl Sandberg is that if you look at all of her interviews, she constantly contradicts herself or she'll say one thing and then she'll flip off on it. My favorite example being that every small business in America should sign up for Facebook and have a Facebook page because you will always be able to access your audience. And then, of course, later on saying, oh, hey, you know, things are getting really hectic. And so now in order for your stuff to be seen, you got to pay for it.

0:39:01 Thomas: Right, right. Hmm.

0:39:32 Thomas: Yeah. The pages

0:39:33 BJ: So, yeah, I mean, I deleted mine, to be honest with you.

0:39:33 Thomas: Are just a joke now. I I mean, I, I know that just from having my page, you know, I had a, yeah, I had a page for the podcast. I barely even use it. I just don't even, it's, they want to make you pay money to get to people. And even when you do, it doesn't do anything like nobody it's it's all a joke. I, uh, anyway.

0:39:53 BJ: Right. We haven't even talked about ad fraud. Just real quick, over 60% of the traffic on the web is fake. And by fake, I just mean it's not human.

0:39:55 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Bots.

0:40:02 BJ: It's a bot or it's a click farm or something like that. So a lot of the traffic that you do see driven from Facebook more often than not is either one, a bot or two. It's coming from like Russia or Bangalore or something. And that's done because the click farms, it's in their interest to make it look like they're humans. And so they're constantly clicking on things that are unrelated to why they're actually on Facebook in the first place. And there's really no, as we saw with the Russians, there's really no policing of that because it's not financially in Facebook's interest to police it. So that's a whole other thing. But what I would say about the FCC decree is essentially this. Back in 2011, going back a little further, I'm a big Obama fan, but probably the one fault of his administration or one of the faults of the administration is that he, on numerous occasions, gave Google and Facebook a pass on different things.

So there was a couple of times Google came up under DOJ investigation for being a monopoly. In both times, sometimes, you know, they got some finger wagging and some "naughty, naughty, don't do that again, Google." And, you know, and then it got off the hook. And so Facebook signed a dissent decree in 2011 that said, "Look, we admit that what we were doing is wrong in terms of our data collection.

0:40:03 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:41:15 BJ: We're going to fix it. We're gonna do better. And if we don't do better, we will be responsible for paying these fines. And no one ever, no one on the FTC side ever enforced it. So that's what I would probably spend most of my time talking to Mark Zuckerberg about as, you know, are you aware of this document? Is this your signature? Are you aware of this section that says we are working to improve our security? Do you feel your security is better than it was in 2011? Which the answer is going to be no. And so that's honestly what I would, I mean, the frustrating thing is we had these vehicles, right? We've got the Consumer Protection Board, which has been messed up by Trump, but we have the CPB. We do have the FTC. We do you have to DOJ. There are things we can do against these tech companies. We just don't activate them the way that they should be. Me

0:41:28 Thomas: Interesting.

0:41:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:59 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. I, yeah. I don't remember that mentioned. That would have been curious to hear the answer to that.

0:42:07 BJ: Too right.

0:42:07 Thomas: What do you think is going to, I mean, what's frustrating is I still don't know that anything's going to actually happen as a result of this, unless maybe On the state level, as you've outlined. But do you think that Facebook could self-regulate? I mean, that seems to be what a lot of people just want them to do so they don't have to worry about it, you know, so Congress doesn't have to actually research what the hell this stuff is, um, is that possible? Can they do, will they, what do you, what are your thoughts on that question?

0:42:17 BJ: Yeah.

0:42:41 BJ: I mean, I think within a decade, yet the answer is yes, they'll have to, uh, sooner or later the advertising money is going to stop flowing. And I think, with, uh, I don't know if this is too inside baseball, but, uh, WPP's, WPP is the world's largest advertising agency, it's right, it used to be run by a guy named Martin Sorrell, and up until, until recently, WPP has been telling all their clients, like Procter & Gamble and blah, blah, blah, to put money into Facebook and Google because you'll see great results. There's been a lot of rumblings in the advertising industry because of ad fraud, because of some of the issues we've talked about. There's also stuff like brand safety, where you've got ISIS videos and then a commercial for dish soap right next to the ISIS videos that go on. And so I think sooner or later, the train will stop, the money train will start, and they'll have to change their business model. And at that point, that's probably when they'll roll out and say, hey, for $9, we'll protect your data.

0:42:48 Thomas: Hmm. All right.

0:43:35 BJ: So the answer is yes. Sooner or later, it will happen. I don't know if it'll happen fast enough, and I don't know if they'll happen fast enough to prevent some of the more social justice issues that I've mentioned, like the data collection and it being used. So really, my whole thing with the privacy bug, I'm giving the audiobook away free, by the way. I've been giving away PDFs for free. I really don't care if people will buy it. I just want them to read it because I figured the more people that know what's happening, the more informed they can make their decisions about this stuff. And hopefully that'll lead to some kind of change before the advertising bubble pops.

0:44:10 Thomas: I mean, I'm sure you're stealing their data somehow, but it's free. No, I'm just kidding, you just have to sign a click wrap agreement, uh, giving, oh,

0:44:15 BJ: Yeah, no. So I've been giving away my cell phone number in all the interviews I've be doing. And so if people text me the word sheetrock, I send them a free copy, a free PDF of social media is bullshit. And I'll give my number at the end of the interview. But people have said, hey, what are you doing with this information? I said, nothing. I'm sending you the book and then I delete you from my phone. I'm not collecting it or doing anything because I'm too lazy. I don't have the ambition to go and text all of you.

0:44:32 Thomas: Cool, uh, Yeah, so, and and that's just one company, right? So what is Google going to do? You know, are they, are we going to have a paid Google, uh, format where you to, or, you know, like that's, that's another aspect of this. Facebook is, I think, justifiably getting a spotlight on them right now, but there's, there's all kinds of other companies doing this. What, what do you think they're going to doing?

0:45:07 BJ: Right. I think it's going to be different. The data brokers, I think, will go under the right sort of regulation. We haven't even talked about this, but one of the the things I put is that you should be compensated for your data, it's

0:45:22 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Let's, let's get into that then. Well,

0:45:23 BJ: Okay. So that's, it's everyone's popular subject, although, um, it's been, it's dull, like it's antique at this point, it goes back to about 2000. And so the basic concept is that it's like either Facebook, a, uh, once a year would send you a check, it's not gonna be for a lot of money, like it'll be for like 300 bucks, whatever it is, uh, and that'll be the agreement saying you could use Facebook and do whatever you want. And And we will compensate you for your data every year as part of an annual license fee. And that's sort of the Geron Lanier approach, which is that, you know, all the companies out there that collect your data would have to pay you some kind of license fee. And again, it's not a lot of money, but it establishes the principle that your data has value. I take it a little step further in that I think you should be able to control your data and buy and sell it.

0:46:15 BJ: I know that over in Europe, I talked to a lot of people over there who don't quite like that because they think that, you know, privacy is a human right and you shouldn't be selling your own human right. But I do feel that through, I'm not a big cryptocurrency guy, but I do think through something like that, we now have the technology in place where I can go to a site and say, hey, I don't want you to show me all these shitty advertisements. I want advertisements from Marvel, and Marvel might actually pay me for my time in exchange for showing only Marvel ads within the browser, for example.

0:46:47 Thomas: But then you've, I mean, how is this going to work as a market? I mean, if they, they're paying you to advertise to you,

0:46:51 BJ: So It already. Oh, God, yeah. Like it already exists, there's a browser called Brave, and that's essentially, uh, what they do with a cryptocurrency called the Basic Attention Token, where a company can pay you for your time in change for showing their ads within their browser, you know, whether or not it's a marketplace Or An Exchange.

0:47:10 Thomas: But I was going to say, isn't that just a gamble or something for them? Like that they will get more out of you than they're giving you.

0:47:11 BJ: Oh, Sure, that's Right, and I don't, again, I don't think That any I Don't think there's Any perfect Solution at the moment, uh, I'm more of the belief that I want to try these things and I want to try all of them, you know, I want to try maybe paying nine dollars to Facebook in exchange for not being creeped on, or I want to try getting an annual license For You, that's

0:47:20 Thomas: Yeah. I don't know how sustainable that is. Right.

0:47:35 Thomas: Well, yeah. Going back to that, I think the paying for Facebook, I really think does make, make sense at this point because, yeah, I mean, 10 years ago, eight years ago, I remember that that forever was the viral bullshit that people would put, Facebook is about to start charging for your thing, post here if you don't shut up, like there's no way, uh, that, and like the the stupid contract people would do, like, uh, I do not allow you, and had all this legalese that barely made sense, like retweet, or you know, what would it be, share, and then, you know, that'll protect yourself as well, but, um, at this point I think we're in a, in a different set of circumstances like before, 10 years ago, eight years ago, would have been like, well, that's absurd, no one's gonna pay for this.

And not only that, they were pretty mad, like, how dare you think that I'm gonna pay for Facebook. But now it's like, well, there's a lot of things we're paying for, you know, we're paying for Netflix, we're playing for, uh, Amazon Prime, or, you know, and not only that, I think we're realizing the amount of stuff that goes into this, that amount of data that they have, and and the value there, and it might be to the point where people, you could pay for for Facebook a few bucks a month, and then, so what would that just be, like a totally, would it be an ad-free version, or, uh, they

0:47:49 BJ: Right. Yeah. I Agree. Yes.

0:48:53 BJ: So that's, that's the the the pitch that I make in the book is like Netflix. You would pay them in an exchange. They wouldn't collect any of your data. Just very simple.

0:49:02 Thomas: Wouldn't collect data, but would they do

0:49:03 BJ: Yeah, they wouldn't do – they wouldn'T collect anything, the end-to-end package and sell it. Like they could still show you ads if you turn it on. The whole point for me is that if you pay the $9, you have control over your Facebook experience as opposed to them sort of doing like this patchwork stuff that they're pushing out right now. Oh, look at us. We're making changes. You can clear your search history, okay, great, not a lot of people use Facebook search in the first place then, so, uh, my whole thing is they've

0:49:31 Thomas: They Have I Think They said they were going to put in the ability to delete all of your data, right? Is that, okay,

0:49:36 BJ: Talked about but they haven't talked about the data that they're still collecting and packaging and selling to other people, and that's sort of where the problem lies, so you can delete like all the stuff that you put into it is what they're saying, but you can't delete like their database of your face, for Example. So, there's, you know, it's one of the of those things where it sounds nice, but it's it's only a half measure. It's not a full measure.

0:49:41 Thomas: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing we haven't even talked about is the algorithms. We got all kinds of algorithms. I mean, it's been years and years since Facebook was even, Twitter even, just showed you Facebook and Twitter. Like it used to be here. Let me get on my rocking chair and like tell you, tell you tell you young 24 year olds. What are you? I don't know. It used to be that Facebook, you'd have a number of friends, and anyone you were friends with, you do your feet. Well, first off, there wasn't a newsfeed that you would just go to people's pages. But anyway, once they had the newsfeed, it was okay, everybody you're friends with and including all the pages you've liked, it'll show you whatever their posts are in chronological, chronological order. And I would actually, I used to do this with, I think, Facebook, back when, you know, I I cared more about it and I was friends with people, I was like, I would scroll down, see everybody's stuff and essentially go to wherever I had seen before.

So like it was possible to scroll down and just get to like, okay, I've seen Facebook now, I've caught up, as though it was like a newspaper I was reading, I've cut up on everybody's stories now. And maybe it's just because I have way more friends because it's podcasting, but also there's no rhyme or reason to it. Like if I, if I refresh Facebook right now, I won't even see any of

0:50:03 BJ: Right. Right. Right.

0:50:31 BJ: And

0:51:17 Thomas: The same things I just saw. Like it's it's not, I don't even understand how it works, I guess they just decide at random, or there's a, you know, obviously the algorithm, the black box kind of thing, where it's hard to know exactly what's happening. But I can refresh, I've done this on on my phone before, just for shits and giggles, like I'll swipe down, do the swipe down refresh on my Facebook app, I could do it 10 times and it'll be 10 different feeds that have totally different stories that I wouldn't have seen in the other one. It's it's kind of creepy and it's annoying to me because it's like someone is deciding what I want to see, you know, and trying to like try these different things on me. It's like I just want to see the people that I'm following, you know? Hmm.

0:51:57 BJ: It's very easy to break that algorithm too, um, you know, one of my favorite things that came out of that, that testimony was Zuckerberg saying that even he wasn't sure how it worked, uh, which is total bullshit. Like it's not, first, the algorithm is not that complicated, it's just they want it to appear complicated, a fun, a fun game that people can play at home is that if, if you write the words congratulations or happy birthday or new job, you'll see that that post will get surfaced more than what if you post the link. Like if you host the link that goes out from Facebook, they bury it because they don't want anyone to leave.

0:52:12 Thomas: Yeah. Okay.

0:52:30 BJ: So it's one of those things where, you know, they claim it's magic, and they claim that they're doing it for one reason or another. But the whole reason why the algorithms there in the first place is for them to serve you more ads at the end of the day. And that's true of Twitter as well. You know, Twitter back 10 years ago was awesome, you made a, you posted something, everyone saw it, now you have no idea if anyone saw it, and that's, that's really, that's very frustrating for marketers and just for people looking to get to learn about their stuff. So the big thing that I want to stress about the algorithm though is it's not magic, like it's, if it was very complicated, Facebook would not work properly, like Facebook would take forever for it to load. So these systems in place are very easy, uh, to manipulate, because they're dumb, and that's part of the reason why Russia was able to do what they do.

0:53:15 BJ: So it's annoying for users, but then it's also bad for everyone else because we all think it's magic, but it's not.

0:53:23 Thomas: Yeah, it's, that, that makes sense to me, it's it's it's not magic, it's very self-interested stuff, like, like you saying, it's just if this will lead you away from the product, then, then we don't really want to show that. Yeah.

0:53:37 BJ: Right. So, I mean, we've seen evolutions of it, too. The trick used to be if you posted photos, your stuff would be surfaced more than if you had a text update. Then if you hosted multiple photos, then that would surface. Then if you posted a video that was embedded on Facebook, you remember that Facebook, for a while, was surfacing video, video, because everyone figured out that the algorithm is really stupid, uh, and the way to cheat it was to upload video. And so, yeah, I just, my big takeaway to this, and the thing I want people to know, is that these things are not magic, it's a recipe that just says if the user does this, then show this, and that thing is very easy to break by bad actors, and sometimes marketers. Right?

0:53:38 Thomas: Oh. Right. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:17 Thomas: All right, well, that's it, frustrating, I really, is there an option, I know there, I feel like I've done this, this before, but I don't think it took, or that eventually was undone. But I, for a while, there was an option of like, no, just give me my goddamn, you know, newsfeed. And Twitter, especially Twitter, I don't, they started that a couple of years ago too. Twitter for a, it held out for a while, which was just in order. Here are the things that were in your Twitter feed from other people you follow. And I think they got rid of that too. And no matter how many times, I hit that little button of see less often, see less often. They don't, by the way, they don't give you can you disable this goddamn thing? They don'T give you that option.

0:54:43 BJ: They Did.

0:54:58 Thomas: They give you, oh, See less often. Less often. Yeah. I want to see 0% of the time. Just show me the tweets in order. But I don't know, then again I guess, you know, it might be true that that would get clogged up with stuff and it might be that it's better to see more important tweets that you would would otherwise miss. But do they even have the option to go back to the old-fashioned way anymore?

0:54:58 BJ: That's Right. Oh.

0:55:10 BJ: Yeah. Yeah. They can turn that right on, that's the frustrating thing, I don't think so, I can tell you if you want to see more tweets from people you follow just to engage with them more often, because that's what they do, like that's how their algorithm works, if you tweet with someone a lot you will see their updates, if you maybe tweet them once, even though your friends offline, you will rarely have ever seen their updates

0:55:23 Thomas: They do no I know, I mean, do, can I, uh, Yeah, I don't think so either Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I totally noticed that, especially on Facebook, it's like if I comment on someone's thing then all of a sudden the news feed's got a bunch of their stuff that wasn't there before.

0:55:53 BJ: Right. Right. So, I mean, like, I don't want anyone to come away from this frustrated. I think change is coming. I think the more informed people are, you know, they can check out the book at yourprivacybook.com. The more informed they are, I do think that they can take steps to at least make it difficult for companies to creep on them. And I do think, you know, on the local level, that maybe I'm being a little too optimistic, but I do think if you contact like the Attorney General's office or your state government, you could push for some kind of regulation. Sure.

0:55:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. All Do need, final question here, I do need to ask about the webcam thing, because I don't cover my webcam. What is the danger there? What's happening that people would need to cover their webcam?

0:56:29 BJ: It's It's more a philosophy of if it can be hacked, it will eventually be hacked, or it could be hacked. And so back in the days of Edward Snowden, remember him, uh, he was talking about how the NSA was taking like sexy pictures of a lot of women through the webcam and then passing the photos around their office, uh, so there was that, that initially had came out, and, uh, he has his web camera covered. Mark Zuckerberg notably also has his webcam covered for that reason. So, so it's just one of those things where if you have a persistent internet connection and a camera connected to it, if you want to make yourself feel a little safer, you can cover it up with a piece of tape or post-it note.

0:57:11 Thomas: You got any other tips or advice or anything? I know people should read the book, and of course the links will be in the show notes and all that, but anything else people should do? You know, I guess obvious things that people should be doing, but aren't doing.

0:57:26 BJ: Yeah, so covering up your camera. The most obvious thing that people don't do that they could do is keep their passwords offline in a notebook instead of storing it online. I know that sounds really simplistic, but a lot of people will do what Sony did where they have a folder with all their passwords in it.

0:57:40 Thomas: Yeah. I use A, what do you think of password managers? Are those any good? Yeah.

0:57:44 BJ: They have also been subject to hacks and breaches. So are they more secure than other things? Sure. But if we're operating under the philosophy that anything that can be hacked will be hacked eventually, then I prefer the notebook. I know it's a little bit of a pain in the ass, but I think it also encourages people because you should change your password once a year unless you're the victim of a data breach, in which case you should changed it immediately. But by keeping it in a notebook, I think it's easier to go, "Oh, okay, it's time to process off and put in a new one," right?

0:58:09 Thomas: Right. And then there's, of course, like, don't use the same password for everything and use complex passwords. Yeah.

0:58:21 BJ: Yeah. Well, don't, don't make yourself crazy either. Um, I think that there's... There's a bit of bad advice that's come out over the years where you need some like 18 character password with like exclamation marks and at symbols and hashtags and all that. I think that, you know, you can have just a secure password if it's something like random horse battery staple.

0:58:41 Thomas: I love that, that was uh, there's a comic that yeah, that was brilliant, I absolutely love that, right?

0:58:44 BJ: XKCD. And that's, that's where I got it from. I cite him in the book. And so, that to me is, you know, if you come up with something like that's crazy and obscure, like that, uh, it's almost as secure as having some random yeah

0:58:56 Thomas: People were I think so, the logic just to explain to people is that, like, we thought, we think, because we're stupid humans, somebody along the line thought, "Oh, if I put a dollar sign in the password, or, you know, some symbol, then that won't, won't be guessed." But it's like, well, okay. If, if someone's just trying to, what's the phrase when they're just trying a hard, you know, random guess or whatever, what is that phrase? Brute force.

0:59:19 BJ: Yeah.

0:59:19 Thomas: Like if they're, if they're just trying to brute force your password and they're using random characters, it doesn't really, like, putting $1 sign in it is a lot less valuable than just making it a long, but memorable phrase, because they're not going to be guessing horse carriage, you know, so whatever you just said, like pony, you express, like, just a string of letters. Um, if they're just brute forcing random characters, the longer it is the better, but you're saying don't, don't go too long, is there a sweet spot? Okay.

0:59:49 BJ: Don't make yourself crazy, like, if it's something you can remember, that's great, um, so random horse battery staple.

0:59:55 Thomas: Excellent.

0:59:55 BJ: Uh, is something you could remember, it's still, it's long, but it's just something that you can picture visually is what he was talking about, Randall Monroe is who we're talking about, who's the author of XKCD. So if it's something that you can remember through a monomic device or through pictures, I think that's perfect.

1:00:12 Thomas: All right, anything else before we uh call it an interview, any other tips? Sure.

1:00:16 BJ: Yeah. Well, let me let me give out my number so people can text me the word sheetrock. It's spelled exactly as it sounds. Sheetrock to 646-331-8341. 341, that's six four six three three one eight three four one, and I will send you a free PDF copy of social media it's bullshit that's right Well, I mean, as much information as you want to share right, so far, everyone's been on their best behavior, I'm happy to say, but uh, none

1:00:34 Thomas: And They just have to send you their, their uh, uh, social security and address, right? All right. Yeah. Yeah, how many dick pics have you

1:00:49 BJ: Yet none yet, thankfully um but I'm sure they're coming

1:00:49 Thomas: Gotten? Okay, well, I, I hope my audience won't be the, the audience that breaks that streak for you, but you never know. There may be some troll out there. All right, well that's, that's very interesting stuff. And, uh, blast your social media, BJ. Put, are you even on? Did you quit all that?

1:00:55 BJ: So

1:01:07 Thomas: Do you, do you Twitter, do you do Facebook?

1:01:07 BJ: I don't, I don't actively use them. What I, what I do use Twitter for is if you like professional wrestling and comic books, uh, I do maintain the Twitter account that's just based on that, and the only reason why is because that community, uh, the comic book community in particular is very active on Twitter, so uh I, I do publish comic books, so, I, you know, I do maintenance with their presence for that reason.

1:01:13 Thomas: Right. Oh. Okay, cool, yeah, I'm, I do a similar thing on, on these. I mean, I'm just, you know, we didn't really talk about this, but uh, you know, I don't click on anything, like, there's got to be a way to use Facebook and Twitter in a way that doesn't compromise you, but I mean, it sounds like no matter what, they've got all this data on you, so maybe not, I don't know, okay, anyway

1:01:48 BJ: Once you pay for it.

1:01:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, all right, well, that's super cool, thank you so much for your time and uh, breaking that down for us. And yeah, check out that book, everybody. Text him, or, you know, there'll be links as well in the show notes. And BJ, thanks for your time.

1:02:04 BJ: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

1:02:28 Thomas: All right, well, I'm sure we've barely scratched the surface, but I had a great time with BJ answering some of my novice questions about internet privacy, and also a lot of that history was fascinating. Fascinating. I want to give you one more reminder to go to www.nosha.info to check out my upcoming talk for the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association on May 19th. Please come out! Alright, as usual, I'll see you next week. I'm going to be having the regular two bonus episodes this month, and I'm thinking I might want to talk about the intellectual dork web. That might be kind of fun. We'll see. As of now, that's something I want to talk about because I am getting a kick out of it.

1:03:15 Thomas: And, you know, you have to laugh about it because otherwise it's so frustrating. But either way, I'll see you next time, thanks for listening.