Speaker 1: Well boy, this episode is worth a re Listen, you
Speaker 1: guys are classic episode this week is about an early
Speaker 1: Facebook scandal. Isn't it weird that we have to say
Speaker 1: an early Facebook scandal?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just become one in a laundry list of scandals.
Speaker 2: But this is one of the ogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It has to do with an outfit called Cambridge
Speaker 3: Analytica that had a little something to do with an
Speaker 3: election a couple of years before. This episode was made
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, and it is Hmmm, it's creepy because again,
Speaker 3: it's all about what happens when your personal information is
Speaker 3: just available for a private company to be used and
Speaker 3: then sold.
Speaker 1: What could go wrong? We're about to find out. From
Speaker 1: UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled
Speaker 1: with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn
Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is no.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission controlled decand you are you. You are
Speaker 1: here that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: As you're listening to today's show, feel free to uh
Speaker 1: drop in your own emoji reaction, whether it's a wow,
Speaker 1: a sad, I'm mad. I don't know the names of
Speaker 1: those reactions available on Facebook.
Speaker 2: Call one of them is the O face. It's just
Speaker 2: the open mouth. I guess that's wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I call it wow.
Speaker 3: It could be wow or it could be.
Speaker 2: Are there official names? Is there a company line on
Speaker 2: what these reactions should be known as?
Speaker 1: I hope they all have specific proper noun names, like
Speaker 1: Derek or calliope.
Speaker 3: I'm sure the actually is a title to each of
Speaker 3: those images. Right.
Speaker 2: Seems like a pretty everything in its right place kind
Speaker 2: of company. Facebook. Yeah, they don't really let much fall
Speaker 2: through the cracks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm speaking of Facebook. While you're listening to this,
Speaker 3: feel free to peruse our Facebook page stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know at conspiracy stuff, or our new
Speaker 3: Here's where it Gets Crazy group on Facebook. Just you know,
Speaker 3: hang out on there the whole time you're listening.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: Nothing bad will happen to you, nothing bad that hasn't
Speaker 1: already happened. We'd like to introduce you to Facebook. If
Speaker 1: for some reason you manage to listen to podcasts and
Speaker 1: never heard of this before, and you're wondering what the
Speaker 1: heck is Facebook? I mean the Facebook, right, not a Facebook,
Speaker 1: And we'll get to that because there was an earlier
Speaker 1: physical iteration of Facebook. Little known fact, if you were
Speaker 1: like over two billion people across this fair planet of ours,
Speaker 1: you use Facebook on a daily basis. Mobile traffic is
Speaker 1: a huge part of Facebook's operation nowadays because originally was
Speaker 1: desktop and it was only for members of certain universities
Speaker 1: or colleges, but now anyone can get on it were
Speaker 1: provided they have the right equipment and internet connection.
Speaker 2: Isn't it crazy how mobile has advanced so exponentially. Remember
Speaker 2: a time where you still had a phone that barely
Speaker 2: had stuff you could do on it. It had a
Speaker 2: snake and like a calculator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's what has it been twelve, fifteen, sixteen years?
Speaker 3: I guess so as it's been really really developing.
Speaker 2: But it's really ramped up in the last more like
Speaker 2: ten years. Yeah, you know, with like the I mean
Speaker 2: the iPhone's only you know, a little more than a
Speaker 2: decade old, right m h.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, and it's an exponential growth that has
Speaker 1: prompted some questions in the industry and outside of the
Speaker 1: industry and in the minds of fringe researchers as well.
Speaker 1: Did this stuff grow organically? Was state supported on some level?
Speaker 1: The answer to that both of those questions is actually yes,
Speaker 1: but maybe not in a super nefarious way. Regardless of
Speaker 1: the origin of this exponential growth, we know that mobile is,
Speaker 1: as Noel said, huge, and many people would not have
Speaker 1: predicted it. It's safe to say, but as of December
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, there were one point one five billion mobile
Speaker 1: daily active users on Facebook's platforms, whether mobile through an OS,
Speaker 1: which is the safer way, or mobile through a Facebook app.
Speaker 2: Does that include Instagram as well? Since Facebook owns Instagram.
Speaker 1: No, that does not include Instagram, And that's a great question.
Speaker 2: So that number shoots even further through the roof if
Speaker 2: you include Instagram, which is also hugely popular.
Speaker 1: Right, Instagram has been one of the fastest growing, especially
Speaker 1: since Facebook has been taking an increasing amount of flack
Speaker 1: over the years. That one point one five billion number,
Speaker 1: that was an increase of twenty three percent from December
Speaker 1: to twenty fifteen. And this means, you know, if we
Speaker 1: read between the lines, that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who do not have a desktop computer or a laptop,
Speaker 1: have have no intention of buying one and say I
Speaker 1: can just do everything in my digital life on my phone.
Speaker 2: It's becoming more increasingly more true. I mean, there's many
Speaker 2: things that we would rely on a laptop or a
Speaker 2: computer to be able to do that you can totally
Speaker 2: do on your mobile device. And it's so much more
Speaker 2: convenient and easy and you always have it right in
Speaker 2: front of your eyeballs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can put your friends on Pokemon Go
Speaker 1: so that their faces will be introduced even if they
Speaker 1: introduce to the system, even if they don't have an
Speaker 1: online profile or a desire to create one.
Speaker 2: You can poke your friends. If you're not into Pokemon,
Speaker 2: you can just poke them.
Speaker 3: So okay, here's here's my big question. And most of
Speaker 3: you already know this, but you think to yourself, well,
Speaker 3: Facebook is this massive thing with all of these people
Speaker 3: walking around on their phones looking at their profiles and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's all free though, I don't have to pay any
Speaker 3: money to download Facebook.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you have a service for free that uses
Speaker 1: ad revenue, you are not the customer. You are the what.
Speaker 3: The product.
Speaker 1: And yep, that's true, folks. You are not the customer
Speaker 1: of social media. You are the product of social media.
Speaker 1: Unless you are paying a monthly fee for it. And
Speaker 1: even then, if you are paying a monthly fee for
Speaker 1: something if it's not social media, if you're paying a
Speaker 1: monthly fee for your cable company or your internet connection,
Speaker 1: they're also taking your data. You are more than one
Speaker 1: revenue stream for them and for Facebook, this is hugely important.
Speaker 1: We looked into the advertising revenue right where Facebook publicly
Speaker 1: makes a lot of its money, and mobile advertisement alone
Speaker 1: represents eighty eight percent of all Facebook's ad money from
Speaker 1: Q three, twenty seventeen. Quick explanation if in case, we're
Speaker 1: getting a little to inside baseball. In businesses, as you
Speaker 1: may or may not know, profits and losses and revenue
Speaker 1: are divided up into four segments per year that reach
Speaker 1: three months long. They're referred to quarters, and in business
Speaker 1: speak in the lands where people say things like wheelhouse
Speaker 1: and granular and cadence, these quarters are simply referred to
Speaker 1: as Q one, Q two, Q three, Q four. So
Speaker 1: this mobile advertising is huge for Facebook. Facebook needs this
Speaker 1: stuff to happen, and for that to work, they need
Speaker 1: to have someone looking it ass They need to have users.
Speaker 1: That's where you come in. You might be saying, not me,
Speaker 1: fellas not me, ya, Jabroni's because I don't have a
Speaker 1: Facebook profile. Well just hold on, hold on, just for now,
Speaker 1: pretend you do. Let's talk a little bit about you.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you, the Facebook user. What do we
Speaker 1: know about you?
Speaker 2: So twenty nine point seven percent of users range in
Speaker 2: age between twenty five and thirty four years old, and
Speaker 2: that is the most common age demographic of Facebook use.
Speaker 2: And that's also a pretty sweet marketing spot too, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, all those young professionals, all that new income
Speaker 3: fresh for the harvesting, or you know, the folks who
Speaker 3: are staying at home with their parents because they can't
Speaker 3: afford to buy, you know, pay rent anywhere, because that's
Speaker 3: a whole other issue we're having to deal with.
Speaker 2: Well that's a lot less fun, Matt.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, we do know that we should do
Speaker 1: an episode on the looming financial crisis of the millennial
Speaker 1: generation and the post millennial generation. Stay tuned. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, if you're listening, you're in that age
Speaker 1: group right to us, and let you let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. The biggest misconceptions are about your generation.
Speaker 1: And everybody does want to have some sort of attention
Speaker 1: or connection on social media, right, That's why it works.
Speaker 1: You know, you say something that is a funny one
Speaker 1: liner or whatever, and then you check back a few
Speaker 1: hours later you're like, wow, twenty four people know I exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I mean. Sweet addiction, isn't it?
Speaker 1: It is? And we do see dopamine spikes both when
Speaker 1: you check a mobile phone just in general for text
Speaker 1: messages and when you look at Instagram or Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter or what have you. So we are going to
Speaker 1: help you a little bit with this. It turns out
Speaker 1: that Facebook users in general are most often on this
Speaker 1: platform in the middle of the week between one to
Speaker 1: three pm, and they're eighteen percent more likely to engage
Speaker 1: with whatever is posted. That means throw a like or
Speaker 1: a comment or reaction of some sort if it's Thursday
Speaker 1: and Friday. So if you want a lot of people
Speaker 1: to see your stuff and talk to.
Speaker 3: You, do it middle of the day on Thursday or Friday.
Speaker 2: So what part of the bell curve am I if
Speaker 2: I'm on it Monday through Friday, twenty four SEV.
Speaker 1: We're a little bit different in that regard because, in
Speaker 1: interest of full transparency, we use Facebook for work.
Speaker 2: That's true, That's what I tell myself anyway.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people I think who
Speaker 1: would say who would be in the same boat and say, well,
Speaker 1: I may only check it every so often, but I
Speaker 1: get notifications automatically pushed, or I am always logged in
Speaker 1: because Facebook wants you to feel like it's more convenient
Speaker 1: to always be logged in. Not all of these users, though,
Speaker 1: are real.
Speaker 3: Say what right?
Speaker 1: CNN estimates their eighty three million fake profiles floating around,
Speaker 1: and that's probably a lower number than it is in actuality.
Speaker 3: Wow, I mean, that's a sizable chunk of one point
Speaker 3: something billion, you know users, But that still leaves you
Speaker 3: with over a billion users. True, even if it's one
Speaker 3: hundred million, even if it's two hundred million, there's still
Speaker 3: so many human beings using this thing.
Speaker 1: And there are also people who have multiple accounts of
Speaker 1: their own, so there's still a meat sack at the
Speaker 1: other side of the keyboard or the phone. But does
Speaker 1: that mean that only one of those profiles accounts is real?
Speaker 2: Well, it's true. It's like, you know, some folks that
Speaker 2: we work with will make themselves a work related Facebook
Speaker 2: what they call a public facing Facebook profile, and then
Speaker 2: they'll keep their personal one, so they just you know,
Speaker 2: befriend their actual friends. Not that we're not all friends
Speaker 2: with you know, our people that like the show and
Speaker 2: that we interact with. We're all internet friends. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's different. You have to separate it. I, on the
Speaker 2: other hand, I only use my one because I don't
Speaker 2: care and I'm an attention hoard.
Speaker 3: Uh. Same.
Speaker 1: Actually, on average, regardless of whether the user is real
Speaker 1: or a bot, the user will tend to spend twenty
Speaker 1: minutes on Facebook per visit. Advertisers love this number because
Speaker 1: that is an amazing amount of time to spend on
Speaker 1: one website, especially one there's continually refreshing ads for you.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you guys a quick question if either
Speaker 2: have you ever been taken in by an online ad
Speaker 2: as an online ad ever done anything more to you
Speaker 2: than just register annoyance? Have you have you have you
Speaker 2: had a successful interaction with an online ad where it
Speaker 2: knew something about you and served you just the right
Speaker 2: product or service that you were immediately like, I must
Speaker 2: have this.
Speaker 1: You mean, like a civilian thing. Yeah, instead of going
Speaker 1: to complain about the ad, right?
Speaker 2: Oh then no, no, never, I always wonder it just
Speaker 2: it just seems very ham fisted most of the time.
Speaker 2: The way you get served ads online. I'm just wondering, like,
Speaker 2: how successful is it really?
Speaker 3: I don't know, I can't think of one.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because you're right. It reminds me of the
Speaker 1: early days in the Terminator universe when they say the
Speaker 1: first androids were easy to spot, right, they didn't sweat
Speaker 1: or bleed or whatever, and they got increasingly sophisticated. That's
Speaker 1: what's happening now. So it may be ideal well in
Speaker 1: the ideal world for some of these ad providers and
Speaker 1: data aggregation centers. It may be that they want you
Speaker 1: to not know that you are being taken in by
Speaker 1: an ad. They want you to feel like you just
Speaker 1: had an epiphany and realized you needed a whopper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to wonder, like, maybe even the ads
Speaker 2: that I see as being unsuccessful, maybe they're somehow implanting
Speaker 2: that whopper idea in my head through subliminal means.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know, or they're just doing
Speaker 3: it outright. If it's a beauty product or something like
Speaker 3: what my wife watches on social media, it's, you know,
Speaker 3: someone that she likes in, is interested in, and follows.
Speaker 3: But then all of a sudden, a beauty product will
Speaker 3: like show up that the person is holding, and we'll
Speaker 3: mention just quickly, and then somehow she wants to buy
Speaker 3: it all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's you know, that's a super effective thing
Speaker 1: that's happened ever since we were children. Right, and then
Speaker 1: there's right now for a lot of Facebook ads. If
Speaker 1: you have a Facebook account, you have probably encountered the
Speaker 1: following cartoonish situation. You have, let's say, made a big purchase.
Speaker 1: You have purchased a new car, and like, this is
Speaker 1: my new Toyota Corolla, and that information bounces around backstage
Speaker 1: where you can't see, and then boom, you all of
Speaker 1: a sudden are inundated with ads for Toyota Corollas. That's
Speaker 1: silly and it makes no sense, that's exactly yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's what happens.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know what, this person who just bought
Speaker 1: a boat for the first time probably wants five more boats.
Speaker 2: Why not like a boat shammy though, or like a
Speaker 2: boat trailer, you know, why not, like, you know, get
Speaker 2: a little smarter and granular with it, because you're right
Speaker 2: every time, like or even if like I've looked at
Speaker 2: a product on a site and maybe I didn't buy it.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is smart. It inundates me with ads for
Speaker 2: that same product that I almost bought, that I could
Speaker 2: see being like, well, I guess I could buy it.
Speaker 2: I keep getting reminded maybe I do need it after all.
Speaker 2: But the whole boat with a boat thing just seems
Speaker 2: like a waste of algorithm.
Speaker 1: But if twenty thousand people ignore it, and one person says,
Speaker 1: you know what, yes, is that the ratio you think
Speaker 1: two boats? No, that's way too high. It's way less.
Speaker 1: But we know that regardless of the reaction, people are
Speaker 1: seeing this, and you don't always have to be on
Speaker 1: Facebook to see it. On average, those like and share
Speaker 1: buttons that go across all these websites, they're viewed across
Speaker 1: ten million websites daily, again estimated, probably a lower end
Speaker 1: estimation too. Every sixty seconds on Facebook, five hundred and
Speaker 1: ten thousand comments are posted, two hundred and ninety three
Speaker 1: thousand statuses updated, and one hundred and thirty six photos
Speaker 1: are uploaded. And one in five page view in the
Speaker 1: US occurs on Facebook one in five twenty percent of
Speaker 1: every single page view. That is crazy. But how did
Speaker 1: Facebook get there. How did it start? What led us
Speaker 1: to this strange thing?
Speaker 3: Well, you have to go back to two thousand and
Speaker 3: four year of our Lord, February fifth. In fact, it
Speaker 3: was the brainchild of a man named.
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg, Old Marcus Zuckerberg.
Speaker 3: He and his roommate. You've all seen the movie. We've
Speaker 3: all seen the movie, Fantastic Movie.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good. Remember when you first heard there was
Speaker 2: gonna be a Facebook movie and you're like, how's that
Speaker 2: gonna work? Yeah, that's gonna be dull.
Speaker 3: I had no idea there was actually compelling stuff behind
Speaker 3: the creation of this, But yes, Zuckerberg and his Harvard
Speaker 3: roommate Eduardo Severin, they created this website and it was
Speaker 3: built after or off of another program he'd already created
Speaker 3: called facemash all one word yep, and that one. That
Speaker 3: one was created in two thousand and three year prior
Speaker 3: to it. So face smash was developed by Zuckerberg. He
Speaker 3: wrote all the software for it. He made a website
Speaker 3: when he was in his second year of college, and
Speaker 3: the website was set up as this it's like a
Speaker 3: hot or Not game. You've seen it before online. At
Speaker 3: least around that time, there was even hotter not dot com.
Speaker 3: That was a thing you just say, yes, this person
Speaker 3: is attractive or no, this person is not attractive.
Speaker 1: And it was entirely female students, two female students side
Speaker 1: by side, and then you would vote on who was
Speaker 1: hot and who was not.
Speaker 2: So this sounds great, yeah, which is like tender.
Speaker 1: Basically, you know, I don't I don't participate in online
Speaker 1: dating apps.
Speaker 2: I'm smart, that's smart.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: But was this information stored? Was it was there some
Speaker 2: kind of leaderboard? I thought I remember hearing something about that, like,
Speaker 2: was it literally just you do it and it goes away?
Speaker 3: Hey, man, I don't know the ins and outs of
Speaker 3: face Smash Smash.
Speaker 1: They did, they did store, they did store the data,
Speaker 1: and they also at Harvard at the time, they had
Speaker 1: a physical thing called a Facebook. There was more than one,
Speaker 1: and these just had a picture of someone's staff, alumni
Speaker 1: or current student and a little blurb of information about them,
Speaker 1: sort of a who's who kind of thing. And so Facebook,
Speaker 1: the online platform, was named after this because Zuckerberg thought
Speaker 1: they would try to digitize and he's like, look, I
Speaker 1: could do it better, and I could do it in
Speaker 1: a week. And it turns out he was right. Because
Speaker 1: today Facebook is one of the largest repositories of this
Speaker 1: sort of information on the planet. And you know, to
Speaker 1: your question, I wonder, I wonder if somewhere deep in
Speaker 1: his own secret files completely air gapped, if Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: is still going through his hot or not and thinking for.
Speaker 3: The world, for the world, Oh jeez. Well, And you know,
Speaker 3: it's one of those things where when you're creating a
Speaker 3: Facebook like that, you're gather information and one person or
Speaker 3: a team of people are creating that physical book with
Speaker 3: that information. Right. What Zuckerberg realized is that people would
Speaker 3: voluntarily insert their own blurbs and then add pictures and
Speaker 3: then videos, and then check into places and say where
Speaker 3: I've been. He was onto something pretty crazy. That's kind
Speaker 3: of deep in the heart of all of us.
Speaker 2: It's very true. It's very true. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: that's why we're going to get into this later. But
Speaker 2: it's hard to accuse people of stealing your data when
Speaker 2: you give it so willingly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the common human trait we're talking about is narcissism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is look at me itis, right, which we suffer from
Speaker 1: as a species, but also compels our species to do
Speaker 1: some amazing things, and now what happens. What happens when
Speaker 1: one company has all of this information at its fingertips.
Speaker 1: Fast forward way past two thousand and four, but not
Speaker 1: as far as you would think, and enter Cambridge Analytica.
Speaker 2: That's right, this company, Cambridge Analytica, which I knew precious
Speaker 2: little about until you know the kerfuffle of late, was
Speaker 2: started in twenty thirteen. The company markets and Marketed and
Speaker 2: markets continues to market itself as a source of consumer research,
Speaker 2: targeted advertising, and other data related services to both political
Speaker 2: and corporate clients. So you know, in short, there they're
Speaker 2: kind of mining data and crunching the numbers, running it right.
Speaker 2: According to The New York Times, it was launched with
Speaker 2: fifteen million dollars of seed money, backing money by billionaire
Speaker 2: Republican donor Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon.
Speaker 3: Oh Steve Bannon, that's sounds familiar.
Speaker 1: Stevieb Yes, the advisor for the Trump campaign and later
Speaker 1: for a time an advisor to the Trump administration. Now
Speaker 1: bitter enemy.
Speaker 2: Also was the kind of power behind the throne of Breitbart,
Speaker 2: this very divisive right wing website.
Speaker 1: And everything was going along swimmingly until that is in
Speaker 1: March of twenty eighteen, when the house of cards began
Speaker 1: to tumble, and we will.
Speaker 2: Sort through the debris when we return from a quick
Speaker 2: sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts. On March seventeenth, twenty eighteen, reports
Speaker 1: from the Guardian and The New York Times revealed that
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica, again a data analysis firm that had worked
Speaker 1: with President Trump's campaign, had harvested the personal information of quote,
Speaker 1: around fifty million Facebook users without permission. Whether that's permission
Speaker 1: from Facebook, whether that's permission from the users like they
Speaker 1: would ask. This revelation came from a whistleblower named Christopher
Speaker 1: Wiley Wylie, who states that he helped build the firm
Speaker 1: and worked there until twenty fourteen. The way this is
Speaker 1: that Cambridge Analytica retrieved the data from an outfit called
Speaker 1: Global Science Research or GSR, a company owned by University
Speaker 1: of Cambridge professor Alexander Kogan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he collected all this data in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: He used a psychographic personality test app and it was
Speaker 3: called this is Your Digital Life all one word, just
Speaker 3: this is your Digital life. There were there are around
Speaker 3: three hundred thousand people who and who actually like got
Speaker 3: this app and installed it, and then they gave it
Speaker 3: permission to collect their personal information from Facebook, including the
Speaker 3: city where they set up the profile, the content they liked,
Speaker 3: and the information about their friends. Now, this is the
Speaker 3: most important part. You gave it permission to collect information
Speaker 3: about your friends, so that three hundred thousand people jumped
Speaker 3: up exponentially.
Speaker 2: Let's say, even when you hear about like recon data
Speaker 2: recon that law enforcement agencies or the FBI do where
Speaker 2: you can know something about who people interact with that
Speaker 2: actually knowing who they are kind of like you can
Speaker 2: see the web of communications and it starts to give
Speaker 2: you a really clear picture even without knowing the specifics
Speaker 2: about who's in the chain.
Speaker 3: Dude, you can do that with the white pages, That's what.
Speaker 2: I was saying, But with this, it's like they literally
Speaker 2: have like all the information. So it's like no end
Speaker 2: to the kind of stuff you could learn about people
Speaker 2: with this kind of access, Right, Yeah, So this is
Speaker 2: what happens.
Speaker 3: You get three three hundred thousand people to bite on
Speaker 3: the hook. Then all of a sudden, you've got the
Speaker 3: information on over fifty million people.
Speaker 1: At the time. That's why we estimated exactly. And then
Speaker 1: the other sticky problem with this. Without going too far
Speaker 1: into big data, we can recommend that you check out
Speaker 1: our earlier episode on it. If you would like to
Speaker 1: learn some frightening things about target, you can find that
Speaker 1: on our website. One of the sticky insidious things about
Speaker 1: this is what Facebook would refer to as frictionless sharing. Right.
Speaker 1: It's very fluffy euphemistic phrase for the process that Nol
Speaker 1: and Matt are describing here, and it does expand. It's
Speaker 1: like that six degrees of Kevin Bacon game, although using
Speaker 1: their using their information that they had aggregated, Facebook later
Speaker 1: found people are more like three and a half degrees
Speaker 1: separated from each other, including maybe Kevin Bacon. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's an average.
Speaker 2: I mean, how often have you, like, haven't met a
Speaker 2: new random person on Facebook and then you've ended up
Speaker 2: befriend of them on Facebook and realized that you have
Speaker 2: several mutual friends, even if there's somebody from like another state,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like, it's not that far fetched.
Speaker 2: So the web starts to shrink, or at least the
Speaker 2: access to it, you know, the more you think about
Speaker 2: you know, these connections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And on the so March seventeenth, This all
Speaker 1: goes public right the next day, Facebook bans Cambridge Analytica,
Speaker 1: and they ban its parent company, and then they ban
Speaker 1: Kogan himself. They also on the same day banned Christopher Wiley,
Speaker 1: the whistleblower.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: On March nineteenth, Facebook stock plummets takes a nosedive. On
Speaker 1: the same day, Congress starts to sniff around. Senator Edward
Speaker 1: Markey from Massachusetts says, hey, we got to hold some
Speaker 1: hearings against these Facebook and Cambridge Analytica jokers and paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: and specifically he wrote to the ranking members of the
Speaker 1: Senate Committee on Commerce that Senator John Thune and Senator
Speaker 1: Bill Nelson of South Dakota and Florida, respectively, and Marky says,
Speaker 1: we need to move quickly to hold hearings since Facebook
Speaker 1: is required to quote obtain explicit permission before sharing data
Speaker 1: about its users. Facebook holds an emergency meeting. They also
Speaker 1: this is enjoyable. They also for everyone at the meeting
Speaker 1: their version of an all hands They have a poll
Speaker 1: for the employees, you know what you think. Zuckerberg doesn't
Speaker 1: say anything about this for three days, and it's not
Speaker 1: until March twenty first that He addresses it with a
Speaker 1: post on his Facebook account. Got to respect the consistency,
Speaker 1: and he says what happens is his responsibility, but there
Speaker 1: are changes made to the platform that will prevent it
Speaker 1: from happening again. He proposes a three step plan going forward,
Speaker 1: investigate third party apps, restrict developers' access to user data
Speaker 1: on the whole, and give users tools to see what
Speaker 1: information of theirs is being shared.
Speaker 2: So, Ben, if I didn't install my Digital Life, what
Speaker 2: was my data breached?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Quite possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so can you explain why.
Speaker 3: So there's this thing where in the rules of Facebook,
Speaker 3: if you're an advertiser and you are collecting data in
Speaker 3: this way, it says that you can, as the developer
Speaker 3: of an app, take like glean the information of friends
Speaker 3: of the people who have actually installed your app or whatever. However,
Speaker 3: you have to use that data in a very limited
Speaker 3: way and only to improve your app that you're using.
Speaker 3: You can't actually sell that data to a third party
Speaker 3: or use that data for any other reason. That that
Speaker 3: was the original rules they were setting, right, And.
Speaker 2: Then just to clarify, that's exactly why they made that
Speaker 2: change where the third parties don't have quite carte blanche
Speaker 2: access to your friend's data only to yours directly because
Speaker 2: you have opted in to write that third party.
Speaker 1: Again, it's restricted. Ye, that's a lot. Like, that's a
Speaker 1: lot like flame retardant or water resistant. It's not proof,
Speaker 1: not water or flameproof. It's it's still not banned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's still a fire.
Speaker 1: And this is where some dicey things start happening. March
Speaker 1: twenty second, This all happens so quickly. March twenty second,
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump goes on Twitter, which is his social
Speaker 1: media of choice, and he appears to boast about a
Speaker 1: partnership with Cambridge Analytica. He doesn't name them, but he
Speaker 1: says people are no longer claiming his use of social
Speaker 1: media was less robust than Clinton, that being Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: in the twenty sixteen campaign in election, And while he
Speaker 1: doesn't outright name them, the timing suggests that he was
Speaker 1: talking about Cambridge Analytico.
Speaker 2: Well, it's sort of like that boast he makes where
Speaker 2: he says I don't pay my taxes, so I'm smart.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like him saying I figured out how
Speaker 2: to exploit social media, so I'm smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess you know. I don't follow his tweets
Speaker 1: very closely.
Speaker 2: Don't you think it's sort of an odd thing to say,
Speaker 2: given how controversial this stuff has been for him to
Speaker 2: come out and say that, Sure, if he wasn't kind
Speaker 2: of trying to vindicate himself in some way or say that, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it just seems a little boastful to me.
Speaker 3: It's puzzling.
Speaker 1: Indeed, Yeah, he did. I mean, it's clearly a boast.
Speaker 1: On March twenty third, ellin musk Our modern Tony stark
Speaker 1: Our modern Tesla. I guess he would want us to say,
Speaker 1: gets spooked and deletes his SpaceX account. He deletes a
Speaker 1: Tesla account. Zuckerberg is invited on the same day to
Speaker 1: test five in front of the House of Reps House
Speaker 1: of Representatives, many of whom will go on to thoroughly
Speaker 1: embarrass themselves with their lack of knowledge regarding social media
Speaker 1: platforms and technology in general.
Speaker 2: I saw a really good meme where it was like
Speaker 2: a screenshot of all the people that were quizzing him,
Speaker 2: and it just had like fifty spyware search bars like
Speaker 2: stacked up on top of themselves, like in their browser,
Speaker 2: you know, like those ones that like automatically install and
Speaker 2: you can't get rid of them. Well, they can't fill
Speaker 2: their whole screen.
Speaker 1: Do you think his photoshop? Oh yeah, jud it's worth
Speaker 1: it him. Yeah, I think so too. Well.
Speaker 3: And here's here's the whole other thing that we're not
Speaker 3: even gonna get into too deeply in this episode, but
Speaker 3: some of the some of the ways that Cambridge Analytica
Speaker 3: was using this data included influencing, if not just you know,
Speaker 3: the American president presidential election, the entire Brexit situation.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is true. That is true. And this is
Speaker 1: one of and their UK based company to Cambridge. So
Speaker 1: this is the primary impetus for officers from Britain's Information
Speaker 1: Commissioner's Office getting involved. They're a data watchdog group, so
Speaker 1: they raid the offices at Cambridge Analytica in London. They
Speaker 1: take their time and they're there for seven hours.
Speaker 2: I heard an NPR piece where someone was able to
Speaker 2: get their kind of dossier, their their digital you know,
Speaker 2: dossier that Cambridge Analytica assembled about them particularly, and it's
Speaker 2: not the most alarming kind of sounding stuff that you
Speaker 2: might imagine. It's like you're who are you, what party
Speaker 2: are you more likely to identify with?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: It represented that kind of stuff, and Zuckerberg, even in
Speaker 2: his testimony said this is all stuff people would share
Speaker 2: openly themselves. So, you know him, in an attempt to
Speaker 2: absolve himself, I was wondering what you guys think, like
Speaker 2: how is this different? Like what makes this so different?
Speaker 1: I want to walk through the rest of the timeline
Speaker 1: and get to the testimony here, because that is a
Speaker 1: good question. So the organization, the Information Commissioner's Office was
Speaker 1: given the search warrant by the High Court judge to
Speaker 1: determine whether the group tampered with Brexit, as Matt as
Speaker 1: you just brought up, and they are currently still analyzing
Speaker 1: and considering the evidence. Right on March twenty fifth, Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: who has become at this point known as the Zuck
Speaker 1: in a lot of online forums, takes out a full
Speaker 1: page ad in multiple UK US papers. It's a profound apology,
Speaker 1: repeats his three step plan. The FTC the next day
Speaker 1: confirms that they're investigating Facebook for these privacy practices. On
Speaker 1: the twenty seventh, Zuckerberg refuses to meet with British lawmakers.
Speaker 1: He sends one of his employees, but he does agree
Speaker 1: to meet with US Congress and while Britain is investigating
Speaker 1: this Wiley that whistleblower from earlier tells Parliament that Facebook
Speaker 1: uses microphones to improve ad targeting, which we've talked about
Speaker 1: before on this show. Yes, what do you guys think?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's a real thing.
Speaker 2: Like on your phone?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've certainly and we all have I think
Speaker 2: had a situation where we were chatting about something and
Speaker 2: then got served with an AD about it the next
Speaker 2: day or later. I mean, I yeah, I think it's
Speaker 2: highly plausible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm utterly convinced. Even though I have not seen absolute,
Speaker 3: like damning evidence, I'm convinced.
Speaker 1: I you know, we have to ask ourselves at what
Speaker 1: threshold can the sheer number of anecdotes and firsthand experiences
Speaker 1: be accepted as as you said, met damning evidence. I
Speaker 1: think we're close to that threshold. There's there's something we
Speaker 1: should fast forward to. On April fourth, Buried in a
Speaker 1: blog post about changes Facebook is making to quote clarify
Speaker 1: in terms of service. You like that Clarify not correct.
Speaker 1: The company casually increases the number of people affected by
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analyticas' efforts from fifty million to.
Speaker 3: Eighty seven million.
Speaker 2: Okay, just a couple more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a few.
Speaker 3: Dollars, yes, almost half again, These these are individuals that
Speaker 3: were compromised, right yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And they do go out of their way to say people,
Speaker 1: not profiles because they think their PR team is working
Speaker 1: around the clock to humanize Facebook.
Speaker 2: And do you think they've called out like a lot
Speaker 2: of it. We talked about fake profiles and bots and stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do we know that number? Like, how
Speaker 2: many in that number do you think could be fake profiles?
Speaker 2: And like, I don't know, do.
Speaker 3: You remember the number of fake profiles from the top. No,
Speaker 3: it was house high eighty three million. So what if
Speaker 3: these are all fake? No, they're not all fake, It's
Speaker 3: just it's a proportion. I'm sorry. I just I think
Speaker 3: it'd be hilarious if they only got fake profiles.
Speaker 1: That would be you know what, that would be a
Speaker 1: relief for everyone involved, except for the bot masters. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but they continue to their credit. Facebook suspends two more
Speaker 1: companies doing similar stuff, one called CBEU and one called
Speaker 1: aggregate IQ, and then they start in four users who
Speaker 1: are affected by the breach. And folks, you're listening to
Speaker 1: this today, the odds are you probably have some sort
Speaker 1: of Facebook profile, and if you have some sort of
Speaker 1: Facebook profile, the odds are not insanely low. It's it's
Speaker 1: not super likely, but it's it's quite possible that you
Speaker 1: opened your Facebook one day and you saw a notice
Speaker 1: that says that you may have been affected by this
Speaker 1: because either you or a friend used the app This
Speaker 1: is your Digital Life.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is your Digital life.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a soap opera or something for.
Speaker 3: Like the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, or a Black Mirror episode, right.
Speaker 2: That'd be a good one. I think, yeah, we should
Speaker 2: pocket that at that.
Speaker 1: So they appear to have also harvested not just the
Speaker 1: what we will call like the metadata, the connections, the
Speaker 1: time of log in, the time spent somewhere, but they've
Speaker 1: also are did content, private messages.
Speaker 2: Were harvested again those things. Isn't that That's dark to me?
Speaker 2: That's really creepy.
Speaker 1: The other synonym is scraped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard that a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they said a small number of people who
Speaker 1: logged into This is Your Digital Life also shared their newsfeed, timeline,
Speaker 1: post and messages, which may have included posting messages from you.
Speaker 1: That's according to Cambridge Analytic and Facebook. They also gained
Speaker 1: access to information from the friends of the apps users
Speaker 1: and it's still, honestly is not clear how many users
Speaker 1: were affected.
Speaker 2: What it's like a disease. It's like it's it can
Speaker 2: contract it from others.
Speaker 1: It's a vector from contact and astute listeners. You noticed
Speaker 1: earlier that Mark Zuckerberg himself refused to go to British lawmakers,
Speaker 1: but did consent to go to US lawmakers. And we
Speaker 1: were kicking this around a little bit off air. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that is?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, he spent two days giving testimony to
Speaker 3: the United States lawmakers. It sounds so much better when
Speaker 3: you call them lawmakers instead of just you know, the
Speaker 3: House or Congress. But anyway, yeah, he spent two days
Speaker 3: there and he had not much of a problem at all,
Speaker 3: fielding questions, like you said, Ben, from people who had
Speaker 3: barely a grasp on what an online advertising is, or
Speaker 3: what an app actually is, or how data transfers occur.
Speaker 2: And correct me if I'm wrong. But it's my understanding
Speaker 2: that British lawmakers do more so than American lawmakers, or
Speaker 2: at least they know how to dig deep and put
Speaker 2: people's feet to the fire, maybe a little bit more
Speaker 2: than we did. It felt like this was a bit
Speaker 2: of a softball kind of situation.
Speaker 1: Oh, agreed. Yeah. And this goes into maybe journalistic culture too,
Speaker 1: because BBC reporters are generally thought to be harder hitting
Speaker 1: as journalists. I've got a short, just a couple of
Speaker 1: choice questions, Yes, lawmakers asked Mark Zuckerberg. Would you like
Speaker 1: to hear something?
Speaker 3: Yes? Please?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 1: Okay. Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina asked, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: is Twitter the same as what you do?
Speaker 3: Lindsey Graham asking more like Lindsey Grandpa?
Speaker 2: Am I right?
Speaker 3: Home?
Speaker 1: Boy? Florida Senator Bill Nelson is a fond of a
Speaker 1: particular type of chocolate and he had mentioned that fact
Speaker 1: to some Facebook friends, and now he's seen ads for
Speaker 1: that chocolate. So he said, what if I don't want
Speaker 1: to receive ads for chocolate?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then Senator Roy Blunt from Missouri says, my son
Speaker 1: is dedicated to Instagram, so he'd want to be sure
Speaker 1: I mentioned him while I was here with you. It's
Speaker 1: not even a question.
Speaker 2: Can I can we can? I? Can you sign this
Speaker 2: for me, Mark Zuckerberg, for my grandson?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Man, good lord? How much more? This is comically softball
Speaker 2: and again like I mean, you know, there's probably a
Speaker 2: committee that like knows how the internet works or why
Speaker 2: why why aren't the FCC involved.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just it just seems very like what's the word,
Speaker 2: just a lot of pageantry and no real like yeah,
Speaker 2: like action.
Speaker 1: Like a lot like a lot of theater. And you
Speaker 1: can you can read in depth some of these some
Speaker 1: of these questions. Matt, you really took the you really
Speaker 1: took the took one for the team because you watched
Speaker 1: a lot of this.
Speaker 3: I did. I started watching the first day and I
Speaker 3: got lost. After about forty minutes, I just couldn't. It
Speaker 3: became noise and I just shut it down.
Speaker 2: Can you do an impression of Zuckerberg?
Speaker 3: I don't know that I can. I was listening to
Speaker 3: MPR and they were kind of summing up some of
Speaker 3: the major parts and I heard him say, this is
Speaker 3: a quote, so I guess I'll try it here. We
Speaker 3: didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility and
Speaker 3: that was a big mistake and it was my mistake,
Speaker 3: and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and
Speaker 3: I'm responsible for what happens.
Speaker 2: Here, and I swear I am human. Yes, I swear, hello, friend,
Speaker 2: it's just.
Speaker 3: The responses that were given to a lot of the
Speaker 3: major things. As you can expect since he's under oath,
Speaker 3: he is, he's on the surface. Everything is on the surface.
Speaker 2: And he just seems pretty surfacy in general.
Speaker 3: Oh and I don't know. I don't know much about
Speaker 3: the zuck Man. I feel like when I talk about
Speaker 3: the zuck I have this bit of envy just about
Speaker 3: how young and successful and.
Speaker 2: Really you think he's happy that I think he'd feel
Speaker 2: really isolated and I don't know, you know, more money,
Speaker 2: more problems than he's just trying to connect the world.
Speaker 1: Well, Mark, if you would like to hop on our
Speaker 1: show in the future for an interview, or if you
Speaker 1: just need some actual friends to maybe go bowling with
Speaker 1: you or something, let us know.
Speaker 2: Hit us up on Facebook where we are conspiracies.
Speaker 3: Yes, just so I will say one last thing, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there was one one, even though it's kind of a
Speaker 3: low blow shot. Senator Dick Durban at one point of
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, asked Mark Zuckerberg what hotel he
Speaker 3: was staying at. He's like, well, so, what hotel are
Speaker 3: you staying at while you're here?
Speaker 1: Would you be comfortable revealing that information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And you know, Mark of course is like, no,
Speaker 3: absolutely not, because again, all of the information sharing here
Speaker 3: that we're talking about is voluntary.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And as a point, he has a point. It's an
Speaker 2: interesting argument because a lot of this is based on
Speaker 2: the inherent problems of social media. But it's a contract
Speaker 2: that we all sign on for and we accept the
Speaker 2: trade off, you know.
Speaker 1: Because surely we all took the time to read the
Speaker 1: terms of agreement in full.
Speaker 2: Now, Ben, I would think that's possible, mind you possible
Speaker 2: that you have.
Speaker 1: It is quite possible. But one thing that is impossible
Speaker 1: for us to do now is to pretend that this
Speaker 1: is not an ongoing thing, or pretend that there's a
Speaker 1: full number, a full solid number of people that we
Speaker 1: know have been impacted. We can't predict the future, but
Speaker 1: what we can do is explore the troubling implications. After
Speaker 1: that is a word from our sponsor. Here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy. This granted, even though the three of us
Speaker 1: are hilarious, sounds kind of dry, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But that's because we're at the beginning of a much
Speaker 1: longer story and a much larger revelation It's a story
Speaker 1: that's been going on untold silently for you know, since
Speaker 1: shortly after Facebook was opened to anyone who wanted to
Speaker 1: log in. And while those investigations are ongoing, it's safe
Speaker 1: to say more and more unpleasant discoveries linger on the
Speaker 1: horizon waiting to be discovered. One of the first questions
Speaker 1: is what other operations are occurring at this point. We
Speaker 1: don't know. Very few people actually know. Like just before
Speaker 1: we hopped in the studio today, a few hours ago,
Speaker 1: it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica was planning to launch
Speaker 1: its own cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3: Yep, they want to raise money, don't they want? They
Speaker 3: want to raise money to pay for the creation of
Speaker 3: a system to help people store and sell their online
Speaker 3: personal data to advertisers.
Speaker 2: Oh, come on.
Speaker 1: True story called dragon Coin, after a famous gambler in Macau.
Speaker 2: But I thought we agreed that, like while in aggregate,
Speaker 2: on the whole, our data is worth a lot. My
Speaker 2: data is not worth a lot. Your data is not
Speaker 2: worth a lot. I couldn't sell my data and have
Speaker 2: it made. I mean, maybe I'm correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh no, they're using The thing is they were hoping
Speaker 1: to build a system that would combat the same kind
Speaker 1: of activities they did, the idea of being that who
Speaker 1: knows better how to build a hen house than the
Speaker 1: fox who got fat?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting, I understand what you're saying. Almost like
Speaker 2: a password wallet or something like that, or like a
Speaker 2: vault that you can keep your stuff under wraps.
Speaker 1: Which would also be supervised by Cambridge Analytica and their
Speaker 1: parent company. There's this other question, which is is it
Speaker 1: that bad? What gives you know? The effort for this
Speaker 1: was overseen by their former CEO, the disgraced chief executive,
Speaker 1: a guy named Alexander Nix. He was forcedyle of the
Speaker 1: company in March of this year because he was caught
Speaker 1: on tape bragging about his company's approach to political work
Speaker 1: in their countries across the world, including Eugene shell companies
Speaker 1: and strategies to entrap opponents. Yeah. They they famously state,
Speaker 1: and this is Cambridge themselves, that their database contains over
Speaker 1: five thousand data points on nearly every American consumer. And
Speaker 1: if you do some due diligence like NOL did, then
Speaker 1: you will see that a lot of it seems kind
Speaker 1: of innocuous.
Speaker 2: That's what I was talking about. Earlier, I think I
Speaker 2: jumped the gun a little bit and talking about that
Speaker 2: NPR piece I heard where a gentleman was able to
Speaker 2: obtain his Cambridge Analytica profile, let's call it, I think,
Speaker 2: I said, dossier. And he was pretty sure that it
Speaker 2: wasn't all of it, because I certainly wasn't that five
Speaker 2: thousand points. But it was, you know, a pretty basic
Speaker 2: little collection of data points that, yes, you could absolutely
Speaker 2: glean from just kind of trolling someone's feed, their their
Speaker 2: their page, you know, their wall, all the kinds like
Speaker 2: is this person a Republican or a Democrat? You know,
Speaker 2: most likely are they? What kind of income bracket are they?
Speaker 2: And this is also if you could kind of figure
Speaker 2: out by looking at pictures and seeing the kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff people actually post about themselves already, but then much
Speaker 2: fewer than five thousand, and he was pretty sure that
Speaker 2: he didn't they weren't going to give him all five thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean be stuff that I love that point
Speaker 1: you make about a lot of this stuff being things
Speaker 1: that you or I could find just by looking at
Speaker 1: someone's page without even being their Facebook friends.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not my point. At Zuckerberg's point, he said,
Speaker 2: that to US lawmakers. That was sort of his defense, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, and that's why I think this is a
Speaker 2: really interesting question that you raised, Ben. Isn't that bad?
Speaker 2: And I want to know what's the difference between the
Speaker 2: stuff we share and what Cambridge Analytica is doing with
Speaker 2: this stuff they're harvesting from us.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, it becomes murky and dangerous when it goes
Speaker 1: into political influence. So Cambridge Analytica did use this information,
Speaker 1: this data to influence elections. Per Matthew oskal Ski, at
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica, we break up our data into three buckets, political, commercial,
Speaker 1: and first party. We work with several of the main
Speaker 1: voter file providers depending on the preference of our clients
Speaker 1: to access vote history and voter profiles. And then they
Speaker 1: couple that with top commercial data providers for on a
Speaker 1: licensing basis that stuff like general demographics, geographics, purchase history,
Speaker 1: interest and so on. Then they get R and D
Speaker 1: project data, internal surveys, research what they call exclusive data relationships, which,
Speaker 1: as you know, in this kind of conversation, the most
Speaker 1: blase phrase is usually hiding the strangest things, and data
Speaker 1: collection through direct response projects, which is actually asking people
Speaker 1: what they think. Whistleblowers, not just wiy alleged that Cambridge
Speaker 1: worked with Steve Bannon to sway the vote starting as
Speaker 1: far back as twenty fourteen. And this is not really
Speaker 1: a big deal, does it seem? It's not unique. Everybody
Speaker 1: we ever meet is going to try to persuade us
Speaker 1: to do something without falling into relativism, right, Like, the
Speaker 1: three of us are pretty opinionated people, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to persuade each other's stuff all the time. Usually we agree,
Speaker 1: but if it's a larger company, that doesn't make that
Speaker 1: impulse itself inherently nefarious. Until we get to what Nick's
Speaker 1: actually said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was secretly recorded being a bit of a braggadocia,
Speaker 3: a bragadouche. I try to squeeze a line in there somehow,
Speaker 3: but yeah, he was bragging about how his firm, Camerge Analytico,
Speaker 3: was largely responsible for the election of Donald Trump as
Speaker 3: President of the United States. He described all kinds of
Speaker 3: questionable practices they used to influence foreign elections. Because remember
Speaker 3: this is a British firm and they're influencing the American election.
Speaker 3: Why I thought Russia was influencing the election. You might say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: maybe it was also our friends over in Britain.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I just want to say I pulled
Speaker 2: up this press release from Cambridge Analytica's website and they
Speaker 2: lay out a few points here. One no laws were broken.
Speaker 2: Cambridge Analytica did not hack Facebook. Two, Cambridge Analytica did
Speaker 2: not use the data or any derivatives of this data
Speaker 2: in the US presidential election. Three Cambridge Analytica did not
Speaker 2: work at all on the Brexit referendum. For mister Wiley
Speaker 2: is not a whistleblower. It goes on well.
Speaker 3: In this secret recording of Alexander Nicks, the former chief
Speaker 3: executive of Cambridge Analytica, he said that his firm did
Speaker 3: all the research, analytics, and targeting of voters for Trump's
Speaker 3: digital and TV campaigns. He was recorded saying.
Speaker 1: That He also said that he had met personally met
Speaker 1: Trump when he was the candidate many times, and that
Speaker 1: they deployed dirty tricks, including old school espionage stuff like honeytraps,
Speaker 1: setting someone up with a sex worker prostitute, fake news campaigns,
Speaker 1: fake bribery scandals, operations with ex spies and espionage agents
Speaker 1: to swing election campaigns, and this was recorded by an
Speaker 1: underground reporter working for The Observer. What they did is
Speaker 1: they posed as a member of a wealthy family from
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka seeking political influence. And then when the reporter
Speaker 1: as this wealthy Sri Lanka in person, when they asked
Speaker 1: if Cambridge Analytica could offer investigations into damaging secrets of rivals,
Speaker 1: digging up dirt. Essentially, Nick said that Cambridge worked with
Speaker 1: former spies from Britain and Israel to look for dirt
Speaker 1: and said they were doing it as they were speaking.
Speaker 1: He also volunteered that his team was ready to go
Speaker 1: further than just a keyboard investigation. He's like, I've got
Speaker 1: one guy. He's a master disguise. We can send him.
Speaker 1: He can be anybody. It's like, also, we can entrap
Speaker 1: people with some sex workers, bring a few Ukrainians with
Speaker 1: us on the trip, if you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: have a pp party. That was the implication something something untoward, right,
Speaker 1: And then he said that we do. He said, deep
Speaker 1: digging is interesting, but you know it can be equally
Speaker 1: effective to just go in and speak to the incumbents
Speaker 1: and offer them a deal that's too good to be
Speaker 1: true and make sure the video of it is recorded.
Speaker 3: Wow, hence the dirty tricks and also okay, so according
Speaker 3: to Wiley the whistleblower, he says, quote, we exploited facebooks
Speaker 3: to harvest millions of people's profiles and built models to
Speaker 3: exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.
Speaker 3: That was the basis the entire company was built.
Speaker 1: On, alleged whistleblower bro alleged Okay, that's what we have
Speaker 1: to Oh, yeah, we're gonna get alleged heavy here. Allegedly heavy.
Speaker 1: That's not a bad name for an album of some sort.
Speaker 2: We should put that in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, allegedly heavy.
Speaker 3: What if it's heavy? Allegedly?
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a good got a concept album here?
Speaker 3: Now to discs.
Speaker 1: But the question remains, like, what is what is wrong
Speaker 1: with this in a legal sense? If we have signed
Speaker 1: a contract, essentially, if we have assented to having this
Speaker 1: data traded in exchange for using this free service, then
Speaker 1: what's the big hubbub? The problem here is that it
Speaker 1: was used without notifying Facebook users, and Facebook really does
Speaker 1: not want this to be characterized as a data breach
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, one of which is a
Speaker 1: majority of American states have laws requiring notification in different
Speaker 1: cases of data breaches, including California, where Facebook is based.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got one of the emails from your bank
Speaker 2: or target or something saying, hey, you were part of
Speaker 2: a potential bundle of a trillion users who may or
Speaker 2: may not have had your information compromise. You should probably
Speaker 2: change your password. They didn't just send that to you
Speaker 2: out of the goodness of their heart, did they.
Speaker 1: No. No, there's a lot of cya there, and as
Speaker 1: we know, being a family show, that stands for cover
Speaker 1: your actions or ardvark or cover your ardvark, which I
Speaker 1: like better actually. And the ultimate goal of Cogan, who
Speaker 1: worked at the University of Saint Petersburg, by the way
Speaker 1: and receive Russian grant money, was not just to collect
Speaker 1: this and build an an anonymous database. He was working
Speaker 1: with Cambridge Analytica to build a database of identified profiles,
Speaker 1: or what they would call matched profiles. They started with
Speaker 1: the aim of making two million match profiles, meaning tied
Speaker 1: to electoral registers in eleven states, with room to expand
Speaker 1: much further, ultimately aiming to get all fifty states.
Speaker 2: To what end to send them targeted messages about candidates.
Speaker 3: Very specific, personalized targeted messages. Wow.
Speaker 1: So like if you're working for if you're working for
Speaker 1: the Republican Party or something that's your client, right, and
Speaker 1: you want to split a vote, you could say, well,
Speaker 1: here's some fake news about a Bernie Sanders or Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton or something. Or you could also put out some
Speaker 1: fake or embarrassing news about a Republican rival and say, oh,
Speaker 1: Senator Ted Cruz is I don't know, stealing peeps from
Speaker 1: kids on Easter Sunday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you can do it with a Facebook ad
Speaker 3: Like you could buy a Facebook ad spot that only
Speaker 3: targets one human person, right.
Speaker 2: And I think another thing that came from this in
Speaker 2: terms of Facebook changing their guidelines, they're going to be
Speaker 2: much they say they're going to be much more strict
Speaker 2: about selling political advertisements. That they're going to be much
Speaker 2: more like knowing where the business is coming from or
Speaker 2: something right this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a tough question too, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to vilify a Facebook No, but there's
Speaker 1: it's similar to the problem with YouTube, like how can
Speaker 1: you tube catch every falling sparrow of inappropriate stuff people posts?
Speaker 2: The Wild West Man? You know, I bet you it's
Speaker 2: going to come out in this that Facebook didn't really
Speaker 2: break the law. That not not necessarily true of Cambridge Analytica,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't seem like it's like the thing. It's like,
Speaker 2: why would you do something if you're not if there's
Speaker 2: no monetary h consequence in place for doing it, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like that's a regulations are all about, right, so,
Speaker 2: but you also don't know how to make a regulation
Speaker 2: until the case comes up where it's needed. And I
Speaker 2: think that we're going to see that now. But I
Speaker 2: do think that Facebook probably didn't break the law.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because, you know, legislation lags so far behind
Speaker 1: technological innovation, you know, which we've talked about in the
Speaker 1: show before for long time listeners. But there's something else,
Speaker 1: a big implication that a lot of people are just
Speaker 1: now becoming aware of, and a real spooky one that
Speaker 1: that might surprise some folks. And that is the question. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say I don't have a Facebook profile. Let's say
Speaker 1: I've never logged on to Facebook or Instagram I know
Speaker 1: their fingers on the same hand, and Twitter or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even I didn't even mess with MySpace
Speaker 1: or friends stirs how much could Facebook know about me?
Speaker 1: While they know a whole heck of a lot because
Speaker 1: of things that are called shadow profiles, called shadow profiles
Speaker 1: by literally everyone but Facebook.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're gonna call them shadow profiles because it's
Speaker 3: an awesome sounding, ominous thing. Here we go. You may
Speaker 3: have never started Facebook, right, you never even opened it up,
Speaker 3: not once, not a single time.
Speaker 1: But guess what, I hate books and faces.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I'm with you, brother, but I'm off the grid. Matt.
Speaker 3: You are off the grid. But you've got this friend
Speaker 3: that works over at the Pigley Wiggily. Here's the problem.
Speaker 3: She loves Facebook. She's on it all the time, right,
Speaker 3: and you know, you guys, you're just Palso, you're texting
Speaker 3: every once in a while, and.
Speaker 2: I'm on my flip phone.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, you're on your flip phone. But she's got
Speaker 3: that sweet iPhone five and uh, you know she's on
Speaker 3: Facebook with her app. That could be a problem for you.
Speaker 1: And then she maybe saves your number and labels you
Speaker 1: as hot Maddie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hot Maddie in her contacts. That's that's the off
Speaker 3: the grid guy that I am. And bigly Wiggly.
Speaker 1: Paramore yeah yeah, And so yeah, so then uh, the
Speaker 1: then Facebook has that piece of information.
Speaker 3: And then let's say, because you allow Facebook to see
Speaker 3: your context, yes.
Speaker 1: And depending upon your interaction or you're the amount of
Speaker 1: trouble you're willing to go to, it's very easy for
Speaker 1: Facebook to do that. In some cases you cannot avoid it.
Speaker 2: And you do have to opt in for that though,
Speaker 2: you know, justice any apps like that, as soon as
Speaker 2: you do an action on that app that requires it
Speaker 2: to have access to your camera, or have access to
Speaker 2: your microphone, or have access to your contacts, a little
Speaker 2: pop up comes up and you have to say yes,
Speaker 2: and you know it's a permission thing. But I guess
Speaker 2: once you've done that, that's just for you, it's not
Speaker 2: for those around you.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also if you use an iPhone, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a tad bit better about that. And the
Speaker 1: blootwear can be put in by a provider. I see that,
Speaker 1: and that blootwear may be such that you would have
Speaker 1: to perform a process called rooting your phone to actually
Speaker 1: get rid of it.
Speaker 2: You mean on an Android, like on an because if
Speaker 2: you've always heard, I've always heard that PCs are more
Speaker 2: susceptible to spyware and things. I guess that's true of
Speaker 2: the phones as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah I could, Yeah, I could easily see that.
Speaker 3: So let's let's just quickly jump into why Facebook hates
Speaker 3: that term shadow profiles. Oh why do they Well, because
Speaker 3: it sounds like they're straight up making these hidden profiles
Speaker 3: somewhere on your phone or your app, or maybe just
Speaker 3: in Facebook at large, profiles of people's people in your
Speaker 3: car contacts list that don't have a Facebook profile, And
Speaker 3: they say, that's not what they're doing. It doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: But in twenty thirteen, Facebook said it discovered and fixed
Speaker 1: a quote unquote bug. The bug was that when a
Speaker 1: user downloaded their Facebook file, which you can still do today,
Speaker 1: and it'll give you all the information they say they
Speaker 1: have on you. It'll give you all the or at
Speaker 1: least the information you're allowed to see, they have on you,
Speaker 1: all your likes, comments, et cetera, your messages. The thing
Speaker 1: was that in twenty thirteen, this quote unquote bug included
Speaker 1: not just people's visible contact information for their friends, but
Speaker 1: also their friends shadow contact information, So they were seeing
Speaker 1: stuff that they weren't supposed to see. And the problem
Speaker 1: with the bug for Facebook was not that all of
Speaker 1: this stuff was lumped together. It was that it had
Speaker 1: shown people that it existed. So the extent of the
Speaker 1: connections that it built around every user was supposed to
Speaker 1: only be visible to Facebook. Yeah, and they admit that
Speaker 1: this is in their phrase, it's getting information from a
Speaker 1: friend or someone you know or might know. But what
Speaker 1: does that mean. That means anyone at any point who
Speaker 1: might have somehow labeled your phone number, your email, or
Speaker 1: even your physical trying not to curse here, even your
Speaker 1: physical address will be added.
Speaker 3: To that.
Speaker 1: Agglomeration of information that is you. So, whether it's the
Speaker 1: Pigley Wiggly Hot Maddie, whether it's an old email address
Speaker 1: from college that a friend of yours has, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like, it's like hot dot Maddie at uga
Speaker 1: dot edu.
Speaker 3: It was Obadiah fourteen at AOL.
Speaker 1: I knew it was him.
Speaker 3: Dang is that him?
Speaker 1: The whole time? Well, Obadiah just thought he looked like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always thought that to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too, That's why That's why I chose it.
Speaker 1: So this means that the average user is much more
Speaker 1: exposed than they were led to believe. And Facebook's position
Speaker 1: is that mistakes happen and will be improved. And I think, Noel,
Speaker 1: you make a really interesting point in prediction here will
Speaker 1: it turn out to be something illegal? Do laws exist
Speaker 1: for this sort of situation? It seems like right now
Speaker 1: not many do.
Speaker 2: It seems like this is a case that will lead
Speaker 2: to change. We're already seeing it, but you know, big,
Speaker 2: big changes. The tech companies will have to abide by it.
Speaker 2: And it also makes you wonder is this going to
Speaker 2: affect user experience in a way that is unpleasant, because
Speaker 2: I think it might. I think some of the things
Speaker 2: that we take for granted on an open internet or
Speaker 2: on like an app like Facebook, are largely because of
Speaker 2: the the lack of barriers in some of these kinds
Speaker 2: of things, and we may find ourselves being inconvenience because
Speaker 2: of fallout from the story, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's a good that's a good point,
Speaker 1: and it's a great perspective to raise because as we know,
Speaker 1: history proves that privacy as a concept is a relatively
Speaker 1: recent phenomenon. You know, the idea of privacies. We understand
Speaker 1: it did not exist in centuries past, and it may
Speaker 1: well not exist by the end of this century, by
Speaker 1: the end of by the end of this next decade,
Speaker 1: start like twenty twenty eight. But the other thing is,
Speaker 1: this is the current lay of the land, folks. The
Speaker 1: other thing is that, as far as Facebook is concerned,
Speaker 1: none of that information that other people have about you
Speaker 1: counts as your information.
Speaker 3: That's shadow information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it belongs to the people who uploaded it. They're
Speaker 1: the only ones with any control over it. That's why.
Speaker 1: For instance, you can remove a tag of yourself on
Speaker 1: a photograph, right, and this is not shadow stuff. This
Speaker 1: is public profile stuff. You can remove a tag of
Speaker 1: yourself in a photograph, but if you want the photograph
Speaker 1: to be taken down, you have to get the person
Speaker 1: who put it up to take it down. This is
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff. And this is why, even though it's not illegal,
Speaker 1: this is why it could put people in real danger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone who cannot have their identity known.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like an undercover cop for instance, or let's say
Speaker 1: a prosecutor for criminal.
Speaker 3: Cases, anybody in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Anybody in law enforcement. Let's say people who have lives
Speaker 1: working in well it's not legal in a lot of
Speaker 1: the US here, but somebody who's working in the sex
Speaker 1: trade or something. And you can find these various stories
Speaker 1: of people who deleted their Facebook because they were in
Speaker 1: a profession like this and they got the scariest thing
Speaker 1: it can happen, which is someone they knew, maybe even
Speaker 1: someone they like, put away in jail, or something pops
Speaker 1: up on the people you May know list, or for instance,
Speaker 1: there was a There are little things that are just
Speaker 1: twilight zone moments, like you'll hear stories about someone who
Speaker 1: works as a receptionist at an office meets somebody for
Speaker 1: the second time and they call them by their nickname
Speaker 1: in their second conversation because they popped up on their
Speaker 1: Facebook list. Or what if you are a therapist and
Speaker 1: your clients start popping up on each person's Facebook list.
Speaker 1: This is I mean, this is dangerous stuff, especially when
Speaker 1: we're what we're getting to is, regardless of the intent,
Speaker 1: what we're getting to in action is a violation of confidentiality.
Speaker 1: It's a dangerous thing. But then we have to ask,
Speaker 1: and I keep going back to the question you asked, No,
Speaker 1: how can government's police international entities like this? Should they
Speaker 1: even be trying? You know, it seems like the EU's
Speaker 1: taking this more seriously than the US, But there's pretty
Speaker 1: compelling evidence that this is not in any way new.
Speaker 1: We've talked about Alphabet and Google, talked about the CIA
Speaker 1: and Facebook, Cambridge Analytica. It's just it's a gimme. It's
Speaker 1: a home run. If if we were intelligence agencies, or
Speaker 1: if we were these businesses, we would feel like it
Speaker 1: was foolish not to be doing this.
Speaker 3: I agreed. It feels like there needs to be some
Speaker 3: kind of United Nations style thing just for digital matters,
Speaker 3: for international digital matters.
Speaker 2: Something really good points.
Speaker 3: Something where it's like an international body that can make
Speaker 3: decisions and say anything that occurs on networks that go
Speaker 3: across what lines of states and countries they you have,
Speaker 3: you are beholden to our group.
Speaker 2: I say, we set it up and then immediately neuter
Speaker 2: the heck out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, let's give it the Leaga Nations treatment. Uh.
Speaker 3: And I think it needs to be run by a
Speaker 3: group of ais. Paul's nodding robots factor to Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: will be the head.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, have you seen those memes where they like
Speaker 2: paint him up like a data from Star Trek.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's really good and it's eerily eerily works.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but I am kind of serious with people
Speaker 3: that people that actually know what they're talking about and
Speaker 3: understand a technocracy of I mean, I think there should
Speaker 3: be a body that at least can enforce regulation.
Speaker 1: Well, there are several there's a wealth of bodies in
Speaker 1: the US and abroad that were built with that purpose,
Speaker 1: but of course, as you mentioned before, are a little
Speaker 1: close to the entity and institutions and industries that they
Speaker 1: are supposed to oversee. Yeah, well, what's the question? What
Speaker 1: happens next? Is this going to be a flash in
Speaker 1: the pan news wise? Will the news cycle move on
Speaker 1: to a different thing as the US and Russia continue
Speaker 1: to wage war for the pipeline in Syria? I'm sorry the.
Speaker 3: Way what'd you say? Proxy war?
Speaker 1: Freedom? And whatever?
Speaker 3: What was it?
Speaker 1: But the but the you know, is this going to
Speaker 1: stay in the headlines? Will we ever know the full story,
Speaker 1: the full cast of players, the extent of their involvement.
Speaker 1: Will it? Will anybody at Facebook be charged with a crime?
Speaker 1: Will anybody at Cambridge Analytica? Did Facebook even commit a crime?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That?
Speaker 1: That's what I keep going back to. Cynics in the
Speaker 1: audience will probably say no, guys, if you token scapegoats
Speaker 1: will be profited up for some public pitchforks and political
Speaker 1: theater and then it'll be business as usual.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, but that's our show but for today. Yeah. By
Speaker 1: the way, we're on Facebook.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If you have any thoughts on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's
Speaker 3: use of data and data and however you say that,
Speaker 3: you know, just write to us. You can find us
Speaker 3: on Facebook. We are conspiracy stuff, Like, really, just find
Speaker 3: us there. Make sure you put any and all identifying
Speaker 3: information just directly into the comment box. Cool, they know, Okay,
Speaker 3: but just you know, put more just as much as
Speaker 3: you possibly can.
Speaker 1: Listen to your fears, your blood type things that you
Speaker 1: worry about when you walk into an elevator full of strangers.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We had a funny realization the other day. We were
Speaker 2: looking at some of our breakdowns of like listenership, and
Speaker 2: there's a really huge percentage of our listenership that comes
Speaker 2: up in the data that we get as unknown or Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Ben immediately was like, well, that's probably because our
Speaker 2: listeners might be more likely than some other show to
Speaker 2: use a VPN.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we know what you're doing right now with all.
Speaker 1: Your encryption, and we applaud it.
Speaker 3: We think it's awesome.
Speaker 1: A VP of Virtual Private Network. Right, yes, let us
Speaker 1: know what you think about this. What do you think
Speaker 1: about the scandal? Would you, for example, would you be
Speaker 1: okay with it if you received some sort of compensation
Speaker 1: other than the use of that platform, like if you
Speaker 1: got to check every three months or something where they said, hey, great,
Speaker 1: great job, here's for being you. Here's for yeah, perfect, Yes,
Speaker 1: here's for being you.
Speaker 3: Here's two dragon coins.
Speaker 1: Here's two dragon coins, and a couple embarrassing pictures of
Speaker 1: you from middle school. Don't thank us, We like to
Speaker 1: thank you. And if you just know which side your
Speaker 1: bet is made, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Just remember if you know, you stop using our services.
Speaker 3: We do have these pictures and they may or may
Speaker 3: not end up in the hands of your enemies.
Speaker 2: It'd be a shame if the enemy's found out about
Speaker 2: your head gear, your brace face.
Speaker 1: So do you click like angry or wow? What was it?
Speaker 1: O face?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: O face?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I do the heart?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my favorite.
Speaker 2: I like the heart.
Speaker 1: So let us know. Thank you so much as always
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Stay tuned as we return with more strange, unusual, fascinating,
Speaker 1: and at times terrifying stuff. They don't want you to
Speaker 1: know in the meantime, and.
Speaker 3: That's the end of this classic episode. If you have
Speaker 3: any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
Speaker 3: into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 3: One of the best is to give us a call.
Speaker 3: Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
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Speaker 3: good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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