Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm os Vlosian, and today Cara Price and I will
Speaker 1: bring you the headlines this week, including a bipartisan bill
Speaker 1: that could change the future of the Internet. Then, in
Speaker 1: our Tech Support segment, we'll talk to Jeffrey Fowler of
Speaker 1: the Washington Post about the twenty three and me bankruptcy
Speaker 1: and what that might mean for your genetic data. All
Speaker 1: of that on the Weekend Tech. It's Friday, March twenty eighth. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm very, very excited to finally be able to say it.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Cara Price.
Speaker 2: Hello, it's good to be back as Valashan.
Speaker 1: You're armed with a document dossier.
Speaker 2: I am, I have papers. I created a dossier of
Speaker 2: all the tech stories that I want to bring up.
Speaker 2: And then, of course you've already reported what happens with me.
Speaker 2: But no, some of them, some of them are true
Speaker 2: to my own weirdness and obsession. One of them is
Speaker 2: Kim Kardashian's photoshoot for Perfect magazine, which came out a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me about that. I remember, Kim Kardashian, you
Speaker 1: and I were entertained last November by her sort of
Speaker 1: first trap photos with the Tesla robot. But is this
Speaker 1: a development?
Speaker 2: So if you're Kim, you're gonna pose, and if you're Kim,
Speaker 2: you're gonna post with the hottest stuff. Right, what's the
Speaker 2: hottest stuff? The cyber truck and a Tesla robot And
Speaker 2: those poses are not exactly of the doge variety. They
Speaker 2: are sultry. But no, you know, there's actually a more
Speaker 2: serious story here. The Associated Press reports that Tesla has
Speaker 2: recalled nearly all cyber trucks, so it's more than forty
Speaker 2: six thousand in fact, and the National Highway Traffic Safety
Speaker 2: Administration warned that panels on either side of the truck's
Speaker 2: windshield are in danger of detaching and creating a road
Speaker 2: to hack. It's not funny, but it's like you're in
Speaker 2: the hand, I mean, where you see it.
Speaker 1: It's funny because ironic, because it's supposed to look like
Speaker 1: you're living in the future but supposed to be roane.
Speaker 2: It's RoboCop but with like an old hyende vibe. And
Speaker 2: so the issue is actually the adhesive. It's vulnerable to
Speaker 2: environmental embrittlement. According to the NHDSA.
Speaker 1: I thought that was your phrase.
Speaker 2: So drivers can get the panel replaced by Tesla for free, actually,
Speaker 2: which I mean I imagining going to do that?
Speaker 1: Fool's Errand yeah, I mean Tesla shares a down forty
Speaker 1: two percent for this year, and I can't imagine this
Speaker 1: story will help on the subject of corporate drama. I
Speaker 1: was drawn to this story this week of tech enabled
Speaker 1: business espionage. Here's the headline from tech Crunch. Rippling seu's deal.
Speaker 1: Deal denies all legal wrongdoing and Slack is the main witness.
Speaker 2: Can you explain to me how Slack is a witness? Actually,
Speaker 2: Slack is a witness to a lot of our bacchanalia
Speaker 2: for this show, So Slack as a witness actually makes
Speaker 2: sense to me.
Speaker 1: So yes, I mean, this is kind of a story
Speaker 1: about who's watching on You're on your work software or computer.
Speaker 1: But Rippling and Deal are HR startups that offer payroll
Speaker 1: and other HR resources and their rifles. This is the
Speaker 1: Pepsi and Coke of the HR software.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the sexiest sentence.
Speaker 1: In Rippling recently announced a lawsuit against Deal in a
Speaker 1: fifty page complaint, the ledges racketeering, unfair competition, misappropriation of
Speaker 1: trade secrets and more. And here's the real intrigue. The
Speaker 1: lawsuit centers around an employee that Rippling alleges acts as
Speaker 1: a spy for Deal.
Speaker 2: The worst thing you could be at Coke's a Pepsi
Speaker 2: spy and vice versa. But then again, I'm like, who
Speaker 2: cares about trade secrets at Rippling and Deal? But I
Speaker 2: guess it's the comtes.
Speaker 1: Twelve and thirteen billion dollar HR companies. They're almost exactly
Speaker 1: the same size, they have a very similar offering and
Speaker 1: so so yeah, I think the stakes are high, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a kind of public relations war
Speaker 1: going on. In parallel, Rippling created a game on their
Speaker 1: website called the Snake Game. You of course remember Snake.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just download a black puzzle again, which
Speaker 2: is the closest I can get, but Nokia.
Speaker 1: Well it's not the closer you can get because you
Speaker 1: can now play Snake on Ripling's website. Here are the instructions.
Speaker 1: Deal often claims to be a one stop solution for
Speaker 1: all your global payroll needs, but their customers pay the
Speaker 1: price for gaps beneath the surface. Play this game to
Speaker 1: find the difference between Deal's claims and the reality of
Speaker 1: their proce.
Speaker 2: This is the pettiest. This is pettier than some of
Speaker 2: the stuff that my friends did in college.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure you want to play the game, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it won't be interesting to the listener to listen
Speaker 2: to us play. But just like imagine playing Nokia Snake,
Speaker 2: you gobble up all of the alleged deal falsehoods that
Speaker 2: are at play. But the lawsuit was filed by Rippling.
Speaker 1: That's right. And the reason it fascinates me, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: is because it's kind of about privacy, especially privacy as
Speaker 1: an employee, right, Like, if you think you're alone on
Speaker 1: your work computer, you're wrong, man.
Speaker 2: Well, especially if you're a spy.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, according to Ripling's own lawyers, the company keeps a
Speaker 1: detailed log of what people do on Slack, Like when
Speaker 1: an employee accesses Slack channels, or conducts searches on Slack,
Speaker 1: or opens a document on Slack. All those things are logged.
Speaker 1: And so the lawsuit contends that according to this logged activity,
Speaker 1: the Rippling employee, who is allegedly a spy for Deal,
Speaker 1: started looking at content associated with the word Deal at
Speaker 1: a much higher rate beginning November, including perusing sales related
Speaker 1: Slack channels that weren't necessary for his job in payroll operations.
Speaker 2: But when they say looking, we're looking at.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll give you. I'll give you a clear example
Speaker 1: of this. So this morning, when you slacked me and
Speaker 1: said how can I find the log in details to
Speaker 1: all of our subscriptions, what I did was I searched
Speaker 1: log in in Slack and then that's how I found it.
Speaker 1: So you used me as a human function, but you
Speaker 1: actually there is a search function.
Speaker 2: They're like OS has been trying to log in.
Speaker 1: Quite a bit recently. So that's exactly right. So this
Speaker 1: dude was writing deal into the Rippling corporate Slack and
Speaker 1: seeing what he could find allegedly.
Speaker 2: Fascinating, and so slack was basically, I mean, slack wasn't
Speaker 2: doing anything. But like when people went looking for what
Speaker 2: this guy was doing, Slack was like, here's what this
Speaker 2: guy's doing.
Speaker 1: People didn't just go looking, They actually created a honeytrap. Explained,
Speaker 1: So Rippling created a Slack channel and started a rumor
Speaker 1: that it had a bunch of embarrassing information about Deal
Speaker 1: in it, and of course allisuredly this employee headed straight
Speaker 1: for that slack channel.
Speaker 2: And the spy employee searched for this channel and that
Speaker 2: was picked up by the slack log is.
Speaker 1: That's according to the lawsuit anyway. It also claims that
Speaker 1: when the alleged spy was asked by court order to
Speaker 1: hand over his phone, he escaped the bathroom, locked the
Speaker 1: door behind him, and possibly even attempted to flush the
Speaker 1: phone down the toilet.
Speaker 2: As someone who's heard anxiety attacks, at first, I hear, well, honey,
Speaker 2: that phone ain't going down the toilet, And then I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I would flush a phone down the toilet,
Speaker 2: especially if it was a Nokia phone that things goes
Speaker 2: right down, not my iPhone.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: You have to imagine fishing your wet phone out of
Speaker 1: the toilet having to fail to flush it is not.
Speaker 2: The the way I have fished phones out of a toilet.
Speaker 2: I'd be a millionaire if you paid.
Speaker 1: Next, I have a story that doesn't exactly debunk the
Speaker 1: claim that crypto is the Wild West. The story is
Speaker 1: about something called a crypto mixer, and he guess what
Speaker 1: that is, Cara.
Speaker 2: Like something between the world's Saddest job fair and the
Speaker 2: Saddest Prome.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought too, but then I asked Google Gemini. Ah,
Speaker 1: And here's how Gemini explains. A crypto mixer, also known
Speaker 1: as a tumbler, aggregates cryptocurrencies from multiple users, mixes them,
Speaker 1: and redistributes them randomly, making it harder to trace the
Speaker 1: origin and ownership of the funds. So, of course there's
Speaker 1: a public ledger for cryptocurrency, the blockchain, but after the
Speaker 1: mixing process, the coins are we distributed back to the
Speaker 1: original depositors in a random manner.
Speaker 2: It's like if everybody bought a bottle of vodka and
Speaker 2: you made a huge batch martini and then you were like,
Speaker 2: can I have my drink? You get your drink, and
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't know if that was from my
Speaker 2: bottle or who somebody else's voca battle.
Speaker 1: I think that that is very very well put, and
Speaker 1: I'm sober. The metaphor the founders of this particular mixer chose, however,
Speaker 1: was the Tornado, hence the name of Tornado Cash.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a celebrity baby name.
Speaker 1: Well wait till we get to the alleged perpetrator. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the Justice Department alleged hackers, including the
Speaker 1: Lazarus Group, which is allegedly run by the North Korean government,
Speaker 1: launded billions of dollars in stone assets using Tornado Cash.
Speaker 1: So the US took action and sanctioned the company, and.
Speaker 2: So nobody in the US could use Tornado Cash anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the name. That was one of the
Speaker 1: consequences of the sanctions. Another was criminal charges against two
Speaker 1: founders of Tornado Cash. The Wall Street Journal recently spoke
Speaker 1: to one of the founders, whose name is get this,
Speaker 1: Roman Storm.
Speaker 2: I can't These are Kardashian children's names.
Speaker 1: That's right. So Roman Storm the founder of Tornado Cash.
Speaker 1: But you know, all jokes aside. He was actually arrested
Speaker 1: at gunpoint after federal agents stormed his home in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three to arrest him for his involvement in Tornado Cash.
Speaker 1: He's now out on bail and says he's not guilty
Speaker 1: of charges of money laundering and sanctions violations. In this
Speaker 1: week's Wall Street Journal article, he maintains that the software
Speaker 1: he created is neutral and has both good and bad
Speaker 1: use cases.
Speaker 2: But it's my understanding that the whole point of the
Speaker 2: blockchain is to create a ledger that traces back the
Speaker 2: original transaction. So what could possibly be a good use
Speaker 2: of crypto mixing, Well, Storm.
Speaker 1: Said, it's financial privacy. So an example he used actually
Speaker 1: was that you could donate crypto to assist Ukraine in
Speaker 1: their war effort without identifying yourself, for example, to Russian authorities.
Speaker 2: So that actually makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: There is some good news for Storm, we could go
Speaker 1: the US actually lifted sanctions against Tornado Cash, and while
Speaker 1: Storm is still awaiting trial, his ally seems to be
Speaker 1: encouraged by the Trump administration's desire to make the US
Speaker 1: the crypto capital of the world.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. I love that story. Else, The next story that
Speaker 2: I want to talk to you about is one that
Speaker 2: I have not shut up about since probably we started
Speaker 2: doing Sleepwalkers.
Speaker 1: Seven years ago, seven years ago.
Speaker 2: And you know what, a lot of people in the
Speaker 2: US government have not shut up about it over the
Speaker 2: last seven years either. But this is the first time
Speaker 2: in my research that I've felt like, Okay, there's actually
Speaker 2: going to be some movement on this because members of
Speaker 2: the bipartisan members of the US government are getting involved.
Speaker 2: So Section two thirty sounds extremely boring, and I bring
Speaker 2: it up at parties and people look like shut up.
Speaker 2: But if I want to kind of plagiarize the way
Speaker 2: that Section two thirty has been described by those who
Speaker 2: care about it, it is the twenty six words that
Speaker 2: created the Internet, the twenty six words of the following.
Speaker 2: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall
Speaker 2: be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information
Speaker 2: provided by another information content provider. What does that mean
Speaker 2: to you?
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that much to me on the face of it,
Speaker 1: But I know that those twenty six words have been
Speaker 1: some of the most consequential in the history of technology legislation,
Speaker 1: and arguably are lifetimes. They represent this addition to the
Speaker 1: Communications Decency Act that was passed in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: and those twenty six words that created the Internet basically
Speaker 1: meant that Internet platforms were not legally liable for third
Speaker 1: party content like content created by users that lives on
Speaker 1: their platforms when the law was struck. It was basically
Speaker 1: designed to allow these Internet platforms to grow and to
Speaker 1: host content without fear of liability.
Speaker 2: They did that successful.
Speaker 1: Boy did that work.
Speaker 2: And it was also related to free speech concerns, which
Speaker 2: is still something that you know people are talking about today,
Speaker 2: which is this idea of like, how much is a
Speaker 2: two moderated internet?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And so, ultimately, as you were saying, Section two thirty
Speaker 2: allowed companies to put less effort into regulating their content
Speaker 2: because they're not treated like publishers.
Speaker 1: Publishers obviously are constantly subject to lawsuits for saying stuff
Speaker 1: which is defamatory or for publishing content which is extreme,
Speaker 1: whereas websites and social media platforms are immune.
Speaker 2: Right, And in the nineties, nobody could have anticipated how
Speaker 2: this law would fuel the explosion of what we now
Speaker 2: know as social media. The story here is that thirty
Speaker 2: years later, there is now some bipartisan support for modifying
Speaker 2: Section two thirty, and two senators, one being Lindsay Graham,
Speaker 2: who's a Republican from South Carolina, and the other Dick Durbin,
Speaker 2: a Democrat from Illinois, plan on introducing a bill to
Speaker 2: set an expiration date for Section two thirty, and that
Speaker 2: date is January one, twenty twenty seven. Mark your calendar,
Speaker 2: less than two years from now, less than two years
Speaker 2: from now. But the Information reported that the lawmakers don't
Speaker 2: actually want to repeal Section two thirty outright. It's really
Speaker 2: more of an invitation to the tech companies to negotiate,
Speaker 2: which is something that they have been unwilling to do
Speaker 2: without an ultimatum thus far.
Speaker 1: I think one of the interesting things about this story
Speaker 1: is the first place you sort reported was in the
Speaker 1: Information which is like the go to source for the
Speaker 1: whole tech industry.
Speaker 2: And I think what that signals is that big tech
Speaker 2: is actually watching very closely. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that I've noticed is just this increased anger towards tech
Speaker 2: companies in recent years from both sides of the aisle.
Speaker 2: You know, there's the growing concern for the safety of
Speaker 2: kids online and frustrations about failed attempts to regulate big
Speaker 2: tech again on both sides of the aisle, which may
Speaker 2: bode well for this yet to be introduced Bill.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a story we'll be following up with over
Speaker 1: the come months. But right now, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with a few more headlines, and then
Speaker 1: we'll hear from Jeffrey Fowler of The Washington Post about
Speaker 1: what twenty three and meters bankruptcy filing could mean progenetic data.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, Welcome back. We have a few more
Speaker 1: quick headlines to you this week before we dive into
Speaker 1: our conversation with Jeffrey Fowler about twenty three and meter.
Speaker 1: Casey Newton wrote this week in his newsletter about two
Speaker 1: new studies, one from the MIT Media Lab and one
Speaker 1: actually from Open ai itself, which suggests that heavy chatbot
Speaker 1: use is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: as Casey Newton and the studies both point out, correlation
Speaker 1: is not causation. There's always a possibility that loneliness is
Speaker 1: what propels someone to seek an emotional bond with a bot.
Speaker 1: But the studies do point at a potent danger, which
Speaker 1: is that engaging with compelling chatbots might pull people away
Speaker 1: from connections with other humans, which may in turn drive
Speaker 1: more loneliness and more dependence on a computer companion.
Speaker 2: This is the digital chicken egg. Am I lonely seeking
Speaker 2: a chatbot? Or is the chatbot so hot that I
Speaker 2: can't stay away?
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: There's another story that Semaphore reported on that an off
Speaker 2: Broadway theater in New York is offering live AI powered
Speaker 2: translations for the play Perfect Crime. So theatergoers can scan
Speaker 2: a QR code and choose from sixty languages. So actors
Speaker 2: wear microphones that feed their voices directly into the translation system,
Speaker 2: so no side conversations or audience noises get accidentally picked
Speaker 2: up by the AI powered translation services. This is an
Speaker 2: incredible use of AI, which is like, you could be
Speaker 2: a tourist from anywhere and see this show and still
Speaker 2: understand it.
Speaker 1: Finally, obviously we can't pass the headlines by without a
Speaker 1: nod to this week.
Speaker 2: The dofist Pentagon pracs.
Speaker 1: Hashtag signal Gate. Just a few weeks ago we had
Speaker 1: Meredith Whittaker, who runs Signal, the encrypti mesching app on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff and Signal is absolutely the flavor of the
Speaker 1: week because Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, was
Speaker 1: accidentally included in a Signal group with JD. Vance and
Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth to discuss highly sensitive battle plans for Yemen,
Speaker 1: which are now absolutely all over the Internet. The lesson
Speaker 1: here is that it turns out encryption doesn't work if
Speaker 1: you invite journalists into your group chat. The story broke
Speaker 1: the internet per Axios. Hashtag signal Gate is the most
Speaker 1: interacted with story of the year to date. The Atlantic story,
Speaker 1: which is titled the Trump administration accidentally texted me its
Speaker 1: war plans has approaching five hundred thousand interactions on social media,
Speaker 1: which is more than the second and third place stories
Speaker 1: of the year combined. For your reference, those two are
Speaker 1: Meet the World War II veteran that recently celebrated its
Speaker 1: hundredth birthday from the venerable news source eleven Alive. And
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's networth dropped twenty nine billion dollars in one
Speaker 1: day as Tesla stock tanks from Business Insider. So lots
Speaker 1: of emojis in the in government communication, many more than
Speaker 1: one would suspect fireflames. So for our next segment, we're
Speaker 1: going to explore what happens when a company that you've
Speaker 1: given your personal data to hits a crisis. Now, companies
Speaker 1: file for bankruptcy all the time, from major retailers and
Speaker 1: restaurant chains to tech startups and bitcoin exchanges, but they
Speaker 1: usually don't own the DNA sequences of millions of people.
Speaker 1: So such as the case Carrot with twenty three and me, yeah.
Speaker 2: They have my oh boy, do they have my data?
Speaker 1: Was so you were one of the people in the
Speaker 1: twenty tens when this was the hottest game in town
Speaker 1: who couldn't resist.
Speaker 2: I did it in twenty twenty one because it was
Speaker 2: a thing that it was a thing that somebody bought
Speaker 2: me as a gift, oh okay, And I kind of
Speaker 2: sat on it for a little bit.
Speaker 1: You're buying the dip as a user, not as an investor.
Speaker 2: One thousand percent, and I, I don't know, I just
Speaker 2: looked at it. I'm obsessed with my family history and
Speaker 2: to get a little bit more serious, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like I have a lot of dead relatives and I
Speaker 2: don't have the ability to ask them, you know, who
Speaker 2: was our extended family. And so I decided to take
Speaker 2: matters into my own hands. And you know, lo and
Speaker 2: behold found out that I'm incredibly Jewish, which doesn't surprise me,
Speaker 2: and that's it, but that was still exciting. I struggle
Speaker 2: with something that I think is really at the core
Speaker 2: of this bankruptcy filing and how it affects people, which
Speaker 2: is I love to give my data away. I don't care.
Speaker 2: I want it now. I want Wi Fi at La Guardia,
Speaker 2: I want Wi Fi in the middle of the street,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to give you my pass where I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you my email address. I also report
Speaker 2: in a technology podcast where I know that that's a
Speaker 2: terrible thing to do, and such as the case with
Speaker 2: twenty three and Me, where everyone was like, Kara, don't
Speaker 2: do that, just don't do it. Talk to your family
Speaker 2: members and don't do it.
Speaker 1: Now. Can I ask you? One of the things that
Speaker 1: twenty three and Me was trying to do to kind
Speaker 1: of make its business model more robust than just providing
Speaker 1: a one off test that you literally never needed to repeat,
Speaker 1: was to kind of build in this like social aspects
Speaker 1: to the platform. Did you connect with any distant, previously
Speaker 1: uncontacted relatives.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we figured out we were related. You know,
Speaker 2: no profound It was not a profound thing. And look,
Speaker 2: I know that for a lot of people what happened
Speaker 2: was like people found out they had like a brother
Speaker 2: or another family. You know, it was I think it
Speaker 2: was a It had a profound effect on a lot
Speaker 2: of people. It did not have a profound effect on me.
Speaker 1: So my sister is pretty interested in genealogy, family tree, etc.
Speaker 1: Scarce and she, to her enormous credit, said to my father,
Speaker 1: would you mind if I do twenty three and meters?
Speaker 1: And he said, I would really prefer it if you didn't,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to know if there's a serial
Speaker 1: killer in the family. We both raised the eyebrows with this,
Speaker 1: and of course the question arose, was there a suspect
Speaker 1: in mind?
Speaker 2: You're like, are you exact?
Speaker 1: So she didn't do it? You know how paranora I am.
Speaker 1: Of course I didn't do it either, But fifteen million
Speaker 1: people did. And many of those people who know about
Speaker 1: the bankruptcy, I'm sure are concerned about what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to their personal data. Here to help us understand
Speaker 1: is Jeffrey Fowler, who writes a column for The Washington
Speaker 1: Post all about the user experience of technology, the good
Speaker 1: and the bad. And what I particularly like about his
Speaker 1: writing is that he really centers the user in his column.
Speaker 1: It's tech journalism, but it's practical tech journalism. What does
Speaker 1: this mean for me? How can I make things better?
Speaker 1: What should I know? And so he wrote a column
Speaker 1: this week that called both of our I.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey, welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, So you wrote a story this week and
Speaker 1: the headline was delete your DNA from twenty three and
Speaker 1: me right now, which was quite a captivating headline. Could
Speaker 1: you just start off by giving us a little bit
Speaker 1: of the background On twenty three and meters. And then
Speaker 1: while you wrote this story, I wrote.
Speaker 4: It because fifteen million people around the world spat into
Speaker 4: a little vial and sent their DNA to a company
Speaker 4: in Silicon Valley with the promise of unlocking all sorts
Speaker 4: of things about our ethnicity, our background, our family tree,
Speaker 4: and our health. But it turns out that the company
Speaker 4: that we trusted with that information, that really really precious information,
Speaker 4: was a terrible business, and it declared bankruptcy late Sunday night.
Speaker 4: And if there's one thing I know, it's true you
Speaker 4: do not want a company that is bankrupt to be
Speaker 4: responsible for protecting your very precious information. And that's the
Speaker 4: situation we find ourselves in. So the moment I heard
Speaker 4: about it, I was like, we need to press published
Speaker 4: on this story right now. And it seems like a
Speaker 4: lot of people agreed, because so many people have been
Speaker 4: trying to delete their data from twenty three and me
Speaker 4: that the site has been down for large periods of
Speaker 4: this week.
Speaker 2: And yet you, like me, could not resist getting a
Speaker 2: twenty three in me account. What were your reasons for
Speaker 2: getting an account originally?
Speaker 4: You know, I think it sort of tracks the arc
Speaker 4: of a lot of our relationships with technology and with
Speaker 4: data over the last twenty years. Look, this was the
Speaker 4: two thousands for me. There was so much possibility out there, right,
Speaker 4: and you know, in two thousand whatever, when I did
Speaker 4: my twenty three and me test, what I could imagine
Speaker 4: was what the company was promising, which was just a
Speaker 4: fascinating idea, right that together, if they were able to
Speaker 4: gather enough DNA data, they could use the power of
Speaker 4: technology to unlock all kinds of secrets about the human body.
Speaker 4: They could already even in those early days, tell you
Speaker 4: curious things about yourself, Like I remember one information they
Speaker 4: gave me is that I have a gene that makes
Speaker 4: me likely to have wet ear wax.
Speaker 1: While that is, I feel so seen. I was always wondering.
Speaker 1: It's a thing. It does.
Speaker 2: It's very validating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so while that's like the wet ear wax
Speaker 4: is not going to change the world, they maybe could
Speaker 4: learn things about cancer or all kinds of mysteries about
Speaker 4: the human body. That is, That was and remains a
Speaker 4: pretty exciting idea.
Speaker 2: All of these things are true about twenty three and
Speaker 2: meters And as a user, I also experienced, you know,
Speaker 2: some interesting information and connection with people that I didn't
Speaker 2: even know were distant cousins. But as you said earlier,
Speaker 2: this is no longer a viable company. Can you talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about why it went bankrupt and how
Speaker 2: it started to run into trouble.
Speaker 4: So all preface this was saying like, I've not been
Speaker 4: tracking the financial fortunes of twenty three and meters over
Speaker 4: the years, but I know at the high level they've
Speaker 4: tried a lot of different ideas to make the business work.
Speaker 4: Because it turns out that when you asked people to
Speaker 4: spend roughly one hundred bucks to send you their DNA,
Speaker 4: they only want to do that once, right, So twenty
Speaker 4: three and ME had this problem, which was once people
Speaker 4: did the test, that you couldn't get any more money
Speaker 4: out of them. So they had to figure out other
Speaker 4: ways to keep going as a business, to make some
Speaker 4: money out of the data that they had. And I
Speaker 4: think the big idea that they had was that it
Speaker 4: was going to be useful for developing drugs, and they
Speaker 4: made a big partnership with GSK, and GSK took a
Speaker 4: stake in the company, and that went on for several years,
Speaker 4: but it wasn't producing results at a scale that was
Speaker 4: helping them and I guess the costs associated with it
Speaker 4: were just gigantic. They've then tried other things. They tried,
Speaker 4: I think most recently selling GLP once as kind of
Speaker 4: a home kind of health kind of service like Pivot
Speaker 4: to Health, and it just didn't work, leading to around
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one that they went public and they were
Speaker 4: valued at six billion dollars roughly, and then as a
Speaker 4: Sunday night when I checked, it was around fifty million dollars.
Speaker 4: They have no idea what it would be now that
Speaker 4: it's in bankruptcy court. Probably less, probably less. And along
Speaker 4: the way they had one other thing that we should
Speaker 4: definitely talk about, which was they had a big hacking attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you sort of pointed out that there was
Speaker 1: a time in the two thousands where we just couldn't
Speaker 1: wait to give our data to all comers and see
Speaker 1: what kind of surprising results that we got back that change,
Speaker 1: which presumably became a headwind for twenty three and meters.
Speaker 1: But there also some specific issues they had that may
Speaker 1: have put customers off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think the attacking attack is a big one.
Speaker 4: My memory of it is that they had a problem
Speaker 4: with users that were reusing passwords or using passwords that
Speaker 4: had been otherwise compromised on the internet. This is a
Speaker 4: common thing to all our listeners if you do not
Speaker 4: already have a password manager and use it to get
Speaker 4: distinct passwords on every single site, and Appy used and
Speaker 4: do that now because that is a big risk. But
Speaker 4: turns out a lot of twenty three meter users fit
Speaker 4: in that bucket, and folks were able to get into
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of accounts and then even offer to
Speaker 4: sell some of that some of what they learn online.
Speaker 4: I think it was mostly information about like family trees.
Speaker 4: I don't think they got people's like DNA samples, but
Speaker 4: still it was enough to really really spook people. And
Speaker 4: you know, because at that core of it, I think
Speaker 4: people are and even back then, we're pretty nervous about
Speaker 4: the idea of spinning into a vial, and any breach
Speaker 4: of that trust by by twenty three and me was
Speaker 4: just it was just killer.
Speaker 1: After the break, we're going to get Kara to finally
Speaker 1: delete her account, stay with us. So, Jeffrey, what happens
Speaker 1: is you don't delete your data from twenty three and me, Like,
Speaker 1: what would happen then.
Speaker 4: If you don't delete your data from twenty three and
Speaker 4: me it is now essentially up for sale. So the
Speaker 4: company has said that it is in bankruptcy court, which
Speaker 4: means it has to find it either find a buyer
Speaker 4: for the whole company or sell it off for parts.
Speaker 4: And the most valuable asset they have is the DNA
Speaker 4: data of sensibly still millions of people. Who is going
Speaker 4: to buy that, We don't know. There's lots of speculation,
Speaker 4: maybe insurance.
Speaker 3: Companies, insurance we have well, we have some laws, some
Speaker 3: laws in the US that protect users from not users
Speaker 3: protect people from.
Speaker 4: Having their their data, their genetic data used to keep
Speaker 4: them from getting things like healthcare coverage. But it's not
Speaker 4: an airtight law and it doesn't apply to other kinds
Speaker 4: of insurance. And again, it can also be bought by
Speaker 4: somebody who we have no idea what they're going to
Speaker 4: do with it, and they may not try to do
Speaker 4: anything with it for like a long time. Because that's
Speaker 4: the thing about data. I think that is the key
Speaker 4: takeaway lesson for everybody from this that you know, you
Speaker 4: can think you know what's going to happen to it
Speaker 4: at one time, and then in the future. It has
Speaker 4: a totally different use, and that applies to our genetic data,
Speaker 4: but all kinds of things about our lives.
Speaker 1: Can anybody delete that twenty three meter day secause? I
Speaker 1: think I read in the piece there's a California law
Speaker 1: that makes this particularly easy to do, or at least
Speaker 1: possible to do. But what about for other people elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the US or elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you asked this question. So we've been pretty
Speaker 4: sort of gloomy so far in this conversation. But there's
Speaker 4: a glimmer of good news here, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 4: Starting back in twenty eighteen, California passed a law that said, you,
Speaker 4: dear consumer user citizen, have some privacy rights, and among
Speaker 4: those are you have the rights to delete data that
Speaker 4: companies collect about you. And then a couple years later,
Speaker 4: actually during COVID, California passed another law that everybody was
Speaker 4: so distracted by COVID about we forgot even existed, which
Speaker 4: is a genetic information privacy law which comes even deeper
Speaker 4: and says you not only have the right to delete
Speaker 4: your data from a company, you also have the you
Speaker 4: have the special right to delete genetic data. You have
Speaker 4: the right to tell them to destroy your sample, and
Speaker 4: you have the right to tell them withdraw me from
Speaker 4: any research that's going on. So hoay California for this law.
Speaker 4: Other states, seeing that the federal government in the US
Speaker 4: was doing absolutely nothing to protect our data privacy rights,
Speaker 4: copied it, and I am now happy to say they're
Speaker 4: about twenty states that have versions of this law that
Speaker 4: require giving people the right to delete their data. I
Speaker 4: have a little map that think gets updated that I keep,
Speaker 4: which is like my little sign of hope in the
Speaker 4: dark dark days that regulation can work and we can
Speaker 4: have some help. So the reality is the majority of
Speaker 4: Americas are now covered by these state laws, and so companies,
Speaker 4: including twenty three and me basically treat all Americans the
Speaker 4: same way now, which is to say, yes, we will
Speaker 4: delete your data. Now, a lot of people have been
Speaker 4: writing to me saying like, well, how do we know
Speaker 4: they're really deleting it? It boils down to like if
Speaker 4: they don't, they could get into big trouble.
Speaker 1: But who's they? I mean, this is the receivers, the creditors,
Speaker 1: I mean, in a bankrupt company, the stakes. So I mean,
Speaker 1: who do you go after in the event they don't
Speaker 1: take this duty seriously through the ankruptcy process.
Speaker 4: It's true that like they have very little left to lose,
Speaker 4: you might argue, but there is a spotlight on them
Speaker 4: because they're going through this process, right, and so there's
Speaker 4: going to be a judge involved. And to be fair
Speaker 4: to twenty three and meters, they have already said, look,
Speaker 4: we are going to handle your data the same way
Speaker 4: we always have throughout this process, and we're going to
Speaker 4: try to look for a buyer that will uphold the
Speaker 4: same use. But the truth of it is, because America
Speaker 4: has no real laws that cover this kind of data,
Speaker 4: that all that they would really have to do is
Speaker 4: update the new buyer would have to update a privacy
Speaker 4: policy and give you notice of that and kind of
Speaker 4: then again give you that chance to delete it if
Speaker 4: you don't want to be a part of that. And
Speaker 4: the truth is most Americans are not paying enough attention.
Speaker 4: Even if you know, even if I do another Washington
Speaker 4: Post headline, but this time in all capital letters, you
Speaker 4: know a lot of people wouldnt wouldn't pay attention to that.
Speaker 1: So you haven't started a genetic bank run. We don't
Speaker 1: know how many are actually trying to delete their data,
Speaker 1: certainly enough to crash the website, but a majority, as
Speaker 1: far as we know.
Speaker 4: I asked twenty three and me yesterday and they wouldn't say.
Speaker 2: You've convinced an undisclosed amount of people to delete twenty
Speaker 2: three and me. I'm gonna be honest, Jeffrey. I read
Speaker 2: your article. I didn't do anything, and it's because I'm lazy.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's no good reason. Like you, you
Speaker 2: wrote an incredibly compelling article. I went on Instagram instead,
Speaker 2: Like there's no good reason.
Speaker 1: But how do you actually do it?
Speaker 4: Okay, you want to do it together? Right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, hold on one second. Can we get your phone?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm opening of course, I'm like, I'm opening
Speaker 2: it with my face, So tell me how to delete.
Speaker 2: I'm now in the app.
Speaker 4: It says, hey, Kara, so go up to I think
Speaker 4: it's on the upper right corner.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I'm there. God, I'm gonna miss my cousins.
Speaker 2: Keep on.
Speaker 4: You can look for settings. Once you tap on your
Speaker 4: little profile.
Speaker 2: I's a chance to pass for an updated information.
Speaker 4: Okay. Once your in settings, keep scrolling all the way
Speaker 4: down and towards the very end, you'll see an area
Speaker 4: called twenty.
Speaker 2: Three and menu data Got it?
Speaker 1: Got it?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 4: Okay, then click view.
Speaker 2: Well there's an access your data or delete your data in.
Speaker 4: Mind, Oh you want to delete?
Speaker 1: We were like shock, we were already to folkate the
Speaker 1: roads that Jeffrey, thank you.
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure.
Speaker 4: It will give you a chance to download some of
Speaker 4: the data, including everything from their report about your health
Speaker 4: and your family.
Speaker 2: And report summary. Here we go.
Speaker 4: And then after you get that stuff, Okay, you're going
Speaker 4: to scroll down, you're going to click delete. Now. A
Speaker 4: couple of things to mention about this. While you're clicking
Speaker 4: on things. When you ask to delete, they also do
Speaker 4: two more things. One they also delete your specimen if
Speaker 4: you'd left them the physical jewel that you send them
Speaker 4: in the mail. And two, they withdraw you from any
Speaker 4: health studies that you might have opted into.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I just want to share one thing, Jeffrey,
Speaker 2: and this has nothing to do with our podcast. You
Speaker 2: and I, Jeffrey, are both likely to get wet earwax.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me tell you if you ever live in
Speaker 4: a really moist place that your wax is going to
Speaker 4: sneak up on you.
Speaker 1: I'm deleting.
Speaker 2: Here we go, permanently delete. Oh gosh, here we go.
Speaker 2: I'm like in this house, we delete twenty three and
Speaker 2: meters and then it says profile data, so delete data.
Speaker 2: So here what it says is we have received your
Speaker 2: request to delete your data and have sent an email
Speaker 2: to the email address link to you'rre trying to three
Speaker 2: me account. Please locate this email on the strategy to
Speaker 2: confirm my request.
Speaker 4: That's right, So your kind your email app and then
Speaker 4: it's an email in there, and then you press do it.
Speaker 2: Do it permanently, delete all records permanent.
Speaker 4: Do remember. Should you decide that you really still want
Speaker 4: to know about such things, you could swab again. The
Speaker 4: one thing about your DNA is it's not changing. And
Speaker 4: that's in some cases I guess a good thing and
Speaker 4: sometimes of badly bad thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jeffrey just decays. I have two questions for you.
Speaker 1: The first is how often, as the technology columnst for
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, do you have to talk people through
Speaker 1: how to do banal technology tasks.
Speaker 4: We actually have a special thing on our website where
Speaker 4: it's like, this is the box for us to give
Speaker 4: people instructions for things. So in fact, if you pull
Speaker 4: up my column on this and you scroll down a
Speaker 4: little bit. I've got one of those boxes that I
Speaker 4: was literally reading off of while we were going through
Speaker 4: this process together. And that's fine. Look, this stuff is
Speaker 4: hard yep. These companies can act in evil ways and
Speaker 4: it's not your fault. So the whole premise of what
Speaker 4: I try to do as a tech columnist of the
Speaker 4: Washington Post is be on the side of the user
Speaker 4: r and like, help you fight back when you can, right,
Speaker 4: And like, I think that's that's super important.
Speaker 1: And the second is what do you want to take
Speaker 1: aways from the twenty three meters story?
Speaker 4: One, perhaps we shouldn't have all sent our DNA to
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley corporation that has Silicon Valley Corporation values and
Speaker 4: ways of doing business. And the bigger one is that,
Speaker 4: like we've been talking about here, that it's really hard
Speaker 4: to know in any given moment what your data could
Speaker 4: be useful for at some point in the future. And
Speaker 4: so the only really reasonable thing to do to protect
Speaker 4: yourself is to allow as little of it as possible
Speaker 4: to be collected, which sounds like an insane person thing
Speaker 4: to say in our modern economy when we're literally being
Speaker 4: watched in every single potential dimension. I once did a
Speaker 4: piece for the Post where I hacked into my iPhone
Speaker 4: to watch what it did while I was sleeping at night.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, and saw it sending data out to like
Speaker 4: just like hundreds of like data brokers and all these
Speaker 4: are sorts of things. So it was terrifying. It wasn't
Speaker 4: even using the phone, but it was, you know, it
Speaker 4: was communicating all this personal information about me. So how
Speaker 4: do we deal with that fact? This runs a little
Speaker 4: bit inttention of like I love technology. I want to
Speaker 4: use is a cool phone, and I have seventy five
Speaker 4: connected gadgets in my home that make all sorts of
Speaker 4: cool things happen. I think the answer is you just
Speaker 4: have to be vigilant, and you need the help of regulations.
Speaker 4: And so that's you know, to that have our interest
Speaker 4: at heart to sort of put boundaries around what these
Speaker 4: companies can do.
Speaker 3: And that's why I'm.
Speaker 4: Here to sing the praises of the California Privacy Protection
Speaker 4: Law and hopeful that we can maybe get some some
Speaker 4: more Jeffery, thank.
Speaker 2: You, Thank you so much, Jeffery, and thank you for
Speaker 2: helping me do something that I should have done many
Speaker 2: days ago. You bet.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm most
Speaker 1: Flosian and I'm care Price.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Victoria Dominguez.
Speaker 2: It was executive produced by me oz Vaalashan and Kate
Speaker 2: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 2: engineer is Bihied Fraser and Kyle Murdoch mixed this episode
Speaker 2: and he also wrote our.
Speaker 1: Thea Join us next Wednesday for a very special edition
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff The Story when we'll share an in
Speaker 1: depth conversation with Zach Brown, the CEO of McLaren Racing
Speaker 1: from the McLaren Technology Center. So f one fans tune
Speaker 1: in and please rate, review, and reach out to us
Speaker 1: at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We really
Speaker 1: want to hear from you.