Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking High There and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: show that looks at the future and says forget you
Speaker 1: and forget her too. I'm Lauren bog Obama, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and our host Jonathan Strickland is not with
Speaker 1: us today this week that we're recording. He is out
Speaker 1: at CES, Yes, finding lots of exciting things to come
Speaker 1: back and report on to you guys. So in the meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we thought that we would do an episode about about
Speaker 1: the permanence of the Internet, or the permanence of all things,
Speaker 1: but specifically in these are modern times, the stuff that
Speaker 1: we put out there digitally, I mean basically the Internet
Speaker 1: is forever. Yeah, not so great if they're embarrassing pictures
Speaker 1: of you out there, as probably all of us have
Speaker 1: experienced at one point or another. YEA something that you
Speaker 1: said offhand or maybe posted or sent to somebody came
Speaker 1: back to haunt you and probably a small way. Hopefully
Speaker 1: a small way, because it's not been a small way
Speaker 1: for everyone all the time. Well, I mean, so when
Speaker 1: that relative of yours finds the picture of the school
Speaker 1: play you were in when you were in second grade
Speaker 1: and you were dressed up in a cow costume and
Speaker 1: singing at the top of your lungs and doing the
Speaker 1: splits for some reason. Uh, that's kind of weird. You know.
Speaker 1: Everybody sees that and now they're like, oh, this adult
Speaker 1: person that I thought I knew as an adult person
Speaker 1: is actually a tiny child in a cow. Is this
Speaker 1: something that personally happened to you or is this an
Speaker 1: example that you just made up off the top of
Speaker 1: your head. It's not this specifically, but this kind of thing, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, it sort of forces the past to be
Speaker 1: with us constantly. Things that we would acknowledge happened certainly
Speaker 1: suddenly become things that are still presently going on when
Speaker 1: you're constantly seeing the pictures of them over and over again.
Speaker 1: And sure, yeah, it wakes me out sometimes. Like if
Speaker 1: I if I google my own name and and everybody
Speaker 1: googles themselves, it's okay, we're we're all aware of it.
Speaker 1: It's myself, oh my um, but no, no, if if
Speaker 1: you google Lauren Folk, obam one of the like, like,
Speaker 1: you know, seven pages back, there's some forum comments that
Speaker 1: I made on like an X files fan forum in
Speaker 1: like and it's pretty I mean, I'm just like, oh
Speaker 1: that really, my dad was right when he told me
Speaker 1: that I shouldn't attach my real name to things. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say your dad's advice was pretty sound, and it's
Speaker 1: probably still pretty sound today. The things we do have consequences.
Speaker 1: That goes without saying. Everybody understands that, but not everyone
Speaker 1: seems to understand that. Actually, well everybody understands that in
Speaker 1: the abstract, but you can kind of forget about it
Speaker 1: when you're in the middle of an activity. Um, so
Speaker 1: everybody understands that they are going to be social, economic,
Speaker 1: legal consequences for the things they do and say when
Speaker 1: people are watching. So, you know, if you were to
Speaker 1: go stand down on a busy street corner and start
Speaker 1: screaming about, you know how you're going to blow up
Speaker 1: a building or something, and then people come and try
Speaker 1: to grab you, I was just kidding. I didn't I'm
Speaker 1: not I would never do anything like. I mean, you'd
Speaker 1: have to understand that, like, people would still be concerned
Speaker 1: even if you actually were hidding. Yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing that right most people get
Speaker 1: that they shouldn't do because of those consequences. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: you might make that same kind of comment to your friends.
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't. Somebody might, and and your friends might understand, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's just your sort of six sense of humor. You'd
Speaker 1: never actually do that because your friends know you or well,
Speaker 1: for example, if if you play first person shooters and
Speaker 1: you discuss them in an off hand manner in a bar,
Speaker 1: for example, like I, I cannot kill you. So hard
Speaker 1: to tell you the number of times that I've said
Speaker 1: something like that out loud in a public space and
Speaker 1: realized immediately after I said it that I sound like
Speaker 1: a complete psychotic killer. Right. But so with the age
Speaker 1: of the Internet and social media, there's a way in
Speaker 1: which these two scenarios have kind of blurred together in
Speaker 1: an unfortunate way. So let's say you're on Twitter or
Speaker 1: you're on Facebook, and you're having a conversation that you've
Speaker 1: come to view as a conversation among friends. You know,
Speaker 1: I just interact with my buddies on here. You don't
Speaker 1: really have the the awareness most of the time that
Speaker 1: what you're doing is public and other people have access
Speaker 1: to it. You feel like you're in a private conversation.
Speaker 1: But then you say I'm gonna kill you so hard
Speaker 1: or something like that, and then suddenly everybody's listening and
Speaker 1: you really regret saying that, and you can't take it
Speaker 1: back because people don't understand, all right, even if you
Speaker 1: delete that tweet, there's a decent chance that it's been
Speaker 1: cashed somewhere, or that another service has picked it up,
Speaker 1: or you know, it's just because you delete something doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's gone digitally speaking, right. Uh. And we'll definitely
Speaker 1: talk about the extent to which that sad fact is
Speaker 1: true in a few minutes here. But so we should
Speaker 1: start off talking about the the difference between public and
Speaker 1: private and and what these different concepts mean to people,
Speaker 1: especially in terms of the consequences they experienced, like physical,
Speaker 1: real consequences in their lives, whether you're you know, it's
Speaker 1: in an interview chair or on a witness stand. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are cases in which the things you've said online,
Speaker 1: which might have otherwise been just sort of dumb, off
Speaker 1: hand comments or ephemera that you might have spoken between
Speaker 1: your friends out you know, hanging out somewhere and would
Speaker 1: have disappeared forever. Now those comments are recorded and accessible
Speaker 1: to the public, and we'll come back to haunt you
Speaker 1: can certainly right, you know can, and you know, if
Speaker 1: they can, they probably probably will. So we want to
Speaker 1: talk about some examples of people who have faced public
Speaker 1: repercussions for things they did online. Um. Yeah, some of these.
Speaker 1: Some of these made me feel really badly for the
Speaker 1: people involved, and some of them gave me that's to
Speaker 1: fixed sense of schadenfreud, depending on depending on the the
Speaker 1: offense given. But uh so, so your your first one
Speaker 1: was a schadenfreud moment for me. Yeah, this is one
Speaker 1: of the craziest I found. Apparently, in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: a juror was dismissed from a UK court case after
Speaker 1: posting details about the case on Facebook and asking her
Speaker 1: friends how she should vote like in the deliberation. The quote,
Speaker 1: the quote from the Telegraph report on this was I
Speaker 1: don't know which way to go, so I'm holding a pole.
Speaker 1: And this was like a child sexual assault case. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was not the kind of thing that it is
Speaker 1: okay in in any way to have been posting details
Speaker 1: about Yeah, um, I mean, I mean, aside from the
Speaker 1: legal ramifications, that's just yeeky. I mean, you just don't
Speaker 1: do that. Right, Yeah, of course. And so this juror
Speaker 1: was found out and was sent home, and then I
Speaker 1: guess the case was resolved with an eleven person jury.
Speaker 1: But this juror, the report concluded, in seems like the
Speaker 1: case that was very lucky not to have been held
Speaker 1: in contempt of court. Yeah, I'm shocked that she didn't
Speaker 1: face legal repercussions from that. Yeah. People get fired from
Speaker 1: their jobs all the time for stuff they do online.
Speaker 1: Oh certainly. Um, there was there was one case of
Speaker 1: a teacher here in Georgia who was asked to resign
Speaker 1: after she posted um private Facebook photos of herself with
Speaker 1: alcoholic beverages in her hands while she was on vacation. Um.
Speaker 1: Some of her co workers at the school that she
Speaker 1: worked for apparently alerted the principle, and the principle basically
Speaker 1: asked her for her resignation. So, I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: quite like being fired, And I think that in a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases, it's more we'd really like you
Speaker 1: to resign than a direct firing. But there was a
Speaker 1: story from two thousand nine about a girl who lost
Speaker 1: a job offer from Cisco after she tweeted about being
Speaker 1: excited about the paycheck. But not about the job itself.
Speaker 1: Apparently the uh someone from the company's Twitter feed contacted
Speaker 1: her and was like, we'll let we'll let HR know
Speaker 1: how you feel about that. Thanks, and and then she
Speaker 1: lost the job offer. So's we demand that you enjoy
Speaker 1: your work. Well, okay, that's that's fair. But but I
Speaker 1: but I see it from their point of view. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's just in terms of of a way that
Speaker 1: you behave online is part of what they're hiring and
Speaker 1: so therefore, yeah, and it probably just hurts the company's
Speaker 1: reputation in their mind to have stuff like that out there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Speaking of reputations, there was a football player who was
Speaker 1: released from his contract with the Kansas City Chiefs after
Speaker 1: he sent out some inflammatory tweets UM, including and this
Speaker 1: is one of those shot and freud things. In response
Speaker 1: to another Twitter user saying that he would regret what
Speaker 1: he was tweeting, he said, and I quote make me
Speaker 1: regret it. L m a O. You don't stop my checks, does,
Speaker 1: but somebody reading this might m and then you know,
Speaker 1: there have been tons of cases. This one hits pretty
Speaker 1: close to home to me of of social media managers
Speaker 1: UM accidentally posting from the incorrect account, So like you
Speaker 1: thought you were posting from your personal account, but instead
Speaker 1: you were posting on the company account, right right. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that I literally have done. I have
Speaker 1: accidentally posted a tweet that I meant to send for
Speaker 1: my own account as the when I was accidentally signed
Speaker 1: in as as how stuff works on on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: I'm playing all you tweet is adorable cats. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was nothing. It was nothing bad.
Speaker 1: It was something about like a fire drill and myself
Speaker 1: being really out of shape, so I I mean it
Speaker 1: didn't and like there was no cursing involved, so it
Speaker 1: was okay. But yes, people have been fired for that.
Speaker 1: There was an employee Chrysler, I believe, who was complaining
Speaker 1: about Detroit drivers and that didn't go over too well.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, but uh, apparently after the tsunami in Japan,
Speaker 1: Gilbert Gottfried made a really tasteless joke on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Affleck decided to find another um spoke stuck. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's sort of different kind of categories for
Speaker 1: these people who are already famous and have a lot
Speaker 1: of people following them versus people who just you know,
Speaker 1: we're tweeting to their friends. Now, in fact, it's probably
Speaker 1: not all that different. I mean, in both cases it's
Speaker 1: public um, but one is at least somebody who should
Speaker 1: know that people are going to be reading this all right,
Speaker 1: and should have some kind of well, you know, in
Speaker 1: the Gilbert Godfried case, I think it's strange because you know,
Speaker 1: you've you've hired an offensive comedian to be your spokesperson,
Speaker 1: and then you're surprised when he says something offensive. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't quite mash for me personally, although you
Speaker 1: know it's it's certainly within their right to say, we
Speaker 1: don't want you representing us anymore. It's like they fired
Speaker 1: the company spokes bear for getting into the garbage. I know, right,
Speaker 1: that's completely unfair. That's the ceel you forbears would totally
Speaker 1: have something to say about that. Yeah, but wait a second, Lauren,
Speaker 1: if you are a citizen of a country that supposedly
Speaker 1: protects free speech, how come you can't say anything you
Speaker 1: want online and not be punished for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I believe in free speech. You believe in free speech,
Speaker 1: don't you? Yes, I'm I am a good American? Okay,
Speaker 1: So how come people can't get away with saying stuff
Speaker 1: like this. Why are they being punished for just exercising
Speaker 1: their right to free speech? Well, okay, the the whole
Speaker 1: Amendment about free speech is really more about the government
Speaker 1: not being able to tell you what you can and
Speaker 1: can't say. It has nothing to do with it. It's
Speaker 1: the first Amendment. Doesn't protect you from your own stupidity. Right.
Speaker 1: This is ah not to get too political on a
Speaker 1: podcast about technology science in the future, but it's relevant
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about today. The whole concept of
Speaker 1: the legal idea of free speech protects you from being
Speaker 1: prosecuted or from being legally prevented from giving speech, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't protect you from, say, like the social consequences,
Speaker 1: your employment being one of those consequences. Right, uh so.
Speaker 1: But but there are some legal protections, not necessarily so
Speaker 1: much under free speech, but actually under some labor laws.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about what protection does exist.
Speaker 1: So here are some facts. Um. In two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: a paramedic working for a company called American Medical Response
Speaker 1: based in Connecticut lost her job after she went on
Speaker 1: Facebook and she called her boss some names, including scumbag
Speaker 1: and some other words. We're not going to say here. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was in response to a dispute that she
Speaker 1: had had at work, which involved I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was entirely about but at least involved a dispute
Speaker 1: over union representation. Okay, So so she was so she
Speaker 1: was discussing some some serious points about her job, but
Speaker 1: in the course of it used language that was perhaps
Speaker 1: um inadvisable to public public consumption. Sure, yeah, um not
Speaker 1: super friendly words. Okay, fighting words maybe, but not in
Speaker 1: where it's in the legal sense though that's a different story. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: A an organization actually exists called the National Labor Relations Board,
Speaker 1: and the National Labor Relations Board of the n l
Speaker 1: RB took up this employee's case in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: and in January two thousand eleven, the ambulance company, the
Speaker 1: American Medical Response, agreed to settle. Now, this was the
Speaker 1: first case in which the nl r B had ever
Speaker 1: defended the rights of an employee to speak on social
Speaker 1: media specifically. Um, it wasn't the first time they've ever
Speaker 1: dealt with social media, but before they've tended to decide
Speaker 1: with with an employer. Yeah, with an employer's discretion, um
Speaker 1: to to terminate based on whatever their employee policy is.
Speaker 1: This case was n l r B versus American Medical
Speaker 1: Response UM, and the NLRB argued that the speech was
Speaker 1: protected because employees were discussing the supervisor action, which was
Speaker 1: protected under the National Labor Relations Act UH, and that
Speaker 1: was designed to give workers safety to quote engage in
Speaker 1: concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other
Speaker 1: mutual aid or protection. And essentially what this spoils down
Speaker 1: to is that employees can talk about the conditions of
Speaker 1: their employment. They can talk about the terms of their
Speaker 1: employment and company policies with co workers and UH, they
Speaker 1: can talk about unionization strategies, and they can't be punished
Speaker 1: for this conversation. Well that's that's that's sensical and also
Speaker 1: kind of awesome. UM. I have heard that they have
Speaker 1: that there's other cases that they have declined to to
Speaker 1: file complaints for. Oh yeah, UM and and and like
Speaker 1: you said, there's there's plenty wherein they have sided with
Speaker 1: the company. But like there was one that I read
Speaker 1: about where a bartender was fired for saying on Facebook
Speaker 1: that his customers were and I quote rednecks and that
Speaker 1: he hoped that they choked on glass. Yeah, that's Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that would not be protected under the National Labor Relations
Speaker 1: Act because that doesn't really have to do with any
Speaker 1: pertinent conversation about the conditions of employment unionization. That's just
Speaker 1: sort of a nasty thing. Right. Also, you're you're technically
Speaker 1: threatening people at that point, which is generally not protected speech,
Speaker 1: even under something like the First Amendment. Right. So, the
Speaker 1: bottom line is you might have some degree of legal
Speaker 1: protection for what you say on social media under certain conditions,
Speaker 1: especially pertaining the unionization and workplace policies and conditions, but
Speaker 1: the general idea of free speech does not protect you.
Speaker 1: Um So, if you get on Twitter and just go
Speaker 1: on a rant about how you know your boss looks
Speaker 1: like a donkey headed cactus, I don't know. That is
Speaker 1: exactly what I say when I'm angry at my boss. Sorry, Tracy, Uh,
Speaker 1: then you can be fired and you probably won't have
Speaker 1: any legal recourse. Okay, But but jobs aren't the only
Speaker 1: sphere in which you can get in trouble for things
Speaker 1: that you say online. Yeah, I mean, there's there's certainly
Speaker 1: not pretty deep social repercussions that can that can happen
Speaker 1: in your in your circle of friends. Right, So, like
Speaker 1: especially if you're a young person, but I guess anybody,
Speaker 1: but as young people are especially vulnerable. Something embarrassing or
Speaker 1: private gets out and you can feel like this is
Speaker 1: the end of the world, and you can be really
Speaker 1: harshly bullied about it, of course, but yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: if if you've got people who are not looking out
Speaker 1: for your best interests, then that kind of commentary about
Speaker 1: what is posted about you can be very harsh. Yeah. Uh, okay.
Speaker 1: So let's say I've had social media accounts of very
Speaker 1: various kinds for like five years, and I suddenly get
Speaker 1: real anxious about this. I'm like, oh, oh no, all
Speaker 1: these things out there, I've got to go delete it
Speaker 1: all right now. And you go back, you delete your
Speaker 1: Facebook account, you delete Twitter, you delete everything everything you've
Speaker 1: ever put online, and you you go into lockdown mode.
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, my identities, my own I control people. See,
Speaker 1: none of that stuff is gonna haunt me. Am I safe? Uh?
Speaker 1: Basically no, Basically, the Internet is forever um and and
Speaker 1: that is partially because of Uh. There are lots of
Speaker 1: organizations that are out there that are that are purposefully
Speaker 1: saving the things that we post online. And that's not
Speaker 1: generally going to be Um, you know, stuff that you've
Speaker 1: posted in private on Facebook, but certainly a public forum
Speaker 1: like Twitter. You're dealing with things like like the way
Speaker 1: Back Machine, that nonprofit that's working actively to create an
Speaker 1: Internet library for posterity. Um, Google, Google's cash. Every time
Speaker 1: Google looks at a website and tries to figure out, um,
Speaker 1: where to put it in search ranks or or where
Speaker 1: to serve it within searches, it's it's cashing that page.
Speaker 1: It's creating a record of it that can stay there
Speaker 1: after you've taken the page down. Um. There are tons
Speaker 1: of other services that do stuff like this. Even the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress is collecting tweets. Okay, so anything that's
Speaker 1: been created after the widespread use of the Internet, that
Speaker 1: that's probably not going away. You should just count on
Speaker 1: that being there. But I want to introduce an even
Speaker 1: scarier idea. And this has to do with digitization, which,
Speaker 1: on one hand, is a wonderful thing like digitization of
Speaker 1: old print sources and books and stuff like that. This
Speaker 1: this is awesome for research. So you want to do
Speaker 1: research on something that happened in nineteen ten. And I've
Speaker 1: actually been in this position before, doing research on stuff
Speaker 1: that happened a long time ago, where you just can't
Speaker 1: find this information that was sort of a femarole back then.
Speaker 1: Maybe these weird little newspaper articles that stuff is getting
Speaker 1: scanned into Google. Oh yeah, and and I mean it's
Speaker 1: like you just said, it's terrific for for us as researchers.
Speaker 1: If you know, you suddenly find yourself in the position
Speaker 1: of wondering what was going on in popular mechanics in
Speaker 1: UM and it's there. That's awesome. So stuff that they
Speaker 1: thought was a phemera not anymore. It helps us revisit
Speaker 1: the past and learn more. Right, but not so great
Speaker 1: if you say, published a collection of erotic science fiction
Speaker 1: in four and you're just every day you're thankful that
Speaker 1: nobody remembers that, and nobody will ever find a copy
Speaker 1: until somebody scans that in and it gets on Google Books,
Speaker 1: and then your name is touched to the sci fi
Speaker 1: erotica thing forever and ever um, at which point your
Speaker 1: options are like change your name or yeah, or or
Speaker 1: have used a pen name in the first place, which
Speaker 1: I think is really under those kinds of cases. Really
Speaker 1: should have thought of the Internet. You should have You
Speaker 1: should have I mean, if you're a sci fi writer.
Speaker 1: Come on, um, but should have been more prescient. Uh,
Speaker 1: but no, and and it is. It is a great
Speaker 1: thing that that stuff like like Google or way Back
Speaker 1: Machine are creating these records. I think that um, I
Speaker 1: mean the same way that there are society is dedicated
Speaker 1: to collecting ephemera um in in ads or in the
Speaker 1: form of letters, lots of stuff that people never expected
Speaker 1: to last, but they give. They give our society that's
Speaker 1: really terrific peek back into what was going on in
Speaker 1: prior times. And so that's beautiful but also completely terrifying. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's time to talk about blowback, because all this stuff
Speaker 1: is scary people. I think people are probably wanting if
Speaker 1: Femora back. They want to reclaim the idea that you
Speaker 1: can have interactions with your friends and with various interlocutors
Speaker 1: over over the media that you use without it being
Speaker 1: stuck somewhere in an archive for forever haunting you. How
Speaker 1: do we get a Femora back. A Fema, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, being something that that's fleeting, that fades away.
Speaker 1: This an interaction that's just for now. Well, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, there's an app for that, an app for that.
Speaker 1: I think there are several apps for that, but we
Speaker 1: know there's a big app for that. Yeah that. The
Speaker 1: one that's been getting the most press lately has been Snapchat.
Speaker 1: It's it's been getting most bad press lately, but but
Speaker 1: it's but it's maybe the biggest generator of the ephemera
Speaker 1: app buzz kind of stuff. Um. Forbes estimated that as
Speaker 1: of January, some fifty million people were using this app.
Speaker 1: It's an app, by the way, if you haven't heard
Speaker 1: of Snapchat that UM that allows you to um send
Speaker 1: a picture or a text or a video to to
Speaker 1: a friend directly to a friend for and the message
Speaker 1: will self destruct within a certain period of time, within
Speaker 1: whatever period of time you specify. The example I heard
Speaker 1: was like ten seconds. Sure, yeah, and so it's just
Speaker 1: a really quick thing and UM, you know, so far,
Speaker 1: I think has been used by a lot of The
Speaker 1: median age of their users is like eighteen, um, and
Speaker 1: so I think it might be sexy sexy times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of concern about this from like
Speaker 1: parents and especially like older people in the media, like
Speaker 1: what is this? It's kind of scary. I can see
Speaker 1: why they'd be concerned. I guess, well, sure, I would
Speaker 1: also devil's advocate that and I'm not sure if you
Speaker 1: can use that as a verb, but I just did suckers,
Speaker 1: So there, um that, Uh, you know, if kids are
Speaker 1: going to do this kind of thing anyway, at least
Speaker 1: not having permanent records of it is a is a
Speaker 1: good thing, is kindest assuming there aren't actually permanent records
Speaker 1: of it, right, which is kind of the problem. Um. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: so they've got about fifty million people using it, and
Speaker 1: it's users as of September, we're sending some three fifty
Speaker 1: million photos a day. Dang, yes, um, And and it's
Speaker 1: been known part of the bad buzz about them is
Speaker 1: that they had this huge security breach out right right,
Speaker 1: Hackers stole some forty some four point six million user
Speaker 1: names and phone numbers from snapchats databases. And it's creators
Speaker 1: knew about the possibility of this happening, that they had
Speaker 1: been uh informed about it by a private security company,
Speaker 1: but they totally blew it off. Wow, some kind of apology, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but but it was the kind of
Speaker 1: apology that was like, well, the hackers didn't really distribute
Speaker 1: all your phone numbers. They only distributed them in a
Speaker 1: way that if someone bothered to pull up a huge
Speaker 1: database of phone numbers and cross referenced them, that then
Speaker 1: they'd be able to have your information. So so Snapchat
Speaker 1: the kids are using it is this where they're going
Speaker 1: from Facebook? Because I've heard that the kids are leaving Facebook.
Speaker 1: Two young people think Facebook is not so cool anymore.
Speaker 1: That's that's part of it. Um, and Facebook, in response
Speaker 1: to this, released what Poke, which, of course they had
Speaker 1: had a poking mechanism previously, but this is a separate
Speaker 1: app thing um in order to compete with Snapchat, which
Speaker 1: basically just drove more people to Snapchat due to the
Speaker 1: publicity that that sprang up around the release. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I read that. News emerged in November of last year
Speaker 1: that Zuckerberg had tried to buy Snapchat. Yeah, after after
Speaker 1: the release of Poke went so poorly. He offered them
Speaker 1: three million dollars in three billion dollars I'm sorry, three
Speaker 1: million dollars billion, three billion dollars in cash u which
Speaker 1: is a bunch, and they turned them down. Um they
Speaker 1: they yeah, they were like, nope, we're keeping this. We
Speaker 1: think it's worth more than three billion dollars. Okay, so
Speaker 1: poke nut poke, not a big hit. Not not a
Speaker 1: big hit. Um. What else is out there for in
Speaker 1: terms of effemorra apps. Well, there's there's one called Wicker
Speaker 1: that's a little bit more security focused. It's it's sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to in the media as a snapchat for adults,
Speaker 1: or for businesses or for criminals, depending on who's writing
Speaker 1: the article. Um but but but they feature a really
Speaker 1: good encryption, like higher than the n s A S
Speaker 1: standard according to them. Um, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: enter any personal information to sign up for an account.
Speaker 1: You're totally anonymous. Uh. You also, h every message that
Speaker 1: you send is encrypted with a different key, and it
Speaker 1: has a a sub program that shreds expired messages digitally.
Speaker 1: It just runs in the background and will write gibberi
Speaker 1: over data that's sent to the trash. Uh. So So
Speaker 1: so that sounds I mean, And and this one is
Speaker 1: much more of a response, I think to all the
Speaker 1: stuff going on with the n s A and people's
Speaker 1: increasing privacy concerns. Yeah, speaking of those concerns, Um, what
Speaker 1: kind of safety measures are in place for these apps?
Speaker 1: I mean, so people are using them with the understanding
Speaker 1: that Okay, this image or whatever that I send on Snapchat.
Speaker 1: It's really going away. It's going to self destruct mission
Speaker 1: impossible style. Yeah, and it will never ever be seen again.
Speaker 1: It's totally safe. Is that correct? Not at all? Okay? So,
Speaker 1: so first of all, there are several problems with the
Speaker 1: concept that anything is ever totally safe, because if you're
Speaker 1: sitting there with with a picture that you have just
Speaker 1: received from someone. Okay, so let's let's imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: like I I send you a picture of me standing
Speaker 1: across us the line in the museum that says do
Speaker 1: not cross this line. Yes, and you send it via
Speaker 1: vias a Snapchat or poke. Um, and you set the
Speaker 1: message to self destruct within ten seconds. So I could
Speaker 1: still look at that on my phone and take my
Speaker 1: handy separate camera and take a picture of that picture
Speaker 1: on my phone and send it to the museum guards. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they would kill me. They would kill you. They
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't kill you. I don't think that most museums do.
Speaker 1: That would be horrible. Okay, So you can use a phone.
Speaker 1: Could you use just a regular old screen grab? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. Um. Well, okay, in the case of Snapchat
Speaker 1: and poke, you can um and you will be Joe.
Speaker 1: You having sent me that picture. If I took a
Speaker 1: screen grab of it, you would be alerted to the
Speaker 1: fact that I had done so, so I'd get a
Speaker 1: message saying your data is not secure. Yeah, this person
Speaker 1: just totally screwed you over. Um, maybe reevaluate your friendship
Speaker 1: with this person, but that doesn't fix the problem that
Speaker 1: you took a screenshot and now that exists. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is based on the trust of your friends, uh,
Speaker 1: which you know see above reads some of the examples
Speaker 1: that we gave earlier. Your friends can't always be trusted
Speaker 1: as much as you want to believe that thing. I'm
Speaker 1: honestly not sure how Wicker deals with that situation, so
Speaker 1: I can't report on that specifically. Um okay, even if
Speaker 1: even if your friends are on the up and up
Speaker 1: and they don't, you know, take any photos or screen grabs,
Speaker 1: the fact that you are sending this image through servers
Speaker 1: and it's being bounced around via cellular towers means that
Speaker 1: that that data can be plucked out during that transfer,
Speaker 1: for example, by the n S A. UM, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that's going through the pipes is hypothetically up for grabs.
Speaker 1: If someone is really excited about trying to grab it.
Speaker 1: So there's that. Okay, but at least assuming the people
Speaker 1: who are using this are on the up and up
Speaker 1: and uh, you're not being spied on, it really will
Speaker 1: self destruct your image, right, So I send you the
Speaker 1: incriminating museum photo. That's that's definitely actually going away, right,
Speaker 1: well not quite. Uh, it depends. Uh. Like I said
Speaker 1: with with Wicker, Wicker has that has that app running
Speaker 1: in the background that will garble all of your deleted data.
Speaker 1: So so Wicker is cool for that, but something like
Speaker 1: Snapchat or Poke UM there was back at def Con,
Speaker 1: which is a largely white hat hacker convention, um a company.
Speaker 1: One company presented these these interesting results of hack attempts
Speaker 1: on Poke, Snapchat, and Wicker and found that they could
Speaker 1: pull some data from all but Wicker UM, and they
Speaker 1: found out that the way that your media is being handled,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily deleted. In many cases, it's just marked
Speaker 1: with extensions and kind of database notes that tell your
Speaker 1: os to treat the media like it no longer exists.
Speaker 1: So so that photo that so that photo is still
Speaker 1: on my phone and it's still on your phone. Are
Speaker 1: our systems are just being told to ignore it. It's
Speaker 1: like you have a polaroid of this, but you've put
Speaker 1: a sticky note over the front of it saying don't
Speaker 1: look at this. Right, Basically, that is the digital Yes,
Speaker 1: that is what's going on there. How about encryption. Encryption
Speaker 1: is good, y'all. I recommend doing it. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of the moral of the story here, really, Um,
Speaker 1: is that things that are encrypted are going to you know,
Speaker 1: encryptions can be broken, but um, that is the safe
Speaker 1: way to transmit stuff that you don't want other people
Speaker 1: to see. Yeah. I hate to say it, but I
Speaker 1: think the message for the future is really what your
Speaker 1: dad said. I mean, it's like, don't do anything on
Speaker 1: the internet that you wouldn't be comfortable standing in front
Speaker 1: of an audience and doing. And that's the sad fact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but if you if you would be upset about
Speaker 1: your grandmother seeing it, or if you would be upset
Speaker 1: about your boss seeing it, then then really the best
Speaker 1: thing to do is to not do it at all.
Speaker 1: And I know that that's not the fun answer, but
Speaker 1: you know it's it's not it's not unreasonable. I don't
Speaker 1: think being kind of an old person I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if if that's the you know, is that not
Speaker 1: fun or is that just common sense? Uh? Maybe the
Speaker 1: moral of the story is that in the future, grandmothers
Speaker 1: are just going to have to accommodate their their expectations
Speaker 1: of their precious grandchildren to include a lot more swearing
Speaker 1: and and stuff like that. Uh. And that maybe in
Speaker 1: the incredible future UM, we will be all of our
Speaker 1: bosses and that we also we therefore won't care so
Speaker 1: much about all the terrible things that our employees say.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't think that that's actually a beautiful future
Speaker 1: at all. I think I think that really we should
Speaker 1: just behave ourselves online. But hey, guys, if you have
Speaker 1: any completely insecure messages that you would like to send
Speaker 1: to us um for public consumption, behave yourselves and trip
Speaker 1: on over to fw thinking dot com. Um. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is where you can find links to all of our
Speaker 1: social media sites and also podcasts, videos, blog posts, all
Speaker 1: sorts of non ephemeral media and uh if you do
Speaker 1: want to check out those social media sites independently, we
Speaker 1: are on both Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. Our handle
Speaker 1: there is FW thinking And we'll talk to you guys
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this topic and the
Speaker 1: future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Toyota Let's Go Places