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- [00:01]
A
Hi, this is Matt from P1 with Matt and Tommy, and this episode is sponsored by ebay. The cars you'll find on ebay are just different. They come with a story that you can't wait to share. Like this 1973 Dodge Charger on ebay that has been tucked away in an Arizona barn for over 40 years. Only 55,000 miles and somehow, in great running order, it even has a rare sunroof. Suddenly, a car that was hidden for decades is being delivered in just a few clicks. With ebay's secure purchase, all the paperwork handled, There are thousands of cars on ebay, from unique finds like the Pontiac Grand Prix SJ to daily drivers. And now with a new way to buy them. Ebay, things people love.
- [00:46]
B
I'm Jane Marie and this is the dream. So I keep doing this thing where all I want to talk about are the things that piss me off and they'll also piss you off. And then we can be pissed off together. I'll knock it off soon, I'll get bored of it. But the other day I was noodling around on the Internet and I was on Threads, which is owned by Meta, which is Mark Zuckerberg's company. So I'm over there noodling around and I stumble upon some interesting information about data mining. The thing that Meta was doing as I was scrolling a few weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security sent a memo out to folks in that business, the data business. It's called an rfi, a Request for Information. And here's a snippet. The Department of Homeland Security, dhs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is gathering information to better understand how the industry's commercial, big data and ad tech providers can directly support investigation activities. So that's a bit scary, right? And then I saw this woman say, you have every right to be scared. I work in that industry. But you're scared for the wrong reasons.
- [01:56]
C
I'm Jess Lewis. I am chief technology and Data officer for a company called Cross Media. We're in the advertising media. Advertising industry. I'm a cyberpsychologist by trade, which means I've spent too long of a time building systems that introspect human nature with technology and understanding the liminal spaces in what people do on a day to day basis with technology.
- [02:26]
B
Can you slow down and tell me what the heck you're talking about? Because you're using a lot of words that I don't understand.
- [02:31]
C
Sure, absolutely. I'm in a unique space, so it's okay. So as a chief Technology and Data officer, what I do for companies is I come in and help them plan their technology roadmap. And that's everything from adoption of systems internally that could track time cards all the way to AI, which is a very controversial topic as it is right now over the past 18 months, because it's become such a buzzword in the industry. But I've been working in artificial intelligence and machine learning for about 15 years back when I was at Disney, and we were doing a lot of the TEC technology that first built Disney. And I'll give you an example. If you had a photograph of a bunch of Disney characters, we trained it to understand which Disney characters were present in an image or a video or what Disney song was present in a wav file. And the reason why that was important is, if you think about librarians or archivists, it's basically digitizing a lot of assets now that led to the building of Disney. So there's a lot of underlying technology and a lot of things that we do. And I've been doing this for decades now. I'm certainly dating myself by saying that, but I've been doing it for decades. And most recently over the past 10 years or so, I've really gotten into audience technology, and that's really understanding at a human level how people interact with technology. Where they click, why they click, what their motivations are in signing up for certain social media platforms versus other social media platforms, Reddit groups, things like that.
- [04:26]
B
Are you doing the same thing now at Cross Media?
- [04:29]
C
So at Cross Media, I build those same technology platforms, and we do that for our clients. And we have clients ranging all sorts of industries, very large clients that target their customers with ads. Now, those ads could be, if you are a runner and we want to serve up the best running shoe to you, or the best hiking shoe, or we happen to know that you're of a certain age where you're getting ready to retire, and it may be a financial institution that says, hey, you know what? You've probably seen some of the Fidelity ads, right, as you're cruising around the Internet. A lot of that technology, technology is built by people like me. That's sometimes a little hard to admit, right, because it is targeting. And a lot of folks can think that that's very invasive, but a lot of people would rather get an ad that is contextual to their lives rather than something that they think, oh, that has nothing to do with me.
- [05:34]
B
I see that. I mean, yeah, look, it's. It's that advertising has always been targeted, right?
- [05:40]
C
That's Right. Even in magazines, if you're into fashion, you're going to buy Vogue magazine. You're not necessarily going to care about a golf ad in Vogue magazine, for example. Right. If we're talking about print. So it needs to be contextual for your life. And what I deal with, particularly in cyberpsychology and especially most recently over the past couple of years in my research work outside of cross media, is I deal with those moments that advertisers want to target you when you're at your weakest. I want to know when you're at your strongest. I want to make sure that we're writing policy that protects people from not getting targeted when they're at their weakest. We live on capitalism. We all make money from ads and networks have ads. But at the same time we have to be really, really careful because there are all sorts of downstream ramifications, whether it's environment from data centers, whether it's mental health by doom scrolling as it were, on social media. So there are a lot of implications. In my most recent research work over the past couple of years has been trying to write policy and understand the risks of doing those very things.
- [07:01]
B
Okay. So that leads to, what I think is interesting is when someone says, like an expert like you says, yes, you have plenty of reason to be concerned about this thing that's happening. So for data sharing and collection or some sort of surveillance integrated with what we're doing online, but not for the reasons that you think. Right. So that's kind of how I read what you were saying about somehow people integrating ad technology into surveillance and things like that. So I don't even know where to start that question exactly. But can you just restate your thesis around that?
- [07:41]
C
Yes. It's really understanding that advertising is fundamentally not suited for surveillance. It's not suited for the Department of Homeland Security. It is not suited for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Because of the way that ad tech data is collected and what we use it for, it fundamentally doesn't match with what they're looking for. Let's say for the sake of argument that they, they meaning ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, anybody in our government, let's say that they're completely entitled to this data. We all, none of us have anything to hide and it's no big deal that they have this data. Data, okay. The problem is, is this data is not collected in a way that is actually suitable. It runs on the very premise. It's basically data that's either probabilistic or deterministic. Now what do I mean by that? So for marketing purposes, for advertising purposes, let's go back to print for a moment. If you, Jay, walk into a, you know, a store, Barnes and Noble, I don't even know if they exist anymore, you walk into a Barnes and Noble and you, you pick up a Vogue magazine and you make that purchase, I'm going to say with a high probability, you might be interested in fashion, right? So it's, you're, you're, you're talking about a data that's probably, you're probably female, you're probably a certain age group, right? And we put that data together to give us a probable Persona of who you and people like you are.
- [09:23]
B
Okay?
- [09:24]
C
But we don't know who you are as a person directly. We try, and in marketing and in advertising spaces, we try to get to that one, one to one, targeting to say. And that would be very creepy, right? If you go on to the Internet and it says, hey, Jane, we saw you looking at this thing.
- [09:41]
B
Now doesn't does though.
- [09:44]
C
Well, I mean, it does, but it's all done in probability, Right? But you notice it when it's the creepiest, right? Or you notice it when it's really contextual to like, hey, I was talking to somebody about a hot tub last weekend and suddenly I'm just getting inundated with the hot tub. But if you buy the hot tub and you still get inundated with hot tub ads, that's just because we're taking a probability that you probably didn't buy that yet.
- [10:08]
B
Right?
- [10:09]
C
But deterministic data means that we can determine exactly who you are, where you've been, what your email address is, what your address is. Now the unfortunate part is that Department of Homeland Security and ICE already have a lot of that data. So what they would like to do is reach into ad tech and get all of the probabilistic data. But the reason why that is very dangerous is you could be sitting in a parking lot three blocks away from a Starbucks, but hooked up to their wifi, and they may actually think that you're in the Starbucks or if you're in an apartment building with hundreds of people in the apartment, we really don't know who you are. And when they're trying to target people for these raids, it becomes very dangerous because the likelihood of you getting caught up in something like that could be very high. And it also, the chances are of them having the wrong person is also very high.
- [11:12]
B
Right?
- [11:13]
C
So this data doesn't even match with what they're hoping to Gain.
- [11:19]
B
Tell me when your ears first pricked up about this.
- [11:23]
C
I saw the rfi. So that's a request for information that ICE put forward and had to publicly state that they would like companies to submit to them. Which companies have the right architecture flow, meaning do they have commercial data sources? Are they using data brokers? Are they ad tech compliant? I can get into what that means they want to understand so that they can build a comprehensive surveillance data platform. And that's when I knew that when I saw started to see this. I'm very big on pattern recognition, which is why I'm in the business that I'm in. When Elon Musk went in with Doge and sort of pulled all of our data out of, you know, Social Security databases. They already have a lot of information about us. And we were getting upset about that when that happened and thought, okay, wait a minute, you know where this is leading? This is leading to them asking for much more data on our behaviors. What websites are we going to? What are we buying, what are we searching for, what are we looking for, what time of day are we doing it?
- [12:33]
B
And connecting that with our exact identity and connecting it.
- [12:37]
C
That's right. And so then probabilistic and deterministic data now meet. And that makes things even more dangerous, right, because they will know it's like a surveillance state. I mean, I know that's a little more challenging and maybe a little heated to say, but I mean, honestly, that's what they're hoping to provide. They want to know where you are at all times and what you're doing and what you're looking at.
- [13:01]
B
And the problem comes with the fact that they're using these data sets that, that are not compatible with one another, even.
- [13:10]
C
That's right.
- [13:11]
B
Okay, tell me about adtech compliance real quick since you brought that up.
- [13:15]
C
Yeah. So ad tech compliance is kind of interesting because it's particularly revealing when they use those words because it has no established meaning. There's no industry standard for something, quote, ad tech compliant. There's no regulatory definition, there's no certification process. It appears to be a term invented for the RFI that allows the vendors that would be responding to this request for information to self define what compliant means. And unfortunately, this creates an accountability vacuum.
- [13:50]
B
Right.
- [13:50]
C
ICE can claim that they purchased, quote, unquote, compliant data. Vendors can claim they provided it. No one has defined the standards the data actually meets. And when that data quality inevitably causes harm, the vague language provides liability cover for all parties. Right. Except for the people who may have been wrongfully. Targeted. So that raised an immediate red flag for me. They're asking for historical location data. So they want to know where a device has been over the past days or weeks or months that could be used to establish patterns of life, right? Where you live, where you work, where you worship, where you get health care. Now look again, in advertising, this is super useful. It's super useful to know that I'm not going to try to sell you snow tires if you live in Florida, but if you start to travel to the north every so often and we see populations of people doing that, then we can again with some probability target those people and say, hey, by the way, check your snow tires or have you gotten your oil changed? I mean it's supposed to be fairly innocuous, but then contextual. And then I will add one additional layer because it got so heated over the Internet about, you know, why would I build these systems to begin with and, or why would I be part of teams that build these systems. A lot of these systems are built for accessibility. It's being able to monitor medical records to understand where there's a pattern for rare disorders of which I actually have one. And it was really useful for AI to be able to determine that so I could have cogent conversations with my doctors. Accessibility for folks with disabilities, right, to be able to have text read to you is all done through manipulation of machine learning and some level of artificial intelligence. You know, when you see streaming shows that you love so much on Netflix or Prime or you know, any of the streaming platforms where there are ads, all of those are funded by us, right? They're funded by the money that we spend out in the environment and we want to money on the things that matter to us. Where it goes wrong is I don't need ice or anyone else, whether I'm hiding anything or not to know my real time location data. But it becomes super useful if I can't, if I, if I'm visually impaired and I can't see where my phone ended up and I need to be able to do it, you know, a find my or something like that, right? So location data is a double edged sword. A lot of the data is a double edged sword.
- [16:44]
B
We'll be right back. I'll be honest, what sold me on Thrive Market wasn't just the food, it was the relief. I do most of my grocery shopping on the app and for about $5 a month, I don't have to second guess every single thing I put in my cart. That alone is worth it to me. Thrive Market is a membership based grocery service where you shop from wherever you are. You get access to weekly sales, auto ship and save, personalized filters, free gifts and the peace of mind that everything on the site has already been vetted. No junk, no surprises. My kid loves the granola bars. I mean we have like a whole granola bar cupboard now and Thrive's makes it easy to get a ton of different granola bars. I can grab things like Goodle's Mac and Cheese, Simple Mills, Siete Poppy brands and flavors I honestly never see in my local store but that feel better to say yes to. And I love the filters. I can shop high protein or low sugar in seconds and be done. I pay five bucks a month so I don't have to think about sketchy ingredients every time I shop. No delivery fees piling up, just one simple membership that pays for itself. I use this and you should too. Join thrive market@thrivemarket.com for 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. And they sell makeup. Every group of friends has one person who refuses to change still paying for a subscription they forgot about. Won't update their phone because it still works. That used to be me, especially when it came to overpaying for wireless. Then I switched to Mint Mobile and honestly I wish I'd done it sooner. Mint exists to fix the whole this is just how much wireless costs lie. You get the same coverage, same speed, unlimited talk, text and data just without the bloated price tag. Compared to my old carrier, the service has been just as good and I'm saving a lot every month. Switching was easy too. I kept my phone, kept my number activated with ESIM in minutes. No contracts, no hassle, and with a seven day money back guarantee and customer satisfaction in the mid-90s, it's pretty risk free. I use this and you should too. Ready to stop paying more than you have to for a limited time. New customers can get unlimited premium wireless for just $15 a month. Switch now@mintmobile.com dream that's mintmobile.com dream upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months or 180 DOL for 12 month plan required 15amonth equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only over 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. See mintmobile.com.
- [18:59]
A
Hi, this is Matt from P1 with Matt and Tommy and this episode is sponsored by ebay. The cars you'll find on ebay are just Different. They come with a story that you can't wait to share. Like this 1973 Dodge Charger on ebay that has been tucked away in an Arizona Barn for over 40 years. Only 55,000 miles and somehow in great running order, it even has a rare sunroof. Suddenly, a car that was hidden for decades is being delivered in just a few clicks with ebay's secure purchase. All the paperwork handled. There are thousands of cars on ebay, from unique finds like the Pontiac Grand Prix SJ to daily drivers and. And now with a new way to buy them, Ebay, things people love.
- [19:49]
B
Welcome back to the dream. Let's rejoin my conversation with Jess Lewis, who wrote an op ed about this whole ICE data request thing where she lays out in further detail basically what she's been saying here. You can find it@campaignlive.com and people online were not happy with her. Tell me about the pushback that you've gotten. Like, in what context?
- [20:14]
C
Gosh, we've seen a lot in the news where these dragnets have caused so much harm already in Minneapolis and New York and a lot of other places. So tensions are high, really high. So I get it if somebody comes on the Internet and says, hey, I'm an ad tech. I've been building this stuff and building audience Personas and targeting and understanding how you guys surf the Internet for 20 plus years. Of course, the pushback I get is, well, why the hell did you do that? What they don't know about me is that I have been pushing for policy changes for the better part of 15 years and members of organizations, global organizations that work to put policies in place like gdpr. And of course, if you ask me what that actually stands for, I'm going to forget. But that's the policy that now when you go online to a website and it asks you to accept cookies at the bottom, once you accept those cookies, you are giving that website permission to track you. They're dropping a couple of little digital pixels, digital crumbs that say, I am probably female, I am probably interested in kayaking, I'm probably interested in cooking and all the things that I like. The Internet knows me very, very well. So the pushback comes with, gosh, maybe you should have thought about this falling into the wrong hands when you first started doing it. And you know what? That's entirely fair. Yeah, I want people to know and I want people to be. I want them to be targeted with the stuff that is contextual to them. I want my clients to be able to spend their media dollars in the right way. And I want the customers that they target to be. To have trust in the clients and trust in data privacy. But I also want the average consumer to be. To really understand that everything that you do, if there's a microphone attached to it or if there's a camera attached to it, or you're taking photos or you're sending texts, that all of that can be tracked. Your digital footprint is your Persona.
- [22:41]
B
But you don't feel guilty about it.
- [22:46]
C
Oh, oh, I 100% do. 100% do. It doesn't matter how altruistic I Even policy creation or even accessibility AI or, you know, being able to digitize, you know, archival materials. It doesn't matter how altruistic I think we intended it to be. I now know not to be as Pollyanna about it. Now I have a lot of hope, I have a lot of hope that by. By shining the biggest light on it that we possibly can and people can be educated about it, that they can make those choices for themselves. But sure, I mean, the guilt, I mean, wouldn't the guilt be there for almost anyone who drives this kind of thing, period? Right? I mean.
- [23:43]
B
I mean, if the whole thing was easily opt in instead of opt out, I think I would have a much calmer feeling about it, about the surveillance state. You know, the cookies thing is a really good example because I can see the, you know, accept or don't accept button, and I can say, nope, I don't accept that, or I can choose not to use icloud. I've just only recently started using it for, like, anything on my phone. But the idea that so much of it is, is not opt in. It's not something that I'm giving my permission for. It's just being collected.
- [24:20]
C
Anyway, you did accept it.
- [24:23]
B
Say more.
- [24:23]
C
You did agree, right? Terms of service, which are just embedded.
- [24:30]
B
In whatever the thing is that you're looking at.
- [24:32]
C
Yeah, yeah. So every time you make a connection on your phone. And again, it could be something that's super useful to you. Let's say you have an iPhone and you've got Apple Health and you want to give Strava that captures biking and running and all those things. Right. And you want to give it permission to put its data into Apple Health. Now it's a couple of clicks. It makes it very, very easy intentionally.
- [25:00]
B
Right.
- [25:00]
C
We don't want to add friction. Friction is like a big thing in Internet advertising as well. But what we do is we say you've basically agreed to give us access to these things. Or when you first sign up for X or Threads or Facebook or any of them, even the more global ones who are doing way better with their terms of service. The terms of service, though, if you click on the little itty bitty link at the very bottom, it'll tell you everything that you need to know, that it captures your phone conversations, it wipes them, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's not taking that data and creating a probabilistic model of you. It may not be saving your conversation that you had with your mom last night or something. Right. But what if you were talking about a hot tub? It's going, oh, wait a minute, she might need a hot tub.
- [25:55]
B
And is that following me around? Like, is it? Is it?
- [25:58]
C
Yes.
- [25:59]
B
Is everything building one Jane?
- [26:01]
C
Yes and no. The ideal, if you were to ask most advertisers, is that it's dealing with one Jane. But we don't actually know that you're Jane. We can guess that you are. And this is an entire topic that would probably take two hours in and of itself to talk about.
- [26:19]
B
I want to talk about it.
- [26:20]
C
Okay. It's called householding. So, for example, what's it called? It's called householding. And if you've ever gotten a text of somebody, I don't know if you live by yourself. I don't. And occasionally the other person in my house who is my partner will get a text and it will say, hey, Jess, we saw that you were looking at xyz. And she comes to me and goes, wait a minute, I didn't look at this. You did. But that's because they're trying to guess because both of our phone numbers are attached, our cell phones are attached to this address. And we may have visited the same site because of course, we have stuff in common or we wouldn't be married. But there are a few things that we don't have in common at all. And it sort of screws up the model.
- [27:07]
B
Right?
- [27:07]
C
They don't know. Like, they're just trying to guess. And the more information you give it and the more you opt in and the more websites you go to and the more times you give your email address, there's something called a uid, which is a unique identifier, and a lot of organizations have it, a lot of data providers have it, a lot of credit reporting agencies, for example, have it. And what they will do is something called stitching, and they will stitch together these aspects about you. Things like your email address. Do you use a secondary email address? What your address is maybe what your zip code is, places you've traveled. If you, if you have a Gmail, you go to your main Google page and you go to your Google Maps. It's kind of shocking to see that they can tell you everywhere in the world that you've been.
- [28:07]
B
Was there a point where were you pumped about all this 15 years ago? And then you were like, oh, I.
- [28:15]
C
Was, I was pumped about it because I was creating different types of technology. Right. I wasn't really in advertising necessarily. I was creating Personas to understand viewing habits, for example. So when we were building Disney in order to populate genres, you know, I'm a big Marvel fan. So for me I would much rather see Marvel and sci fi and you know, the, of course, after Netflix. But Netflix will give you the recommendation engines and that's all very exciting, right, because it creates again, contextual good experiences for people that make things very easy for them. And when it comes to accessibility to make things very easy for people, when you go into a doctor's office or creating something around telehealth. So I, so I've done quite a bit on the health care side as well. But advertising is a totally different beast. That's where every once in a while we start thinking about and joking about it in our industry, about Big Brother. But what I can say is there are a lot of us trying very hard to make things as ethically rigid as possible, policies written. So instead of saying ad tech compliance, that actually means nothing. To pass policy in California, to pass policy in the UK and the eu, to pass policy globally, it's really, really important that we have that kind of rigor or what will happen is exactly what's happening right now.
- [29:54]
B
I was going to say that kind of requires the government not to be made up of bad actors.
- [29:59]
C
Exactly.
- [30:00]
B
That's what you didn't see coming, is that the government would be the people improperly using the technology.
- [30:05]
C
I didn't, I didn't. And you know what?
- [30:07]
B
Really didn't.
- [30:07]
C
No. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people, you know, do I feel actually quite embarrassed, you know, sitting here in my, in my house, you know, as a married woman in a same sex marriage that I'm sure the government is not too happy about. Did I ever see this coming? No. Am I embarrassed that I was perhaps too trustful or Pollyanna about the fact that our government would actually protect us? Sure, sure. But I can admit that, I could admit that I have had time and time again over the past few years just utter Shock in the inability for people to feel empathy for their neighbor and feel empathy for a population or populations of people who are, who don't have accessibility, who maybe don't speak a particular language, who don't look like or act like the way somebody says they should. And for them to be targeted for those things instead of just wanting to go buy a pair of shoes, that's pretty devastating. To find that the bad actors are taking advantage of, what do you call it when you take advantage of it and you didn't plan on it, but they're actually planning on it on purpose. And that's very, very concerning to me, which is why as soon as I saw this, I wanted to speak up. I wanted to talk about it immediately and say, this is bad. And I understand it because I built it. Or I built it with a lot of people, but I built it. And I'm in a unique position to talk about how it works.
- [31:52]
B
Have you read Frankenstein?
- [31:56]
C
I have, and I'm a sci fi fan and I absolutely love post apocalyptic genres, but that was supposed to be fiction.
- [32:12]
B
Let's talk about your, your earlier life, your childhood and stuff. Because as you're saying all of this, I'm like trying to build a picture of you in my mind. I'm doing my own data collection, right in real time. And I'm thinking, oh, this girl bought. You wanted an Atari and you saw the world as getting more exciting the more technology was in it. Am I totally reading that wrong?
- [32:35]
C
No, you're reading that correctly. Absolutely. Big nerd. Big nerd. I was, I was an avid reader. I was an earlier, early adopter of every technology I could possibly get my hands on. And I saw it as a force for good. You know, when, when I'm the person that, when, when they have the contests of, you know, how you would use AI and technology. I mean, these days we say AI, but back then it's, you know, how would you use technology or coding to solve, you know, desalinating water? You know, I was all over those types of things. And I mean, I'm not that important. I've never really created anything that was life changing. But I've always, I've always strived to because I always saw the good in people and the good in technology and our advancement. And I mean, it was a Trekkie. So, yeah, beam me up, you know, to beam up the food or to beam me to another planet instantaneously.
- [33:40]
B
You wanted, you wanted Judy Jetson's closet?
- [33:43]
C
I wanted Judy Jetson's closet. Yes, absolutely.
- [33:49]
B
So did I. We'll be right back. Welcome to the nowadays no Hangover club. And the first rule of no hangover club, you don't get a hangover. If you're wondering how that's even possible, it's actually pretty simple. You don't have to trade a fun night for a miserable morning anymore. Nowadays is a zero proof, THC infused beverage that gives you a clean, balanced buzz. No hangover, no bloat, no regrets. It tastes great, gives you that easy social lift, and just feels like a smarter way to drink. You can pour it over ice, crack open a ready to sip can, and enjoy the moment without overdoing it. And also, their bottles are really pretty. I like their sparkling spicy lime flavor and then their cranberry cocktail mixer. It makes me want a bar cart. It's like frosted glass and it kind of has a pink hue to it. It's really pretty. Anyways, visit trynowadays.com thedream to get 30% off your order. That's trynowadays.com thedream or use the dream at checkout. Drink responsibly. Must be 21 or older.
- [34:54]
A
Hi, this is Matt from P1 with Matt and Tommy, and this episode is sponsored by ebay. The cars you'll find on ebay are just different. They come with a story that you can't wait to share. Like this 1973 Dodge Charger on ebay that has been tucked away in an Arizona barn for over 40 years. Only 55,000 miles and somehow, in great running order, it even has a rare sunroof. Suddenly, a car that was hidden for decades, decades Is being delivered in just a few clicks. With ebay's secure purchase, all the paperwork handled, There are thousands of cars on ebay, from unique finds like the Pontiac Grand Prix SJ to daily drivers. And now with a new way to buy them ebay things people love.
- [35:42]
C
Science and technology have done a lot of good for us. They've, you know, it's taken us to the moon, it's allowed us to explore stars and ways we never have before. But now to look at the night sky and the dead satellites and how much junk is up there, you know, at what point. And this is a question that I think we all have to ask ourselves, people who are in tech or in science or really any anything that is going to evolve us as a, as a human race, at what point does it become too much? And I think that really goes back to have we set up our society and systems that are community driven? No no.
- [36:27]
B
The answer is no.
- [36:29]
C
Yeah. I mean, I don't even have to go any further in that list.
- [36:31]
B
We don't go to Blockbuster anymore. We have Disney because of you.
- [36:35]
C
Right.
- [36:35]
B
So I don't. I'm serious.
- [36:37]
C
I don't.
- [36:37]
B
Okay, fair. It's true, though. I don't have to leave my house and be out in the world and talking to people. I never get exp to something I don't like. I hate that part so much. Like, I miss the old Internet, when I would be surprised every once in a while, and now I'm not surprised when I'm on the apps, looking at whether they're streaming apps for television or movies, whether I'm even on threads. I have curated a world that I like on threads, but it's so homogenized, even if I'm actively trying to make it not exactly. Like me.
- [37:12]
C
That's right.
- [37:13]
B
So I do think we've built something that is, like, antithetical to the human experience in a way.
- [37:19]
C
And this is where it's been very eye opening for me over the past probably two years. And that is that convenience has also meant that it's very convenient to work. It's very convenient to work more hours. People can reach in any time and email you or text you or slack you or teams you or discord you. And we get what? More and more disconnected. The more we work, the more hours we put in, the more we can't disconnect from the very technology that now can't give us any kind of bifurcation between pleasure and work. Means that that's all we're doing, right?
- [37:57]
B
Yeah. When you were building the tech for, say, Disney. So when you're thinking about, okay, I'm a Marvel fan and I want to make sure all my Marvel movies are in one tab or that I'm getting the ads for that when I first open the app. Right. That discoverability stuff where you're exposing people to new things and maybe ideas that they didn't even know they wanted. Is that part of the thought process in the design?
- [38:27]
C
Yes.
- [38:28]
B
Okay, how does that work? Tell me how that works.
- [38:31]
C
Yeah, so that works. And this is where I fell in love with audience profiling.
- [38:40]
B
Okay.
- [38:42]
C
Yes. And that sounds strange. I know. I felt like a marketing csi, right?
- [38:49]
B
Yeah.
- [38:50]
C
Because if you liked one thing, we would try to show you something that was the complete opposite. You asked me about my childhood. Right. You made some assumptions based on my love of technology. What you may not know is a bunch of other things. Right.
- [39:06]
B
You're a horse. Girl.
- [39:08]
C
Well, you do know that, because that's on my threads. I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
- [39:12]
B
That was a total guess. I was not. I was not going off of.
- [39:16]
C
I am, I am. I am a horse girl. I have five, in fact. I'm such a horse girl.
- [39:21]
B
Yeah, I did not know that. I was really just.
- [39:24]
C
I may be a technologist, but I love nature and I live on a farm because I have to go touch grass 13 times a day. But that's what I think is the most fascinating is, you know, if you're into travel and this is a kind of generalized topic, right? But if you're into travel, you're probably into cuisine. If you're in the Midwest and you've never gone anywhere, I'm gonna start to introduce you to things that are different but maybe localized, but not necessarily show you something like a buried fermented egg somewhere in Asia.
- [39:59]
B
Why not though? That's what I'm saying. That's the fun of life that I miss. That's the fun of the Internet that I miss. I miss the weird. I miss the random.
- [40:08]
C
I miss the weird. I miss the weird and the random. Because what we would do is we would move that algorithm and help you move that algorithm forward so you could discover. I mean, at the time, I loved it, right? So at the time, when Netflix launched, initially, I got introduced to all sorts of interesting documentaries. Now it only shows me things that it knows I'm going to like versus things that's going to challenge me. And that has everything to do with advertising. That has everything to do with keeping you on the system longer.
- [40:40]
B
And why did you do this? Why are you doing this?
- [40:44]
C
Now see, I didn't. Now we talk about the thing called the algorithm. The unfortunate part is things like the for you page on a lot of social media, it's really for you and who we think you are versus for you as a society, as a community builder. And that's the, the further individualization. Wait, is that a word? Yeah, individualization of. Of our. Our people. Uh, and that's where I, that's what makes me really upset, is that we've lost a lot of the cultural diversity in doing this.
- [41:20]
B
So you were thinking when you started getting into this, you were thinking like you really had rose colored glasses on about the usefulness of this sort of technology.
- [41:33]
C
I did. I met a woman who had. She was. She was wheelchair bound, she had Ms. And we were testing VR goggles, virtual reality goggles, for her to go on a trip that she would never otherwise be able to do that. Makes me just tear up to see the look on her face, to see what she could actually experience as a result of technology.
- [42:00]
B
Oh, it's also creepy, Jess.
- [42:02]
C
It is.
- [42:03]
B
I actually am a bit jealous of your optimism that still exists.
- [42:09]
C
I'm hanging on by a thread, Jane. Okay, there's a little. There's a little bit left. There's a little bit left. Can.
- [42:28]
B
Can we go back to the RFI again? Just. I just want to make sure I understand, like, what could possibly be done.
- [42:34]
C
Oh. So all of the responses were due on 2 February. It's not an order. What they're doing is they're saying, hey, we want to gather information to better understand how the industry's commercial big data and ad tech providers can directly support investigation activities. Unfortunately, it doesn't take but just a few million dollars and a little bit of power to completely shift how somebody starts to use or weaponize this type of data. Which is why this ICE RFI is so dangerous. Because applying technology beyond its intended design, the intention is key here. Beyond its intended design introduces an enormous amount of risk.
- [43:33]
B
Right.
- [43:35]
C
You have to move forward with it responsibly. And this is where I said that my optimism is hanging on by a thread. And that's because really, the systems that we need to break down are systemic.
- [43:52]
B
Is this a runaway train or is there something to be done? Like taking this rfi, for example, very particularly. Is there a way people can respond or companies can respond and say no?
- [44:05]
C
They can. Well, first, what they do is they don't say no. What they do is they just don't respond. Right. Because it's not a call to all data companies or data brokers. Yeah, I know. I say in the op ed that it's absolutely a signal of a moment of reckoning because this is not verified information. And companies, ad tech companies, ad brokers, data brokers need to say no. They just need to not respond. And those that do, we need to look at with the most jaundiced eye we can. Because what they have basically said is we see that this data is going to be misinterpreted because they know that the data models are not accurate.
- [45:04]
B
Well, on the face of it, it's going to be misused because like you said, it's not designed for this.
- [45:09]
C
It's not designed for this, and they flat out say what they're going to use it for. So anyone who participates needs to be thought of as a dangerous actor or one that does not have the society at large, the community at large, people's privacy first in mind.
- [45:30]
B
But aren't you expecting such like a level of thoughtfulness from people that just rarely exist?
- [45:38]
C
I do, but you know, like in.
- [45:39]
B
A surveillance state, you know what I mean? Like having that critical thinking skill to go, yeah, guys, we're not going to respond to this request from the government requires like a bunch of people at the top of these companies saying that they understand what the risk is.
- [45:55]
C
That's right. That's right. It is really critical that we remove the fear and stand on the right side of history. What I can tell you is that while again, I probably sound very Pollyanna about this, I have had numerous people write to me privately from other media, advertising agencies that have agreed or would like to agree to pull together some sort of consortium that says, we will not respond, we won't respond to this one, we won't respond to future ones. And we encourage others in our industry to be very cautious of anyone who is going to utilize data for these purposes. Because that amount of distrust will bleed down into our clients, you know, big corporations and into their customers. And that level of the erosion of trust will rock entire global economies. They need to pay attention. They need to pay attention to it.
- [47:04]
B
Meaning the average consumer will stop trusting the giant corporation and then things will.
- [47:11]
C
Fall apart and stop buying.
- [47:14]
B
You know, I don't think that's true at all.
- [47:16]
C
You don't think so? No, but we've seen, we've seen, we've already seen boycotts of Target and Amazon. We've seen their revenue go down. We've seen time and time again where more and more people can actually vote with their wallet. But if we don't encourage more people to do the same thing if they're, if the companies that they work with are not going to be trustful. And I do see this day to day. I mean, it may not seem like on the macro unless it's like a major.
- [47:47]
B
Well, you work in advertising too. And my friends who work in advertising, there's others who are in marketing and advertising who talk about this like the economic blackout day is gonna be a really big deal. And then it's like I didn't feel it.
- [48:00]
C
Yeah.
- [48:01]
B
And Amazon is still in charge of literally everything.
- [48:04]
C
Literally everything. Yep.
- [48:06]
B
And they're inside the Oval Office right now. So I don't know, I feel like we are becoming.
- [48:12]
C
This is just.
- [48:12]
B
Maybe it's just I'm more like 10 steps more jaded than you at the moment, but it feels very much like we've already capitulated.
- [48:20]
C
I hope not.
- [48:30]
B
What if. Let's say Palantir and Meta. I'm gonna just pick those two big ones. What if they get this RFI and they go, sure, Then what?
- [48:41]
C
They will. It's not even a what if. They will 100%.
- [48:48]
B
Okay.
- [48:49]
C
Yeah. So how much more time do we have to talk about that?
- [48:54]
B
So they will 100% say yes, and they will fork over all the data and they have all the data and.
- [49:00]
C
They can, because we've agreed to it.
- [49:02]
B
Okay.
- [49:02]
C
Okay.
- [49:03]
B
Now I'm back to, like, too late. Who cares? We're all fucked.
- [49:08]
C
Well, I mean, I hate it.
- [49:11]
B
Well, so what is again? What? Just it's too late. It sounds like if Meta's handing everything over, if Palantir is handing everything over, it sounds like the solution is I just have to get rid of my computer and my phone. Aluminum foil on the inside of my windows.
- [49:25]
C
Exactly. Exactly.
- [49:37]
B
The dream is a production of Little Everywhere. If you have tips or questions, you can email us@hellotleverywhere.com and you can find Jess Lewis over on threads at Jess Lewis, I'm Cjane Marie. Over there, that's S E E, Jane Marie. See you next week.