← There Are No Girls on the Internet
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- [00:00]
Bridget Todd
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Annie
Guaranteed Human.
- [00:04]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart.
- [00:20]
Mind Games Narrator
What if mind control is real?
- [00:22]
Menelik Lumumba
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [00:25]
Mind Games Narrator
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [00:28]
Hans Charles
When you look at your car, you're.
- [00:30]
Bridget Todd
Gonna become overwhelmed with such good can.
- [00:33]
Mind Games Narrator
You hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [00:35]
Hans Charles
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [00:38]
Mind Games Narrator
Can you get someone to join your cult?
- [00:40]
Mind Games Narrator 2
NLP was used on me to access.
- [00:42]
Mind Games Narrator
My subconscious mind games. A new podcast exploring nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming. Is it a self help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:04]
Podcast Host (There Are No Girls on the Internet)
There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative.
- [01:12]
Bridget Todd
I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet.
- [01:17]
Podcast Host (There Are No Girls on the Internet)
Is WhatsApp reading your private encrypted messages? This is what US authorities are looking into this week. Now, this comes after a lawsuit filed last week which claimed that Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp, can access virtually all of WhatsApp users purportedly private communications. Now, according to the Guardian, the firm that filed the lawsuit against Meta, attributes this allegation to unnamed, courageous whistleblowers from Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa. But Meta, Surprise Surprise, is denying the allegations, calling the lawsuit's claim categorically false and absurd, and suggesting that the claim was a tactic to support the NSO Group, an Israeli cyber intelligence firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware called Pegasus, which can turn pretty much any smartphone into a surveillance device remotely. It's been used against activists and journalists and recently lost a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp.
- [02:16]
Bridget Todd
So what does all of this mean for you?
- [02:19]
Podcast Host (There Are No Girls on the Internet)
Well, Meta is all about the idea that WhatsApp is a secure, encrypted private platform, to the point where my friend Annie, one of the hosts of the podcast Stuff mom ever told you'd, saw commercials suggesting that WhatsApp is a safe place to have conversations about topics as sensitive as your reproductive care, which, to.
- [02:38]
Bridget Todd
Be clear, is not something I would recommend anybody do.
- [02:41]
Podcast Host (There Are No Girls on the Internet)
And right now, the Trump administration is using every tool they have to force tech companies to turn over people's personal communications. In fact, just this morning, the Washington Post published an exclusive investigative report about how DHS is using subpoenas to quietly surveil and silence their political enemies. So that means that protecting your digital privacy is more important than ever. Not just for you, but anyone in your network who might be more vulnerable than you are. Your friend who overstayed their visa, your cousin who got an out of state abortion. Their safety depends on you. I broke down all of this earlier this winter with my friends Samantha and Annie over at the podcast Stuff mom never told you'd.
- [03:28]
Annie
I feel a little bit guilty about this one, Bridget, because it was a big topic that I was like, you know what? I would really love to discuss this, and it's just a huge spiraling thing. Complicated. But I really appreciate you bringing it, and I think it's really important, and I'm excited to talk about it and to learn more. So what are we discussing today?
- [03:54]
Bridget Todd
Today, we are diving into the wide world of privacy, specifically whether or not Messaging apps like WhatsApp actually are private. And I know I can already hear somebody in their car or washing their dishes right now thinking, snooze. Privacy has nothing to do with me. I don't break the law. I have nothing to hide. Whatever they have on me, they already have it. Who cares? That is actually a very common attitude called privacy nihilism, where you just are like, the government has all that they're going to have on me. It doesn't matter. And honestly, I get it. Most of us probably don't really think twice before you hit send on a message, right? But what if hitting send could put you at risk? And the truth is, in 2025, it literally can. Whether you're texting about abortion or a protest or whatever, your messages could be watched, flagged, or even used against you. Privacy isn't just for people with something to hide. It is for people with something to lose. And right now, in 2025, given everything that is going on, that is all of us. Yes.
- [05:01]
Annie
And we're going to get into this more, but it seems that companies at least have tapped into this, this worry, this concern, and they're competing with each other in ad campaigns.
- [05:15]
Bridget Todd
Well, Annie, you sent me this ad from WhatsApp that, in my opinion, heavily implied that WhatsApp is meant to be like, a private, secure messaging platform, and that one could even trust it for a private conversation about healthcare. Like, maybe if one was trying to pursue an abortion, this would be a platform that you could do that securely. You Were also telling me about another ad from Apple where it was like, camera birds being launched at people or something.
- [05:41]
Annie
Yes, yes. That ad is very frightening, everyone. It reminds me of the Black Mirror episode with like, the robot dogs.
- [05:49]
Bridget Todd
Oh, yeah. Oh, the like, army robot dog. That's like. It's like the post apocalyptic army robot killer dog. Oh, my God. Yes.
- [05:58]
Annie
But there's just these, like, cameras that have bird wings and they have this screeching sound they make and they fly after people on the street who are looking at their phone, implying that, like, they're watching you if you're on your phone or on your laptop and they'll like, crash into Windows and there's a really piercing sound. It's really disturbing. And then it's an ad for Safari that's saying, like, other browsers watch you. Safari doesn't definitely.
- [06:28]
Bridget Todd
They got their finger on the pulse. And the pulse of the moment is concern about our vast surveillance state. That much is clear. I think people are worried about it. And these, I think these companies are like, oh, let's tap into people's understandable concern about the surveillance state right now.
- [06:45]
Annie
It's so odd though, because like, when I sent you that the WhatsApp campaign, it's. It's strange to me in a way that we're living in such a dystopian world where there are ads that are like, you don't want anyone to know about your medical. Like, you don't want. It just has this vibe of overall, it's probably not safe for people to know about these things. I don't know. Which is true. It's absolutely true. But it's strange that it's in an ad campaign.
- [07:18]
Bridget Todd
It's weird to get reminded of it while you're watching Bob's Burger. I totally understand the weird. It does feel rather dystopian. I totally get it.
- [07:29]
Annie
Yes.
- [07:30]
Bridget Todd
Oh, and I should say right off the top that I'm not like an online privacy expert. I don't work in it. I would more call myself a privacy enthusiast. One of the projects that I work on, in addition to my own podcast, There are no Girls on the Internet, is a podcast that I make with the Mozilla foundation, the makers of the browser Firefox called irl. And it's a podcast all about technology, AI ethics, and, of course, privacy. We actually just launched our brand new season a few weeks ago, so folks should check it out. But what's interesting about the show, I think, is that we're really trying to make these conversations that might feel Wonky or inaccessible, accessible for everybody. And. And I think that it's important for folks like me, who aren't necessarily privacy experts or don't work in it, to have a sense of the privacy of the technology and the platforms that we do use every day. Like, we shouldn't treat those as conversations that are just for experts. And especially in 2025, when, as we were just discussing the vibes, it's giving 1984, at times, it's giving dystopian. It's giving, you know, something out of a scary novel, only it's real. That's. I mean, I don't know if that's how you all are feeling, but that's how I'm feeling. And so, yeah, privacy. And the privacy around the apps that we use every single day becomes even more important.
- [08:47]
Annie
Yes. And I know we're gonna talk about it, but we've seen instances of these apps turning over data that people thought was private, weren't thinking that it was going to be shared in this way. So. And, you know, I have to say, WhatsApp is a app that I only have experience generally with my international friends, But I did always get this vibe that it was more secure than other apps. So when I saw this ad campaign, what set me off was not WhatsApp. It's when I saw Meta at the bottom of it, and I was like, okay, wait, now. Now I have a lot of concerns. Now I have a lot of concerns. So, yeah, let's. What's going on with WhatsApp here?
- [09:37]
Bridget Todd
So let's get into it for folks who maybe don't know about WhatsApp. It is a free global messaging platform that was launched in 2009, and it allows folks to send texts, voice messages, video messages, make voice and video calls, share images, documents, user locations, and other content. It has over 2 billion, billion with A B users. There are, like, 8 billion people on planet Earth. So, like, that is a lot of users. And in 2016, it became the number one messaging platform in the world. And, Annie, you were just talking about how you associate it with, like, international folks. And that is absolutely true because it is particularly important for global communication. If you have aunties or cousins in another country, odds are you've probably used WhatsApp to stay in touch. And by 2016, it was the primary means of Internet communication in regions including the Americas, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa. So, yeah, it is a very, very popular messaging platform. In 2014, it was bought by Meta, the company that runs Facebook. But Back then, it was still just called Facebook. Listeners have rightly called me out for sometimes mixing up those two names. Facebook was Facebook. In 2014, they changed their name to Meta to sort of avoid some scandals. But Facebook and Meta, for the most part, are like. You can think of them as interchangeable for the most part. And so they bought WhatsApp in 2014. And that means that, like, the same way that, for me, getting online when I was a kid meant America Online, like, America Online functionally was the Internet. For me, Facebook is essentially the Internet for a whole big swatch of people all over the world, right? And this is all controlled by one person and one company, Mark Zuckerberg. And so really think about that. This one private company basically has total control of the main method of how people get information and communicate with each other. So that gives him specifically, like, an incredible amount of power. Power that I would argue has not always been used ethically or responsibly and not always done in a way that keeps what's best for people at the forefront. So if you're asking the big question of, like, whether or not you would trust WhatsApp, run by Meta at their word that they are private, I mean, it really comes down to the fact, like, do you trust Facebook? Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg? Because that's really what it comes down to, how Facebook and Zuckerberg define what privacy is like, what is private and what is not private and, like, what that means. And so this is where it gets a little bit confusing. WhatsApp's messages are end to end, encrypted by default, so you don't have to turn anything on to message in that way, both for messages and for calls. And bottom line is, like, that is very good for privacy. So I want to be clear that I'm not saying that WhatsApp specifically is bad for privacy. However, the way that Meta operates as a company is what, in my opinion, makes things a little bit murky. Mozilla's Privacy Not Included blog put it like this. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, which means Facebook can Access some data WhatsApp collects on you for specified purposes, which may be bad for privacy. So this means WhatsApp might be collecting data on you when you use it. And we actually sort of know this is the case. As of September 2021, it is known that WhatsApp makes extensive use of outside contractors and AI systems to examine certain messages, images, and videos that have been flagged by users as possibly abusive, and it turns over to law enforcement Metadata, including critical account and location information. So again, it really comes down to whether or not you consider that to be private. Yeah.
- [13:22]
Annie
And also given, like, a lot of other news that's happened with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg that just reverses everything that they said they were going to do. So it's also, I feel an extension of that is do I believe they're actually going to stick with this thing or are they just going to change it?
- [13:44]
Bridget Todd
I mean, I think it's reasonable to look at how companies historically have moved when they say things, when they say one thing and then do the, do the opposite. I think all of that plays into the question of, like, whether or not you're comfortable with them having information about you that could potentially wind you in jail. This is not a hypothetical. We'll talk more about this in a moment. But like, that has happened. Conversations people had on Facebook platforms have led to them being in prison. So, like, that's a, in my book, that's like a. You're, you're giving quite a bit of trust to these platforms. And, you know, as I said, Meta owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and also works with a sprawling network of third parties and contractors, sometimes in, like, very opaque ways. And so my sense is that Meta is like, oh, well, WhatsApp itself is encrypted, so that means it's private. And then conveniently leave out that users who are concerned about their privacy might also be concerned about how and what data is then being shared with third parties. Like, I think that Facebook is like, well, we're encrypted, so that's private. And how Facebook and other companies access data, it's still private. I think that's their, that's their, their, their play there.
- [14:58]
Annie
Yeah. And it does feel very like, I don't know, kind of shuffling it. Like, even going back to that ad, the Meta symbols very small in that ad, I have to say, I think they were like, we know people know that we've gone through these scandals, but also kind of shuffling it off to the user of, you should figure out this was on you. If you were worried about privacy, then I don't why you didn't take whatever steps. Yeah.
- [15:34]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only Iheart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-IHeart to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART.
- [16:04]
Hans Charles
Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles.
- [16:07]
Menelik Lumumba
I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr have both been assassinated and black America was out of breaking point. Rioting and protest broke out on an.
- [16:17]
Hans Charles
Unprecedented scale in Atlanta, Georgia. At Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.
- [16:34]
Menelik Lumumba
To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying.
- [16:39]
Hans Charles
1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.
- [16:43]
Menelik Lumumba
The FBI had a role in the.
- [16:46]
Annie
Murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.
- [16:50]
Menelik Lumumba
This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should and it will blow your mind.
- [16:57]
Hans Charles
Listen to the A building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [17:05]
Mind Games Narrator 2
What if mind control is real?
- [17:07]
Menelik Lumumba
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [17:10]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Can you hypnotize, hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [17:14]
Hans Charles
When you look at your car, you're.
- [17:15]
Bridget Todd
Going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
- [17:18]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [17:21]
Hans Charles
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [17:24]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Can you get someone to join your cult?
- [17:26]
Bridget Todd
NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.
- [17:29]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
- [17:41]
Hans Charles
It's about engineering consciousness.
- [17:43]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Mind Games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, nlp, might actually work.
- [18:00]
Annie
This is wild.
- [18:01]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Listen to my mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:14]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
I remember when WhatsApp was bought out and everybody was really upset because I think at that point a lot of protests and like a lot of gatherings had happened through different messengers, like WhatsApp because it was supposed to be encrypted. And then Facebook bottom out and everybody lost it. I remember people talking about what to do next, and that's when signal kind of got its big boost. If I remember correctly, they've Always been pretty big, but it got the bigger boost because WhatsApp eventually became known as now it can be Facebook. And then they were real quiet about it. They made sure not to change the brand or the logo. And then they were just, I think, really hoping people would Forget who owned WhatsApp. And I feel like the same way, like, you were talking about when people start clicking on, doing the messengers and you get that little. You have to read this. This is our Terms of Service, and no one reads that. Let's be real honest. It's hard to even decipher. I actually had a similar incident with, like, my loans and when thing was popping off about Doge or Doge doing those weird things and looking at the loans, and everybody's coming up with a. That's illegal. Y' all told us if it gets breached by, like, organizations like this, then our loan signs to be forgiven. My specific loan site came back with a whole agreement that it tells me, by the way, a third party can get access if given permission by blah, blah, blah. If you agree to this, you can log in. If you don't, you can't log in, period.
- [19:34]
Bridget Todd
But, like, what? Like, let's, like, be so for real. Why would you have, like, read with a. First of all, you're not an attorney, you're not a lawyer, you're not a contract expert. You don't have all day to read sometimes what is like, 30 pages of fine print. Like, literally, there are artists and activists who have printed out the terms of service that you have to, like, you know, agree to, and it'll be pages and pages and pages long. That's not a reasonable. It's not reasonable to expect you to be able to read and understand all of that just to get information about your loan. So, like, let's, like, be for real.
- [20:09]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
They're literally holding your stuff hostage. I feel like that's also. I feel like this was a thing with Facebook, especially when they started changing terms. And like, yeah, we have you. If you want to log in, you can, but you have to give us access to your computer, your information. We have. We have ownership of all your pictures that you're posting. Like, I feel like they were kind of the beginning of that as well.
- [20:30]
Bridget Todd
So it's so funny that you say this, because in 2021, this all sort of came to a head when Apple and Facebook kind of had a dispute about this very thing, right? So Apple made this update to their App Store, which gave users privacy labels that showed all the different data that that app will Link to. So when WhatsApp, owned by Meta, was in the App Store, Apple published this information that's like, oh, here's the data that this app will link to you. And people were like, wait a minute, I was told this was private. Like, why are you linking so much data to me? So then after that, WhatsApp updated their privacy policy, which inadvertently highlighted their years old policy of sharing certain user data, like phone numbers with Facebook. So people who were concerned about their privacy obviously freaked out. And then Ireland hit WhatsApp with a record $266 million fine for an alleged lack of transparency over how it shares data with Facebook. So when Apple actually gave users the tool to be like, oh, I can make an informed decision transparently about how my data is shared on this app, people were like, nah, I don't actually like that. Like it really revealed that perhaps WhatsApp is not as private as some of these ads would have us believe.
- [21:50]
Annie
Yes. And so going back to the ad where I was like, bridget, I would love if we could talk about this. It's a WhatsApp ad and I thought it was about abortion, but I've seen it since and now I'm like, okay, it's just the medical situation, it's never clearly stated it's an abortion or anything like that. But the fact that my mind immediately went to, oh, this is, they're talking about abortion or like kind of implying abortion. And I recoiled so viscerally because I was just like, no, that's terrible. We can't be telling people this. And they have like a nice little. They show people typing and all the letters get all mixed up with numbers and stuff like that so you can't see what they're typing. But I think that goes to show the concerns a lot of us have of this technology that's telling you like, oh no, it's private. You can do this thing that has unfortunately become dangerous or risky for a lot of people. And my mind immediately was like, abortion? No, that's bad.
- [23:06]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I saw the ad too. I also, I mean, I think they were trying to like, you're not seeing things. Like they don't come out and say it, but I had the same interpretation of that ad as you did. And I think it's just, I think people should just know what's up about WhatsApp. Like they should understand like what is actually happening. Because if I were to use any analogy to explain it, I would say there's private in that. You told your good girlfriend something and she Took it to her grave and she never told a soul. And then there's private like that you told your good girlfriend something and she shared it with her husband. And it's one thing when we're talking about like a juicy secret, it's another when we're talking about something that unfortunately, like, could get you locked up. And, you know, when it, when it comes to abortion, we know that Facebook does have a bit of a track record with this. So Facebook turned over the chats of a mother and daughter to Nebraska police after they were served with a warrant as part of an investigation into an illegal abortion. So they, notably these two women, were not using WhatsApp, they were using Facebook Messenger. But I do think it shows some insight into how this all works because as I said, it's all the same umbrella company, Meta. So in June, before Roe was overturned, Facebook gave the police department in Norfolk, Nebraska access to their private messages that Jessica Burgess and her then 17 year old daughter shared about how to obtain abortion pills. Burgess ended up getting sentenced to two years in prison and her daughter got 90 days. The platform that they were using to communicate Facebook messenger does offer end to end encryption, just like WhatsApp does, meaning that the chats between the two women were only visible to them on their phones and not readable by Facebook or any government entity that makes a legal request to the company. But that option is really only available to folks who are using Facebook messenger on the app on a mobile device, not like on desktop or on a laptop or something. And the messages are only encrypted after users select the option to mark those chats as secret. So you can see how that's less secure than WhatsApp. That has that as a default setting. Like you have to go in and click Secret on mobile to get that end to end encryption. And what's worse is that Facebook just immediately complied by giving these chats over to the police, which they really don't have to do. Legal experts told the Guardian that Facebook could have fought the warrant in court. There are other instances where tech companies have refused to comply with government demands. Apple refused to comply with federal law enforcement's request to break into an iPhone involving the San Bernardino shooting back in 2016. And Facebook itself successfully refused to comply with a wiretapping request for messenger calls back in 2018. So they don't have to give this information over to police, but they do and they're able to have it.
- [25:58]
Annie
And that's the frightening thing because we use, all of us use this stuff in some way or another. Maybe not Facebook messenger or maybe not WhatsApp, but it's just a concern with all these platforms of you know what? I thought this was something that was private and now I'm going to jail or it's been turned over.
- [26:24]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
We can talk about the fact that they have been hacked so Many. What? My WhatsApp has been hacked so many times. My messenger has been hacked so much. I was like, I f this, I'm not doing this anymore. And I completely refuse to use it. Except anytime anyone sends me a message, whether it's my partner or someone, you have to download it. If you're not on the laptop, and even on the laptop, you can't get it unless you do, you download the app and get another code, which is like, what? You're making me do this.
- [26:51]
Bridget Todd
So I actually included all the different instances of WhatsApp being hacked. There are many. There's a, there's many, many, many. At the last minute, I was like, well, hacking is different than, I mean, it's not different than privacy. I made a game day decision to be like, let's, let's exclude hacking from the conversation, but I won't let you WhatsApp me getting hacked. Like, it's a real thing.
- [27:16]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
I mean, if they want to say be secure and private and all these things, but like, one goes in hand in hand, how am I going to trust you if every other day I get a message from this person that's saying, hey, did you send me these things just because I opened an app and it turns out that someone has hacked into my account? Like, obviously, if you can't even get the security to keep my stuff, okay, how do you have the ability to keep it private?
- [27:40]
Bridget Todd
Exactly. And just to be super clear, even if WhatsApp, their encryption means that they cannot hand the content of your messages over to the police, if the police were trying to build a case against you that relied on location data, like, say, did you travel to XYZ location to obtain an abortion? And you live in a place where you were not legally permitted to travel across state lines to do so? Or like, were you at XYZ protest. WhatsApp has metadata. So even if they can't give you get the actual messages, they're fine giving metadata, which includes things like your location, your contacts, who you were messaging. They're fine to give that information over and they have that information. And so it's really about understanding privacy in a more holistic way that it's not just about the content of your messages. It's about how secure is its platform? Like, is it easily hacked? Is it hackable? Does it have a history of being hacked? What kind of metadata are they collecting? How do they use that metadata? It's really about asking all of these background questions in addition to just like, how do they keep my content safe?
- [28:44]
Annie
Right. And on top of that, it's also, there are some things, some laws that we have that sort of allow for them to be like, yeah, we can track you. Right.
- [28:59]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. So I learned this in doing the research for this episode that thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy act, they're basically able to track users without Probable cause. In January 2022, an unsealed surveillance application revealed that WhatsApp started tracking seven users from China in November 2021, based on a request from USDA investigators. The app collected data on who the users contacted and how often and when and how they were using the app. And this is reportedly not an isolated thing, as federal agencies can use the Electronic Communications Privacy act to covertly track users without submitting any probable cause or linking a user's number to their identity. And I should just add a sort of global note about this whole thing is that WhatsApp has two different platforms. Regular WhatsApp and then WhatsApp business. That's meant for small businesses to communicate. That was rolled out in 2018. Everything that I've said so far is really about regular WhatsApp, and that's because WhatsApp's business platform is actually less private. So, yeah, don't use that to talk about anything.
- [30:05]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
That's not the way I thought that was gonna go.
- [30:08]
Bridget Todd
Well, I mean, it kind of makes sense because, like, if you're. If you're a business entity, you're communicating with so many different people in such a different way that, like, I kind of get where they're coming from there. But I just wanted to say that in case someone's like, oh, I have WhatsApp business. Like, let me use it the way that Bridget told me I should be using it. Like, that's a whole different beast.
- [30:27]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
Yeah, I thought that was gonna be an upgrade.
- [30:30]
Bridget Todd
Definite down.
- [30:33]
Annie
Not business class.
- [30:34]
Bridget Todd
No. Because on a plane, it's, like, better. When it comes to medicine, it's worse. Not this much. Okay.
- [30:47]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll Hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-IHeart to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART.
- [31:18]
Hans Charles
Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles.
- [31:20]
Menelik Lumumba
I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr have both been assassinated, and black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protest broke out on an.
- [31:31]
Hans Charles
Unprecedented scale in Atlanta, Georgia. At Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. And a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.
- [31:48]
Menelik Lumumba
To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying.
- [31:52]
Hans Charles
1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.
- [31:57]
Menelik Lumumba
The FBI had a role in the.
- [32:00]
Annie
Murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.
- [32:03]
Menelik Lumumba
This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.
- [32:11]
Hans Charles
Listen to the A building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [32:18]
Mind Games Narrator 2
What if mind control is real?
- [32:21]
Menelik Lumumba
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [32:24]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [32:27]
Hans Charles
When you look at your car, you're.
- [32:29]
Bridget Todd
Going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
- [32:32]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [32:34]
Hans Charles
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [32:38]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Can you get someone to join your cult?
- [32:40]
Bridget Todd
NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.
- [32:43]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
- [32:54]
Hans Charles
It's about engineering consciousness.
- [32:56]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Mind games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, nlp, might actually work.
- [33:14]
Annie
This is wild.
- [33:15]
Mind Games Narrator 2
Listen to mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:27]
Annie
Okay, well, we have been, you know, focusing on WhatsApp, and surely all of these applications we could talk about, but WhatsApp in particular, how's it doing with privacy when it comes to privacy?
- [33:52]
Bridget Todd
So, as I said, Ultimately, WhatsApp, I would say, is pretty private. Good for privacy. Here's how Mozilla's privacy experts put it from a technical perspective. No, WhatsApp itself is not really bad for privacy. WhatsApp uses strong end to end encryption for all texts, chats and video calls. This is great. WhatsApp cannot read your messages or see your call. The flip side of this is Facebook, a company infamous for its vast and questionably ethical collection of so much data, owns WhatsApp. This means that lots of metadata, things like purchase history, location, device ID and more can be captured and shared with businesses advertising on WhatsApp. So people looking for a true privacy centered messaging app can find much better options. Yes.
- [34:38]
Annie
And speaking of, you have a better option.
- [34:42]
Bridget Todd
Teeing me up beautifully to talk about one of my favorite apps, and that is Signal. I am such a Signal fangirl. I have been a fan girl of Signal for a very long time. I remember the very first time I encountered Signal, I was like trying to date somebody and this person eventually became like a very good friend of mine. But initially I was like, oh, what's this platform? And I was telling a friend like, oh, I met this, this person and they, they didn't give me their number. They were like, here's my Signal. And my friend I was telling this to was like, are they an eco terrorist? Because back then the only person who would have Signal on their phone was an eco terrorist. Like, that is how long I've been with Signal. But Signal is amazing. It is free. Everyone listening should download Signal right now. And it is run by an incredible nonprofit that is helmed by this woman, Meredith Whitaker, who is this bad woman in technology who does a lot of interesting writing on surveillance. I genuinely like, deeply, deeply admire her. If you ever want to be really challenged in a good way, like, watch out videos of her lectures. She's just a fascinating human being. And so Signal is generally considered to be more secure and private than WhatsApp due to its just general commitment to user privacy as a nonprofit and its open source nature. While WhatsApp uses end to end encryption, Signal goes further by not collecting any user metadata and being backed by this nonprofit organization, which generally does minimize the potential for that kind of data exploitation. Right. And so whereas they're both using end to end encryption, WhatsApp does collect and share metadata. Signal does not. They don't collect any of that. So that is definitely the better platform if you're talking about anything at all sensitive. And honestly, it's just a platform that I use. Like most of my conversations are happening on Signal.
- [36:35]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
And I'm going to insert this joke here. Unless you're dumb enough to send messages to the people you're not Supposed to be sending like, you know, top secret information to journal.
- [36:45]
Bridget Todd
If you're listening, Pete Hegseth, we're talking about you. You know what makes me mad about that is that that was the probably for a lot of Americans, that was probably the first time I had ever heard about Signal. And Signal is so awesome. It's so great. They have such a great, like, mission. And it made me sad that the first encounter that a lot of people were having was with Pete Hegseth, like completely misusing it. And even in some of the reporting about that, they were sort of trying to make it signals like mistakes like, oh, like, like, what is this shadowy app that they were using and how could this happen? And it's like, no, Signal didn't do anything wrong. It was 100% user error.
- [37:29]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
Right. Honestly, I was really shocked that they use such a public, like, platform that is free. I'm like, you're the government. Don't you have your own kind of like chat application that you used within your own people? Like, I don't this. There's a lot I have questions about in this moment.
- [37:46]
Bridget Todd
I can answer that question for you. The answer is absolutely. The United States government has spent lots and lots and lots of money to develop and use super secure messaging apparatus. Yeah. Signal is not the use case for this. If you're talking about like secret military plans, I do think, love, like, I read the different conversations that were happening. I can't remember who it was. It might have been J.D. vance. Don't quote me on that. Who is like only responding in thumbs up emojis. It's one of them that is like, just stick a thumbs up there and they'll get the gist. Like, I don't want to be in print on this one. Which looking back, was probably a smart idea.
- [38:27]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
Yeah. The little level of like comedy here is just like, what is going on? But it feels right. It feels about right. The disaster and doom in like a comedic form. Like, yeah, okay, that's where we are.
- [38:39]
Bridget Todd
Sometimes they gotta laugh to keep from crying. Am I right?
- [38:43]
Annie
Yes, it's true. I have to admit to you all I wrote in a fan fiction lately. I had a plot point about this whole thing.
- [38:52]
Bridget Todd
The half thing.
- [38:53]
Annie
Yes. Because I was trying to figure out how to make something that was incredibly stupid happen in the government. And I was like, well, it already happened.
- [39:02]
Bridget Todd
Right.
- [39:02]
Annie
So I can point to real life evidence and be like, you know what? I would have thought it was too, too stupid. Oh my gosh. But yeah, it did happen. So I just Wrote it in. And it kind of saved me a whole headache of figuring out how that next.
- [39:17]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
I forget it's true. Like, all of the things that they have predicted, this level of stupidity, it's no longer funny because it's like, right on.
- [39:24]
Bridget Todd
Yeah.
- [39:25]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
Like, this should not be this real.
- [39:27]
Bridget Todd
You know, stuff is bad when, like, if you were writing a fictional work about it and you would be like, oh, that's too on the nose. Nobody's gonna buy that. And it's like, no, homie, it happened. Ripped from the headlines.
- [39:39]
Podcast Guest or Contributor
You're good.
- [39:42]
Annie
Well, you know, one thing that has. One of the reasons I really wanted to talk about this, Bridget, is that I was so. When I saw that commercial, I was so worried about people believing it. Like, you know, like, I was really concerned that people would be like, oh, this is a. This is a secure interface that I can use and getting in trouble or having. Having this really terrible experience. And I do know what you were talking about earlier, that a lot of people do have that sort of burnout.
- [40:26]
Bridget Todd
Of like, you know what? They already know.
- [40:28]
Annie
They already have it. What's even worth trying. But it really. It really worried me when I saw it. And I think, given the environment we live in now, that it is something that we need to talk about and be aware of and be educated on.
- [40:56]
Bridget Todd
Absolutely. I'm glad that you're bringing it to the Sminty listeners because it is important. And it can always be really hard to tell marketing from reality, especially with this, because it is a little bit murky. But I guess I would just offer, like, the reality is that we are in a world where our rights are being rolled back, where protest is criminalized, health care is criminalized. In a world like that, privacy and security is not just a tech issue. It is a survival issue. And we have to protect our data and our conversations the way that we also protect each other. I know that someone listening out there is like, bridget, you sound paranoid. It is not about being paranoid. It's about being prepared and being cognizant of, like, the reality that we are in today. And so if using signal over WhatsApp and getting into the habit of doing that, if that could potentially save somebody listening a whole lot of stress. I want to offer that there are small, meaningful changes that we can make to keep things more secure and private that don't cost us anything that we should be doing. And I honestly think if you are someone who is. I don't even know how to put this. I am prepper minded a little bit. I'M like, oh, the vibes are bad, the vibes are weird. Like, better get prepared. I think right now the big thing we should be preparing for is cyber security. And I think that it's probably more likely that we are going to see digital attacks and cyber attacks, probably more so than other kinds of things you could be prepping for. And so preparing and getting yourself situated for those kinds of attacks is easy and free. It doesn't take a lot. And so I would say if you're feeling unnerved and uncertain in these times, start there. Like that is something that you can manage. It does not take a lot to get yourself in a good protected place.
- [42:49]
Annie
Yes. And you over on your podcast, there are no Girls on the Internet and other episodes on Spinty. You've done a lot of episodes about that, about how that can look and what you can do. So thank you as always.
- [43:04]
Bridget Todd
Oh my gosh. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. And if you want more conversations about tech and privacy, check out the newest season of Mozilla's IRL podcast, all about those very topics.
- [43:15]
Annie
Yes, yes, and thank you. We always love having you on. Thank you for taking this topic suggestion, but yes. Where can the good listeners find you?
- [43:27]
Bridget Todd
You can find me at the IRL podcast. On my podcast there are no growth on the Internet and on Instagram. BridgetMarie in D.C. yes, well, looking forward.
- [43:36]
Annie
To next time, Bridget. In the meantime, if you would like to contact us listeners, you can. You can email us at hello Stuff mom never told you.com youm can find us on bluesky@momstuff podcast or on Instagram and TikTok @stuffonevertolds on YouTube. And we have a book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina, executive producer Maya and a contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I never told you is production My Heart Radio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, you can check out the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [44:13]
Mind Games Narrator
What if mind control is real?
- [44:15]
Menelik Lumumba
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [44:18]
Mind Games Narrator
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [44:21]
Hans Charles
When you look at your car, you're.
- [44:23]
Menelik Lumumba
Going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
- [44:25]
Mind Games Narrator
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [44:28]
Hans Charles
I gave her some some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [44:31]
Mind Games Narrator
Can you get someone to join your cult?
- [44:33]
Mind Games Narrator 2
NLP was used on me to access.
- [44:35]
Mind Games Narrator
My subconscious mind games. A new podcast, exploring NLP AKA Neuro Linguistic programming. Is it a self help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [44:53]
Annie
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.