Transcriber: Tuyen Nguyen Reviewer: David DeRuwe
“I have nothing to hide” - the mantra we often repeat
as we willingly upload our data to the government, tech companies,
large corporations, and the sole developer that built the new app you’re using.
You may not think it’s affecting you personally,
and you may not care about it for your own sake,
but our data is being used in damaging and horrifying ways.
And there’s a direct connection between this ... and this.
Everything we do online leaves a footprint.
That video you just uploaded, the one of you and your cat hanging out,
it tells me where you live, how you dress, and the things you like.
The Google search you just completed, the one for the local grocery store,
tells me where you’re going to be later, tells me what sort of food you like -
it might even tell me where you work.
The email you just opened and the link you just clicked
not only tells me you’re susceptible to, but you are also receiving my messages.
And the chats between you and your friends
tell me where you’re going to be on the weekend.
Unless you’re going out of the way to protect your privacy,
there is a very simple rule to apply to the places you leave your data:
If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
The practice of harvesting and collecting our data is big business
to the tune of billions, if not trillions of dollars a year.
While it may seem innocuous,
it has incredible harmful results on our democracy.
I’m here to convince you that you actually need to care about your privacy,
even if you think you personally have nothing to lose
because it’s not just you that’s at stake - it is all of us.
Our liberties are being violated when vast amounts of data is collected on us
and funneled into online central repositories called “portfolios.”
These portfolios allow companies
and individuals to make decisions about our lives without our knowledge.
Let's take Facebook, for example, and they're not the only ones.
Apps such as Tik Tok, Snapchat, and Twitter are just as bad.
If you use any of Facebook’s apps, and I know it is a boomer app these days,
but they also own Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
Everything you do there,
not just what you click and what you share,
but what time you log on, how long for
is collected and funneled into a big portfolio about you.
Any website or app that integrates Facebook marketing
also integrates tracking,
sending more information about you back to them.
Let’s take Google for example.
Google is integrated into nearly every single website and app out there
in some shape or form.
So that medical information
or other things that you think you’re searching up in private mode,
Google knows about that,
and they’re selling it to companies who are paying through the nose to get it.
So why do they do it? What’s the reason?
As an app developer myself, I can tell you:
the more I know about you, the more I can predict what you're going to do,
what you think and what you feel.
I can then feed that through artificial intelligence
and get even better at predicting you.
And when I get really good at it,
I can start selling you stuff a lot more effectively.
In fact, over time, I can actually learn to manipulate you
into buying what I want to sell.
I get feedback on what marketing you’re susceptible to,
I can remove the stuff you don’t like, and crank up what works in real time,
serving you content after content, slowly nudging you into doing what I want.
Now some of you might say
“I don’t care if you tell five shoe companies what sort of shoes I like,”
but the harm doesn't really lie in selling you stuff.
What you look at affects what you can see, what jobs you can apply for,
what places you can rent, what credit you can access,
what deals are even available to you.
But hey, maybe you don’t care about that either, but it gets worse.
Companies and individuals use the same tools,
the ones used to convince you to buy that new red pair of Converse,
to also change opinions and sway votes, subverting our democratic process.
And tech companies are incentivized to harvest even more data on us
because of the insane, insane amount of money they make selling it
to people for marketing and nefarious purposes.
Companies and individuals use these tools to change opinions and sway votes.
Fake news, extremism, and hyper-partisan viewpoints spread online
because of the tools that have been created.
It makes it incredibly easy, using models enabled by our data,
to target an individual,
nudging them down an ideological spectrum to an increasingly warped worldview.
First, we serve you content that we know you agree with,
and then we push you down a more hard-line viewpoint,
changing the way you think, the way you feel, the way you vote,
the way you view our democracy.
Tech companies develop these tools
and sell them to third parties for their own end,
and not all of them are using it to sell you stuff.
It may sound extreme,
but we’ve actually seen lots of examples of this over the last few years:
Brexit, the perfect example.
Many “leave” voters report voting to leave based on misinformation they saw online.
Anti-COVID-lockdown protests spread online because of the misinformation,
and if anything, the last four years of the Trump presidency
are the perfect example of this.
And these events are not random.
They are the result of deliberately targeted campaigns,
using all of our data to polarize and divide us.
And I mean, we saw this reach the pinnacle at the start of this year,
when a group of armed rioters stormed the US Capitol
with the intention to harm and kill lawmakers.
Many of these people have since been linked to online conspiracy theories,
which are known to spread their lies on social media.
They use the same tools, the ones used to sell shoes,
with models enabled by our data to draw people in,
pushing them down funnels of misinformation,
and changing the way they vote and the way they think.
And we saw these funnels spin straight back up after the attacks,
twisting the story, laying the blame elsewhere,
and we have even reached the point where non-social media,
mainstream news organizations join in on it because they are incentivized
by the clicks and traffic and views it gets.
We have reached the point where it’s spilling out of the online world
into the real and creating a massive feedback loop.
So how do we stop this?
Like, how do we stop people abusing our data?
Well, the first thing to do is care.
Stop being compliant, and stop just giving all your data away.
We’ve allowed these tools to be created
because of the vast amounts of data that we’ve all given them,
and we've been trained from a young age to share everything we do online.
So really, what can you do?
The first thing is vote. Vote for people that care about privacy.
The EU is taking steps to ensure data confidentiality,
but meanwhile, in Australia, we have no laws to protect you.
In fact, we only have laws that allow the government to spy on us.
Many companies take advantage of this
and have separate terms and conditions just for Australia.
Second, use a better browser that doesn’t track everything you do.
Firefox is certainly better than Chrome,
but if you want to take things further, Brave is the best.
It not only blocks ads and trackers, but this means websites load faster,
you use less battery, and you use less data.
Use a search engine that doesn’t save all your searches until the end of time,
such as DuckDuckGo,
or if you want to save the planet at the same time, check out Ecosia.
Here are some more services you can use:
Lastly, be mindful of the apps that you put on your phone
and the permissions that you give them.
And if you just keep logging in to every service out there
with your social media accounts,
it makes it even easier for you to be tracked.
Stop doing it.
If you browse the internet on Brave,
but share every aspect of your life online,
then you have missed the point of my talk.
It doesn't matter how clever you are,
and protective against the sneaky, invisible tracking,
if you just give all your data away anyway.
I know it can be hard.
Changing the way that we use the internet is difficult.
It took me some time, but I finally removed myself
from Facebook and all of its apps.
As far as I’m concerned, the company cannot be trusted with my data,
and they've shown that time and time again.
So when a company does misuse your data,
get angry, get outraged, and use something else for a while,
even if it’s more difficult.
Honestly, you just have to care; that is step one.
And then take a few small steps in changing the way you interact
with the internet.
Technology is a fantastic tool,
but it needs to be used for us, not against us.
And it’s up to all of us to push for the changes we want to see,
And I cannot stress this enough:
If we do not take steps now to protect our privacy
and change the way our data is used, we will hit certain tipping points,
which there will be no coming back from.
And once our privacy is gone, it will be incredibly hard to get back.
Thank you.
(Applause)