 One of the ways that I think small businesses can grow more easily these days is by using paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, etc. And I received an email from a reader of mine that was very challenging and he basically accused me of supporting these giant companies that are doing so much harm to the world. And I want to read that email to you and share with you my thoughts as I read it. So later on when I add the blog post to this video, you're going to see responses from tons, not tons, you're going to see a lot of responses and these are from my own clients that I share this email with and I wanted to get their thoughts on this issue because I was genuinely curious what everyone thinks on this and I would also be curious what you think about it, okay, as I read this. So this is George, how do you reconcile pain for Facebook or Google ads with the concept of authentic marketing? These are two behemoths that stand for everything that is utterly and completely inauthentic and untrustworthy. They mine and monetize people's most private details and habits with little recourse and in shocking ways that most people are unaware of, from analyzing faces for personal insights to building shadow profiles on people who don't even use their systems. It's incomprehensible what they're doing. None of it is anonymous either. Researchers have shown it's all very easily de-anonymized. They collaborate with three letter agencies, FBI, CIA, etc., who conduct unconstitutional searches on a mass scale. They coped out to authoritative regimes, all for the sake of, literally, only money and nothing else. China isn't the only one leading Google to finally drop their ironic slogan of don't be evil. Google used to have that slogan in the beginning of their company, don't be evil and then they dropped it a couple years ago. That's just the tip of the iceberg and all of it has been proven thanks to investigative journalism, congressional hearings, and whistleblowers. That you, and those who follow your advice, choose to willingly give these horrible companies even more money in order to make yourself money. Do you see why I don't understand your message? Playing devil's advocate, I could argue you're not the one performing all of this immoral and unethical behavior, so you're still being authentic in your marketing practices in the superficial sense. Yet, your entire premise of utilizing Facebook or Google ads in order to grow your own business rests completely on a mountain composed of inauthentic practices, immoral algorithms, and sometimes illegal behavior. Without all of that, you wouldn't be able to use Facebook or Google ad services because they wouldn't exist otherwise. Number one, when you use Facebook or Google ads, what you're actually doing is using a surrogate company to do the dirty work, mining personal info for ad purposes without true consent for you. All in order to target your marketing efforts to make yourself money. Number two, even if you disagree with number one, then it's hard to argue against the fact that by giving them money, you are directly enhancing and supporting their inauthentic marketing ad practices in order to make yourself money. That's inarguable. Number three, ergo, by using their ad services, your revenue is ultimately de facto tainted with inauthenticity, no matter how superficially authentic your marketing practices actually are. Paying for Facebook and Google ads, yet touting authentic marketing practices in order to make an income is the same to me as a vegan buying fur coats in order to resell them for income. Sure, the vegan didn't kill or eat the animal, but he just supported someone who did. Please don't take this message as an attack on you. If it were, I would have posted it publicly. I have no personal beef with you. So what's your reaction to that email? I'd love to know honestly what your reaction to the substance of that email is that Facebook is Facebook and Google are mining our data and not even keeping it so anonymous. It could be sold and used for corrupt ways and we're not private. I mean, that's a real question for you. I think different people have different, we will land on different ways on how we feel about these things. There's different levels to this email, right? There's one level of saying Facebook and Google, their practices are not private and they might even be engaging in immoral and unethical behavior. So that's a real question for you. Where do you land on that? And I think wherever you land on that is, to me, it's a personal question. So that's one level of the email. Another level of email is that because I'm paying money to these companies, I am thereby supporting these immoral and unethical and illegal practices. So that's a second level of the email. And the third level of the email is just that the tone of the email doesn't, to me, it doesn't open discussion. It doesn't say, hey, George, I'm really curious. It seems to me that they are this way. I learned something really important from an English professor in college because I used to be very, for those who don't know, I used to be a fundamentalist Christian. I used to be a fundamentalist Christian as well as a hardcore green party person. And I used to say, you're evil. If you don't, first of all, if you don't believe in Jesus Christ saving your soul, then you're going to hell and that's the bottom line. Like that is the bottom line and you better save your soul. I used to preach that stuff. So I was very fundamentalist in the past. And then I was also into the green party stuff at different points of my journey. And I was like, man, if you're not fully giving your life for green party principles, you're not a good person. So I used to be very fundamentalist in these different ways. And maybe some might say I'm fundamentalist in the authentic marketing ways now. I don't know. But the English professor, I was trying to convert him into a Christian. And he said, George, he taught me so much. He said, first of all, in my papers, he said, George, you could really open, you could really help people be more open to your viewpoints if you use the word it seems rather than it is like this and this is the truth. And if you don't believe this, you're wrong. Okay. He says, you should say it seems that's a very useful word. It seems to me. It's a very useful, very useful phrase for everybody who's watching this who is fundamentalist. Even if you believe this, something you believe is the absolute truth and everyone is wrong except for you and put those who believe the same way you do, you should still in communication use the phrase, it seems to me that this is true. And I wonder what you think of that and I'm and be genuinely curious because the other thing that the professor taught me is this. He says, if you are not willing to listen, okay, if like she said, George, I really, I really appreciate your passionate search for the truth, the truth or the capital T, the absolute truth. I appreciate your passionate search for that. But in order to search for the truth, okay, get this in order to search for the truth, you need to be willing to be wrong. Isn't that right? You need to be willing to be uncertain because if you are certain that you what you know is true, then you will never learn what might be outside of your certainty. It blew my mind. It blew my world apart. I'm like, that's true. And plus Christ Jesus taught us to be humble, taught us to love others, taught us to be, you know, to be other servants of others, right, which means to be very open and humble and to say, well, I don't know. I don't know. Let teach me, you know, to be a servant of another, right? And to be open and of course, to have your connection with God, et cetera, et cetera. That's very important to be certain about your own faith, but not to be, you know, so judgmental of others, to be open, to be open and willing to learn from others experiences because you might learn something that adds to your faith, that adds to your understanding of reality, right? So it seems to me that and to be willing to be uncertain so that you can, and by the way, these days I have a stronger faith than ever before. It's not in the same fundamentalist Christian doctrines, but I have a very strong faith in the afterlife. I've mentioned this before in my other videos. I really, I believe 200% in the afterlife and in spirit communication and in the spirit world. I really, I'm happy to die right now. I know I'm not afraid of death at all, which is also what helps me to be authentic because I don't care if everything's taken from me. I have faith in the afterlife, but also in the fact that this life is being guided in perfect ways that I can't even imagine. So it's not about the external wealth or security and it's about the internal connection and that's much more. Anyway, that aside, let me now talk about the Facebook stuff and the Facebook and Google stuff. Okay, so let me share with you my viewpoints on this and I am genuinely curious what you think of this. I think that privacy in the online world today, if you're going to use the internet, you should expect that everything you post online is public knowledge, public knowledge. Now with email, even email, people hack Hillary's emails or hack DNC's emails, I mean even emails are not private, no matter how encrypted and Gmail or whatever you think you are. Everything you do online, I've assumed that from day one and a lot of you don't realize this, oh my God, everything I post online, even emails, even private messages, I assume it could be hacked and it could be just public information out on the New York Times or Fox News or whatever channel you prefer. I just assume that. So that is how I operate in my life. And so having that means I'm free to just whatever I say could be public one day. Now, chances are it's not. See that's the thing. You have to be willing, like people who are very fundamentalist, right? It's like black and white when reality is gray. I mean reality has many shades of color, obviously. So you have to be willing to work with probabilities. Those who don't have an insight about probabilities and statistics become black and white, become like, oh my God, everything's so scary, like, oh my God, privacy, I'm so scared. It's ridiculous. It's like I am, I actually, okay, no one cares about me. Like, sorry, the government agencies couldn't care less about me. There's nothing like, there's nothing I do that is, you know, I'm not involved in any, you know, terrorism or anything like that. And it's like, you've got to be kidding me. Like, give me a break. Who wants to hack into my stuff? Now, the other thing is the other thing is I'm much more savvy about phishing, P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G phishing. I'm more technologically savvy. Like, I know not to click on certain emails that say, oh, log into your bank. I'm very savvy to say, look at the URL. Is it really, you know, BankOfAmerica.com or is it something, BankOfAmerica.i'mahacker.com? I mean, like, there are certain tricks that you need to be aware that you shouldn't just log into a PayPal or log into a bank just because you saw an email that says your security is at risk and you click on it. You have to be aware of certain things, but I think that's kind of like being a savvy consumer. I'm not a programmer. I don't know. I don't use VPN. I don't use virtual private networks. I don't log in through VPN anything. I've never touched VPN in my life, but I'm very savvy as a savvy consumer. I know not to click on spam emails and log into my bank account or log into my email or log into my PayPal. I think some of you have gotten hacked as you're not, or log into Facebook. When you log into Facebook, you have to look at it. Make sure it says Facebook.com at the end, not Facebook.somerandomotherdomain.com. Then it's, you can't, do you realize some of you don't even know this? When you log into something, you have to look at the URL and the final.com before the slash whatever has to be Facebook.com or PayPal.com or Chase.com or whatever bank you use. I use the credit union, but anyway, so it's like you have to be a savvy consumer that not log in just because you're asked to log in. If you look at the URL very carefully, but besides that, I've never been hacked. I've never been hacked in my, all these years of being very active online. I've never been hacked. I've never had to change my Facebook password. I've never had to change my email password. I've never had to change my PayPal or bank passwords. Just being a savvy consumer, I've been very safe. So some of you need to become a more savvy consumer. We could talk about this, put your questions in the chat below. But other than that, it's very, very little possibility that the CIA is monitoring me or the FBI, like they don't care about me. They've got so much more to do. That's just so much on their plate. Why would they care about you or me? Unless we're like, unless we have certain trigger words that we use all the time, like bomb, bomb, I'm trying to plan a bomb here. I'm trying to organize with my terrorist cell. I mean, even saying these things, it's like, okay, these things will show up in the transcript of the video. But just a single instance of this, if I don't have a pattern of this, talking about terrorism and trying to plan a terrorist attack on New York City. See, I'm using these words. I don't care because there's no pattern of me using these things. And so the agencies don't care, even if everything's public. Like I said, so if I operate from the standpoint that everything is public, there is no privacy on the internet. You think you have privacy? You don't understand the internet. Okay, so let's start with that truly savvy understanding that nothing is private anymore. All right, now go and live your life. Live, and it's so interesting to me because if I can bring in the spirituality thing from a spiritual standpoint, nothing is private either. There are dozens of spirits around you right now watching your every action, even in the bathroom, watching your every thought, not just your every action, reading your every thought. There are spirits right now reading your every, you know, uplifting thought or disgusting thought or mean thought or shameful thought. Every thought is public in the spiritual, in the spiritual internet. So living that principle to the physical world, it's the same thing. The physical world, everything is public on the internet anyway. So, okay, so starting there, why is Facebook and Google evil? If they're mining our data, okay, let's talk about this very carefully, okay? Facebook and Google, what they're doing with mining our data is this. They're mining your data to sell it to people like me. And yes, also selling it to the Russian operatives who use it for political purposes. And yes, also selling it to big companies to try to manipulate your thoughts to buy their stuff. But they're also, they're selling to everybody including me and the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and whatever you want to say, okay? And the internet hackers and to big companies and to George Cal and to everybody else here who's using Facebook ads. So they're mining your data. Like I said, everything you do on the internet, everything you do on Facebook, they're tracking everything, everything. What article do you click on? At what time of the day? Oh, you clicked on that article at that time of the day. Now we're gonna try to serve you ads on that topic at this time of the day. Because here's the bottom line, Facebook and Google are mining your data so that they can give you more of what you want. They're trying to read your mind as well as the spirits and as well as God is reading your mind perfectly. They're trying to read your mind so they can give you more of what you want. And by the way, that's the same thing with the spiritual universe, the spiritual internet, the spirits read your thoughts, life, vibrations when they read your thoughts and they'll give you more of your thoughts. They'll give you like, you always think, you always try to think well of other people. We're gonna give you more situations where you can think well of other people. You always think badly about these kinds of people. We're gonna give you more situations where you're gonna find bad things and those kinds of people. And that's exactly what Facebook and Google are doing too. You tend to click on articles about sleep and about this. Well, we're gonna serve you ads about pillows and about beds and about other articles about sleep. You tend to like puppies and dogs, great. We're gonna serve you ads about dog food and about dog grooming or whatever.