 So let's talk about Facebook specifically, but in general these seem things going to apply to really any company that practices the similar business model. That business model I've heard referred to as surveillance capitalism. Basically, it's monetizing your existence and all the information about you so advertisers can figure out how to sell you things. Now, I don't think this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. And I don't think it's anything more than a business model that we don't have any other context in history or a juxtaposition where we can talk about back in the 1800s when this thing was built to apply to modern day. And I say that because Facebook has worked at a scale bigger than any other company and Google's right there next to them behind them in terms of this similar business model and doing a lot of the same things. And you've connected two billion people together with Facebook. That's amazing. It's also part of what I look at as a real-time experiment with the humans. We are our own guinea pigs because it's not like they can do A-B testing. Well, apply it to these two billion people, but not these two billion people. There's simply not a simple way to do that. And there's not another time in human history when we've connected so many people together. It's causing a lot of interesting things to happen. One of them is we always made the assumption people were more alike than they are. And we do have great amount of similarities, but we find out little things about each other based on how we grew up, based on how things are, and we're watching those ideas collide. I honestly never knew any of the political things that my grandfather did. But certainly here in 2018, people love sharing their politics and arguing them to the nth degree on Facebook, along with many other debates and stuff like that. Some of these debates are healthy, some of them are not. But I never look at these companies as good or evil. I never try to anthropomorphize them. I never tried to bestow those traits upon them, because when you look at it and take a more objective look and look at the reality of how these companies are built, the average age in 2018 of a Facebook employee is 28 years old. So you have a bunch of people in their 20s making decisions that affect two billion people. They're going to make mistakes. Now, I don't think they get a free pass on these mistakes, but I'll admit they make them. And you have to take a step back and go, OK, now I have a little bit of a concept. Now, as I said, they'll be holding to advertisers as their business model. So whenever I see people complaining about Facebook and YouTube and Google hate free speech and they're far leaning this way or that way, they lean towards advertisers. If there is a way they lean, they lean to the people that pay the bills. And the people that pay the bills are not necessarily the users of that. You are part of the product because the advertisers want to target you and let me know when coffee is on sale, which I don't think this is necessarily bad. Getting targeted ads that are more focused towards me, both as a business owner. I enjoy because I can target my ad dollars towards people interested in my services. Or in the case of me being a consumer, I like when things are on sale and I like when I'm notified of things on sale. I check in on Facebook at Big B Coffee sometimes. So then Big B Coffee lets targeted ads come to me to let me know when there's a coffee sale and a drink special. So it's not that any of these things are necessarily good or bad, but where they have really betrayed the public trust is making the assumption that things or giving the impression that things are private. They're not. Now, because I've been working in tech my whole life, I've always, since the earliest days, if I put it on the Internet, it has always been with caution. It has always been with the thought that this is very public information, even when the early days of dial up and the BBS systems where I hid behind a handle. But I always in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm using my own telephone line or sometimes this is tied to my own credit card to pay for this service. Therefore, it's not anonymous. And this assumption that you have great privacy on these platforms should be pretty much thrown out the door, because it'll help you in the long run. Every time you see a congressional hearing, which is just a big dog and pony show that we know no real thing will come from. But maybe it's a little entertaining to watch and show how our Congress has no concept of this and real the nurse not a way for them to police these things either in any easy or meaningful way. And I'm terrified if they did try to pass laws on it, but those laws will quickly become irrelevant as these business models change. But you as a consumer, as long as you are constantly aware of what data you're putting out there and you think the data and pictures you share are representative of yourself, you're doing good. Now, just because you check that private button, and this is, like I said, the betrayal of the public trust, you assume that there's privacy. I've never had that assumption. So they bother me bothers me much less sharing things on Facebook. But I understand for a lot of people, especially because it may be their newer introduction technology, because it becomes so easy to use that they understand that, yeah, I thought this was private. I didn't realize they let someone else read my private messages. I've always assumed, even in the private message parts of Facebook, that it's something I said per se in a restaurant would be the real world equivalent to this, because someone could have overheard it. It's not something I'm sharing deep, dark secrets with. I just don't think that's a great platform for that. And I'm hoping to raise some awareness, which is why this video of maybe you shouldn't consider them a safe platform for that as well. And I, like I said, I don't like the idea that they're haters of freedom of speech and things like that. They're going to get involved and bump up against issues. But those issues are mostly advertiser driven, not really conspiracy driven. They're looking for ways to keep the advertisers happy and keep the information flowing. And if they block or delete a channel, which we always know they can get better at this, but it's sometimes related to the advertisers or sometimes fear of being sued from copyright holders, which creates an entire another rabbit hole. Because honestly, if you meet some of these entrepreneurs, you meet people running tech companies, they will tell you some of the difficult decisions they've had to make and things that they didn't ever want to even deal with is those topics. They really wanted to build a platform, an advertiser friendly platform that does this. And next, you know, you have someone screaming about conspiracy theories and a brand calling you going, my ad was shown on this guy who was screaming about stuff and conspiracies and then is now being sued. Can we not have my ad show up on that? Honestly, if you meet these entrepreneurs, the people I can tell you, even Zuckerberg, as much as I don't think he cares a lot about our privacy and he's really out to monetize it as a entrepreneur and business person, it is not top of his list of things he would hope to deal with on the platform. And I've read Alexis O'Hanion's book, it's a great read called Without Their Permission, and it's one of the things he challenged when he founded Reddit and put that together. He hated all of the drama and moderation problems. He loved all the tech and enthusiasm behind it. But those moderation problems were some of the big challenges he faced of what could or could not be on their platform. And, you know, those decisions do have to be made, unfortunately, especially when you're beholden to advertisers. So my goal here is really just to raise awareness about Facebook, about YouTube, about Google, to remember that if you're putting something out there, never trust them to be private. That's where they did go wrong with betraying the public trust, in my opinion. But don't just simply call them good or evil or leaning left or right. Honestly, there's not any big conspiracy going around. You have a bunch of people generally less than 30 years old making decisions for billions of users every day. They're going to make mistakes. We should hold them accountable for those mistakes, but just don't trust them. I just have to say that out there. If you put something out, make sure it's public. I do not put personal photos of many intimate nature into the Google Cloud. I know that at some point someone could be watching, someone could be looking at those. Those are not places that I think those should be because, yes, they could become public. So don't use them simple as that. Always use encryption, always use things like I'm still a fan right here in 2018 of the Signal platform. And one of the things I like, and this is why Snapchat was so resonating with the younger generations, is the ephemeral nature of some of these things where you can set the messages to expire and gone forever without archiving. That's generally how I like to communicate. I communicate things across signal. I have messages set to expire. They go away. There's not this long archival history. The company is trustworthy because they don't have a business model of surveillance capitalism. So I'll give a plug for signal, but please just don't trust those companies and your life will be better. It doesn't mean you shouldn't use them because I do use it. I do check in places on Facebook. I don't mind the targeted ads because they generally benefit me. So I still will continue to use the platforms, but I will always use them as I always have with the knowledge of things I put out there are public and something that I don't mind sharing with the world or two billion of our closest friends on Facebook. All right. Thanks. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and hit the thumbs up. If you want to see more content from my channel, go ahead and hit subscribe and the bell icon and hopefully YouTube will send you a notice. If you're interested in contracting launch systems for any type of IT services work or consulting work, go ahead and head over to laurancesystems.com and fill out our contact and get in touch with us. 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