Tech Won't Save Us - The Dangers of Tech that Tracks Everything We Do w/ Shoshana Wodinsky

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Paris Marx is joined by Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss how the digital infrastructure that companies have built out over the past couple decades to track everything we do in order to serve us ads places us at risk, and how that’s come into focus since the overturning of abortion rights in Roe v Wade in the United States.Shoshana Wodinsky is a privacy reporter at Gizmodo. Follow Shoshana on Twitter at @swodinsky.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:Shoshana wrote about getting an abortion in the age of surveillance and why every company is becoming an ad network. With her colleagues at Gizmodo, she also wrote about how Facebook perpetuated climate denial and killed news feed changes that would anger conservatives.Anti-abortion groups targeted ads at people who had visited abortion clinics.Data brokers have been selling data on people who visit abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood.Support the show

I hate to say you have no sense of agency in this, but I was talking to an actual out-and-out data broker, a source of mine, earlier this week. And I was just like, what do you think about the whole deleting data thing? And he laughed and he was just like, it's like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and I am back this week. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode where Brian Merchant took the hosting duties and turned the tables on me to ask me questions about my new book, Road to Nowhere, What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation. It was definitely fun for me to be on the other side of the microphone for once, to be the one answering the questions than asking them. And obviously, I always love chatting with Brian. As you would know,

if you're a regular listener of the show, he's been on plenty of times. I always love having him on the show. So when it came time to pick somebody to interview me about my book, I knew that I wanted Brian to do it. And I thought he did a great job. I really enjoyed it. I hope you liked having a guest host for one week as well. Yeah, it was definitely cool for me. And obviously, if you did miss last week's episode, just a reminder that my book is out now and you can get it anywhere that you buy books, basically. Now, this week, my guest is Shoshana Wadinski. Shoshana is a privacy reporter at Gizmodo, and she was last on the show in September of 2020, way, way back then. Episode 28, if you want to go back and listen to that about the digital ads industry and how Google and Facebook really dominate it. Since then, you know, Amazon has continued to rise and is kind of one of the three main players now.

But in this week's episode, we wanted to sort of talk about something else. You know, as I'm sure you've probably heard recently, the Supreme Court in the United States overturned Roe versus Wade, which means that, you know, the right to abortion nationally in the United States is taken away. And now it's up to the various states to decide if they're going to, you know, allow people to get abortions or make abortion access illegal. And obviously, it's a huge problem. And it's a huge rollback of the rights of women and pregnant people in the United States. And one of the things that I noticed as that happened is that one of the rights of women and pregnant people in the United States. And one of the things that I noticed as that happened is that one of the conversations people were having was around whether you should delete your pregnancy apps and the way that various websites or platforms or apps would be able to track you if you are seeking abortion services and what that would actually mean for people.

And so I wanted to explore that with Shoshana to understand it a little bit better. And in doing so, certainly, we talk about what this means in particular for people who are seeking abortions. But, you know, it's really a conversation that goes so far beyond that to, you know, really touch on how we have built this digital infrastructure that just tracks so much of what we do. And it's not just like Facebook and Google that are doing this or websites that have their cookies in it. But now, like when you make a purchase at a store that can be sold to data brokers, or even when you walk by certain locations, your phone can, you know, be pinged and that location data

can be sold off. And there's so many ways that our locations and things that we do and various traits about us get captured by these various technologies that now surround us and that we use every day and that it becomes really difficult to avoid having yourself be tracked somehow in some way, which means that even if you delete a particular app from your phone, that doesn't mean that various information from you won't be accessible or be shared in a way that you might not want it. And so I think that this is a fantastic conversation, a really wide ranging conversation. And even though it's on a topic that

is terrible, it's an important conversation as well, I think, that goes beyond abortion to a much more fundamental problem that hopefully this will reveal to even more people as they have to encounter and think about this system of digital tracking and surveillance that the companies that control so much of the digital infrastructure have built up in order to maximize their profits, regardless of what that means for us as a people and as a society. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you do, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share the episode on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And obviously, if you like this episode, if you like the podcast as a whole,

if you enjoy these critical conversations on the tech industry, consider joining supporters like Richard from Montreal or Danny C from San Diego by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. And with that said, enjoy this week's conversation. Shoshana, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Hey, thanks for having me back. I'm always excited to chat you know you're always doing this fantastic work on all the data that all these companies are uh recording on us i i wish i wish i was here under less dire circumstances i wish i would show too yeah i wish we could just like talk about how shitty google and facebook and amazon are

but unfortunately we have bigger fish to fry today you know what was funny i was talking to uh a privacy academic uh as as one does for a story recently and i was kind of like you know everything kind of sucks right now but at least it's job security and then i went but um and he just he was kind of quiet and i was like it's job security you get it he was like uh anyway it's you you got you gotta find the laughs where you can absolutely no i i completely agree unfortunately and you know we we don't have a great topic today um but at least it will be that's true it's it's a great topic but it's just terrible that it has to be a topic. That's the problem, I think. It's fascinating. You know, I got into this business. I think I mentioned this during the last time I was on here. I got into journalism to be like a wonky business reporter.

And now people are coming to me like, you are the person that knows all the data that cops are going to get? And I'm like, what? No, I like deliberately don't report on law enforcement. That's a world that I don't know. And people are like, no, no, no. Law enforcement and private corporations are now one of the same. They always were. And I was like, oh, I guess this is how things are now. But yeah, it's insane to me how the lines between what public officials know about us and what private corporations know about us is becoming so blurred. I started reporting in 2019, so I'm still technically baby. But in that time, since Cambridge Analytica, they've literally become one and the same. Cops and data brokers are the,

they're just buddy buddies now. It's great. Yeah. Great. It's one way to put it. But, you know, it's wild that you say you've only been reporting since 2019, because I feel like you've been doing such great work. So, you know, great, great job, you know, learning so quickly. No, it's part of it. Part of it is because like I, you've read my stuff, you know learning so quickly no it's part of it part of it is because like i you've read my stuff you know that's the stuff that i cover is like really kind of dense so i can cover basically the bare minimum or leave holes and stuff and people will be like wow this is so in depth and i'm like oh you have no Like, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, the stuff I cover is always like is always like an iceberg. Personally, I don't know about you.

I love watching like this iceberg videos on YouTube. And they're so great. I like the ones where they flip over, though. Yes. And people are like, oh, like they read like 3000 words on like the way cops get data from your phone. And they're like, oh oh that's it this is fine and i'm like i'm like sure and i like kind of like i was just having a discussion with somebody earlier today about this like i don't know if i should tell people how much deeper it goes

because it kind of imbues people with it imbues me personally with a sense of kind of infuse people with it infuse me personally with a sense of kind of like hopelessness and i'm like i'd rather people think that i mean it's not it's not even thinking it's like you can you can do stuff to protect yourself sorry i'm right i'm rambling now no that's completely okay i i think i think it helps to like start this kind of discussion with a bit of a bit of a light banter you know just a light banter about the erosion of all human rights yeah okay well here's a question for you do you think because this i get into like arguments with people about this all the time i'm of the mind that it's better to be completely transparent with people about the data that's collected on them and like the failures of regulation to kind of keep it all contained. But being transparent means people realize, oh, there isn't that much I can realistically do unless I go full Ted Kaczynski and like live in a shack out in the

woods. So I know a lot of like friends of mine are just like, you can't tell people that they need to like think that there's some hope here besides voting harder. And I'm like, but there kind of isn't. So I'm kind of curious where you fall on that. No, I think it's a great question. And I think it's one that, you know, even when we're not dealing with like specific kind of personal privacy stuff that comes up all the time, right? Because on the one hand, like what immediately came to my mind was thinking about climate change, right? Yeah, I was about to say, yeah. And for so long, like we've been told, oh, you know, change your light bulbs, buy an electric car, like this is how you do your part, right? And then but actually, like dealing with the problem requires these massive kind of structural changes that you can't affect as an individual. No, I literally tell people that reporting on privacy is exactly like reporting on climate change, because it's Apple saying, oh, you can just block apps from tracking and it's fine. The same way it's Coca-Cola saying, oh, you can just recycle our plastic bottles and it's fine.

Meanwhile, Apple is building out like this massive targeted ad network behind the scenes. And Coke is, it's coca-cola what are you what are you gonna do i mean i'm not familiar with the coca-cola emissions process but i'm sure it's not great uh yeah it's just corporations love pushing responsibility onto the individual rather than like take them like changing what they do. Exactly. You know, it fits with the whole neoliberal narrative that we've had for several decades, right? That we leave things to the market, that it's all about the individual and individual empowerment

and like blah, blah, blah. And like, you know, it really doesn't get to the root of these problems, but that works very well for these companies who benefit from these problems continuing and making us believe that we just need to act as individuals to to affect change when actually we need the state to actually step up and wield its power to make these changes like on our behalf to protect us and whatnot. It's you know, what's really funny is a few weeks ago, for some bizarre reason, I was invited to talk on a panel hosted by the IAB Tech Lab, which is like the body that self-regulates the way data brokering and ad targeting works online, because legislation

clearly isn't there. And I was talking to one of my other panelists behind the scenes, and I asked him, I was like, hey, so what's it going to take for y'all to kind of treat consumers like they're consumers, more or less? I don't remember exactly what I asked. But he basically said, oh, we're not going to do anything until lawmakers step in. Why would we? Like, this is our business and business is good. And I'm like, fair enough. And then we had a very cordial panel together. But yeah, it's like to I mean, at the end of the day, I'm a business reporter, you know, it's like I can't hate a company for trying to drive shareholder value. Like that's what they're there for. But at the same time, it would be nice if they didn't yeah you know i think it's fascinating because then that gets into the whole question about like

to what degree should these companies be the ones that are like pushing to show that they're for these like progressive causes when really underlying them is a business model that like pushing those progressive causes just acts as in many cases, like a PR campaign in order to distract us from these like much deeper fundamental problems that are really driving the business. No, I mean, like being pro privacy right now is it's a business tactic. It's a selling point more than anything. People are like, oh, we have Apple. Look at Apple. Yeah. Apple has always been like this. I read about this not that long ago. It started with, do you remember the iCloud leak with Jennifer Lawrence?

Yeah, absolutely. That was a little bit before my time because, again, I'm baby. But since then, Apple has gone really on the offensive with all of its privacy messaging. They're like, okay, we won't leak your data. It's all good. And recently, very recently, they clamped down on the way ad targeting works on iOS, again, under the kind of like veneer of being pro-privacy. And to a certain extent, you know, they are. Like companies like Facebook, Snapchat, or Pinterest, like they had like their market cap slashed because on targeted ads aren't worth as much. The problem is, I think I mentioned this earlier, Apple is quietly building out its own ad targeting capabilities.

And they aren't really talking about that publicly. But you look into it and it's just like it sounds like you're trading the devil you know for the devil you don't. And Google has also tried to do this where they're like, oh, we will cut off access to third party cookies. And now we control all of that data. So that's fine. Right. And it's like, do you want a bunch of nameless third party marketers to have access to all of your data? Or do you want Google to have access to all of your data? Or do you want Google

to have access to all of your data? You lose either way. So it's really just like, how much are you willing to compromise? And like, at the end of the day, like compromise isn't privacy, but yeah, with a shiny enough ad campaign, it sure looks like it. Absolutely. And that's what Apple has done so effectively for the past few years, especially to make consumers feel that like, you know, if you want to protect your privacy, you need to buy the Apple product. Even even as you know, I think it's fair to say it's a bit more PR, as you've been saying, than is is actually reflected in what's happening. I hate to be such a negative Nelly about this stuff, because like there are people inside Apple and like inside even inside companies like Facebook

or Google that like are trying to do the right thing. And like I've talked to them a lot and some of them like are coming up with like really interesting proposals and ideas for how like the Internet needs targeted ads to survive, at least right now, unless we dismantle it all and start fresh. And there are people inside these massive companies that have the resources to try to do the right thing, and they are. But doing the right thing will never be as profitable as maintaining the status quo. So what do you think is going to happen? Yeah, absolutely. No, I completely get it.

I think it makes total sense. I am going to pivot us in our conversation now, though, to... Back to Roe v. Wade. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so just to set this up for people, Roe v. Wade was a decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 that granted access to abortion services that made that a right for women or pregnant people in the United States. Then in April of this year, we saw that there was a leaked decision from the Supreme Court. It wasn't actually acted on at that point, but that suggested that this decision, Roe v. Wade, the right to abortion in the United States was going to be overturned. And then on June 24th, 2022, that decision was finally made by the Supreme Court,

which basically means that the decision about who gets to have a right to abortion in the United States will be left to the states. And that means that some states will continue to grant that right, that access, while other states will criminalize it and make sure that women or pregnant people can't avail of those services. So there has been a lot of discussion and debate around this topic since it came out. Obviously, you know, it's shocking to see this kind of rollback of rights, especially after they've been enshrined in the United States for such a long time. And especially when a majority of people in the United States support, you know, the right to abortion. But it's this kind

of small, very well-organized group of conservatives that have acted to ensure that this gets rolled back regardless of what the majority opinion is on this topic. One of the main points of discussion, particularly when we're thinking about technology around abortion and what kind of technologies that you should be using and still feel safe to be using. Are these apps where people can track their periods, I believe? And, you know, there's been a lot of discussion as to whether people should delete those apps now because this decision has been made and because certain groups and authorities will be looking for data on, you know, people who might be getting pregnant and will be might be looking at those apps as a source of data to identify whether people might be going to get abortions.

But then I've also seen people saying that, you know, it's not as clear cut that you don't necessarily have to delete these apps. I wonder what your view is on that point around these apps and what the safety is around them now since this decision has been made? Yeah, I mean, first off, every app is different. Without going into the code and seeing all the third parties that are there, it's really tough to say this app is good and this app isn't. I mean, it goes back to letting people have the sort of facsimile that they're doing something, right? I hate to say you have no sense of agency in this, but I was talking to an actual out-and-out data broker, a source of mine, earlier this week. And I was just like, what do you think about the whole deleting data thing? And he laughed and he was just like, it's like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic,

is how he put it. Because he was like, if cops want that data, they're going to get it. But I will say, I think there's been a lot of great stuff written. I mean, I'm working on a story about apps that will come out eventually, but there has been a lot of like great reporting on personal responsibility when it comes to should we delete these apps? Should these companies protect us? And I know that some do. There's a few companies that are based out, I think, of the EU, where privacy protections are a little bit stronger. So if you're going to download an app, make sure they're based out of there. Though I will say, this is something that I think about a lot. When we talk about data, and when we talk about data that discloses that you're pregnant or that you're looking for an abortion specifically, it's not just the last time you menstruated.

It's did you buy a pregnancy test? Did you walk by an abortion clinic? Are you visiting a lot of like pregnancy forums lately? Are you buying maternity wear? It's retail data, it's location data, it's psychographic, it's data from insurance companies. It's literally everything because brokers start collecting data on you from the time you're born until you die. So because it's profitable. So I think that when people are talking about like, oh, I don't want the cops to know that I'm pregnant.

And I know that cops can bypass the Fourth Amendment. They don't need a warrant to buy commercial data. So they can just do whatever they want there. And people have like asked, like since the decision came up, I've been getting texts, I've been getting like DMs there. And people have like asked, like, since the decision came out, I've been getting texts, I've been getting like DMs, like countless people are just like, how do I keep that from happening? I'm like, yeah, you can delete the apps. But like, you need to think about, you need to kind of think like a sociopath, because that's how,

that's how I always report my stories, right? It's like, I'm thinking, okay, I'm a marketer. I want to target pregnant people online. Where do they hang out? How do they act? What are they doing? Because when you start thinking about that, you start thinking about all the little breadcrumbs that add up to the image of a pregnant person. And suddenly it's like, oh, I bought Plan B from CVS two weeks ago. And MasterCard shares data with brokers. And I use MasterCard. And even if MasterCard didn't, CVS has an ad network and they share that data. Or if you use a coupon, coupon companies can share that data. It's so incestuous because the market for data is hundreds of billion dollars deep and everybody wants a slice of that pie. So it really becomes, okay, buy everything in cash. Don't take

your phone with you when you go to a CVS. If they ask you to sign up for the rewards program, don't sign up for their rewards program. But even that, we're talking about icebergs, even that's just the tip of the iceberg. And at the end of the day, this is a critique that I often get that I don't think is unwarranted. It's just like, you're telling people to take so many steps that at the end of the day, they're just going to feel too hopeless. And they're going to be like, well, I guess the cops are going to know either way. And it's like, that's kind of how I feel right now. So I feel like saying anything else is being disingenuous. Yeah, I think it definitely gets back to like,

the question that you asked me earlier, right? How like, how much do you tell people in terms of what is actually going on? And, you know, the feeling of whether individual action is going to make much sense, because as your reporting has shown us over, you know, the past few years, like and certainly there are other reporters working on this stuff as well. But, you know, just the way that these ad networks and these tracking functions have been built out because it's so profitable for these companies to put together these profiles on us that are generated with data from so many different sources that we've found ourselves in this position where whatever we do, you know, it's not just going on Facebook or going on Google

to have data produced about us that these companies can see or, you know, visiting a few different websites that might have like a cookie from Facebook or Google in it. Like there was a reporting, I believe it was last week on how Planned Parenthood, I think had like a Facebook cookie or something. So it was sending data to Facebook. But then, like, we know, we know those aspects of it, right. But I feel like a lot of people don't realize then that all of these shops, all of these credit cards, all these telecom companies, all of these other just totally random companies that you're interacting with are collecting all this data on you too, and are selling this to people to put these profiles together on you that gets much harder to avoid. Because like, you know, as you're saying, it's

hard to just exist, like going around buying cash and not having a phone and not being pinged by these different collection points or what have you.'s uh they're called touch points actually sorry sorry yeah get it get it right uh you got it half of the issue here is that so much of like the business of data which is what i say i report on it's like so much of it is just lingo for basic shit that like if people knew how these companies talk about average everyday humans, I think they would lose their mind. You see this with a crisis pregnancy centers, which is something that like, even before all of this, like when I first started reporting on this stuff years ago, I was fascinated by them because there was this case out of, I think it was Boston, where you had this crisis center that was deliberately targeting ads

at people inside of a planned parenthood. The local AG got involved and he was like, can't do that anymore. Like what the hell? He started looking into it, started looking at certain like years later, relatively recently, they settled. They gave the ad company basically like a nothing fine. And there's nothing stopping you from doing this. But come on, it's really shitty. And it's funny because I'm kind of psychotic. I love looking at the communications that crisis centers like put out, like how they talk to each other, because you have to kind of know your enemy. Maybe we should be clear just for people who wouldn't know what are one of these crisis centers. It's not a pro-abortion place, right?

It's not a pro-abortion. No, no. A lot of them disguise themselves as abortion clinics, but they're basically there to dissuade people from being pro-choice. And they might like pressure young women or young pregnant people into adoption or keeping the child or like something like that. But the point is to ask people, hey, don't get rid of this baby. This baby is a gift from God, yada, yada, yada. Usually they're usually Christian. So these crisis centers, one of them literally said geofencing, which is what it's the terminology for targeting within a specific area, like inside of a Planned Parenthood. Geofencing is perfectly legal. It's done everywhere in the tech industry. So if what we're doing is illegal, then the industry is illegal. And I'm like, this is coming from a goddamn like christian marketing firm that was targeting

pregnant women and they're like if this is illegal then the industry is illegal and i'm like you're not wrong but it's weird to see you say that i guess it's one way to try to stop enforcement right like if you're gonna do something to us you got to deal with this whole bigger problem. So leave us alone, right? They're not they're not wrong. And it's like, I hate to come out swinging for these Christian micro targeting clinics, but like, they're not doing anything different than like, say, a political marketing firm targeting people with ads for a particular candidate or Clorox targeting you with ads for wet wipes. It's all the same. It's just, no, it's all the same. Yeah. But that story you were talking about of like these groups like geo-targeting abortion

centers or, you know, Planned Parenthoods or places where people would go to get abortion services or even just get, you know, reproductive health services and kind of bombarding them with anti-abortion ads. Exactly. And like you said that in the story, you said that like they could get it for weeks afterward, like just because they had been in that zone. And so they would just be flooded with these ads about, you know, not that are anti-abortion that say you should you should seek adoption instead of abortion, all these sorts of things. And like, I don't know, I feel like it's just something that people aren't really aware happens or can happen or can be done. But I don't know, it was just really shocking to me to read

that they could do something like this. It's well, I mean, it's not even weeks. They can target with that forever because the way that it works is that your mobile device that's in your pocket right now kind of gives off kind of a little signal in one of a few ways. And that's how once you step into the perimeter of an abortion clinic, you kind of like step over a tripwire. And then that data gets sent to these companies that are working with like these anti-abortion firms. That's a very, even that is a very oversimplified explanation. But there's nothing, I mean, you can change your mobile device ID, your MA ID is what they're called. And like, you can change them on iOS and Android. You can like look up guides for how to do that. But if you don't, and a lot of people don't, because why would you? It's

kind of a pain in the ass. These companies can just keep targeting you with whatever they want. Or if they wanted to, they could give that data to law enforcement because some states kind of have a bounty on sort of this data now. And you can get a good pat on the head from cops if you disclose which doctors or which women are engaging in the sinful, sinful act of abortion. And we know that there are some people out there who really love a nice pat on the head from the cops and would be happy to do it. I mean, who doesn't love a nice pat on the head from your local police officer? I love it. But yeah, honestly,

and this is when I was talking to this broker earlier this week, he was saying like, yeah, I'm not worried about people like us. I'm not worried about like marketing firms or anything. I'm worried about these goddamn bounty hunters because once they, I hate to say it,

but once they learn how easy it is to get data and how unregulated the space is, yeah, there's really nothing stopping them. of the ads. But you also mentioned how like people who had just donated to like Planned Parenthood and pro-choice organizations like had their addresses and stuff shared online. And, you know, I think we can see more and more recently, like if we see the kind of the libs of TikTok phenomenon and what is going on with these groups and these like really prominent people online sharing the addresses and locations of you know like libraries holding drag events and and shit like that because they hate gay people now that like there's so many opportunities for people to find this information on people and then to share it with like you know people who will take violence against them

online um i don't know it just seems like really it's scary it seems like the internet was a mistake yeah yeah definitely yeah it's like i mean i don't know i was i was born in the 90s so i don't know me too yeah okay holla like uh 90s kids what up um i don't know if something like this could have been. I mean, there were yellow pages, but like because it's so profitable and because everything we do is kind of mediated by technology now. I saw some people writing this opinion, and I agree that like, yeah, our rights for people like me are now rolled back farther than like what my mom had.

Well, she was Canadian, but you got the picture. But it's kind of worse because we have this digital dragnet that we didn't have in the 50s. It makes shopping online convenient, makes it real convenient. I do love buying shoes, but it kills me that we were born into a world where technological convenience was kind of promised to us without strings attached. And then suddenly, lo and behold, look at all these strings. And these companies will tell you, as they often tell me, you consented to this by owning technology. And I'm like, we don't have a choice. What do you expect us to do? And then they go, ah. thought that has been at the back of my mind, right? Like, just how this whole infrastructure has been created over such a large period of time, and how, you know, once again, getting back to your earlier point, it's not really something that us as individuals can stop. Like, it is something

that the state needs to step in and take action against, but they have been unwilling to do that because especially the approach to technology has largely been one of deregulate, let them do what they want. This is the future. This is progress. And ignoring all of these downsides that are increasingly becoming apparent to us, like in this situation. Hey, ad tech is like a 400 billion dollar market. There's close to 10,000 companies profiting off of this in the US and that number is like exponentially growing every year. Do you want to be the one to shut down a small business that's contributing to the economy? I don't know. You'll see that with companies like Facebook, and they will often use small businesses as kind of a human shield. And

they'll say, oh, we saw this with the Apple updates, where when Apple changed its privacy policies and Facebook's market cap kind of went knee, small businesses were the ones that disproportionately were affected because they use this platform for marketing their services. And Facebook will often say, oh, small businesses depend on us to survive. And I'm like, yeah, but they don't really want to. This is the power of monopoly in the 21st century. And then they'll say, well, why didn't anybody else, like another entrant, come in? And I'm like, because you were first. It's not that you were good.

You were just first. And you could say this about Google. You could say this about Amazon. You could say this about anything. It's why, even though there's close to 10,000 ad tech companies, two thirds of the money is controlled by three companies. Facebook, well, Meta, I guess this is what they're called now. Google or Alphabet and Amazon. So it's three.

And that number is also exponentially growing. So it's like, yeah, you have this booming sector with hundreds of billions of dollars, but it's everyone is trying to play catch up to these three massive data hoovering giants. And in order to compete, these small firms are going to need to collect data that those large companies can't. So people in this space will often tell me that it's kind of a race to the bottom. And I wholly agree because it's just collecting more and more and more data and making more and more and more and until what like what what's what's the end state there yeah it doesn't sound like a good end state really you know well it sounds profitable yeah yeah if the end state is being the one with like the largest pile of gold at like being like scrooge mcduck in the intro to ducktales that was ducktales right yes i believe so i loved scrooge mcduck as a kid and those that show so yeah can i tell you

it's like nothing honestly and this is going to sound terrible i was more of a centrist uh when i first got into reporting and then being in this space is like transformed me into a full-blooded anarchist i'm like how can you be anything else like i'm like yeah this is the free market at work and it's making a lot of money it's keeping the free internet running but at what cost we're gonna have to cut that out for all the right-wingers who are gonna come on and say oh look evidence of the the press's left-wing bias it's not even the left. Listen, I love I love capital. I'm a business reporter. I love capital. In fact, like I, I think more so than other privacy reporters, privacy slash business reporters, I am like more of a centrist because I will say, yeah, if you lump on more privacy

regulations, small businesses around the country are going to suffer like that. Like I will say that outright because it's, it's true. And then people will say, oh, well you're anti-privacy. And I'm like, no, I'm anti mom and pop stores being forced to close. And it's like at this conference I was at where I was a panelist, I was like talking to people in the crowd because I'm like, you know, we know, it's been a pandemic for a few years. I miss hobnobbing with like people in the data industry. I want to see their feelings. And a lot of them, one of them told me that he was kind of having a come to Jesus moment lately.

This was like not long after the Roe v. Wade stuff leaked. And what he said was like, eventually people are going to realize like you have to pick one. Like there are a lot of proposals coming out that are like we can save small businesses and like local newspapers and keep people's privacy afloat. And like, yeah, but unless we get buy in from every side, I don't see how that's going to happen. So instead, we have kind of this impossible choice where you can have privacy for individuals or you can have the economy keep being the economy, but you can't have both. And it's like, I feel like part of the reason that we're seeing kind of stalling on federal privacy legislation for so long is because lawmakers realize that and like they don't want to be the one to pull that trigger. And like, I

don't blame them. Yeah, you know, I would say I think those things are still important to recognize, right? Obviously, I'd be more of like a raging lefty. But you a lefty no yeah but uh you know i i still think it's important to understand like the the impacts of legislation and to see what the goals that we actually have are with legislation and with regulation and the things that we want to do right here's a very concrete example that i just thought of uh when gdpr passed you know we were talking about how great european privacy legislation is um yep when gdpr passed uh close to a thousand newspapers mostly small local newspapers pulled out of the eu entirely because it was too costly to keep up with like local laws then it would be to just OK, I guess we're just not going to be right by people in Europe. And like even the L.A. Times for a time had a like if you were in Europe,

you couldn't access the L.A. Times because they hadn't like adapted to the GDPR yet. It's expensive. It's expensive to like go through that rigmarole and you're not making as much money off of consumers. So it's not worth it. Like, I'm pretty sure you still can't get Newsweek if you're like if you're in the UK. But like, you think about something like that. And people are like, oh, local news is shuttering. How do we save local news? And the same people will say, oh, we need like stronger privacy legislation. And I'm like, I agree with both of those things. But do you have an idea for how we can keep up? Like, a big issue there is that because this space is so huge, again, closest to 10,000 companies in the US, most recent figures, because the space is so huge

and because it's so opaque, a lot of the money that's supposed to go to small publishers, that's supposed to go to regular ass like news outlets, ends up going to those middlemen instead. And like they pocket it, they double dip. It's ad ad fraud is a thing it's a well-known issue but unless we uh fight for transparency as well as privacy we're just going to keep perpetuating the same issues which is why i always kind of like bristle whenever I call myself a privacy reporter, even though that's technically what I am, because people get on my case all the time, not unrightfully so, that a lot of my stances are actually anti-privacy.

Because I'm just like, yeah, you can like cut out, you can add ad blockers, but like news outlets, like you're wondering why news outlets, local papers are covered wall to wall with terrible ads. It's because of your ad blockers. You're cutting off revenue for them specifically. And also, that ad blocker you're downloading is also tracking you and selling your data behind the scenes. That's how ad blockers make money. Don't you understand this? No, I'm kidding.

I don't actually say that. But I'll tell people like, hey, you're the ad blocker downloaded. Like, yeah, it makes the internet more bearable. But because this is a race to the bottom, it's going to keep getting worse around you because these sites have to make money somehow. It's, you know, it's an individualized solution to a collective problem. Exactly. And having some people opt out makes it worse for the people who can't or don't know how to or whatnot.

Right. I think that's the key piece. Like, just for example, I saw a story the other day about how there's some Android phones now. This is already common in other parts of the world, but in the U in the US that are going to have ads on the lock screen now. Wait, what? For lower income people, I guess, to like make phones more affordable. So, you know, if you're if you have the money, you can opt out of this. But if not, then you also get ads on your on your lock screen now, along with everything else.

What people will often tell me is just like, I mean, this is an ad you hear all the time. It's like when the product is free or low price, you're the product, in fact. That's kind of true, but it's kind of not because when you pay for something, you are also the product. Like I think I mentioned this before, credit card companies, retailers, retail pharmacies, retail anything, are also compiling your data and pawning it off. And if you're like high income, people want to target you with ads because you're going to buy their product. It's really inescapable because when you are online, you know, free internet is supported by ads. Sucks to say, but it's true. And those ads are going to have to be targeted to you somehow. So even if it's not on your phone,

even if it's not via that free app that you download, you're being tracked. And it's not your fault. It's nobody's fault. I mean, it's capitalism's fault. But yeah, do you have do you have any ideas for how we should completely rebuild the Internet? Well, if people do want to know, they can go back and listen to my conversation with Ben Tarnoff a few weeks ago where we talk about those sorts of questions. Yeah. But I do have some other questions on this I want to get to before we wrap up our conversation. You know, I think one of the responses that's important to get to is the responses of the tech companies themselves. And I feel like, you know, even beyond tech, we saw a lot of companies saying like, you know, we are going to pay for our employees in some of

these states to be able to travel to other states to be able to access abortion services, but then had little to say about the kind of culpability that they have in collecting this data, in spreading this data, I guess in the case of companies like Facebook and spreading kind of anti-abortion messaging, or the fact that many of these companies donate to a lot of these politicians that have been pushing against abortion rights for a long time. So what do you make of the response to these companies in the way that they have sort of framed it to get some positive press in providing this benefit for employees, even as, you know, they are contributing to the problem?

I mean, I think it was Google recently said that they were going to delete location data about people who had recently visited abortion clinics, but they didn't really say anything about search, which is Google's bread and butter, and which is how law enforcement in the past have tied people seeking reproductive care to a particular account. It was via search. It kind of goes back to that point where people leave so many digital breadcrumbs behind, and it's very easy for a company to say, look at us, we are deleting this kind of data, or we're not going to give this kind of data to law enforcement or that or that or that. And then you have to go back and ask, what about all of the other data that you're collecting on all of us every second of every day? And when you talk about apps in particular,

the data isn't just going to the app itself. It's going to the third parties that they use to monetize. Like when there was that big story about location data from Grindr being used to out a Catholic priest, which was horrifying. But that wasn't Grindr's. It was Grindr's fault, but not on paper because it was via a marketing partner that they were using. And people will go to Grindr and be like, do you respond to subpoenas? And they can say yes or no.

But those marketing partners are getting off scot-free. It's a weird, obscure marketing company. Why would you talk to them? Well, this is a reason to talk to them. Get to know your local data broker because they know that they're not going to face as much scrutiny and they are fully willing to work with law enforcement, which is why we see it all the time. Yeah. No, I think it's a really good point. And I would just say on this point, like, you know, I think that these tech companies need to be treated with a little more...

Less kid gloves? Yeah, exactly what I was trying to look for the words to say, right? Just because of the way that so many of these pledges were reported. And it was like, okay, but can you really mention the bigger picture of this where a lot of these tech companies are donating to candidates who are against abortion rights and will continue to do so. And that seems like a bigger story here. You know, I have to be frank with you. I would read those headlines and like I wouldn't even click on the story because I'm just like, I know that this is going

to make me mad. But like, yeah, of course, we're not going to mention this or that company because it's a messier narrative. I feel like a lot of what this conversation has been about is just like narratives that are supposed to be clear cut, privacy, good abortions, good Facebook, bad, yada, yada, yada. And usually that's the case. But if you dig down, it's like, yes, but no. I mean, yes, Facebook is terrible there. I want them to burn to ground. But when we talk about something like data, when we talk about something like privacy or tech in general, it's like I always say that you need before being a journalist, I was in the sciences and I got very into objectively defining things. So when people ask, like, is this app good for my privacy? I'm like, what does privacy mean? Because every single person is going to tell you something different. And I feel like what somebody like you wants out of these sorts

of stories might be different than what companies are willing to give up or what reporters are willing to give up. Narratives are messy is what I'm trying to say absolutely i totally get it and i have one final question on the abortion question and what is happening here and i feel like i already know the answer but i feel like i have to ask the question obviously the supreme court has rolled back the national right to abortion in the united states some states will still have some degree of abortion access and and rights to that other states will not have some degree of abortion access and rights to that. Other states will not have it at all. It'll be criminalized. They'll be trying to track people down who've even sought abortion services. In the United States, the Democrats say that they support abortion rights, but their response seems to have so far been to just to tell people to vote

in November rather than actually proposing anything concrete or doing anything concrete to ensure the right to abortion remains in these states where it's trying to be criminalized. Is there much chance that they do anything to rectify this, do you think, or try to protect these rights or try to stop these companies from selling people's abortion data. What? No, they're not going to stop these companies because modern day voting depends on better data collection and data sharing to a certain degree. That's why Cambridge Analytica happened. But like, so yeah, so they're definitely not going to step in like to stop these companies. Like what?

That's the free market at work, baby. Whether they're going to do anything about this at all. I mean, it would be nice. But like, they've kind of been sitting on their hands until now. So vote harder, I guess. Yeah, they did have until April to actually to prepare something. And it seems like they didn't use that time at all. So they could have done literally anything. I'm like, I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing instead? Like, come on, guys. Yeah, it's it's just terrible. It really is. Hey, I mean, like you, you invited me on. I never said this conversation was going to be pleasant. It was informative.

That is what Shoshana Wodensky promised. When you read my stuff, you'll leave more educated, but not happier. abortion data and everything going on with this since the decision recently, longer term, you have been looking at the Facebook papers, these documents that were released by Francis Haugen last year. And obviously, you and your team at Gizmodo have been digging through that, your colleagues. You've produced some really fantastic reports so far, giving us some insight into what goes on at Facebook behind the scenes, you know, what the teams have been saying internally and all these sorts of things. And I guess I wanted to kind of wrap up our conversation with this question. You know, we've been talking about how data is so important to all of these things, how

there's so much data being collected on us, but also how Facebook plays an important role in so many aspects of this story and the wider story on data, the increasing emboldening of the right in the United States and globally. And in some of your stories that you've published so far, you talked about or you reinforced this reporting that we've already had about how Facebook has been influenced by this desire not to make conservative groups and conservative politicians angry by taking actions around its news feed and other features on the website that would reduce the spread that these right-wing stories get, even when the teams find that it's really getting a disproportionate amount of

attention on the platform. And also that Facebook had this initiative where they were supposed to claim that they were going to push back on climate denial posts and things that were posted on that. And that was basically ineffective. And they have served to kind of spread all of this climate denial information. And so, you know, it's a broad kind of question. But I guess thinking about what we're seeing with the rise of the right in the United States and beyond and how, you know, there are all these terrible issues around abortion rights trying to stop us from addressing climate change. We saw recently that the Supreme Court have a decision that restricted the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to try to deal with carbon emissions in the United States. What do you make of Facebook's role in this whole problem?

I mean, social media is just media. You know, it does play a very significant role in shaping people's opinions about everything in the world. I feel like there's always those Pew studies where they're like, oh, more people get their news from Facebook, yada, yada, yada. But that's fine. If Facebook was better about moderating what's on its platform, as you might know, they're not, they're not great. What the papers have really taught me, and we've only put out like a fraction of them, there's about 1300 documents in there, tens of thousands of pages, I have read all of them and it broke my brain. What I learned is that content moderation is hard. It's real hard. And when we talk about what

content is, like, you know, you mentioned like the climate denialism stuff that was in the last batch of papers that we dropped. I think there were about 20 in there. There were issues where Facebook would be like, oh, we've caught climate denialism in like posts, but it turns out like, hey, our algorithms don't actually work in like Facebook watch. They don't work in video. We don't know what's there. And employees will be like, this seems like an issue. We should probably fix this. And then they have to go up the chain of command because it's such a huge company. And then that goes on the back burner. And meanwhile, you have countless people being exposed to this content. And meanwhile, it's so easy to fix. It's literally like, oh, we'll just add videos to review queue. It's fine.

But like, there's so much internal bureaucracy with every content moderation decision. And like, you wouldn't think that there is, but it's like, we recently discovered, like, you know, there were those stories about people trying to post about selling or the ability to like sell abortion pills on Facebook. And they were like, oh, my account's being shadow banned. Like these posts are being taken down. What the hell's going on? I had a hunch that turns out my hunch was correct. That accounts that like are older, like your regular Facebook account that you've had since high school, if you post about that, the post likely won't get flagged. But if you're

using a burner, like a lot of people are right now, it is going to get flagged. On paper, Facebook says its content moderation decisions are airtight. They are infallible. If you post about X, Y, Z, you're going to be flagged. But then why are new accounts like Burners being treated differently than like the account I've had since high school? What's going on there? And we reached out to Facebook and they were like, we's like, it's, it's things like, this is like, obviously times are always going to be dire, but like in light of the road decision where like the rubber meets the road, you need to be transparent about how you moderate stuff. And like, the fact is like the company kind of is like, obviously they'll say we can't be completely transparent about it because then bad actors will abuse the system, which like, yeah, that's why we're with our with our papers process. We have like a whole academic team that's helping us review things to make sure that actors won't take advantage of what we're releasing. But like, come on, guys, you can say these accounts are treated differently from those accounts.

And why? Like, just it's been a rough few weeks. these accounts are treated differently from those accounts and why like just it's been a rough few weeks so like sorry sorry if i'm uh breaking down right now no my god not not at all no need to apologize i think that this conversation has been so informative you know certainly you know as you say yeah more educated you might feel like ah shit everything sucks but like i mean yeah i mean listen do you want to do you want to live in the matrix or not like yeah you know what i i think people need to know these things and that's the whole point of the podcast is to have these conversations where we get into the dark side of technology um that we should be the dark side of technology that we

should be paying more attention to and that your reporter or that you're reporting kind of wakes us up to all the time. So I really appreciate you taking the time to come back on the show, Shoshana, to talk us through all of this. Thanks so much. Of course. Thanks for having me on again. Shoshana Wadinski is a privacy reporter at Gizmodo. You can follow her on Twitter at Thanks for listening. Thank you.