Are You a Persuadable?
About this episode
AUGUST 16, 2019
How much of your data is out there for the world to see? If you haven't watched "The Great Hack" on Netflix, we recommend watching it. The film focuses on the scandal involving Facebook and now-bankrupt Cambridge Analytica, which notoriously harvested the personal information of over 50 million of the social media giant’s users in order to sway political campaigns. In this episode of the GEEK FREAKS PODCAST Ron, Jacob and Luis analyze the Netflix documentary and discuss how our data is being used to manipulate us.
RON HARRIS
VICE PRESIDENT
- 15 years in the industry.
- Enjoys spending time with his family, riding his Harley, and finding time to sleep.
- Fun fact: Ron broke both of his arms.
- He's a simple person, enjoys work, but also enjoys being alone reading a book or learning something new. Loves candy DOTs!
Jacob Stiel
SERVICE DESK TECHNICIAN
- Finishing Associates Degree in Computer Science from Kalamazoo Valley Community College
- Background in Carrier Ethernet Engineering and Diagnostics, LAN/WAN Engineering and Diagnostics, and General Computer Repair
- Big fan of being a gigantic geek in all aspects of my life. I play games of all types, video, board, tabletop, and card games. Music is my escape, I like it all, love some of it.
- In my free time you can find me spending time with my family (wife, dogs, and cats), playing games, reading, or listening to music.
LUIS SANCHEZ
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
- Bachelors in Graphic Design and Film, Video, Media Studies from Western Michigan University.
- Certified in Inbound Marketing and YouTube Creative Essentials.
- Has experience in branding/identity, web design, video editing, motion graphics, and digital cameras.
- Likes dubstep, tacos, video games and nerd culture.
- In his free time, you can find him making art, exercising, or just hanging with friends.
VIEW TRANSCRIPT >
Ron
Welcome to the Geek Freaks Podcast episode number two “Are You a Persuadable?” With me today is Luis Sanchez and Jacob Stiel.
Jacob
Hello
Luis
Hello hello
Ron
How are you guys?
Luis
Fantastic
Jacob
Pretty good
Ron
Good, good. So today we are going to be talking about are you a persuadable? What your data means to you, what to means to other people, and how it’s being used against us and for us in some instances. So, I guess to get it going how much of your data is out in the world and what does that mean to you?
Jacob
Oh god, way too much.
Luis
Literally all my life.
Jacob
Yeah, yeah I mean 90% of what I do is online right, so my world exists on the internet. So, my data is everywhere, absolutely everywhere.
Ron
So, I don’t have any social media, well I can’t say any I have Twitter and I have LinkedIn. I don’t have Facebook I don’t have Instagram I don’t have any of that. I’m not very active on any of like you guys do on marketing stuff, but uh I yeah, I don’t know it’s wild to think.
Luis
I have a slight obsession with social media like if a new social media app comes out, I download it right away to see what it’s about.
Ron
Hit that terms of service.
Luis
Yeah, I don’t pay attention to the terms at all, I need to. Every time I install something, but I’m sure like 90% of America doesn’t either obviously.
Jacob
Go to end and click ‘okay’ so it pushes you through
Luis
Yeah
Ron
Scroll scroll scroll
Luis
Yeah, but no social media has been out since 2009 what 2008 it really popped? Facebook, Myspace was before that
Ron
I don’t know, I was gonna say Myspace
Luis
I had Myspace when I was like 10 or 11 and ever since then I’m 24 now still use social media literally every single day
Ron
I thought you were gonna say myspace, I still use Myspace
Luis
No no no that’s dead, RIP
Jacob
I mean, I would say social media in its most popular form has been around since 2009. I mean Facebook was around when I was in high school, so 2004-ish it was around but not everybody used it. But you go back further, even AOL, that was social there was a social aspect to it.
Luis
Right. That’s true.
Ron
The chat rooms.
Jacob
Yeah, the chat rooms, you could build your own little web pages and stuff. So, it had a social aspect. It really did.
Luis
Oh boy.
Ron
A profile.
Jacob
Yeah, yeah so, I mean mass social media has been around for a lot less time, but your data has been around for forever.
Luis
Right
Ron
So, I guess the thing that drove this topic was the documentary “The Greatest Hack” on Netflix. And I watched it and the only thing I could think of as we went through this is how instead of being recognized as people, we are all kind of like sheep and follow what we are being shown or told and it’s wild, it’s wild to think that entire countries can be swayed based on the profile that they build on us off our social media. Like we give that much information up they can say well so and so is this way and so and so is that way. They essentially build a personality or profile based on oh I love the Walking Dead or oh I love candy, whichever the case is, it’s just crazy to me.
Jacob
Yeah, it’s uh to think we can be boiled down to an algorithm, right. It’s just we are numbers ultimately.
Ron
It’s wild.
Jacob
Yeah yeah and your numbers can be changed.
Ron So, like when Facebook first came out and everybody was like it’s awesome, we love it, we are gonna use it. I used it for a couple years and then I realized that I don’t really give a shit about other people’s stuff. I got off it and I’m not like happier, it didn’t make me a better person. I don’t know what’s going on with people I went to high school with or grew up with, but I also like the aspect of now being able to have a conversation with people.
Luis It is a way to connect, but I think initially what kind of hit home especially with my generation, like I said I am 24, but like social media became a thing I feel like a lot of kids were like, everyone kind of has this desire for fame almost, getting the most likes, even the most popularity in school, who wants to be the most popular. I think social media like really really hit home with a lot of our generation in that case. People just wanna show off and ya know live their best lives and kind of prove to people that they are awesome. That’s the initial thing, I mean now we use it to connect way more.
Jacob
I mean I use it as a glorified chat program at this point. I’ll post a couple pictures here and there when football season comes around my Facebook turns into a giant rant page, but I mean for the most part I just talk to people on it. That’s all I do any more.
Luis
Really? That’s interesting.
Jacob
Yeah, so it’s definitely a generational divide. So, we are very close to the same generation, but there is a very different way we look at that. So, I look at it more as a tool where as some people use it as a literally like a lifeline
Luis
It’s all about the clout man. People will do anything for clout.
Jacob
Yeah so, it’s like a life replacement almost and I remember watching that happen and going this is weird. It’s very strange. Look at social media, so Instagram.
Luis
I love Instagram.
Jacob
Yeah, so I’ve posted a couple things on there, we’re friends on Instagram, you follow me on Instagram. I’ve posted a couple things, but like that that’s not the first thing on my mind at all. But, for so many people it is. When is the last time you went to dinner with a group of people and nobody pulled out their phone and started jumping on Facebook?
Luis
Haha, Instagram.
Ron
Well and that’s kind of the polarization of it. So, you have me who doesn’t really give a shit about any of it and then you have Luis who loves every aspect of it. And I think it’s just, to me what is frightening about this whole thing and watching this whole documentary is my small children now have to deal with this data being built on them that we have no access to, you can’t call Google and be like what do you have on me.
Jacob
Nope.
Ron
Ya know we were talking about it before, it’s that so Google and Facebook are arguably the biggest companies in the world and they don’t sell anything but advertisements so we essentially are the product and as Facebook make smore acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram and that’s parsing all that data and now your personal conversation on some level, I mean they even admitted to that on some level with personal chats.
Luis
Private messages.
Ron
They were being scraped in the Cambridge thing, this is, I guess what is privacy anymore, it doesn’t exist.
Jacob
No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. It’s impossible to have actual real privacy anymore. Even if you are not on social media anymore you are being monitored.
Luis
Your location is on for most people too. Like they know where you are what you are doing, they know what you did for lunch at 12. There is zero privacy.
Jacob
Yeah, unless you were born in the hills, never went into the main land, never had a phone…
Luis
Even then if someone tags you on something on some social media post they know where you are. Even if you are not on social media there are still ways to track you. It’s crazy.
Jacob
It’s nuts.
Ron
My wife sent me a link to a to her Instagram post of her two kids and it said blonde female, two children in the meta data of the picture. She didn’t type that in. But it’s wild to think that that’s where we are at, like you look at the world as a whole, AI is a huge thing. What we are doing with automation, what we are doing with robots, what we are doing with algorithms. It’s not just to help us, it’s to replace us on some level because they are learning like, to go back to the topic of are you a persuadable, if you have an Amazon Alexa or Google Home or any of that shit, you are being monitored on some level, like they admitted they grab snippets of casual conversation with 10 or 20 key words.
Luis
Right that’s so crazy.
Jacob
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean from, since 911 uh the patriotic act there have been multiple taps on phone systems in general looking for keywords, think about that. Since 2001 they have been listening to phone conversations and looking for keywords, words that I am not going to say right now because they are listening and I mean this will hit the internet, this will be out there and somebody may monitor it, somebody may pull that right, so you think about it that’s been happening for almost 20 years.
Ron
And it’s wild. To think that you can casually be like oh I like that picture of your kids like and now that becomes a part of, ya know Cambridge is now, they were a 50-million-dollar company or whatever the case was
Luis
Cambridge Analytica.
Ron
Yeah
Jacob
Now they are gone.
Ron
Bankrupt. Yeah, they don’t exist and it’s pretty eye opening, I was just saying this to Luis too it’s crazy to think that their whole slogan and the whole reason they existed ya know without getting political, Steve Bannon, the Vice President and the co-creator of it. His whole thing was you have to tear the world down to rebuild it in your image and that’s essentially what they when you watch the documentary that’s what they attempted to do and were very successful at it.
Jacob
Extremely.
Ron
Because of all the stuff that we’ve given them.
Luis
Right.
Ron
Like they know that you like the Walking Dead and you are a perusable, so they are going to show you certain types of ads during the Walking Dead. I get it like that’s in some level target marketing but now it’s being used, it’s like weaponized without getting to conspiracy theory.
Luis
Right, because I mean even with regular marketing and tracking analytics and stuff it’s not, it doesn’t compare to the power of just having all the power houses just like meet up, like all the YouTube people, all the Google people get in a room and they really really try to see, like grab all the data and what Cambridge Analytica was doing was they would get all the analytics, tap into messages and stuff, and then they would release propaganda. It’s straight up what it was, they would release propaganda to those persuadables, and persuadables are just people that don’t really have a…
Ron
Stance.
Luis
Stance. They can be persuaded one way or another and a lot of these persuadables usually live in swing states. I mean that’s the most important thing during elections are the swing states.
Jacob
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Luis
So if you can persuade people by knowing that they like certain things and just release propaganda for them of opposing parties like negative stuff ya know about whatever party then obviously they will believe it because fake news is a thing and it’s so easy to grab information form social media specifically because Facebook was a big deal with this whole Cambridge Analytica thing, they got in trouble.
Ron
Well so then, the other side of the coin, I’m not, [to Jacob] you’re just a few years younger than me, a couple years younger than me, so I’m not the type to see an image and be like I want that, like it’s a lot of headphones. I looked at, I research scales, Fitbit scales and uh other types of scales because I wanted to know which
Luis
Like weight scales?
Ron
Yeah to stand on because I want it to be automatically logged so I don’t have to see it blah blah blah all the stuff. I spent probably three months doing that right, so you can show me a picture where it doesn’t mean shit to me. I think that in itself is very opposite too. Your generation Luis, I’m not picking on you, but I am kinda and like our parents’ generation because they took everything as face value. You are who you are, this must be true because I am seeing it with my eyes like with my own eyes, so this has to be it.
Jacob
Right, yeah
Ron
And then your generation, again no offense, is the same kind of way, like it’s the internet baby its gotta be true, this has to be real because a lot of people don’t want to put in the effort to do the research because again now even in my to kind of kick my own statement in the ass is even then you are probably reading false information in some form or fashion.
Jacob
Unless you diversify your information and sources you never know what’s true anymore. I mean that’s the thing, out parents’ generation they had basically one information source, so they had to believe it. You could watch TV, but how many channels did they watch. The news, I mean there was one or two world news sources out there and that was it. Now, we have thousands of channels, the internet, but the thing is people get very accustomed to looking at one source and never moving away from that source.
Luis
Right.
Jacob
I do the same thing you do when its products, I don’t just go buy something and be like it’s a cool picture I really like how that looks…
Luis
Oh my gosh, I love ads, I will, if you, even packaging, I like go down the aisle and I see a product that has really good packaging or that was advertised online or I see it on my Instagram I’m like huh that seems pretty cool.
Ron
But, do you think that you were affected that way or drawn to that because of your personality, your personality is more creative right so you’re always looking at design and colors…
Luis
Yeah, yeah
Ron
And that kind of stuff, that could play into it a lot, I don’t know.
Luis
I think it’s more to do with emotion especially with like my generation. I don’t want to categorize all of us, but a lot of us do react with emotion, I guess. So, if there is something that kind of like strikes you emotionally, or even like makes you mad or something it like really sticks. So, like a lot of way that stuff is advertised now is really striking an emotion from someone. So, like whether it makes you mad, or makes you happy, or makes you sad, it like…yeah sorry what?
Jacob
To use a common term now, it triggers you. So, it triggers something.
Luis
Yeah definitely.
Jacob
That’s it. It keys to something you are looking for.
Luis
Right.
Ron
Well I think that’s the whole idea, right? We even do it in our industry, if a potential customer call us and they want to talk to me about sales it’s because there is an emotion tied to it and I have to, I have a very small window to attach myself to that emotion. So if I say hey, you call me and your like my I.T. guy sucks and I want to go to somebody else I have to do this now, I have to push up the hill right now because if I don’t tomorrow is a new day and if any form of marketing is emotionally driven, great marketing is emotionally driven. But the problem is when you are bombarded with tit those emotions are raw and pure and consistent and constant and it’s crazy and I think that we all knew, to go back to your point earlier Jacob, we all knew this was going on.
Jacob
Oh yeah.
Ron
For years and we never thought it was an issue. I think a lot of people still to this day don’t think it’s an issue, I’ve always thought it was a little weird that’s why I got off it but there’s nothing we can do about it to be honest with you.
Jacob
Nope, not a thing.
Luis
We all kid of agreed to give our information when we signed up for these applications, or programs, or when we download anything.
Jacob
Yeah, I mean to Facebook, Google they know everything right. Absolutely everything there is no ifs ans or buts. Even f you don’t have a Google account, Google knows about you, but it’s not different than what’s been going on forever in our government for instance. The NSA knows everything about us too and so at some point it’s like a concession…
Luis
That’s like when I realized, after this documentary specifically too there is a big movement, data is human rights. Like we should see data as property.
Jacob
Oh, I agree.
Luis
So, there is a big move in trying to like fix that because we can’t just like do nothing about it.
Ron
So, do you think that companies have a responsibility with our data? So, if they are hacked or if something does happen, they should be maybe stricter penalties, or more done to protect us as the free entity, essentially it is a free product, but we should be protected in some form or fashion.
Luis
Yeah, no definitely. Facebook specifically owns all our stuff like they have it, they can’t really release it to people, but like the way Cambridge Analytica went around that, was that they would just use the platform to just like skew people. They wouldn’t really like; they can get into the whole legality with it was that they were really going in.
Ron
Yeah.
Luis
They lied that they didn’t um go into messages and save certain data, and it was just a whole issue and Facebook just didn’t, Mark Zuckerberg denied a lot of it and yeah it was crazy.
Ron
So, at the end of it, or it was at the beginning, the professor asked everybody do you think your phone is listening to you and he’s smarter than our tin foil conspiracy theory, he’s like it’s not listening to you, it’s target based on everything that’s gathered about you. Because we have to understand that too, if you are using Chrome and to search for things, and you are using Gmail to order things, and you’re using G-chat to talk to your wife or friends, and you’re using that’s all being harvested. So I guess do you think that our phones listen to our convos, I know our phones all have access to our microphones so if you have messenger turned on you can use your contacts and messaging and all that other Microsoft stuff, but do you think that’s a true thing or it’s more targeted?
Luis
I 100% think it’s true. I don’t think there is necessarily a person 24/7 on the other side listening to stuff…
Ron
Just listening to Luis.
Luis
There is an algorithm that does pick up on certain cues because I mean have you guys ever just scrolled through social media and found an ad that had something to do with what you were just talking about that day cause that literally blows my mind and it happens all the time.
Jacob
Yeah, so I’m pretty sure it listens for keywords. I would be very surprised if your microphone does not listen for these keywords. I would be very very surprised to find out that’s not a thing.
Ron
Wild to think about.
Jacob
It uses very little energy, it requires very little processing, I mean any phone should be doing that. I mean if I were, if I was Facebook, if I was Google, and that’s how I mad my money I would be doing that.
Luis
Well how many apps are you using that has the window that pops up would you like this app to use your microphone. That’s when you just give up all your data all your privacy, everything. It’s just those little terms and liabilities and stuff it’s just insane.
Jacob
Like Facebook, you have Facebook on your phone…
Ron
They have everything.
Jacob
They literally have everything.
Ron
Because you give them access to your contacts. Like so, right it will go through my Office 365 account and pull contact information. It’s wild.
Jacob
Mhm yep. The people you might want to connect with, okay.
Luis
In the documentary, with Kaiser which is one of the people, or she worked for Cambridge Analytica, and then kinda was in a sense a whistleblower and she explained how she found a bunch of emails from the previous meetings and stuff ad showed it all to the public, But like how she was saying how this documentary was made this year in 2019, but how last year data surpassed its worth like from the oil, data is worth more than the oil now it’s insane.
Ron
Absolutely, that’s why they are the biggest companies in the world.
Luis
Yeah that’s why Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple it’s just all the tech is gonna rule the world.
Jacob
It already does.
Ron
Before we get out of here, I think it’s wild too, we gave one away at a TV conference, but those Facebook robot things…
Jacob
The portals?
Ron
Yeah, in your house.
Jacob
It follows you.
Ron
That’s cool. It’s gonna be there in my kitchen.
Jacob
Okay, one more thing so that whole concept, I was messing around with a drone yesterday and it can literally follow you, it can detect an object and follow it based off the shape and size of the object, just think about that, it’s just a thing in the sky.
Luis
Drones in itself is a whole other crazy topic.
Jacob
That doesn’t even have the same processing power as our phones.
Luis
Right.
Ron
That’s wild and the government just got approval to do high altitude balloons in our orbit to have better domestic surveillance.
Luis
Yikes.
Ron
Yeah dude that’s tin foil stuff right there we don’t have enough time. But okay I appreciate it guys thanks for your time. Thanks for listening to the Geek Freaks Podcast. Make sure to subscribe and tune in to next week’s episode ‘Has technology changed the way we communicate?’ So thank you again have a good day.
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