SmarterEveryDay's 4privacy can, and cannot, meet its goals
drewdevault.com
drewdevault.com
As Drew points out, the thing that he described is clearly not possible, thanks to the "analog hole" (or even an equivalent "digital hole" -- if the protocol is open source, there's nothing stopping me from creating a fork of their software that logs everything it ever sees).
Closing the analog hole is impossible. Closing the digital hole would require some sort of DRM, which is definitely counterproductive, and most likely ineffective.
Awesome video! But I'm not sure more and more tech will solve any of this. Email? Protonmail with anonaddy or your favourite flavour of PGP Messaging? Signal, matrix Browsing? Librewolf, waterfox, brave Passwords? Bitwarden Dns? Nextdns, pihole Social networks? You don't need one Operating system? Linux Mobile operating system? Privacy friendly android rom We already have most of what we need, but doing all this is way too much for your average user. We need a way to either educate people (props to this amazing video), or an easy way to install all this by default for the general user.
The premise of this article is that the author doesn't understand how the company will make money, but it seems fairly clear from the Kickstarter: The $25 Kickstarter price only buys users 1 year of service, after which they presumably need to pay an annual subscription fee like everyone else.
As far as I can tell, they're basically aiming to recreate something like 1Password + Signal (or any variation of password manager and encrypted messenger) as a SaaS and using this YouTuber's audience to bootstrap the popularity.
Where I get uneasy is how quickly SmarterEveryDay seems to have switched from a YouTube channel about explaining things into a YouTube channel about stoking "Big Tech" fears as a way to sell apps. The latest video is title "Is Your Privacy An Illusion? (Taking on Big Tech) - Smarter Every Day 263". They drive out with a drone and get video footage of a Facebook datacenter which quickly transitions into some scary talk, overlaid with animations, about the government can extract "your data" from these datacenters. He speaks very confidently, saying things like "this is exactly what happens" as he talks about government subpoenas as if they're happening to us all on a regular basis.
This transitions into a friendly claim that he's building an app to change all of this by using client-side encryption. The app is apparently for storing things like passwords, IDs, and other things you'd normally put in BitWarden or 1Password.
The app pitch builds heavily on "Big Tech" fears, which SmarterEveryDay is gladly amplifying and exaggerating wherever possible, in order to sell their own password manager and messenger app that doesn't exist yet. They're not shy about it, either. In fact, you can even pay an extra $75 to "send a message to big tech" as a Kickstarter reward:
> Pledge $100 or more
> APP + SEND BIG TECH A MESSAGE
> Get access to the 4Privacy app (1 year) and insider access to news and updates.
> You're also adding extra support to help our team win and sending big tech a message that you want privacy.
> INCLUDES:
> 4Privacy App - 1 Year of Access
> Insider access to news and updates
> Sends a message to Big Tech
You don't even get additional years of access for spending the extra $75. You just "send a message to big tech" by sending your money to these developers.
For a channel that has built a reputation for explaining things, I find it very distasteful to see them switching abruptly to selling fear as a way of selling their app. The type of content their app appears to hold (passwords, IDs) isn't even the type of content that people give to Facebook and other providers anyway, so it doesn't even solve the problem they're using to scare their viewers.
Worse yet, it's generally bad advice to have someone use unproven, closed-source encrypted communication tools from small developer teams when we have more proven options from more experienced cryptographers available to us.
I'm not as doubtful as this author about the company making a simple password manager app work, but I do find it distasteful for them to use a YouTuber known for explaining things to capitalize on people's fears to sell them an app like this. Supposedly they have a plan to make part of it open source later, but we'll see.
> switched from a YouTube channel about explaining things into a
> YouTube channel about stoking "Big Tech" fears as a way to sell
> apps. The latest video is title "Is Your Privacy An Illusion?
> (Taking on Big Tech) - Smarter Every Day 263".
This has been a trend with YouTube science communicators and educators for a while now. They're getting hired by companies to basically produce an ad in the style of their regular videos.
Physics Girl did a video in cooperation with Toyota praising Toyota's hydrogen powered test car, telling her audience that hydrogen as a passenger car fuel has a future while ignoring the fact that every car manufacturer including Toyota has given up on it and favoring Lithium battery packs instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY It was an odd move from her to hype Hydrpgen cars but her audience caught on to it quickly in the comments. Which prompted her to make a follow up video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAO3vUn7nw where she's trying to save what's left to save for the hydrogen cause.
Veritasium did it too. In which Derek Muller created nothing short of a propaganda piece for driverless cars and not even just an ad for the Waymo service in particular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjztvddhZmI This gives me the same vibe as those doctors promoting cigarettes smoking against coughs in the 1950s and 1960s: Here's a professional often someone who is highly regarded as being objective and impartial who is basically leaving out crucial information to push something either a product or an idea onto their audience that is either outright harmful or not holding up to its promises.
In both these cases it was promoting a technology that isn't working out quite as intended. Green hydrogen in commuter cars is way too expensive and impractical to be able to compete with Lithium-Ion battery powered cars that can simply be plugged in at home, where you charge it with your own solar power or energy you get from a renewable energy company. Green hydrogen fuel which is impossible to come by right now would be way more expensive than green electricity you can currently get at home. Self-driving taxis hardly work at all in most commute situations and if they do, it's only in very restricted ways. Within confined neighborhoods and they are prone to fail due to unexpected situations and practical jokes by pedestrians. So much so that Google and other companies have all given up on these kind of services for the time being. These are two examples of products that either do not exist (and never will in the form they are being promoted) or are a horrible choice for most of their viewers. So why promote them? Answer is the companies pay them to promote them. That's the real reason these influencers lie about why this stuff is cool and why it's the future.
But they're simply bullshitting us by leaving out the issues and shortcomings and by not talking about the bigger picture of the market situation for these 2nd or 3rd tier technologies. They are trying to help them survive against the more established and more promising competitors. The key issue is promoting products that are not wise for YOU to buy or vote for right now. They say it's about choice, but they try to trick their viewers to choose or vote for something that when considering all facts you'd not want to choose. ("Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now" - Wait, really? Is my neighborhood and commuting route suited for driverless cars right now??) If the companies do it that's fair, they struggle for their survival, but these are content creators who base their brand on being scientific and trustworthy. So that's an issue, they gamble their credibility and millions of their followers trust them to say the right thing, even though their viewers might be more vigilant and educated to call bullshit as well, so there's hope this will not become a regular thing.
Tom Nicholas did a video about this trend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc
I thought it was particularly funny that he chose the running case study for the video as the use of genomic data to catch a serial killer (a real won't someone think about the children moment), but somehow "forgot" to mention that the killer was a police officer, and thus would have also had access to any genomic data available to the police, and potentially have abused it to avoid detection, find more victims etc.
In this case, the SmarterEveryDay personality is the cofounder of the 4Privacy app.
1. https://www.twilio.com/blog/twilio-acquires-ionic-security