Watch this episode on YouTube.
Reasonably Accurate 馃馃 Transcript
Morning a little later than normal. Um, not unexpected for, uh, Monday, realistically, um, you know, not too bad, a couple of minutes behind, uh, for that. Um, just making sure everything's all good on the stream. Uh, mainly because, uh, I had to rip.
I had to wipe everything on my system this weekend having some crazy errors on the Macbook. Um, now I think it's all resolved a little different look as you can tell because a, I'm throwing this together, but also behind me is the green screen.
Um, not that I'm gonna green screen anything in right now. Um, but I actually have to do a reshoot for something I shot this weekend. Um, and I need the green screen for that. So I figured, well, I'm half set up. So why not just broadcast here from this?
So Monday morning, uh, 18th episode of mornings with Mark. Uh, you can hit me up anytime online at marknca. Um Thanks for tuning in. Keep you to tune in. Um, interesting stuff on tap for today. Um, lots to think about what I want to talk about this morning actually is kind of the news that broke about Facebook.
Um and uh the Analytics Company Cambridge Analytica, um and the amount of data that they had harvested and this is something that had come up years ago and it's just kind of coming home to roost now. So, um as we know, Facebook has had a propensity over its early years to change its terms of service, to change its privacy settings.
Um Any number of things, and then early on, there were some real questions about sort of motivation. Um And people didn't necessarily have the ability to control their information as much as they do. Now, now I'm quite happy with where Facebook is now with um user control.
So obviously, Facebook still sees everything you're doing. Um But users now have a huge amount of granularity as far as uh where they can publish. So the stream, for example, is going out live publicly. So to the world on my page, marknca um I mark also have a profile.
Now that profile is something that I just keep for friends and family and all my professional um work is done here on marknca. Um Now that's a good split. Um I like that ability, but even within marknca, the page as well as my profile, I have the ability for every post to say, you know what, this should only go to my parents or to my extended family or to my immediate family, this should go public, whatever the case might be, right?
So you can control things quite granularly. Um Easy example is Facebook live. I don't do live on my own profile that often. But when I do, it's normally because someone in the family could make it to an event and I will do a live stream directly to that person or the people who missed it.
So I'll be streaming literally to two people. Um And then that post goes up on my profile to those two people as well. And that's possible um and relatively easy to do, but things weren't always that way. Now, of course, Facebook still has access to a lot of this information, the terms of service, let them harvest it so that you can um brands and pages can push out to people.
Um And you can still advertise to them because that's where they make their money is obviously on advertisement. But the scandal that popped up or sort of the article that popped up this weekend was the use of um Cambridge Analytica had harvested um an insane amount, millions and millions and millions of profiles a couple of years back and they did it through a third party and a couple of years back that was actually possible through research and there's still a violation of the terms of service.
But again, terms of service are just an agreement. Um It's not a technical block and security. If it's an agreement, you assume it's going to be breached. Um, whereas a technical block is far more important than what used to be possible.
Technically, a couple of years ago was that you could very easily crawl the network or the social graph of various people. Um, so if you had a web page that let people log in via Facebook, you could then crawl the graph of all their friends, you could pull in a huge amount of information very, very easily.
And over the years, Facebook has sort of ratcheted that down. Um, good, which is a good thing. They've also given the user far more control though. A ton of applications still break. So you notice when you connect Facebook to an application, you actually have the ability to control what permissions, it gets the vast majority of applications break.
If you change the permissions they ask for. But the possibility is still there with the user. At least you're making an explicit choice and acknowledging those permissions. It needs to get better, but it's far better than it was. And that's really where this analytical scandal comes from was years ago when it was possible of if I logged into your web page as mark, um, you could then crawl my friend graph.
You were basically me. So you can see everything that I could see on Facebook. And what this researcher, this third party researcher too analytically had done was essentially do that over and over and over and over again and harvest it from um accessing several million accounts, they were able to access tens of millions of accounts in those networks and then they packaged all that data up, um bundled it into a form that they can analyze.
Um And that's where they started harvesting or creating voter profiles by combining with additional information. Um a whole bunch of other things like that. Obviously, there is a huge issue with this and it goes against the terms of service at the time.
It didn't break the technology at the time. Now, the technology and the terms of service are aligned, which is a very good thing. But this is yet another blow to social networks and social media in that. Um And it is somewhat surprising in that people didn't see this coming.
Um A lot of folks did. Um It is one of those things where um unfortunately, people kind of thought just the best. Um And didn't realize that um these networks are designed to influence people. This is the bottom line of a social network is that it is supposed to um drive influence, it is supposed to create these networks.
So, um when they are being used with malicious intent or intent that you don't agree with, it becomes a significant problem. Um So it's interesting, actually, I just watched Ricky Gervais's latest comedy special on Netflix, Humanity. It is pretty good, you should check it out.
Um And uh he had a point in that at some uh you know, one of his bits was that he was pointing out that at some point we shifted away from quality of information and factual information to opinions and popularity contests and of course, social media um flares or fuels that.
Um But I think what's interesting is sort of the efforts that are being made to combat it when um the fundamental fabric of these networks is what's inclusion here, like is what the goal, the goal of these networks is to spread influence and to create popularity contests and to drive likes and to drive, you know, engagement.
Um And you know, obviously fully participating on that, I realize the irony of speaking to you via one of these networks. Um The challenges is how to use a consumer, um a make intelligent choices about what you are consuming, but also what you're sharing, but also how do you validate that?
So there is an interesting announcement. Um You don't stop picking on Facebook but to push over to youtube where they're going to start putting in Wikipedia, um references for things that are contested or potentially at issue, which I think is interesting in itself because it's not like Wikipedia doesn't share similar challenges.
Wikipedia has had quite a few scandals around the editorial, um key super user editors and things like that. It is at least an effort. And I think that's really what we have to go for here is when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Um, you know, it's like security. You have to put security in from the start, you can't bolt it on. If you bolt it on, it's not going to be nearly as effective. Um, but, uh, you know, we have to do something.
Um, social media does some fantastic, fantastic things. Um, the ability for us to be connected with positive spirits with positivity and to contribute to causes to become aware of causes to help each other is too great to ignore. It's too much of an upside, but there is a downside and I think we need to tackle it.
Part of that is building controls into the network. Part of that is building tools in around the network that allow people to evaluate what they're seeing and verify what they're seeing, but it's no easy solution. But the problem is when people only go for the perfect solution, we're not going to get any solution.
So, um big topic, big topic for a Monday. Um I kind of apologize for that. I did want to show off my new mug. Super cool. Um I also badly needed some tea. Um, unfortunately, it is not as caffeinated as I need this morning.
Um, but anyway, thank you for bearing with me. Um What are your thoughts on impact of social media, um ability to control the tools that we need around it? What would make it easy for you to evaluate the content you are seeing and legitimate and see whether it is legitimate, whether it is factual and whether it is purely opinion based.
Um I'm curious honestly, I have my own perspective but obviously as a security professional, privacy, professional, um as someone steeped in technology, I think it is completely different than the average user. Um So uh by all means, uh hit me up, markcna.
There we go, marknca. Um Love to talk about this. Um Lots more. This is not an issue that is going away, this is going to keep coming around. Um So I think it's something that only gets better with discussion. So hit me up here in the comments below on youtube, on Facebook, uh every other network at marknca hope you have a great Monday.
Hopefully it is lighter than this discussion was. Um But again, I think it is important and I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Have a great day.
