The Privacy Project: The key to everything.

February 25, 2020

Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Charlie Warzel

Opinion writer at large

As I mentioned last week, this is the last iteration of the Privacy Project newsletter and column. I am humbled by the enthusiasm you’ve all shown for these columns and for the topic in general, and I deeply appreciate your readership throughout this journey. I’d also like to reassure you that this is not the end of our privacy coverage but part of an ongoing effort to integrate privacy into our general report. Times Opinion will continue to cover the issue and its impacts, regardless of the project’s formal status.

However, the newsletter is evolving. And you’re in excellent hands. My colleague Shira Ovide, a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist and Wall Street Journal reporter, will be taking over the duties as your tech inbox scribe. If you no longer wish to receive the email, simply unsubscribe at the bottom of this newsletter before March 1. We’re eager to hear your thoughts on what you want more or less of so we can make the newsletter even better for you. Please share your thoughts on this form. A reporter or editor may follow up with you to learn more.

And as part of the transition process, I thought it only right that Shira and I do a joint Q. and A. about our projects. Think of it as an exit interview and an introduction all in one.

This is a condensed and edited version of our conversation:

Charlie Warzel: OK! Let’s dive right in. First, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Shira: Oh boy. Journalists are bad at talking about themselves, right? I’m a Libra …

I’ve written about technology in various forms for about a decade, and before that I wrote about media companies, and I was the lead writer for a blog about corporate mergers and tech and finance things. Mostly, I’ve been a nerd business journalist. I am also a very bad cyclist and a native Ohioan. My favorite movie is “Moonstruck.” Or “The Apartment” if I want to impress someone.

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Now I get to ask you one, in the exit interview mode. (Even though this is not an exit.) What is your biggest lesson from working intensely on privacy topics for the last year or so?

Charlie: I, too, am a native Ohioan!

Shira: Wait, what? I’m from Dayton. I told another native Ohioan here that we almost have enough Buckeye tech writers to make a softball team. I think we’re about there. We need to study this phenomenon.

Charlie: It’s clearly something in the water. OK! Lessons! I was a little worried about focusing on privacy so closely. I’d always written some on the topic but in a very general way. But the project radicalized me.

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The biggest lesson I learned is that privacy is the skeleton key to almost all the issues that plague tech right now. It’s actually even bigger than just tech. Data brokers are at the heart of our social platforms, the financial industry, the media and advertising industries and even in politics.

The collection and distribution of personal information powers all of modern society, and there’s a serious imbalance between those that provide it and those that collect it. That imbalance is at the heart of everything from fake news and election interference to fraud to surveillance of vulnerable populations. I started thinking this was something of a niche concern and have grown to believe that it’s the fundamental issue of our connected time.

Shira: So the Privacy Project is really the Everything project?

Charlie: Sort of! I see it as this helpful lens that will help frame and inform a lot of the work about tech I’m doing going forward. It’s also why, even if the project is winding down, the work will continue. But since we’re on the subject of “Everything,” I have a question for you. “Tech” has become this super-broad journalistic term — it covers everything: business, politics, culture, power, etc. I like to say that it’s a cheat code that allows me to write about whatever I want. How are you thinking about and defining “tech” right now?

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Shira: Stellar transition, sir. You’re right. Tech is everything, which is both an opportunity and a challenge. Part of the goal of the tech newsletter is to show the ways that tech is really everywhere and reshaping everything, and working through what that means for our lives and the world.

It might be inconsequential things, like how restaurants are choosing lighting in their restrooms to optimize Instagram selfies. Bathroom lighting is being shaped by our technology habits! And then on the other extreme, technology is influencing how citizens engage with their government, or it is contributing to the erosion of trust in institutions.

Shira: That got deep. Let me ask you a deep thought: Do people care about the topics you write about? It’s not like we’re going to give up on modernity, or give up on the internet and smartphones. So how do you know that people are interested in privacy and related issues?

Charlie: This gets to a core frustration I experienced during the project. Time and again I’d meet an individual who had been taken advantage of by a service or piece of technology. Their information had been exposed or their terms of service breached and they seemed just so … resigned. Overall, they enjoyed the tech that had wronged them. And they didn’t think they had any recourse, so they just told me something along the lines of “I’m frustrated but I guess that’s just how things work.”

But I’ve seen a change. Partly in response to this project but also a broader reckoning around technology and privacy. People are beginning to see how the things that happen online are trickling down into their lives. The consequences feel more real now than they used to and I think that’s only going to continue. Privacy is a difficult topic if you’re trying to draw eyeballs. As a word, it’s just vague and scary enough that people tune out. There’s plenty I wrote that didn’t connect with readers. But the broader goal of the project was to signal the importance of the issue with a steady drumbeat of stories. If people got used to seeing privacy stories front and center every day, maybe it would shape how they see those issues in their own lives. I get a sense that we made a small dent there.

That said, what are some things that you’ll be hammering away at in the expanded tech newsletter? What are some of the most interesting, consequential stories you want to home in on this year?

Shira: The two screaming technology stories in 2020, I think, are the presidential election and the continued reckoning of the power of big technology companies. We’re just starting to wrestle with what political discourse and electioneering look like in our extremely online era, and the rules and norms are being written and rewritten on the fly. And again, all of us and governments around the world are grappling with what it means to have a handful of powerful technology companies that wield influence over what information people see, what products people buy and how people interact with each other.

Also the big picture for me is about trade-offs. Every meaningful change in our personal lives, the economy or the world at large should force us to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks, and what if anything we can do to increase the upside and reduce the harms.

Facial recognition is ultimately a question of how far are we willing to go to potentially keep ourselves safe, at the expense of privacy and the risk of people getting incorrectly identified as criminals. And what if the technology doesn’t work as promised, as you’ve pointed out. The upside is often tantalizing and obvious, and the drawbacks and what to do about them are often not.

And speaking of which, what is one constructive thing you think could be done by governments, regulators, companies and all of us to better protect our personal privacy?

Charlie: The more I think about a giant, ironclad federal privacy law, the more I worry it’s destined to either fail to pass or pass and fall short in implementation. Simply there is too much to consider, and companies will always be a step ahead of the government in finding sneaky ways to sidestep regulations. I am increasingly of the mind that even if we had a federal law, we need something new — a strong agency to deal with privacy violations as they happen. A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but for data.

For companies, I’m not optimistic that they’ll really treat our data with respect until it makes financial sense for them to do so. But I think we are getting there sooner than we think. When I think about the big social platforms, I think about a long game. There’s no guarantee these companies will be beloved forever. If growth stagnates and users get tired of their information being abused with little transparency, that does not bode well for retention. Sure, the ad dollars are there now, but I think the companies ought to think of privacy as a user-experience issue. I think companies that prioritize this over short-term data-sucking profits will be around much longer than those who don’t.

Lastly, the people. This is the hardest one. We’re up against the wall on all this. It’s not our fault that these systems were designed to exploit our information, but we can push back. We can take the extra time to turn off location tracking and opt out of collection we don’t feel comfortable with. That sends a signal, however strong, to companies. We can make choices about what we buy that puts the privacy of others top of mind. Maybe think about the neighbors and how they’ll feel (or talk to them first) before buying that Ring doorbell camera. Small behavioral tweaks can add up.

OK, I am looking at the word count here and can feel my editor over my shoulder calling out for brevity. I’d like to wrap this up with two quick questions. One, what is one thing you want everyone to know about the upcoming newsletter before it starts hitting inboxes? And two, what’s something weird on the internet you’re obsessed with that might surprise us?

Shira: First, I want everyone to know they are compelled by law to sign up for the newsletter.

OK, not true. I want the newsletter to be a home for people who care deeply about technology, and people who don’t think they do but care about their kids, their hobbies, their friends, jobs and their world. Technology affects all of that too.

And … uh … you answer the obsession thing first and I’ll steal your idea.

Charlie: My obsession is wildly popular but still maybe surprising. I am addicted — perhaps hopelessly — to TikTok. In a previous life, I used to read before bed. Now I open my phone and spend roughly 30 to 45 minutes every night just rifling through the “For You” page. It reminds me so much of this old website called VinePeek, which allowed you to look at every Vine being uploaded in real time. I loved it because it felt like a window into the world of bored kids just trying to get through the monotony of school days. TikTok is obviously flashier but I really do love it for that reason. The experience it projects seems to skew white and upper middle class, but there’s still a lot of mix and it feels like an insight into a totally different generation and world. It’s creative, weird, hilarious, sometimes problematic. It’s like compressing the internet into a tiny, wound-up ball and then letting it expand all at once.

Shira: I love those moments of pure human creativity! I don’t think I have a single internet obsession, but I am enchanted when I get a peek at niche communities thriving online. One recent example was this story about plant breeds that get really popular on Instagram and other spots and then sell for thousands of dollars. Did you know that internet-famous plant breeds are a thing? I did not. Also there are plant scams online. Of course.

Charlie: I, for one, am very excited for the Plant Scams Project. Shira, thank you so much for chatting. I can’t wait to read you in my inbox.