Foundation 37 // David Byttow

welcome to Foundation today we're talking to David baow who is the founder and CEO of secret so I'm glad to be doing this because I feel like one of the the things that at least before we met um I was really worried about was uh my secrets and the data and who was responsible for creating this app behind the scenes so I want to take a moment to get to know you as a person and then talk about the product so um you know I normally start off with asking you know where did you grow up yeah so I grew up uh in Chicago Illinois um but when I say Chicago I actually mean a suburb of Chicago um kind of Northwest Indiana because they're very close to each other um yeah I grew up with my mom there in Northwest Indiana and uh my dad was in Chicago and so kind of split between the two MH and did you go to school out there I went to Purdue for uh two semesters and I dropped out of college in 19 and that was to go work in video games and that's when I kind of packed up my car and and moved out to California what what video game company did you go work for uh so I worked for a company called well they were called the collective at the time M uh and we did games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer Indiana Jones Star Wars if you heard of it um and a bunch of movie kind of kind of titles uh for Xbox and PS2 um when I left and went to go work at Google they re branded to double helix and then they were just sold to Amazon so that was kind of like their trajectory over about period of 10 years um so yeah so were you coding at the time then all the time constantly yeah so you know I just wanted to I mean I was coding since I was very young um and there was a progression you know from websites to little silly games to um working on a game in my free time which is what ended up kind of getting this getting on this company's radar because you know they saw us working on a game that was somewhat similar to what they're working on and um and they said hey you should come out and work for us and so I told my dad and I said hey you know college is cool but I think I'm going to go start working and you know at that point was he pissed at that point a lot of lot no he was he was well uh he was yeah when I think back I think he was excited but he was very dubious right of of the idea he's like who is this company and and who you know is this real that that kind of thing um but he just saw that I just I wanted to do it and you know looking back if I had to think about it now it you know I would be scared now to do something like that but I was just I just really wanted to work in games um and you know from about 19 to the time I worked at Google I would say all I you know all they did was code because I felt like I had a lot to learn and kind of you know something to prove because I never actually got my degree um and joining Google was kind of you know my way of telling myself and also showing my dad like look like I actually am an engineer um even though you don't have the piece of paper to back it up that's right um and uh yeah I've been coding as much as I can until now how did you get that interview at Google because normally like Step One is like which college did you which IV league did you you know yes um that's a that's a funny story um very short story so I actually applied to Google about 6 months um prior to joining uh I was actually I did a brief stint at Namco games in Santa Clara and that's very close to Google so I sent in my my resume and it just fell on deaf ears so 6 months later I had a friend who went and worked there and she said it's great you know you should try and apply again and what I did was instead of saying oh I went to college prod do for you know two semesters uh I just took it out and I emailed it back and so no College whatsoever noever took it out the took it out all together and you know I I guess my theory is that they just didn't think about it because they didn't see it right and so it must have passed hands and then got me an interview um and did the phone interview and then went and did the the in person and did anyone ask you at any point like what college you went to um I think the recruiter may have mentioned it and I remember you know the only point when I was really worried was you know even at that point Larry was looking at every supposedly was looking at every resume um or you know every kind of packet for every new hire and I was just so I was just thinking like this thing would come across this desk be like oh good score good interview good no College reject right um but uh it never happened and you know I was in a class of about 40 people when I joined Google and I was the only one in that group that didn't have a college degree um so it was still quite rare but I think it's more common now yeah cool and so how long uh let's talk about your stent at Google like where did you begin so I began um there was a guy that I worked with at Google um it's my manager first manager his name is Rich bur and he uh great guy and he he saw my games background and he really liked that he was working on a product called Google mashup editor which nobody has ever heard of I I think um but it was it was a cool concept and I liked the idea of of what it was and I won't go into detail um but that project was actually cancelled about two months in MH and I was kind of lost at Google um you know my manager was in New York I was in Mountain View and didn't really know where to go next um and so I ended up on the Google wave project uh where I worked for about a year and a half and were you just doing backend coding were you do front end or actually I did on on Google wave I did a lot of frontend code um I did a lot of the API work a lot of the platform work um you know and I it was fun because Google wave was a realtime Communication channel so I was able to build games and you know do things like um multi player chess and multiplayer you know these kind of little games and so that was kind of fun for me because even though it was webbased programming I could kind of go back to like you know some of the things I was doing in video games and I think that's what appealed to me uh with with Google wave is that the technology was just so ahead of its time uh you know it was it felt a little bloated though do you do you agree with that absolutely I mean I I think and I learned a lot of lessons from from Google wave and one was was you know you can't just throw a bunch of features at something and and and you know you need a core you know you need something that people can just fully understand and wrap their head around um especially when they when they first see a product and so you know Google wave did a great job at demoing kind of what what it could do I agree when I saw some of the demos some of the real time stuff I was like wow this hasn't been done before and it's funny right how these things work out where you know remember the big demo in the the big reveal in the beginning was having multiple people you know at separate machines in this document typing and you see the cursor moving you see the other person typing and that always like got an Applause and whatnot and now you know two years later we just take that for granted and every Google Docs you know is just a very common thing um sometimes products work out that way though right like you take like the best little bits of them and then roll them into something else absolutely and if nothing else it kind of it did definitely demonstrate that this was possible MH um but I would say that Google wave was definitely a technology in search of a search of a problem um to be cliche I know some of that uh some of that team then went into plus did you go into plus from there or did you yeah um so I especially the m so I was in Mountain View most of the team was in Australia um and so we um you know I actually saw the writing on the wall um a little bit about a month before the project was cancelled um and I started talking with the Google Buzz guys that's right it was Buzz it wasn't plusz at that point that's right wave Buzz plus that's right um and by the time I joined Google+ was was just getting started um you know Vic and dotra had kind of um taken uh taken the idea into a full-blown project um and we started Staffing up and by that time we were about you know I left wave and we're about 12 15 people on on Google+ um which you know I at that time you know I was really energized and excited about because while I loved Facebook I also loved the idea of Google for once being the underdog right um like Hey we're going to you know we're a little late to the party um but we're going to come in and and see what we can do um and as you know the engineer and me was just really excited to kind of um try and do that at Google um and we all felt that so how long did you stay on for at what point did you depart Google so I stayed on Google Plus for about two years after that um my claim to fame at Google at least was um I was the tech lead uh of the plus one button uh which you know launched on Google search it launched across the web um it uh you know a lot of work goes into this tiny little button that gets littered across the internet I definitely know know that feeling yeah oh yeah exactly I've made some of those buttons in my day yes um and you know it's fun to watch it kind of just just go Um and that was just before Google+ had launched um and Google Plus is a very successful launch by all by all measures um but you know this was an an example of you know I love Google+ and I love I love the what we were set out to do um and the technology that we worked on was was quite fun and and great um and I learned a lot but this is an example of another product where you know in my opinion the vision wasn't strong enough right it wasn't uh distinct or unique enough I I agree with you 100% it felt as though a lot of the feature set was simply to provide like feature for feature like parody with Facebook right it wasn't there wasn't a lot of original thinking there there was some original design there but I think like the underpinnings like the the the core was more or less the same that's right you know in in in in early days we we actually when we set out to build it we it was called Emerald SE was was the code name yeah I heard that when I joined yeah uh which by the way um you know in in just to jump ahead real quick in secret there may or may not be a color named Emerald sea which is kind of a nice throwback ah interesting I saw some people mention that on secret actually that's funny yeah um that was all Chris he just just did it one day I'm like perfect um but uh it was actually called it was a 100 day launch we started and said in a 100 days we're going to launch this thing and the idea was to you know the Mantra was to fast follow um and the theory being like well in order for us to play ball first we just have to get on the court and that was that was inspiring right it's like we're just going to 100 days we're going to fast follow abut Facebook um but we ended up launching about 300 days something like that give or take um and it kind of changed over over time but um that was the what you're what you're saying is the essence of how we got started and that just propagated right that stuck and that's the feeling it had um and to this day right I mean I think it's great technologically I think it's great from a UI perspective um but to me it it feels a bit like um like a theme park right like like Six Flags right there's a ride over here there's a thing over here but they're completely different right and there's not you know any one core thing right and they sell crappy corn dogs and like why my exactly and you only go once a year that's horrible I'm just kidding I love everyone on Google Plus I agree it's insanely talented team I'm I'm curious where they take it from here but let's let's uh move on to uh to to when you left and uh so you you took off and what what what happened what did you decide to do next um well I looked around a bit I remember [Music] um I again because of Google wave because of Google Plus I wanted to work on something that had a had a vision right um that had there was there was something and it was you know smaller as well it was kind of like weighing all these different things so I looked at various companies and you know it came down to um obvious which is currently medium um so obvious Corporation with E Williams and bisone was there at the time mhm and my dear friend uh Dan papayas who um I work worked with that at Google and then there was square and you know uh I had some friends there as well and it was a really really hard decision at that point I looked at two different things obvious or medium was very small very very small team and square was you know hundreds of people and it was growing and whatnot and beautiful office by the way I just went to their new office yesterday oh yeah insane it's awesome um right next to Twitter um and uh actually that office was an old bunker I don't know if you know yeah AT&T right had it before it was it was AT&T but I think it was Bank of America actually and so there's like vaults in the basement and that was also the kind of um the evacuation plan for like the mayor which is why there's a helipad up on top which is also shaped like a square um so you know it worked out dealing with money being in an old kind of bank and this like Fortress of a building it's it's pretty cool um so at the time I decided to go to medium and I worked on that product for about a month um you know medium was there was a lot of great ideas and I was really drawn to it um and you know worked on a few things but ultimately a month in I felt like there wasn't that sense of urgency that I needed um and you know meanwhile was talking with Jack and definitely got the sense that square had that sense of urgency which I feel like is what I've learned about myself as what I thrive on which is you know why I like that 100 day launch kind of thing and and I remember Google wave had a very condensed schedule once we agreed to do Google IO it's like okay now we have to do this right so I really like those constraints um and it felt like medium didn't have that the time and so I remember it was a Wednesday and I I went in and talked with EV and I said look like I think I'm G to go to square um I think that's just a better fit for me um and he was to totally cool and told me to think about it a little bit and I told him why I said like look we have all these things we want to do and I'm not sure you know what launch looks like right and so um you know I was I remember telling him this and you know he was totally he just took it in very very thoughtful right he was very calm and very cool and two days later we had our our company um company meeting and he gave her presentation and he said okay guys we're launching in 30 days and we're cutting all these things and we're focusing on this core aspect of the product which is the the reading the you know creating a Blog creating the the pages and and the reading experience and everything else we'll do later and I remember thinking to myself it's exactly exactly what you know what we should have done MH um and then the decision got even harder uh cuz I wanted to stay and be a part of that right um but ultimately I already told square that I was going to go and I decided to stick with it and and medium launched 31 days later um and uh but I felt like it it was the right choice for me and at Square um what was your role there yeah so I joined Square as a senior engineer um and I was thrown into this product project I remember and you know I remember they couldn't tell me at first like trust trust us when you get here there's going to be this like sense of urgency I I promise you um and I joined and they said well we have this little partnership with Starbucks and in 3 months we're supposed to you know uh run all C transactions on on through Square you know when you swipe a card Starbucks and go through square and at the time I looked at their their technology stack and I looked at you know kind of things they're working on and I'm just I was I was ready to do that right um so you going in as a backend engineer to help going in up the infrastructure yeah um and I got a piece of this puzzle um and about over the next you know few months I I kind of took over responsibility for more and more um and ended up being um you know the the lead for that project um and finishing that um and at that point is when I was um you know kind of given responsibility over of the overall infrastructure uh for square the kind of the technical direction that we were going and it was you know square is a company that grew extremely fast uh you know they built a lot of their their initial technology on on Ruby and and having one monolithic binary that everyone was using and that's great but you know when you scale up and you scale up that fast um you know you run into problems uh much like Twitter did in the early days um and so we had to do the proverbial you know change the engine uh while the while the planes flying yeah exactly um and so that was my responsibility for the first I guess um 6 to8 months square and then what made you what was that pull this I'm always curious about this because I meet a lot of uh uh Engineers obviously and and when you go to some of these bigger companies like a square when I was there yesterday I mean my God like the the perks there the coffee bars the awesome food the beautiful I mean there's a lot to keep you there what was that draw that as an entrepreneur you were like you know what I'm going to leave and just like start my own my own thing well I think was the idea no I I definitely didn't have the idea at that point um you know I was inspired a lot by Jack right and and he just being able to be a part of building square and having the privilege of you know sitting in uh you know being a part of the executive team and and the leadership team and and helping kind of guide the company and figure out priorities and and just you know just be a part of that whole thing made me realize that you know this is this is what I want to do but you know I want to do it with my own company right I want to build something um and you know I I can't I can't really tell you what what it was you know at the time well there really two things it was that desire um and but also my desire travel and again um there was Jack and um uh other people who I met that were very influenced by travel right they and and you know remember Jack would always tell me like oh I love Paris I love Tokyo it's my favorite City New York it's my favorite like this kind of thing and I realized I just never really traveled um and so you know I wanted to kind of my plan was to go around the world in 90 days that was when I was leaving square like this is what I was going to do hit all these places meanwhile like maybe something would come to me May i' figure it out on the way um that didn't happen right I kind of I sat down with Jack and I told him like look I want to leave I want to start my own thing um and he's very supportive and you know when I started to book the trip and plan it um I started having conversations with a few Engineers that I worked with at Square great great Engineers that um there were three other guys and they told me like that they were just planning to leave too and I felt like wow this is perfect right these guys that I worked with we all respected each other we all felt we were all great our Engineers go like we can't pass this up and so I canceled my trip you know I went a few places uh just to kind of get my you know like I went to Paris you know I went to Tokyo um and uh and then we set out a month later to start a company um and we didn't have an idea great crazy we had we had nothing no funding no funding um we just all knew we we just loved each other so you're just living off your savings at this point you're like well screw it we'll just like eat in the savings and just kind of hack on some things yeah I mean yeah we didn't uh yeah that was that was it right we all kind of had that conversation and said like okay how much runway do you have personally right like how long can you like survive like this with your rent and with whatever and we all knew you know I I was I sold my car right um I sold my motorcycle um I got rid of just all I put a lot of stuff in storage um I just got rid of all the extra stuff in my life that I didn't need um and um got a new place and and just focused right and that's what they did too uh and now we set out in search of a idea in search of a product how did you find find the idea well secret was not hatched there um we started a company called Guild it was um you know me and three other guys and you know we worked for about 6 weeks8 weeks um remember we'd go through these exercises where you know I realized that if we're going to come up with an idea I wanted to kind of what I realized was that VC's uh for example were at an unfair Advantage right where not unfair but they had an interesting perspective where they can see so many ideas right in a given week in a given month they just have they just talk with Founders and get inspired and hear all these stories about you know the ideas that they have and their vision and and whatnot and I felt like that gave them an interesting kind of perspective of you know like what the landscape looks like and then the thing I I realized about good Fe fec's is that they were able to kind of see a few ideas or hear a few products and then realize how to like tie them together in interesting ways or you know what I mean kind of you see pieces of one thing that are that look like they're going to be impactful but you know maybe if you change this one thing or move this one thing like you know that kind all time and um I was like well how can I get that same experience um so at that point my my theory was to just turn to angelist and have the four of us it was four Engineers so and by the way four co-founders is very very hard um but the four of us kind of set out scoured angelist and picked like our 10 favorite things and then pitched them to each other right um and that just got our minds thinking got us in the groove right some people some of us focused on Enterprise other ones focused on you know consumer and and things like that and you know that was that was a really really fun exercise and really interesting way to do it um and ultimately we hit on you know again another technological kind of solution in search of a problem right we were looking at using things like Bluetooth Al which is an up and cominging kind of ubiquitous technology um which is low power Bluetooth um and we wanted to do something around sharing consumer oriented um you know like people around you when you you know share something using Bluetooth you can all kind of communicate together and you know is this kind of like group ad hoc sharing kind of product I like that idea I've seen a couple startups in that space yeah like as you pass by people certain things happen certain data gets transferred like creates these like temporal social networks that kind of like exactly right and and there's and there's a lot of applications for something like that um there are limitations Android doesn't fully support Bluetooth Al They you know they'll come along come around um uh and so you know it felt like it was going to be a long kind of like a process right to kind of figure that out um and so while we were working together you know what I realized was coming back to it was four co-founders you know I remember at the time I was feeling a lot of things I was feeling frustrated I was frustrated that we didn't have the product that we that we all were passionate about I could feel that you know um you know two of us were really excited about this idea and then the other two were like H not sure we maybe we should do something in Enterprise and you know we'd have these conversations and talk about this but no one was really at least I wasn't comfortable to like really say what I was feeling and when I did um I I felt like you know I was either shooting down someone's idea or you know like they were taking offense to it or or whatever and so you know at that point as I was like you know what I'm just going to I'm just going to build a tool uh that allows you know kind of silly but build a tool that allows all of us to kind of put our feedback in and then just anonymously read it right just like an anonymous kind of um feedback tool which by the the way is very common thing for a lot of leaders where you know or people in various companies where you'll they'll do a 360 review feedback kind of to thing where you solicit feedback from a bunch of people anonymously and then you get present and then some company goes through it and presents it in a way that's completely Anonymous and right and you know I've done that before and I remember it being really really useful because I've been through many Performance Cycles at Google um where you know you have someone's name and they're like oh you know David's great he's whatever and oh his aies for improvement uh he works too hard like uh he needs to like um you know whatever like stuff that's just you know it's like that's great but tell me how you really feel right it's a little bit of fluff in there absolutely and but the 360 reviews are brutal like they can be like uh David's on his phone too much in meetings like you know what I mean like it's things like that then I'm like yeah some something that no one would ever tell you directly to your yeah or or or it's like yeah or they exactly but it's valuable that's right yeah um but the other thing is it's not you know for example it matters if you know let's say one of my close friends says David's on his phone or you're on your phone too much in meetings if it's my best friend I'm like whatever dude like you know or you know maybe I won't I won't take it the same way as if it was someone who's you know maybe a a direct report of mine right who feels that way and you know here I am I'm supposed a mentor for this person and and here I am like on my phone and that's how they feel right so when you remove that identity and you just say like look like it's it can be any set of these people when it can be any of them it's all of them right and so that that that feedback just it kind of means something to you and you know that anyway that's what I set out to build over a weekend I remember I was at this company this like little tool realiz well there's four of us maybe that's good enough to to do this is and sure enough while I was doing that um you know I remember uh my girlfriend was traveling at the time and um you know I got distracted and instead of building this tool it felt just very like I'm like ah this is you know this this is cool but where's the beauty in it right where's the Simplicity um I then said well like you know what instead I'm just going to make it so that you can just send anyone in a message anonymously just you just shoot a message and you focus on the words it was only about what you were saying it was only about making those words look beautiful um because you know if I could do that if I could capture that emotion capture that beauty and just what the person was saying then they're focusing only on what is being said not who it's coming from right and you know things like other aspects like don't allow them to reply because it's not about replying it's about just you know you saying what you feel right and just trying to make them feel a certain way so when you say to someone you know through this tool for example I love you they don't feel like they have to say I love you back or like I love you and you're an amazing person you just you you read it and you're like who's that from right right and you're just like that makes me feel good um and so that was from that you know at the at the time I I remember I mean I called it whisper right because it just felt like you're whispering to someone mhm um and you know I decided like look this is something that could be interesting and I you know I remember remember I sent a message uh to a girlfriend who was traveling and said oh you know I love you I miss you and she immediately you know she I saw that she read it cuz it had read receipts on it um and she calls me back it was you know like 2:00 a.m. over overseas and and she says um uh what was that like was that you like that was beautiful and of course I played it off a little bit like what are you talking about what was it you know that kind of thing but of course I told her and she's like that's beautiful how do I do that right um and that's when I knew like I just have to build this thing and so it was you know I don't remember exactly but shortly thereafter maybe actually that Monday um you know I kind of decided like I was going to leave this group and that's what I did crazy um I'm I'm curious let's talk a little bit about the content for a second and then I want to get into security before we wrap it up of course um but content wise I mean it's clearly started off with something extremely beautiful um you know I would say that I've seen everything from things that like are tear jerkers to like just uh like Zen quotes to like super hardcore like sexual related stuff like um obviously you had no idea what was going to happen when you set this stuff free but how do you I mean do you you can't really curate the content you just kind of have to let it flow um how do you it seems that a lot of us secretly and I think this makes sense when you think about like the parallels that I was drawing in my mind were like when you sit down with like um like a priest and you go in a confession Hall and you close the door and you tell your deepest darkest Secrets right or you sit down with a therapist or something like that a lot of people have um you know beautiful things to say but also really messed up mental like deep like you know crosses that they're having to Bear is as individuals um how do you control that content how do you make sure it doesn't go too negative like is there well I mean so we've talked about this from from day one and we still talk about it it's a very common topic um I think it is our responsibility to find a way to you know Steer the product in the direction that we think uh adds the most value for people right and the value I'm seeing right now in the product is not necessarily in um the secrets themselves um it's the conversations that come out of those right people are willing to lend support they're willing to give real true answers they're willing to sit there on their phones and type paragraphs and paragraphs in a response to something that is never to their name they're not you know receiving any sort of social capital from that they're just voicing their opinion in a very constructive way and those are the things that we want to promote right and so we do things like build share allow people to share these things out they can be indexed by Google they can be found they can be searched they're still Anonymous right but they can be helpful to to everyone right um conversely when we see things that are more on the negative side very simple things that calling people out outing people um very kind of tasteless content um we can attack it from two angles we obviously moderate we look at things um you know we also give tools to the community itself to to moderate right and the community as a whole it's been really fascinating to watch it kind of it feels like this organism learning right and and kind of developing his antibodies right such that if certain types of content kind of enter the stream they attack it right and what's been really fascinating is even though we've been growing and the rate of which content is posted is growing the amount of content being spread around the service is growing um the amount of moderation we've had to do has stayed either the same or actually gone down and what that shows me is and also there's the nature of the product because the nature of the product is someone can join and like say something and it just goes into an echo chamber if they they're not connected to people right um so what that tells me is that the community is using the tools and they are in fact and they're learning right and they're kind of developing their tone right um so so far we've been very very uh just surprised and you pleasantly surprised that you know most of it has been pretty good um but again in worst case scenario I remember one time I saw one that I had to uh remove move or I reported uh you by swiping to the side uh and then I it was from a friend so it's it's partially my fault for having these friends I guess well so that's the funny thing I mean yeah there are definitely times when when I'll see friend and I'm like you know I just I just want to like you're like how do I know this person um but you know at the same time I think I think we want to definitely do things you know we talk about things like and right now you can heart something you love something and it spreads right you can and kind of curating at that point which is an interesting part um so you're like well that's not good enough I'm going to stop it I'm going to Shield my network from from this thing right um so that's kind of a passive way of of standing up for something right and then of course you can go into report um but we've talked about things like giving that negative negative action like saying like this is not good enough like exposing that as a default option exactly right like a first class citizen like a broken heart or something like that right we have to be really careful with how that might change the tone of the product um but I do I'm very intrigued by giving people um you know not just the ability to spread something but to also kind of you know quiet something down um much like Reddit I mean Reddit or you know yeah yeah so one of the things I wanted to uh touch on real quick is is security because um I've seen the post I'm sure you have too a number of times saying like oh I wish I could you know be be myself on here but I think you're going to get hacked at some point can you briefly talk about like how how security how you're exg googler so that gives me a little bit of like hope that you but but give me uh kind of like behind the scenes what's going on yeah so one thing you touched upon like my background is especially Google+ where at Google um you know users trust their privacy their their their information is of the utmost importance right if Google screws up it's over right like it's bad bad bad news um so it's it's kind of there's always in my mind you know to to keep people's information secure um follow certain rules about how we expose user data how Engineers can access it all these kinds of things kind of come with me right so there is a lot of that that we built in I've definitely over engineered I think some aspects of of the product in a way way that you know for example myself it is not you know it's not possible for me to even know you know who's posting what like that is not you know me Chris nobody we we we can't see that stuff so that's just one side right is internally making sure that employees you know treat this with respect and don't have access to this kind of information right it's just not useful that and I don't want to know my friend Secrets by the way like when I see friend I don't know who this is half the time the other thing is you know this is just a general area of research for us because that is one hard hard problem about this whole thing right and that gives me hope because there's a real need here for this product right but if we cannot get that right if we can't make sure privacy and security are solved and continue to be solved um you know we we can't exist um so we're doing things like you know we talk with tons of security researchers uh we opened up a bug Bounty program and one guy in fact was so helpful to us um that we brought him on as a contractor uh you these are kind of like white hat hackers that are kind of trying to find vulnerabilities with the service um and we brought him on as a contractor it turns out he's in New York and he's joining Google and so he's you know really really great guy awesome um and you know then meanwhile while we're solving these problems while we're um you know really bolt proofing the system we do add things for the users such as you know one thing we added was in two releases ago was the ability to unlink all of your posts what that does that's in the settings I saw in the settings yeah so it's a big red button for users um and we built it in a way well let me explain what it does is when you click that button it actually goes through every post you've created since then and it removes the association between the author which is you and that post itself so you don't receive notifications on it anymore you can't delete it um when you comment you're just a normal commenter you're not you're no longer like the the crown or whatever um and so if something were to happen in that case you know throughout our data store throughout our logs there's zero chance that you know at least virtually zero chance as much as possible um those two things can be linked anymore it's literally an autonomous thing that's just out there in so even if even if the government came in and gave served you a subpoena like you have no data there there are zero data um so logs yeah so one thing we do and this is something we do with Google is you know we never log like for example someone's email address and the content in like the same the same place right we just don't log that stuff um and if you know some for debug debugging P purposes if we have to to log that we make sure to recycle those logs like in 48 hours so it's a very very shortterm thing um in case we you know something needs to be debugged or or what have you what about why why do you ask for the phone number when people sign up uh so we can connect you to your friends but couldn't you just do that by like hashing the address book and upload we do hash the so we do hash the address book um so what we do is we hash and salt the address book which is you know it's it's not because of the entropy of a a phone number um it's not you know like super secure right on that side so do you upload the phone number like my phone number when I give it so when you sign up we give you over SSL we upload both the email address and phone number um and then we hash that in the server so that we can compare hashes against other people's address books people that don't know what hashing is probably take 5 Seconds yeah so hashing is it's effectively a one-way transformation of some bit of data to another piece of data right but it's done in such a way that you kind of think of like dividing right so if you take 49 divided by 7 you get seven and that's that result right but you can't get back to that 49 because you could also like it could have came from 21 or it could have come from whatever so it's that kind of transation for people who don't know it looks like just like a random set of string like a random set of characters it's just a blob right so then do you delete that phone number and email address at that point or do you always keep that we we we keep it in a separate store right now that is logically separated from the user but initially we use that to verify your phone number so we know you're a real person right so we know you at least create some amount of accountability for you and so that we know that you know this is this is someone who has a phone number who uh you know can receive um that that they're not spoofing themselves right they're not spoofing like someone else so they're not just creating a bunch of different accounts or yeah I can't come you know if I know your phone number I can't come into the service and put your phone number in right and then just you know your friends are now connected to me right so I see I see okay that makes sense uh so because otherwise someone could just come in and say I'm this phone number and then all of a sudden have access to all the same friends and everything else right gotcha okay that's right then that's why you know typical verification um what we do do you do um so and so of course we'll just add that that's why we hide Secrets until you're verified you don't you can't receive any of your friend secrets so it's like step one um we'll show you some popular content we won't share anything with those people gotcha cool so um anything else you want to add security wise I know there's it's a lot more complicated than our one minute description but um I would just say like I said it's it is an active area of research for us um and you are hosted on Google servers we are on Google servers uh we are on app engine um you know so physically I think we're we're pretty pretty much okay um and uh yeah now you know the real the real thing is logically being secure making sure that there's no errors I mean most of these security exploits are are very simple you know it's for example if I have access to the database and someone gets my password to my account now they can just go in and do that right so of course that's why we do things like you know the the accounts we use that anyone has any sort of access to anything uh we turn on you know two Factor off right so that you know they need like my phone or something to be able to to be able to access it just knowing my password is not enough right um and so it's those kinds of things that you know those oversights potential overs sites is where hackers get in right and it's it's usually the simple things awesome well thanks for taking the time appreciate it absolutely talk to you soon all [Music] right

Channel: Kevin Rose

Views: 23,115

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Id: 7PmBk7hgUqg

Length: 43min 58sec (2638 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 14 2014