The Terrifying Cost of "Free” Websites | Adam Ruins Everything

[Music] I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice hmm tumbling down the rabbit hole wait do you still think matrix parodies are cool yes look around you Mitchell this is the free Internet we do everything here we connect with friends on Facebook search for information on Google and all of its free yeah free wait actually how do these sites make money I'll tell you but you may not like where the rabbit hole goes so do I choose ooh pill or oh no these are my allergy medications this one's for pollen and this one's for lactose where are we what is this place this is the Internet of the real the truth is these services aren't free at all you pay for them with your very identity when you use Facebook they log everything you do the pages you like the people you interact with even the words in your status updates then they take that information analyze it and assemble a detailed profile of who you are they know your habits your preferences we can even determine your risk tolerance or sexual orientation and then they sell that information to advertisers one risk-taking homosexual please it's a pleasure doing business with you wait how do they know I'm not even known at work yet hey I didn't know you were gay and so adventurous that's not hypothetical this actually happened to a woman in Tampa that is problematic but come on we all know they're showing us ads yeah but we don't know how deep Facebook's tentacles really go they actually record which ads we see then partner with firms that monitor what we do in the real world Jacob liked the page bacon his BAE last we showed him an ad for your double bacon heart-attack burger he just bought one in Duluth clearly susceptible to the campaign let's pump him full of ads yes I got room for one more this has got to be one of the most invasive advertising systems ever devised Facebook can actually determine who's the most vulnerable to an ad campaign then up their dosage till they buy even more well I'll simply delete my Facebook account I'm gonna miss those ex-girlfriend pictures but it's worth it not to be tracked right sure you can quit Facebook but good luck escaping Google [Music] that's me but I'm not even on Google I'm on a private website exactly Google doesn't just track you when you search their tracking software is also installed on over 10 million websites even medical sites so that health info you think you're looking up in private Google's got a front row seat Mitchell has erectile disfunction I know a drug company that would get rock-hard for that information and that's not all every time you write a Gmail watching YouTube video or use Google Maps Google collects data about you god no we don't even know the full extent of what Facebook and Google store or what they do with it all we know is that they're collecting out data on an unprecedented scale and making billions off of it that's their real business model they're monetizing us when we use these sites we're not the customer with a product why how hello Mitchell I've been waiting for you now you're parroting the second Matrix movie what it's the best one Mitchell this is Ethan Zuckerman he's the director of the MIT Center for civic media Mitchell the fact that the sites are free is the problem when the web was created we the users decided we would rather have free stuff than pay money for the services we use as a result the websites have had to sell ads to make money they target ads to us based on our preferences in our behavior online and that means we're under constant surveillance in exchange for these services that we get for free one in six people on earth now has a Facebook account and they make up 20% of all time spent online that's 1.6 billion people who's every move is being tracked by an online Big Brother that they chose to live under no and here's the kicker you want to know how much revenue your personal data is worth to Facebook for every user they surveil they make just $12 no your interests your personality your relationships your privacy those things are priceless but you gave them all away just to avoid paying $12 no that that can't beat us that's that that's not possible well there is a bright side you want to hear about it No No shut up shut up let me out he's gonna pop let me help I wanna get up now this happens to all my friends hey guys Adam here if you like that be sure to watch new episodes of Adam ruins everything every Tuesday at 10:00 on truTV

Channel: CollegeHumor

Views: 6,953,888

Rating: 4.8940253 out of 5

Keywords: Collegehumor, CH originals, comedy, sketch comedy, internet, humor, funny, sketch, facebook, google, surveillance, ARE, adam ruins everything

Id: 5pFX2P7JLwA

Length: 6min 20sec (380 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

If something's free then you are the product, is that not common knowledge?

[u/gnarlin]

People don't give a shit about privacy. How many here will delete their facebook account after watching this video?

[u/B3nzolitz]

• https://10minutemail.com for a temporary email address
• http://www.fakenamegenerator.com for a "whole" persona

[u/rkos]

Very funny video, thank you. I'd like to add something though which I think is most often missed in these privacy discussions. People tend to have a very binary view of either being private or not private which I don't think is very practical at all. If you allow me to get a bit weird for a moment...

I prefer to adopt a philosophy of anything that enters my consciousness having at that moment begun the process of being leaked. From then on out the focus in on mitigating the risk and damages. How secrecy in my observation works in reality is not so much as an absolute but rather just functional. You know and thus the other knows is of course not true but it is a good gedankenexperiment to do to figure out what is it that really would need to happen for the other to make it known to you that the other knows.
This is the illusionary playing field of practical secrecy, the other knows your secret already but knowledge is completely meaningless if no actionability arises from the knowledge. What risks and damages does the other incur in acting on the knowledge? If we start at the extreme beginning of knowledge just having entered your consciousness then I think you can already see the extreme costs on the other were the other to reveal itself as being in the position of access to your most fundamentally private thoughts. Then you can start expanding the exposure of the information and thinking of the kind of reverse Occam's razor on how many unlikely assumptions need to become a reality for not the leak to occur but the leak to be used against you. This needs to be coupled with some rudimentary threat modelling and profiling of the would be attacker, the motivations, capabilities, sociopolitical context and points of weakness that you in turn could be able to exploit. Finally rather than aiming for that absolute secrecy your final goal is a stable equilibrium of mutually assured destruction.

Now to get a little less weird again, I'm just trying to say that even if we start from a nightmare scenario of no privacy we do not in practice lose anything just due to that alone. But as we do try to limit, regulate and remove the threat of WMDs we should just as well try to limit, regulate and remove the threat of spying.

[u/Insouciant101]

Adam ruins everything is just what I needed since John Oliver has taken a break

[u/SirVapealot]

I would rather be advertised to than spend "just 12 dollars" for every site I want to use plus deal with the annoyance of not being able to access sites I haven't paid for.

[u/CaptnCookie]

Great video.

[u/[deleted]]

Ayy, its DC Pierson!

[u/BuddhistSagan]

I personally give Facebook a fake name... They don't allow it but as long as you don't make it completely obvious you can get away with it