Why a metaverse created by Mark Zuckerberg won't be safe | Interview with Brittany Kaiser

What's up, everyone? It's Giovanni here from Web Summit 2021. I have the pleasure to be joined by Brittany Kaiser, whistleblower at Cambridge Analytica, and data rights activist. How are you doing today, Brittany?

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited to be at Web Summit in person with everyone. Final.

Very excited to hear about some very interesting topics that are being discussed here at the summit from you and specifically about data rights. So what is, according to you, the biggest threat right now that is posed on data rights? And how can cryptocurrency and blockchain technology help confront that threat?

I think one of the biggest issues in actually implementing data protection and privacy is that a lot of companies and even governments are not using the technologies that make data protection easy to do, that make compliance easy to do. So when we're thinking about gdpr, when we're thinking about CCPA and other new privacy laws, we need decentralized technologies, blockchain technology, digital ID tracking and traceability, permission structures, smart contracts, in order to make sure that data management from here forward is in the control of the user and that the ways in which data is being used can be auditable, trackable, traceable, and that if data is going to be monetized, that we get to monetize that for our own benefit as well.

We know that one of the biggest threat probably to this kind of future is decentralization of data gathering by these large tech giants, like, for example, Facebook. We actually heard not long ago that Facebook is rebranding itself to meta. And so they are kind of launching this idea of a metaverse where people are going to interact on many different levels in a kind of virtual world. So what are your thoughts about that plan? Are you concerned that that metaverse created by Facebook could become another tool in the hands of Facebook for basically gathering and manipulating data from people?

Yes, I definitely have that fear. I don't think that a metaverse created by Facebook or run by Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a place where our data is safe or where we're ever going to have any ownership of the value that we create in those spaces. Obviously, there are a lot of decentralized technologies, blockchain technologies, that are creating their own metaverses. I mean, people can look at Superworld, they look at Decentraland. There's so many options that are out there where we own our data, where we can monetize that for ourselves, where we actually have control of our digital assets, that we're Creating in the digital world. And that is one of the most important things. So making sure that blockchain technologies can scale and can scale sustainably is one of the main things that I've been working on recently.

Actually, I'm interested to know your opinion about some of the speakers of this edition of the Web Summit, because we saw that one of the main speakers at the ceremony of opening was a whistleblower at Facebook. That became a very. That made headlines not long ago. And so what does that tell us about the stance taken by the conference itself towards these issues? Like, it seems almost like a political statement, the fact that they put her among the speakers at the beginning?

Absolutely. Well, in 2019, they advertised Edward Snowden and me as the whistleblowers that were headlining Web Summit. And I was so, I suppose enthralled by that, that one of the most important and largest tech conferences in the world decides to put on the center stage tech whistleblowers and talk about the actual ethics and issues in the industry. Of course, now they're also welcoming many people from the blockchain industry here who are helping solve those problems. And so I think it's a really beautiful thing when you see Web Summit championing activists, championing activist entrepreneurs, and really thinking about Web3 and what the future of technology should look like.

And what do you think about the common perceptions of these kind of problems? Because we saw many whistleblowers actively trying to kind of spread this consciousness, the importance of preserving our own data. But still, even today, after you were very active as a whistleblower, in the case of Cambridge Analytica, even after that kind of scandal, still, Facebook is still a very powerful corporation and people are still using those services. So do you think that people care in general about their data?

I do think that people care if they understand the value of their own data and the information that they produce every day. I think one of the bigger issues that we're dealing with in terms of data protection and privacy is a lack of digital literacy. A lot of people don't understand how technology works and therefore they're using it without actually knowing what data is being collected or how that's being used. And therefore, it's hard to actually be an advocate for yourself and make the right decisions when you're using technology. So what my hope is is that as we see the emergence and the large scaling of Web3 technologies, that it's going to become easy for people to not have to think about their data protection, that they will be using dapps and large scale decentralized technologies without thinking about that it's running on blockchain on the back end. But they'll use an app where their personal information is not shared, they can share anonymized data sets, they can use the value of their data for themselves. And it doesn't have to be a complex scenario where actually right now we're just at the precipice of seeing global adoption of blockchain technologies. So over the next couple of years it's going to become a lot easier than it is today for people to know that they can safely and securely use technology.

Yeah, definitely, literacy is basic element here. But I would also like to know, in terms of technological innovation, what do you think were the main achievements in terms of technological innovation that protects people's data in the last few months, what are the milestones that especially in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, what are the main innovation that you consider valuable in this sense and what are you looking forward to see in 2022 from this perspective?

So I would say two things in terms of the achievements of the blockchain industry in general and first is scalability and secondly is sustainability. I'm actually the executive chairman of Griffin Digital Mining. We are the world's largest green and renewable mining company and so we're not just doing bitcoin mining, but we'll be expanding into being able to stake and main net validate on tons of other networks to make sure that renewable energy, nuclear energy, anything that is carbon neutral can actually allow these technologies to scale and have entire governments, entire multinational corporations running on blockchain. I'm now seeing huge projects that are coming out of public private partnerships with platforms like Casper Labs who are implementing into entire government infrastructures and entire large scale corporations. When you can start running a Casper node, for example, I'm obviously biased, I advise them. But I do believe that we're now seeing scalable blockchain technologies that are not that difficult to put into large scale implementation. So now that we're finally at that place, I don't think that companies or governments have that excuse anymore to say, you know, using these types of large scale encryptions that we, we either can't do it sustainably or these systems aren't fast enough or scalable enough. We are actually there. So over the coming months and years we're going to see a lot more adoption. Now that we've finally reached that place.

And I'm curious, just as a wrap up question, to know your stance on policy. So you are Very hopeful in terms of the advancement of this technology. So how the private sector can actually help in developing these solutions. But what about policymakers? There should be a cooperation between the private sector and policymakers. Or you have this very widespread among them, the most maximalist, bitcoin maximalist, this view of the government and of policymakers as some sort of antagonistic entities in this sense that they will never help us to achieve those ideals of data privacy, and that they will be always kind of submissive to these big tech giants.

So I believe that most legislators and regulators are trying to do the best to protect their citizens and to make sure that people are leading a better life, therefore trying to stop big tech companies that are bad actors from being a negative effect on society. Right. But not all of them have the technical understanding or the teams in place that can really help them understand what laws need to be created or what regulations will actually be impactful. So I've spent a lot of the past four years, not only through the whistleblowing process, but from moving to Wyoming and working with the legislators there and Caitlin Long on all of the first blockchain legislation initiatives in the United States, that if you bring technologists to work with legislators, they're very happy to engage, they will listen, they will learn how these technologies work, and then we can actually write laws that are enforceable, laws that make sense, and laws that also allow entrepreneurs, not just blockchain entrepreneurs, but anyone in technology that are, well, meaning, that are trying to do the right thing to build their companies. Right. So we don't need too much red tape. We just need common sense legislation to make sure we can build the solutions that will actually make people's lives a better place.

Sounds great. Thanks a lot to Brittany.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.