Ephemera and Eternity

back and report on to you guys. So in the meanwhile, we thought that we would do an episode about about the permanence of the Internet, or the permanence of all things, but specifically in these are modern times, the stuff that we put out there digitally, I mean basically the Internet is forever. Yeah, not so great if they're embarrassing pictures of you out there, as probably all of us have

experienced at one point or another. YEA something that you said offhand or maybe posted or sent to somebody came back to haunt you and probably a small way. Hopefully a small way, because it's not been a small way for everyone all the time. Well, I mean, so when that relative of yours finds the picture of the school play you were in when you were in second grade and you were dressed up in a cow costume and singing at the top of your lungs and doing the

splits for some reason. Uh, that's kind of weird. You know. Everybody sees that and now they're like, oh, this adult person that I thought I knew as an adult person is actually a tiny child in a cow. Is this something that personally happened to you or is this an example that you just made up off the top of your head. It's not this specifically, but this kind of thing, sure, you know, it sort of forces the past to be

with us constantly. Things that we would acknowledge happened certainly suddenly become things that are still presently going on when you're constantly seeing the pictures of them over and over again. And sure, yeah, it wakes me out sometimes. Like if I if I google my own name and and everybody googles themselves, it's okay, we're we're all aware of it.

It's myself, oh my um, but no, no, if if you google Lauren Folk, obam one of the like, like, you know, seven pages back, there's some forum comments that I made on like an X files fan forum in like and it's pretty I mean, I'm just like, oh that really, my dad was right when he told me that I shouldn't attach my real name to things. You know. Yeah, I'd say your dad's advice was pretty sound, and it's probably still pretty sound today. The things we do have consequences.

That goes without saying. Everybody understands that, but not everyone seems to understand that. Actually, well everybody understands that in the abstract, but you can kind of forget about it when you're in the middle of an activity. Um, so everybody understands that they are going to be social, economic, legal consequences for the things they do and say when

people are watching. So, you know, if you were to go stand down on a busy street corner and start screaming about, you know how you're going to blow up a building or something, and then people come and try to grab you, I was just kidding. I didn't I'm not I would never do anything like. I mean, you'd have to understand that, like, people would still be concerned even if you actually were hidding. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's the kind of thing that right most people get

that they shouldn't do because of those consequences. Yeah, now you might make that same kind of comment to your friends. I probably wouldn't. Somebody might, and and your friends might understand, Okay, that's just your sort of six sense of humor. You'd never actually do that because your friends know you or well, for example, if if you play first person shooters and you discuss them in an off hand manner in a bar,

for example, like I, I cannot kill you. So hard to tell you the number of times that I've said something like that out loud in a public space and realized immediately after I said it that I sound like a complete psychotic killer. Right. But so with the age of the Internet and social media, there's a way in which these two scenarios have kind of blurred together in an unfortunate way. So let's say you're on Twitter or you're on Facebook, and you're having a conversation that you've

come to view as a conversation among friends. You know, I just interact with my buddies on here. You don't really have the the awareness most of the time that what you're doing is public and other people have access to it. You feel like you're in a private conversation.

But then you say I'm gonna kill you so hard or something like that, and then suddenly everybody's listening and you really regret saying that, and you can't take it back because people don't understand, all right, even if you delete that tweet, there's a decent chance that it's been cashed somewhere, or that another service has picked it up, or you know, it's just because you delete something doesn't

mean it's gone digitally speaking, right. Uh. And we'll definitely talk about the extent to which that sad fact is true in a few minutes here. But so we should start off talking about the the difference between public and private and and what these different concepts mean to people, especially in terms of the consequences they experienced, like physical, real consequences in their lives, whether you're you know, it's

in an interview chair or on a witness stand. I mean, there are cases in which the things you've said online, which might have otherwise been just sort of dumb, off hand comments or ephemera that you might have spoken between your friends out you know, hanging out somewhere and would have disappeared forever. Now those comments are recorded and accessible to the public, and we'll come back to haunt you can certainly right, you know can, and you know, if

they can, they probably probably will. So we want to talk about some examples of people who have faced public repercussions for things they did online. Um. Yeah, some of these. Some of these made me feel really badly for the people involved, and some of them gave me that's to fixed sense of schadenfreud, depending on depending on the the offense given. But uh so, so your your first one was a schadenfreud moment for me. Yeah, this is one

of the craziest I found. Apparently, in two thousand and eight, a juror was dismissed from a UK court case after posting details about the case on Facebook and asking her friends how she should vote like in the deliberation. The quote, the quote from the Telegraph report on this was I don't know which way to go, so I'm holding a pole.

And this was like a child sexual assault case. I mean, this was not the kind of thing that it is okay in in any way to have been posting details about Yeah, um, I mean, I mean, aside from the legal ramifications, that's just yeeky. I mean, you just don't do that. Right, Yeah, of course. And so this juror was found out and was sent home, and then I guess the case was resolved with an eleven person jury.

But this juror, the report concluded, in seems like the case that was very lucky not to have been held in contempt of court. Yeah, I'm shocked that she didn't face legal repercussions from that. Yeah. People get fired from their jobs all the time for stuff they do online. Oh certainly. Um, there was there was one case of a teacher here in Georgia who was asked to resign after she posted um private Facebook photos of herself with

alcoholic beverages in her hands while she was on vacation. Um. Some of her co workers at the school that she worked for apparently alerted the principle, and the principle basically asked her for her resignation. So, I mean, it's not quite like being fired, And I think that in a lot of these cases, it's more we'd really like you to resign than a direct firing. But there was a story from two thousand nine about a girl who lost a job offer from Cisco after she tweeted about being

excited about the paycheck. But not about the job itself. Apparently the uh someone from the company's Twitter feed contacted her and was like, we'll let we'll let HR know how you feel about that. Thanks, and and then she lost the job offer. So's we demand that you enjoy your work. Well, okay, that's that's fair. But but I

but I see it from their point of view. I mean, it's it's just in terms of of a way that you behave online is part of what they're hiring and so therefore, yeah, and it probably just hurts the company's reputation in their mind to have stuff like that out there. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of reputations, there was a football player who was released from his contract with the Kansas City Chiefs after he sent out some inflammatory tweets UM, including and this

is one of those shot and freud things. In response to another Twitter user saying that he would regret what he was tweeting, he said, and I quote make me regret it. L m a O. You don't stop my checks, does, but somebody reading this might m and then you know, there have been tons of cases. This one hits pretty close to home to me of of social media managers UM accidentally posting from the incorrect account, So like you thought you were posting from your personal account, but instead

you were posting on the company account, right right. And that's the thing that I literally have done. I have accidentally posted a tweet that I meant to send for my own account as the when I was accidentally signed in as as how stuff works on on Twitter, and I'm playing all you tweet is adorable cats. Yeah, basically, I mean it was it was nothing. It was nothing bad.

It was something about like a fire drill and myself being really out of shape, so I I mean it didn't and like there was no cursing involved, so it was okay. But yes, people have been fired for that. There was an employee Chrysler, I believe, who was complaining about Detroit drivers and that didn't go over too well. Um yeah, but uh, apparently after the tsunami in Japan, Gilbert Gottfried made a really tasteless joke on Twitter and

Affleck decided to find another um spoke stuck. Yeah. I feel like there's sort of different kind of categories for these people who are already famous and have a lot of people following them versus people who just you know, we're tweeting to their friends. Now, in fact, it's probably

not all that different. I mean, in both cases it's public um, but one is at least somebody who should know that people are going to be reading this all right, and should have some kind of well, you know, in the Gilbert Godfried case, I think it's strange because you know, you've you've hired an offensive comedian to be your spokesperson,

and then you're surprised when he says something offensive. It doesn't it doesn't quite mash for me personally, although you know it's it's certainly within their right to say, we don't want you representing us anymore. It's like they fired the company spokes bear for getting into the garbage. I know, right, that's completely unfair. That's the ceel you forbears would totally

have something to say about that. Yeah, but wait a second, Lauren, if you are a citizen of a country that supposedly protects free speech, how come you can't say anything you want online and not be punished for it. I mean, I believe in free speech. You believe in free speech, don't you? Yes, I'm I am a good American? Okay, So how come people can't get away with saying stuff like this. Why are they being punished for just exercising

their right to free speech? Well, okay, the the whole Amendment about free speech is really more about the government not being able to tell you what you can and can't say. It has nothing to do with it. It's the first Amendment. Doesn't protect you from your own stupidity. Right. This is ah not to get too political on a podcast about technology science in the future, but it's relevant

to what we're talking about today. The whole concept of the legal idea of free speech protects you from being prosecuted or from being legally prevented from giving speech, but it doesn't protect you from, say, like the social consequences, your employment being one of those consequences. Right, uh so. But but there are some legal protections, not necessarily so much under free speech, but actually under some labor laws. So I wanted to talk about what protection does exist.

So here are some facts. Um. In two thousand nine, a paramedic working for a company called American Medical Response based in Connecticut lost her job after she went on Facebook and she called her boss some names, including scumbag and some other words. We're not going to say here. Uh. And this was in response to a dispute that she had had at work, which involved I don't know if it was entirely about but at least involved a dispute

over union representation. Okay, So so she was so she was discussing some some serious points about her job, but in the course of it used language that was perhaps um inadvisable to public public consumption. Sure, yeah, um not super friendly words. Okay, fighting words maybe, but not in

where it's in the legal sense though that's a different story. Um. Well, A an organization actually exists called the National Labor Relations Board, and the National Labor Relations Board of the n l RB took up this employee's case in two thousand ten, and in January two thousand eleven, the ambulance company, the American Medical Response, agreed to settle. Now, this was the first case in which the nl r B had ever defended the rights of an employee to speak on social

media specifically. Um, it wasn't the first time they've ever dealt with social media, but before they've tended to decide with with an employer. Yeah, with an employer's discretion, um to to terminate based on whatever their employee policy is.

This case was n l r B versus American Medical Response UM, and the NLRB argued that the speech was protected because employees were discussing the supervisor action, which was protected under the National Labor Relations Act UH, and that was designed to give workers safety to quote engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. And essentially what this spoils down to is that employees can talk about the conditions of

their employment. They can talk about the terms of their employment and company policies with co workers and UH, they can talk about unionization strategies, and they can't be punished for this conversation. Well that's that's that's sensical and also kind of awesome. UM. I have heard that they have that there's other cases that they have declined to to file complaints for. Oh yeah, UM and and and like you said, there's there's plenty wherein they have sided with

the company. But like there was one that I read about where a bartender was fired for saying on Facebook that his customers were and I quote rednecks and that he hoped that they choked on glass. Yeah, that's Okay, well, that would not be protected under the National Labor Relations Act because that doesn't really have to do with any pertinent conversation about the conditions of employment unionization. That's just

sort of a nasty thing. Right. Also, you're you're technically threatening people at that point, which is generally not protected speech, even under something like the First Amendment. Right. So, the bottom line is you might have some degree of legal protection for what you say on social media under certain conditions, especially pertaining the unionization and workplace policies and conditions, but the general idea of free speech does not protect you.

Um So, if you get on Twitter and just go on a rant about how you know your boss looks like a donkey headed cactus, I don't know. That is exactly what I say when I'm angry at my boss. Sorry, Tracy, Uh, then you can be fired and you probably won't have any legal recourse. Okay, But but jobs aren't the only sphere in which you can get in trouble for things that you say online. Yeah, I mean, there's there's certainly not pretty deep social repercussions that can that can happen

in your in your circle of friends. Right, So, like especially if you're a young person, but I guess anybody, but as young people are especially vulnerable. Something embarrassing or private gets out and you can feel like this is the end of the world, and you can be really harshly bullied about it, of course, but yeah, I mean if if you've got people who are not looking out for your best interests, then that kind of commentary about what is posted about you can be very harsh. Yeah. Uh, okay.

So let's say I've had social media accounts of very various kinds for like five years, and I suddenly get real anxious about this. I'm like, oh, oh no, all these things out there, I've got to go delete it all right now. And you go back, you delete your Facebook account, you delete Twitter, you delete everything everything you've ever put online, and you you go into lockdown mode. You're like, Okay, my identities, my own I control people. See, none of that stuff is gonna haunt me. Am I safe? Uh?

Basically no, Basically, the Internet is forever um and and that is partially because of Uh. There are lots of organizations that are out there that are that are purposefully saving the things that we post online. And that's not generally going to be Um, you know, stuff that you've posted in private on Facebook, but certainly a public forum like Twitter. You're dealing with things like like the way Back Machine, that nonprofit that's working actively to create an

Internet library for posterity. Um, Google, Google's cash. Every time Google looks at a website and tries to figure out, um, where to put it in search ranks or or where to serve it within searches, it's it's cashing that page. It's creating a record of it that can stay there after you've taken the page down. Um. There are tons of other services that do stuff like this. Even the

Library of Congress is collecting tweets. Okay, so anything that's been created after the widespread use of the Internet, that that's probably not going away. You should just count on that being there. But I want to introduce an even scarier idea. And this has to do with digitization, which, on one hand, is a wonderful thing like digitization of old print sources and books and stuff like that. This this is awesome for research. So you want to do

research on something that happened in nineteen ten. And I've actually been in this position before, doing research on stuff that happened a long time ago, where you just can't find this information that was sort of a femarole back then. Maybe these weird little newspaper articles that stuff is getting scanned into Google. Oh yeah, and and I mean it's like you just said, it's terrific for for us as researchers.

If you know, you suddenly find yourself in the position of wondering what was going on in popular mechanics in UM and it's there. That's awesome. So stuff that they thought was a phemera not anymore. It helps us revisit

the past and learn more. Right, but not so great if you say, published a collection of erotic science fiction in four and you're just every day you're thankful that nobody remembers that, and nobody will ever find a copy until somebody scans that in and it gets on Google Books, and then your name is touched to the sci fi erotica thing forever and ever um, at which point your options are like change your name or yeah, or or have used a pen name in the first place, which

I think is really under those kinds of cases. Really should have thought of the Internet. You should have You should have I mean, if you're a sci fi writer. Come on, um, but should have been more prescient. Uh, but no, and and it is. It is a great thing that that stuff like like Google or way Back

Machine are creating these records. I think that um, I mean the same way that there are society is dedicated to collecting ephemera um in in ads or in the form of letters, lots of stuff that people never expected to last, but they give. They give our society that's really terrific peek back into what was going on in prior times. And so that's beautiful but also completely terrifying. Yeah, Okay, it's time to talk about blowback, because all this stuff

is scary people. I think people are probably wanting if Femora back. They want to reclaim the idea that you can have interactions with your friends and with various interlocutors over over the media that you use without it being stuck somewhere in an archive for forever haunting you. How do we get a Femora back. A Fema, of course, you know, being something that that's fleeting, that fades away.

This an interaction that's just for now. Well, as it turns out, there's an app for that, an app for that. I think there are several apps for that, but we know there's a big app for that. Yeah that. The one that's been getting the most press lately has been Snapchat. It's it's been getting most bad press lately, but but it's but it's maybe the biggest generator of the ephemera app buzz kind of stuff. Um. Forbes estimated that as of January, some fifty million people were using this app.

It's an app, by the way, if you haven't heard of Snapchat that UM that allows you to um send a picture or a text or a video to to a friend directly to a friend for and the message will self destruct within a certain period of time, within whatever period of time you specify. The example I heard was like ten seconds. Sure, yeah, and so it's just a really quick thing and UM, you know, so far, I think has been used by a lot of The median age of their users is like eighteen, um, and

so I think it might be sexy sexy times. Yeah, there's been a lot of concern about this from like parents and especially like older people in the media, like what is this? It's kind of scary. I can see

why they'd be concerned. I guess, well, sure, I would also devil's advocate that and I'm not sure if you can use that as a verb, but I just did suckers, So there, um that, Uh, you know, if kids are going to do this kind of thing anyway, at least not having permanent records of it is a is a good thing, is kindest assuming there aren't actually permanent records

of it, right, which is kind of the problem. Um. Okay, So, so they've got about fifty million people using it, and it's users as of September, we're sending some three fifty million photos a day. Dang, yes, um, And and it's been known part of the bad buzz about them is that they had this huge security breach out right right, Hackers stole some forty some four point six million user

names and phone numbers from snapchats databases. And it's creators knew about the possibility of this happening, that they had been uh informed about it by a private security company, but they totally blew it off. Wow, some kind of apology, yeah, but you know, but but it was the kind of apology that was like, well, the hackers didn't really distribute

all your phone numbers. They only distributed them in a way that if someone bothered to pull up a huge database of phone numbers and cross referenced them, that then they'd be able to have your information. So so Snapchat the kids are using it is this where they're going from Facebook? Because I've heard that the kids are leaving Facebook. Two young people think Facebook is not so cool anymore.

That's that's part of it. Um, and Facebook, in response to this, released what Poke, which, of course they had had a poking mechanism previously, but this is a separate app thing um in order to compete with Snapchat, which basically just drove more people to Snapchat due to the publicity that that sprang up around the release. Um yeah, I read that. News emerged in November of last year that Zuckerberg had tried to buy Snapchat. Yeah, after after

the release of Poke went so poorly. He offered them three million dollars in three billion dollars I'm sorry, three million dollars billion, three billion dollars in cash u which is a bunch, and they turned them down. Um they they yeah, they were like, nope, we're keeping this. We think it's worth more than three billion dollars. Okay, so poke nut poke, not a big hit. Not not a big hit. Um. What else is out there for in terms of effemorra apps. Well, there's there's one called Wicker

that's a little bit more security focused. It's it's sometimes referred to in the media as a snapchat for adults, or for businesses or for criminals, depending on who's writing the article. Um but but but they feature a really good encryption, like higher than the n s A S standard according to them. Um, and you don't have to enter any personal information to sign up for an account.

You're totally anonymous. Uh. You also, h every message that you send is encrypted with a different key, and it has a a sub program that shreds expired messages digitally. It just runs in the background and will write gibberi over data that's sent to the trash. Uh. So So so that sounds I mean, And and this one is much more of a response, I think to all the stuff going on with the n s A and people's

increasing privacy concerns. Yeah, speaking of those concerns, Um, what kind of safety measures are in place for these apps? I mean, so people are using them with the understanding that Okay, this image or whatever that I send on Snapchat. It's really going away. It's going to self destruct mission impossible style. Yeah, and it will never ever be seen again.

It's totally safe. Is that correct? Not at all? Okay? So, so first of all, there are several problems with the concept that anything is ever totally safe, because if you're sitting there with with a picture that you have just received from someone. Okay, so let's let's imagine a scenario like I I send you a picture of me standing across us the line in the museum that says do not cross this line. Yes, and you send it via vias a Snapchat or poke. Um, and you set the

message to self destruct within ten seconds. So I could still look at that on my phone and take my handy separate camera and take a picture of that picture on my phone and send it to the museum guards. Yes, and they would kill me. They would kill you. They probably wouldn't kill you. I don't think that most museums do. That would be horrible. Okay, So you can use a phone. Could you use just a regular old screen grab? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,

you can. Um. Well, okay, in the case of Snapchat and poke, you can um and you will be Joe. You having sent me that picture. If I took a screen grab of it, you would be alerted to the fact that I had done so, so I'd get a message saying your data is not secure. Yeah, this person just totally screwed you over. Um, maybe reevaluate your friendship with this person, but that doesn't fix the problem that

you took a screenshot and now that exists. Right, So this is based on the trust of your friends, uh, which you know see above reads some of the examples that we gave earlier. Your friends can't always be trusted as much as you want to believe that thing. I'm honestly not sure how Wicker deals with that situation, so

I can't report on that specifically. Um okay, even if even if your friends are on the up and up and they don't, you know, take any photos or screen grabs, the fact that you are sending this image through servers and it's being bounced around via cellular towers means that that that data can be plucked out during that transfer, for example, by the n S A. UM, you know, anything that's going through the pipes is hypothetically up for grabs. If someone is really excited about trying to grab it.

So there's that. Okay, but at least assuming the people who are using this are on the up and up and uh, you're not being spied on, it really will self destruct your image, right, So I send you the incriminating museum photo. That's that's definitely actually going away, right, well not quite. Uh, it depends. Uh. Like I said with with Wicker, Wicker has that has that app running in the background that will garble all of your deleted data.

So so Wicker is cool for that, but something like Snapchat or Poke UM there was back at def Con, which is a largely white hat hacker convention, um a company. One company presented these these interesting results of hack attempts on Poke, Snapchat, and Wicker and found that they could pull some data from all but Wicker UM, and they found out that the way that your media is being handled,

it's not necessarily deleted. In many cases, it's just marked with extensions and kind of database notes that tell your os to treat the media like it no longer exists. So so that photo that so that photo is still on my phone and it's still on your phone. Are our systems are just being told to ignore it. It's like you have a polaroid of this, but you've put a sticky note over the front of it saying don't look at this. Right, Basically, that is the digital Yes,

that is what's going on there. How about encryption. Encryption is good, y'all. I recommend doing it. I mean, that's that's that's kind of the moral of the story here, really, Um, is that things that are encrypted are going to you know, encryptions can be broken, but um, that is the safe way to transmit stuff that you don't want other people to see. Yeah. I hate to say it, but I think the message for the future is really what your

dad said. I mean, it's like, don't do anything on the internet that you wouldn't be comfortable standing in front of an audience and doing. And that's the sad fact. Yeah, but but if you if you would be upset about your grandmother seeing it, or if you would be upset about your boss seeing it, then then really the best thing to do is to not do it at all. And I know that that's not the fun answer, but

you know it's it's not it's not unreasonable. I don't think being kind of an old person I'm I'm not sure if if that's the you know, is that not fun or is that just common sense? Uh? Maybe the moral of the story is that in the future, grandmothers are just going to have to accommodate their their expectations of their precious grandchildren to include a lot more swearing

and and stuff like that. Uh. And that maybe in the incredible future UM, we will be all of our bosses and that we also we therefore won't care so much about all the terrible things that our employees say. Maybe I don't think that that's actually a beautiful future at all. I think I think that really we should just behave ourselves online. But hey, guys, if you have any completely insecure messages that you would like to send to us um for public consumption, behave yourselves and trip

on over to fw thinking dot com. Um. Uh. That is where you can find links to all of our social media sites and also podcasts, videos, blog posts, all sorts of non ephemeral media and uh if you do want to check out those social media sites independently, we are on both Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. Our handle there is FW thinking And we'll talk to you guys

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