A bit of background; In January, Whatsapp sent an alert for an update in its Terms of Service. This one caused a bigger stir than normal because it had a February deadline for accepting or being forced to leave the platform. Whatsapp has since moved this deadline to later, also admitting to not having used the best way to communicate this. Let’s talk about the biggest scare. Privacy. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I don’t think a lot of people understand what they actually mean when they talk about not wanting to share their information. Whatsapp has always shared information with Facebook. So if you are already using Facebook, or at least visiting their site or watching a video or two from their platform, they are already collecting data from you. So don’t even think about leaving whatsapp because of “privacy”.

This data does not include your messages, groups or calls by the way. In fact, these are encrypted by default, so even if someone hacks their server, they shouldn’t be able to read them.For Telegram, this is not the case. Their messages are not encrypted by default, unless you use secret messages. Check their Terms of Service. Signal on the other end does encrypt. Their messages are encrypted by default. In fact, the same guy behind whatsapp, Brian Acton is the same guy behind the Signal app. He left Whatsapp when he didn’t exactly agree on some privacy practises with Facebook. A story for another day. But yes, the same encryption technology that whatsapp uses, was borrowed from Signal. Signal seems to have a right approach to protecting people’s privacy, but my only concern is their sustainability for a larger audience since they are not exactly a for-profit business. In fact, they already experienced their fair share of issues due to the surge in numbers when the Whatsapp update came. They have since resolved them. But again, they don’t intend to make money so how far can they go in saving and serving this vision to a larger audience?

Also, just by the way, if you leave in Europe or the UK, most of these updates don’t affect you. You people have stronger privacy laws. Talking of Privacy again, I think it’s kind of overrated. This is what I mean. I am not saying Jack and Jill can know where I stay. I am saying where it benefits me, they may know. For example, my bank has my address because I need their services. My car insurance made an app where if I share my location data they can give me a 25% discount by just downloading their app. They monitor my driving. This makes me a better and safer driver because of their tips. Feels like a double benefit for  me. This is optional but I chose it because I think it benefits me. Also recently shops have introduced curb-side pickup due to the pandemic. If you use the Walmart app to go pick up groceries, you can drive up to the curb side, make a phone call and someone will bring your groceries. If you share your location, you can do mobile check-in, let them know when you are leaving home and they will know when you arrive and are kind of ready for you. You will get your groceries in less time because they are more ready. Again, mobile check in is optional, but if you can enjoy that 5 – 10 mins difference in convenience, all in exchange for my location data? For me that’s a small price to pay. The other side is me not sharing my name, address, credit card info, location, and having to go inside the store and do groceries by handpicking, spending more time and risking myself more to Covid? Excuse me. They can have my data.

I am not saying be careless with your data online. It’s scary out there. More websites than you think are tracking you. Apple is trying to help, hence the recent wrangle you may have seen between Apple and Facebook lately. If you use the safari browser, you may have noticed from their recent update, just how many trackers they are now automatically preventing to track you on your behalf, by default. The worst part is we hardly realise until the website or apps are really big. The recent social site Clubhouse has its own issues I already noticed but no one is talking about. It’s blowing up because Elon Musk talked about it and wanted to invite Russian president Putin to a chat on the platform. But while it’s still invite only, in order to invite someone they ask you to share your contact details. And you already see suggestions based on some contacts you haven’t invited. They are already using this data for their own good. I think there are many mul-practises out there when it comes to privacy, and whatsapp practices that you are afraid of are just a tip. And for me, not really worth switching over because for me I still benefit. Did I also mention the same data Whatsapp collects, name, platform, location, Telegram also collects and they both clearly mention that on their Terms of service. Difference is whatsapp has a bigger parent company Facebook, that they will share the data with but Telegram says they won’t share with anyone.

I am not a Big Tech boot licker. I still think Big Tech companies take some things too far sometimes. Privacy is a much bigger topic and If I have a big enough audience from this, I might put together another ‘general’ article talking about privacy for a non-techie’s perspective. In closing, it is ok to switch to Telegram or Signal if you really have to. But just know there is still a lot more out there that is leaking the same privacy you are trying to protect. Do your own reading before you commit to online services, including just using Google. For now, I’ll keep my Whatsapp and maintain my family contacts. And continue enjoying Whatsapp Status 🙂 . Does Telegram have something similar? 

But this isn’t about jeans or cereal but everything else that actually matters, which makes it worse. When I prepare my daughter for school, the few times I do, I don’t ask her, “what do you want to wear?” I ask, “do you want this or that?” Just two options. The problem isn’t really giving people choice, it’s about guided options. She would pick a cute dress any day, even with negative temperatures and a heavy snowfall just because she wants to look like a princess. Not everyone is mature enough to handle the luxury/priviledge of choice

The problem with the internet is that it gave everyone a voice. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, when everyone shares it, the undecided and uninformed become confused. This can spread really quickly as misinformation. There is something about saying or hearing things over and over again. They start to sound exactly like the truth. Read or watch The Secret.

We can’t ignore how polarized the US is at this time. “But you’re not even American, “ a friend of mine tried to tell me. “I know but they’re our main trading partner,” I tried to justify why I’m so invested. But the truth is, the whole world does care about what happens there. As I write, it’s a week after Election Day and not one person is 100% sure who will be president. If you have been following a certain side however, you may be more confident of one side. That’s just because social media is designed to feed you based on your interests. Have you heard of infinite scroll? Yes that’s it. But it goes beyond social media, any kind of information source that uses the internet, may at some point tend to lean towards a certain side, incl traditional media.

That is why Obama would say if your only source of news is social media, you are not getting a full picture. Chimamanda Ngozi would say there is always another side to the story. And Denzel would say if you don’t read the newspaper you are not informed, if you read it you are misinformed. So what do we do now? “Until the lion learns how to write every story will glorify the hunter,” Chinua Achebe. Again, is that the solution?

Twitter is trying to control the spread of misinformation by fact checking against people’s tweets. Facebook was slower to adopt, arguing we shouldn’t be the prefect or gatekeeper to determine what is true. It does make sense also. But now they do by placing a statement next to a post suggesting a better source or truth. Again, it’s still a suggestion, just a more trusted one. But it just seems to happen more for some people than others. A flaw or intentional? Again, algorithms aint perfect.

We can only try. That’s why people invented democracy. It’s an attempt to make everyone happy, but again, it’s not perfect. There is no democracy in my home. Ultimately the parents decides what car to buy or which place to live. Not even God rules by democracy. He is Sovereign. We all think we like choice. How are you doing with your thousand choices of what to watch on Netflix? How much time do you spend trying to decide vs actually watching? In fact, Netflix is trying out a ‘ cable like’ type of service in France, just because sometimes people just want to be given stuff before they have to decide. In fact, someone discovered that people don’t always know what they want until they have it. He gave you a phone with one button ( they have since removed) and a camera before you asked. His name is Steve jobs and his company became the first trillion dollar company ever. They even removed the headphone jack, and you don’t remember it. Choice is good, but guided choice is better. But who guides?

Honestly, I don’t know the solution. I can only suggest that your only source of information not be just this article, or social media. Read something else , an actual book maybe. Follow someone you don’t always agree with. Hear the other point of view and challenge your assumptions. And in your search, be kind to everyone. Everyone is fighting a harder battle.

Before the coronavirus, zoom had about 10 million active users. This number skyrocketed to over 200 million within one month, as reported by Techcruch. Clearly this was a shock which also witnessed a huge spike in their stock price. Growth is always exciting but in this case, I’m not sure if they were as ready.

It didn’t take time for this kind of growth to start attracting close scrutiny. Someone identified a security glitch that sent information from the app to Facebook, even if the user didn’t have a Facebook account. Zoom quickly apologized for that but that wasn’t before a lawsuit was filed. Facebook is the last company you want to be associated with when it comes to privacy especially after the Cambridge analytics scandal. The scandal was so bad that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg started a whole convention by saying “The Future Is Private,” a statement he himself laughed at just after saying it. Wait, but today we are talking about Zoom. And just as Elon Musk asked everyone to ‘ Delete Facebook,’ Tesla was one of the first to order its employees to stop using Zoom. The New York City’s department of education asked teachers to stop using it for distance learning, siting privacy concerns as well. The Taiwan government banned video calls from it. The Canadian government said the security aspects had not yet been assessed by the Canadian Center for Cyber Security hence approved for government communications, as reported by CBC. The most Canadian way to say its also banned.

In fact it turned out there was also evidence suggesting they had been routing some video calls via China, which some US authorities saw as a security vulnerability. So a few other organization ordered to stop using it. While these numbers may not be as much to cut back numbers from the 200 million to anything close to the usual 10 million prior, they definitely had their impact on zoom’s share price, whose value begun to drop. Again inviting another lawsuit , this time from one of the shareholders.

Again not a first for a communications app. Slack suffered the same and I was a victim here. I bought a few shares at $35 when they listed as WORK on Wall Street and started plummeting till I sold them several months later for $23. A public lawsuit was filled accusing slack for not mentioning some important information on how they run before going public. An invitation was sent to join in the public lawsuit. I couldn’t join because the threshold was way above my little losses , which by the way were not little at all. While I’m still bitter, I still believe in the company itself and still use Slack everyday. I blame Microsoft teams. Similarly, a lawsuit was filed against zoom for security detail not being too accurate. Upon admission by the company itself, their stock price fell.

In all this, we begin to question how it’s been operating before the Coronavirus pandemic. Clearly a lot needed to the ironed out. I guess it never was as visible or important enough to warrant action at that time. This is teaching us the important lesson of always building right and setting right foundations even before you are big. It is clear opportunity might knock at any time, but the question is when it knocks are you ready? Will your operations be clean enough to be able to scale high and fast and smooth. As more scrutiny comes, will you have the right reasons or good justification for your conduct as a business?

Zoom is trying hard to get out of this mess. Facebook chief security officer is reportedly joining zoom as an advisor. No one better to do this at this time. But will it be enough to curb the damage and carry the company forward? I don’t know. But probably at a personal note I probably won’t immediately stop using zoom. I still find its screen sharing smoother than google hangouts and don’t want to be using other smaller startups solutions at this time. I’ll probably not give it much permission though. For example, just my camera and mic, and not my whole folder structure. I still like its backgrounds feature, although I hear Microsoft teams will be rolling out the same soon.(if it hasn’t already)

I mean on a personal level, or as a small business, the benefits seem to outweigh the risks. But lets see how zoom handles all of this. My personal takeaway, always build structures and systems right and with growth in mind. I, for the life of me am still trying to understand how they routed some videos through servers in China “by mistake” or sent data to Facebook through their iOS app…

It wasn’t so much the virus that made it complicated, rather our unpreparedness for it. Some world leaders claimed to have it in control, until they realised they didn’t, maybe a little too late. And that was the first time I’d heard of African countries closing their borders to the US and Europe. Who would have thought. Also, the US-Canada border was only open for ‘essential travel,’ whatever that meant. Italy was on lock-down. Ontario and few other provinces joined in. Schools and daycare centers closed for at least 3 weeks. It united parents to their kids in a way that made them appreciate teachers more.

Idris Alba tested positive. The Canadian Prime Minister’s wife tested positive. They both later recovered fully. The world introduced social distancing, a concept meant to ‘flatten the curve’ and that was the first time many of us were actually learning about this. It was easy to judge leaders. Yet no one had actually been a leader in a global pandemic crisis before. Everyone seemed to be trying. The NBA, NFL, and many other sporting events or gatherings of over 100 and in some cases 50, were cancelled. Late night show hosts did their evening shows without an audience. Churches closed. Some countries introduced ‘quarantine stamps’ on the hand to force those who tested positive to stay home. The US stock market circuit breakers were triggered at least three times in March 2020. They had only ever been triggered at least once in 1997 before since they had been introduced after Black Monday in 1987. And for German Big brother show, no news wasn’t good news anymore. They had to tell them after weeks spent in isolation.

It wasn’t before long that covid-19 was trending. What better opportunity to ride on the wave. Marketing campaigns were created. Blog posts were written. Some even created Medium accounts just to ride on wave and start their writing career (no names). Every CEO wrote a ‘We care’ letter. I received emails from on-line services which I didn’t even know I had, telling me what they are doing in the crisis. I unsubscribed to most.

It was bad. Bare in mind that was long before this Global Fund for Pandemic Preparedness was birthed. That was before every world leader was on board with environment consciousness and fighting climate change. That was before the mental health conversation was a no-brainer, even in the minority communities. Well, we used to call them minorities. A lot was happening but in all, it reminded us we may be the smartest species around but we don’t have it all figured out. We may have sent men to the moon, now to Mars, or we may have built 5G that works even in our most remote hyper-tubes, but we still don’t have complete control of our destiny. We knew we had been humbled when a whole US government declared a national emergency and then a national day of prayer immediately after. A clear admission of the reality and for the need for divine intervention …