I think young people, and actually everyone of all ages, have become less willing to try new things. There's definitely a huge fear of looking foolish. There's a fear of being mocked — I went through an online campaign where someone made fun of me, and it was really hard. So I think it's because of the power of social media and its algorithms that it's become very scary to put yourself out there, which is actually the only way to grow and try new things. You kind of have to take risks and take bold steps. And because we're constantly being watched, and because you never know if someone is recording you while you're trying something new.
>> I'm Jack Raines, an investor at Slow Ventures and writer of the Young Money newsletter on Substack, and on this show we discuss how the biggest trends in Silicon Valley and Wall Street affect your life and your financial portfolio. Last week, I made a bold statement when I said that I love targeted ads. One listener described me, quoting, as a "clown with a microphone." That's fair, but I still stand by my opinion. If I have to watch ads, I'd rather see ads for things I already want. But there's a difference between me giving my data to a company myself, and someone else giving my data on my behalf. And that's the focus of today's episode: how always-on devices are undermining consumer privacy. Basically, when anyone can record you at any time, what does privacy consent actually look like? And when does the convenience of the surveillance economy stop being worth the privacy we give up? Later, Kyla Scanlon will join me to talk about where we draw the line.
As I mentioned, I faced heavy criticism last week for my opinion — which some considered controversial — that I love ads and strongly support giving my data to big tech companies so they can show me better ads. The best benefit of targeted ads isn't just seeing better recommendations, but that we all benefit from many of the free or cheaper things that would have cost us much more otherwise. Let's take Uber, for example. Yes, Uber prices seem pretty steep now. I've noticed the price increases too. Uber's ad business probably keeps prices lower than they would otherwise be. Uber brings in two billion dollars a year in ad revenue, versus $25 billion in total 2025 mobility revenue — the revenue from us riding in Uber cars. So nearly 10% of rideshare revenue comes from ads. Ad revenue has a much higher profit margin than other mobility revenue, because you don't bear the cost of the driver. The marginal cost of serving one more ad in the app is essentially zero. But because Uber can make more profit from ads, it can afford to lower the cost of your ride. I like that my Uber ride to the airport is about $15 cheaper — the ride to JFK is expensive enough.
The same applies to Amazon. Marketplace Pulse published a great article in 2022 about how ads hide the fact that Amazon's retail business isn't really profitable. In 2021, Amazon's retail operations generated $6.3 billion in operating income. But if you excluded ad revenue, it would have taken a $25 billion loss in retail. Again, ads have zero or near-zero marginal cost, and most of that revenue is pure profit. In 2025, Amazon's ad revenue was about $69 billion, up 22% from the previous year. Meanwhile, Amazon's operating income excluding Amazon Web Services was $34 billion. Again, e-commerce is a low-margin, high-cost business, while ads are a high-margin, low-cost business. I get it. All those annoying Temu ads at the top of Amazon's search results can be bad sometimes — I don't want to buy a shirt or a couch from some random Chinese shipping company. Actually, I love my Crate & Barrel couch, but thanks to Temu ads, you can get that couch with much cheaper delivery. So this is the last time I'll emphasize the importance of the ad sector, but we get cheaper goods because ads support companies' ability to offer things at lower prices. I think, at least for my daily life, this is a win. I also think that if more people truly cared about their data privacy, DuckDuckGo would have more than 100 users, and Chrome wouldn't have billions of users. Anyway, let's get back to our topic. If you disagree with me, I suggest trying the internet in Europe. There's nothing worse than clicking through 27 different pop-up windows to accept cookie policies just to read one article. Europe adopts a "prior consent" culture for the internet while America adopts "opt-out," and European websites are really bad for browsing. It feels like you're loading malware while trying to avoid it. Now, there's an important caveat. I think sharing other people's data is where this line gets really blurry. We're quickly entering a world where, thanks to everything from voice recorders to smartphones and AI-powered wearables, the probability of you appearing in the background of someone's video — to become AI training data or content that ends up online — is rapidly approaching 100% at some point in your life, if it hasn't already. And I don't necessarily think this is a good thing. It was never easy to turn the world and the people around you into data for big tech companies, and this is very strange. Because I chose to share my own data, that's my problem if you don't agree with that; but I didn't choose to be in the background of a TikTok video saying, "What are men wearing in Montauk this summer?" And the video goes viral, and I'm in it, walking down the street. I was wearing a white shirt and jeans, which is very ordinary clothing for a white man in the summer, and this seems a bit strange because I had no say in it. But this is the world we live in today. We have always-on voice recorders, we have AI glasses, we have smartphones, and there are very few barriers preventing anyone from capturing audio and visual data and images of their surroundings — including many people who don't realize they're in it — and that data gets uploaded somewhere.
So, let's talk about AI glasses. The biggest players in the AI glasses race right now are the tech companies Snap, Meta, and Google. I already bought a pair of Meta glasses last May. They're here with me in the studio. So I'm a little annoyed because the battery stopped working two weeks ago, and I probably need to take them to the store. But I had a regular pair of Ray-Ban glasses, and I lost them. I was walking in SoHo in May, and a friend and I went into a Ray-Ban store, and I thought I should try them on and see if I'd like them. I also think that a world where everyone is always wearing active AI glasses isn't necessarily a better place, and there are many problems associated with this. The upside is that they're less isolating than AirPods. The glasses are really comfortable. They keep you away from excessive social media scrolling loops, and capturing is much faster than taking a picture of something with your phone and asking ChatGPT how it works. You can just ask the AI what it sees, and it's more seamless and works better, which is great. Honestly, the downside of millions of people wearing these devices all the time is that the probability of you appearing in someone's footage is now 100%, which is really annoying. There's a fear of going viral on TikTok for the wrong reasons — like appearing as a background extra or in an out-of-context video while drunk, or someone ambushing you with a street interview video. I think this "TikTokification" of society has put people in a constant state of tension; nobody wants to be attacked online, and now nobody is safe from the possibility of that happening. You don't want to have to monitor yourself 24/7. That's bad. There are also some potential legal issues. Filming in public places is legal, as is filming in businesses open to the public, except in private spaces like restrooms or changing rooms. But what you do with the footage afterward — using it commercially or for harassment — carries separate legal liability. Let's also not forget that data is now worth its weight in gold to AI labs. These labs have already trained on all the data available on the web, and now everyone is eager to get new data. And what's the best way to get new data? Well, I wear these glasses, and I record videos and take pictures. And there's a lot of new data that wasn't available to companies like Meta, Google, Snap, and others that is now available to them. What does consent mean in a world with no barriers to recording anything, by anyone, at any time? And at what point does the trade-off between privacy and efficiency become not worth it in our growing surveillance economy? Before the pandemic, the idea of recording every meeting was considered taboo at best, or disrespectful at worst. Outside of a journalist recording an official interview, the idea of showing up to a meeting with a digital dictaphone or voice recorder seemed ridiculous. I could never imagine meeting with a founder while a dictation device ran the whole time. But after putting everyone on Zoom for a few years, boom — we now consider video calls normal. And since AI is very good at transcribing words, we've gotten used to paying an analyst to take bad notes when AI can get the same notes with perfect accuracy. But we should compare what's happening in the business world with the newest forms of "rage bait" trending on social media. One of the most annoying rage-bait trends recently appearing in my Instagram feed — and I say Instagram because I avoid TikTok as a plague — is videos of people wearing Meta Ray-Ban glasses where they approach a girl and start flirting with her to get a reaction, or they mock a random person in a store, or they prank people in malls by throwing something and pretending to be a motionless mannequin. And of course, the whole thing is recorded either by them or by someone else wearing these glasses. The main purpose of creating this content is to generate engagement, which grows the user's platform, which can later be monetized through brand deals or ad revenue sharing. The problem, of course, is that this engagement comes at the expense of someone who clearly did not consent to being pranked on camera, doesn't benefit from it, and in some cases faces problems because of it — because the video goes viral and shows them in an unflattering light, ten million people see it, maybe someone recognizes them, and a chain of bad consequences follows for someone who was just living their normal daily life. Turning the world into content has, of course, been possible for a long time. In the 2020s, since the "influencer" profession has become one of the most in-demand jobs in the world, the internet stopped being a way to share your opinions with the world or your own content, and the world has now become a canvas for creating content to share with billions. It's no longer about "I'm doing interesting things, let me tell people about them." It's become "how do I go viral using the people around me?" Film everything, and it goes viral. Other people are just tools to be used for your fame. Phones removed all barriers to turning your surroundings into content. But at least with phones, you can still see someone recording you. Glasses have removed your ability to easily know whether you're being recorded. You know, people wear sunglasses or prescription glasses — are they taking a picture? I don't know. And we're on the verge of reaching a point where you just have to assume there's a very high probability that you're being recorded at some point when you're in public and everyone is wearing these things. Now you have to worry about people asking Meta AI about what kind of jacket that girl is wearing, or the song the man at the subway station is playing, or what I should order from this restaurant's menu when you see the menu written on the chalkboard — and the smart glasses start processing everything they see, and all the images and videos captured as part of that processing become AI training data for a tech company. According to Engadget, Meta has long stated that the actual content of the images captured by the glasses' cameras is not shared or used for training, but the company has allowed the use of images and videos captured while using Meta AI for this purpose. Some of this material is already being reviewed by overseas contractors in other countries, whose job is simply to label images to train the AI to improve the models. And one feels that there's a kind of privacy violation in that. This is a concern shared by many Americans. There's a survey by Security.org of 1,000 Americans showing that 72% of them are worried about being secretly recorded by wearable devices with cameras, 85% support a law requiring a visible recording indicator, and 60% don't trust manufacturers regarding video and data privacy. Two things can be true at once. AI glasses are truly great products. There are many things you can do better with glasses than with a phone, but they're also a clear means of privacy invasion. And finding the perfect balance between efficiency and privacy is really hard. Ring, the company that makes cameras and doorbells that record what happens outside your front door, ran a really bad Super Bowl ad this year where they tried to make it seem cute. Use Ring to help you find your lost dog. If you upload a photo of your lost dog to Ring, the cameras around the city will use AI to help identify the dog. And the comments section quickly described it as having George Orwell vibes, because yes, it's taken straight from the novel 1984. Big Brother can find your dog. This means the cameras can do things without you realizing it, and they're recording constantly, in a way. And that's not a good thing. Police reliance on body cameras rose sharply between 2014 and 2016 after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and then police departments across the country mandated body camera use en masse in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. The increased use of body cameras has led to stronger evidence in potential cases of police brutality, which is a good thing. And evidence from researchers in South Carolina suggests that Flock Safety cameras were associated with an 11% reduction in car thefts in their first year. That's a good thing. There are also some really bad things related to Flock Safety. The Washington Post reported that at least 50 police employees have been charged or convicted of misusing the Flock Safety camera network, with 26 of those cases involving police officers spying on their romantic partners. That's really bad. Reducing crime rates — good. Bad actors using the surveillance state to snoop on and stalk people — bad. We'll be joined by Kyla Scanlon on the show shortly. Kyla recently wrote an article titled "Surveillance Is Chic Now," where she talks about her experience buying Meta glasses, her opinion of them, how she thinks about all these strange privacy invasions, and whether we should be careful about giving our data and the data of the world around us to big tech companies. So I wanted to know her opinion on where we should draw this line. We'll be right back after a short break.
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Kyla, thank you so much for joining us. I've had a very similar experience to yours where you mentioned this thing you bought. Was it the Meta Ray-Ban or the Meta Oakley? Which glasses did you buy? The >> Adventures, yes. >> I'm curious to know your take on consent in a world where AI devices have made recording people and things and uploading them to a cloud server a non-issue.
