About the power of Big Tech and the importance of privacy | Meredith Whittaker | Buitenhof

I'm really happy to be here. Thank you.

Well, I think it shows that the Netherlands are a country of very sensible people who like cool things. Signal is like WhatsApp in some ways. WhatsApp uses our encryption protocol to encrypt a small portion of their data, the messages that you send on their platform. But Signal is much more private and secure than WhatsApp. And in fact, it is the only large-scale messaging platform that exists in the world that provides the level of security and privacy that we do. And we do that in a way that is open source, which means that you can actually look at our code. You can verify that what I'm saying is actually what is happening when you use Signal, which we believe should be the standard for core infrastructure that serves such an incredibly important social purpose like communication.

Well, look, we see the numbers in the Netherlands going up and up. It's one of our top five countries and, you know, a much smaller population than a country like the US. We saw over 200% growth in the last year in the Netherlands and it looks like over one in five people in the Netherlands now use Signal. So, we're really optimistic that people understand the differences and simply want the cooler, safer, classier option. But of course, network effects govern communication networks. People ultimately don't want to be using an app, whether it's, you know, any of them. They want to be talking to their friends. They want to be invited to the party. They want to get the joke in the group text. And so, it takes a while to bring everyone, you know, your uncle, your dad, your cousin over from whatever platform they're using to the new platform. And this is, you know, this is one of the reasons that there is such a significant first-mover advantage in the platform space, in the communication network space. There is, you know, a reason why communication networks, whether it be the telephone or the telegraph, have been traditionally regulated as state-managed monopolies because there's an understanding of the stickiness of the monopolistic form of these types of platforms. And so, you know, that gets into a little bit of the history, but ultimately, the network effect is sticky and shifting over to a new communication platform isn't simply a matter of me choosing to switch. If I'm there alone, I can't talk to anyone. It means everyone has to join at once. And again, that's why we're really happy to see what's happening in the Netherlands, that, you know, so many people all at once recognized, 'Hey, Signal is just a much safer, better option,' and made the switch.

Well, I would say what I've said to other people in the past, which is I think that might feel true on a very abstract level, but what would you be willing to do to prevent me publishing a database of every single text message you've sent, every single flirty emoji you've sent to an Instagram model, every single angry message you sent, or every single bad word you said about your boss or your friends, all in a database that everyone you know can search, from your co-workers to your family to your mother-in-law to your friend group to everyone, right? And I think when you put it in those terms, it gets down to the root of it and people recognize just how essential privacy is to the ability to have a full life, to have various relationships that differ between person and person, to think out loud, to challenge the status quo, to work through ideas, to off-gas and vent and say things you didn't really mean in a context where people will be understanding. All of that requires privacy. And this is why it's a fundamental human right, not a nice-to-have, not something we tack onto the edge of our infrastructures.