Browsing the Internet: Past, Present, and Future Of Online Privacy And Profiling with Jon Von Tet...

Thank you, Marco. It's a pleasure to be here.

I started working with the web back in 1992, and this is so early that the web almost didn't exist. So I was working at the research lab with Norwegian Telecom. I was also doing my studies actually, so I was doing a master's degree at the time. We came across the web, and we set up the entry point to Norway that would list the other servers that were there. I worked on a site which was kind of like an internet before the term existed. Then we were playing with other things, and then we decided to make the browser. This is still inside the Telecom, the research department. Part of what we did was looking at interesting technologies, and again we came across the web. We thought this was interesting. We started to make the browser after a lot of discussion, and then there was a discussion what to do with it. We negotiated a deal where we took it out of the Telecom company because they had no interest in taking it forward, so we just got the rights and we founded Opera. So that's how I started with browsers. I started coding the Opera browser in '94, and we founded the company in '95.

I think that's continuing. The first time I heard that was with PointCast, I don't know if that's '97 or something, where there was this idea that we didn't need any browsers anymore and we were just going to watch our screens and see things move. Certain things have happened in that direction, but I think a lot of people want to be able to control and select the material that they want to see, and not just be fed by some algorithm. So I think we continue to use the browser, and if anything, it continues to increase. It's a very important part of people's lives, and people spend a lot of time online, and most of that is spent in the browser.

Well, obviously my take on blockchain and Web3 is that it has nothing to do with the web, and it's basically just a scam.

It's all related to crypto, and crypto is not a solution to any problem. It's a problem in itself. I've written a blog about it, and a lot of people have reacted positively to that because I think in the industry, a lot of people are thinking the same thing. They are thinking, okay, you shouldn't be able to just go and print your own money and things like that. So I think there's generally a consensus among the people that are in the tech industry that this is not a good thing and we should not be doing this. So that's where I'm coming from. With blockchain as a technology, my feeling has always been it's a technology looking for a problem to solve, but typically most of the solutions that come include some kind of crypto, and so it's another get-rich-quick scheme. I've had discussions with so many people on this, including friends that wanted to get me involved, and I'm saddened that smart people are utilizing their brain power on something like that. So I don't like it. I don't like the term Web3. Web3 has been talked about for a really long time, but if you don't trust me, ask Tim Berners-Lee what he thinks of Web3. I think you'll find that he's in agreement with me. He's probably more polite in the words that he would use, but there's an agreement. It has nothing to do with the web. There are issues with the web, but nothing that Web3 can resolve. Web3 is basically, okay, let's take something people know, let's come with a version three of it and say that we're coming with something new and wonderful and you want to use that, and if you don't know what it is, it's because you're stupid, which is kind of the main argument that comes with crypto. So not a fan. I want to see the web move forward, and I've been working with a distributed web in a different way. We started working with that at Opera back in 2005. We were thinking about the Internet of Things, and I think that's interesting how you do that in a standardized manner. We came up with suggestions on that that we launched in 2010. So there are things around that, but I don't really see blockchain or Web3 as being any part of that. We do have a problem on the internet, and that's the idea that any user can be profiled. I think that should actually just not be allowed. We've tried to push that as well. We made a website with the Icelandic Consumer Association, and you can find it at banspying.org. There's a cat video trying to explain all of this to you, basically the concept of gathering information and how much information is being gathered on us. I think that's a problem. As long as you're on the web, it gets to be really hard to avoid getting into a profile. Now we try to do things on our side in the browser. We are not collecting information ourselves. I think that's maybe one of the most important things, is not to be collecting information ourselves and not building profiles because we think it's wrong to do so. But at the same time, we also provide things like tracker blocking and ad blocking in the browser as well. But the first step needs to be there, which is okay, you're not collecting information yourself. So those are the kind of things that I think are important. For me, I've spent basically my whole working life on the web. I came straight after school, started working on the browser more or less straight away, and I've dedicated my life to getting people online, first with Opera and then with Vivaldi. The idea that I'm getting everyone online and helping them get a great user experience online, and then they're being profiled and that information is being used to influence people in bad ways, divide us, make us hate each other, which is part of what's created through the algorithms that are in use at Facebook and the like, but also the advertisement. So those are the kind of things that we are thinking about. What we are trying to do is to build the best possible browser and try to keep people safe, but at the same time we have to realize that there are problems on the internet, and some of those problems are best solved through regulation.

Well, I have a different view of that actually, because I really think that sometimes, and we've done that before when we found that we've generated bad technology, we can turn it around. We did it with asbestos, and we can do it with the collection of information and profiling. I think realistically speaking, there's going to be plenty of data out there, so it's not really always a question of taking the data away. It's a question of what you can use it for. If I'm driving around, having traffic information is useful. That's a reasonable use of the data. But it doesn't mean that my personal driving habits can be scrutinized for marketing purposes. I don't think there's an automatic tie between those two. So it's a question of there's reasonable use of the data and there's unreasonable use of the data. I think we could get rid of all the GDPR dialogue boxes asking you, because I think it should just be a question of reasonable use and unreasonable use. In most cases, when there's a question of users making the decisions, they don't have the knowledge to make that decision, and quite often they don't really have a choice. It's like, you want this shiny thing or you don't. Even if you want this shiny thing, then you have to give up all your information. I think that's an unreasonable trade. You can just set the rules of what's reasonable to do, and it will change maybe the business model for some companies, but I think that's a reasonable thing to do. There's this narrative that the web is built on this, and that's not the truth. The last 10 years, a lot of misuse of data has been there, but before that you didn't really have personalized ads. You had contextual ads, and I think contextual ads are much more acceptable to the public. It's basically what you're used to. You go into a tech site, you'll see tech ads. You go to a fashion site, you'll see fashion ads. I think it's a fairly reasonable model that's worked for the longest time. Instead, the ads are following you based on your profile, and I think that's a lot of what people are reacting to. There's also the privacy things and what's reasonable together. I think that should be part of this. You can collect reasonable amounts of data, you can keep reasonable amounts of data, and then you have to delete it. There are rules and regulations. In some cases, you as a company will have massive amounts of data on your customers. Maybe you're keeping their email. The idea that someone would scan through your email for marketing purposes, which Google has been doing with Gmail and the like, is so unreasonable it's crazy. You don't expect your telecommunication company to listen to your calls. You don't expect someone painting your house to be making an inventory of your furniture. So why would it be reasonable that anything else that you're doing should be collected? So it needs to be regulated, and I think it will have an impact. To me, it's like if you and I are technical enough and we turn on enough tracker blocking and things like that to keep ourselves from being tracked as much as the rest of the population, then it's like being in a zombie movie. We are part of the people that are locked into the supermarket, and everyone else is outside being a zombie. I think that's a problem. We want to keep everyone safe. We want to help the people that are less technical. It shouldn't just be that because the data is there, you can take it and use it for whatever. The fact that you have the data doesn't give you the right to use it for other purposes. I've been there from the beginning. The idea that you have certain things doesn't give you the right to use it for other things. The fact that you have data on your customers, you can't give it to someone else. The problem now is, you may visit a site. There's no real problem in them having information about what you looked at on that site, as long as it's a small site. The problem is when that and every other site that you visit is then used and put into a big profile. That's where it gets ugly. Small information is maybe not so much of an issue. Again, it's a question of how you're using it and how you're doing the profiling. If the main point is that you visited a shop and next time you visit that shop they know that they would like to show you the thing that you were looking at last time, that's probably not a problem. But following you everywhere else that you go, on every site that you've been, just because you looked at a computer or something else, you'll see that computer for the next two weeks everywhere you go. Not only is it ineffective, but it's unreasonable. That's why so many people are finding that they want to have ad blockers.

I don't think it's reasonable. People have a lot of things to do, all the things on their mind. Most people are not that interested in this, and they don't want to have to deal with it. They just expect society to work in a reasonable manner. We didn't have to tell the painters that they couldn't collect information about what we had in our house. I think you're just expecting that your calls that you're having normally will not be transcoded, no one will be listening to your calls unless there's a particular reason to, unless police have a serious reason and ask for a permit. I remember there was a discussion in Norway actually. There was an interview, the spy chief in Norway was doing a talk, and he was saying, 'You're concerned about what we are collecting of your data. What you should be concerned about is what the big private companies are doing, because they're collecting a lot more than we are.' The point is, when big private companies, when big tech is collecting information and making it available for the highest bidder, they're not necessarily selling your data per se, they're just selling access to you based on that data. As a society, they end up becoming a programming machine for us. I just don't think that's reasonable. The idea that just because they've chosen a business model where they're giving things away for free, which has been the mantra for the internet from the very beginning, I don't think it's reasonable that they go free to kill the competition and then they want to basically not provide us with, again, the deal is okay once you have us, then you can do with our data whatever you want. I was at an event and they were talking about Google Maps and the like. It used to be mapping services would cost money. Then Google Maps came in, and initially the API access was free, and now it's not free anymore. They've killed a lot of the competition, which I don't really think is a good thing. I think it's better if you have a working competition. You can have multiple companies that are trying to compete in the mapping service. The same applies to email and the like. There are some really good mail companies where you pay a few bucks a year, and then you're not being tracked, and they're trying their best to keep you safe. I would recommend people to look at those services instead of just taking the free ones. But on the other hand, some people may not have a choice, and they don't have the time to think about that. Again, I really think that there should be rules and regulations that say what you can do and what you can't do. I don't think there's a way around it. The idea that big tech will do the right thing, they're not doing that. Let's be clear about that. We've just seen that they can't be trusted to make the right decisions. I think it's really unfortunate because I personally had expected more from them, because I don't think they want to create havoc or create problems. But if you look at the issues with Facebook and their algorithm and the consequences of those, and then they find, okay, algorithm makes people hate each other, maybe you should change them. Oh, we make less money. I did a little bit of a survey on Mastodon asking people what they thought, and I think 90% answered that if they made a protocol that made people hate each other, they would change it. And they haven't. It's a question of doing the right thing. I think we should expect more from companies, that they should be thinking about the consequences of what they're doing, and hopefully then they will make the right decision. But at the same time, some of them won't, so we need regulation.

Here's the point. Do you know how many users have asked us about AI? How many users? We are a very user-driven company.

I would say zero. The opposite. It isn't that they're not interested. Obviously if they want to use AI, they can go to any service that they like. They're not asking for it in the browser. They may be interested in playing with it, but there is good use of AI and there's bad use of AI. Like everything, it's a tool. We've seen massive improvements in, for example, translations, and I think that's wonderful. That's the case where we actually are using AI. We basically use ready-made models to help you with translations. We built in a translation feature, and we're continuing to improve that. We're doing that with a third party, but the servers are hosted by us, and again, we're not using the data in any way. We just build the models and then we use them. I think it's a good use of AI. There are other ways to do AI in a good way, and then there's bad ways. Part of what we've been seeing recently is the significant improvement in spam. It's a lot better written, it's written in localized language, it's a lot more to the point. I think a lot of that is coming from them utilizing new tools that are available to them, and that's really unfortunate. The companies that are competing on AI, companies like Google and Microsoft, they've proven themselves to not be trustworthy when it comes to making decisions when they feel that their companies are at risk. They're feeling that this is a game-changer in the industry, and I think in a way they're making decisions which can be unfortunate. I am following how it's going with the results. If you are asking the AI machine that is now supposed to be answering the one question with a single answer, will it give the right answer? The problem is it won't. It will make something up, and it may sound right, but that's part of the problem. Then it will probably be manipulated. Try asking why Microsoft is called the evil empire and see if you get an accurate answer to that, or tell me about embrace, extend, extinguish. You can see that it will tell you Microsoft used to be called this or they did those things, but now they have a new CEO who is walking on water. I'm pretty certain that wouldn't come up automatically. So there are question marks on this. If you're asking what two plus two is, obviously there's a simple answer and you should be able to give that answer correctly. When the answers are more complex, it gets to be more difficult. Will the answers then be the truth? Will they be correct? It's complicated. I think it's exciting on the one side, it's interesting technology, but it's also the next step in big data, and big data so far has been used for a lot of really bad stuff. More collection of data is not what we are needing, and in particular, indiscriminate use of that data.

Yeah, you need the regulation. I think in the US, that's what people want as well. It's just that a lot more people here have given up on the idea that there will be regulation, that regulation will work, that the train has gone and there is nothing you can do about it. If you were to change that, it would have massive impact on these companies. But what I've tried to say is that in the chains, when there are certain companies that just said, 'Okay, I'll use whatever data I get for whatever I want because it's all mine, mine, mine,' they made those choices, and through that they were winners and losers. If you look at the consequences where we were 10 years ago, most of the press and content on the internet was free at the time. There was very little that had gone behind paywalls. The revenue model was actually working at that time. It's very logical. If you wanted to reach a technical user, you would want to reach them on a technical site. Now you can reach them anywhere, as long as he visited that technical site, you can find them anywhere. It's expanding the scope. In the early days of the internet, you would say you are talking about a high-quality placement, you might be paying a $50 CPM, $50 per thousand views of an ad. Now, if the ad was being shown in some of these ad systems that were just showing ads wherever there was space, then you would be getting 50 cents. So 100 to one in cost, because you wanted your ads to be shown in quality locations. Now that's changed, and you have an algorithm deciding what's shown where. The change in the model is significant.

Oh, the pleasure is all mine.