Assertion Partly supported
Weinberg: Google and Facebook hold a duopoly over digital advertising
“In the world, there's a duopoly in digital advertising, and it's Google and Facebook owns basically all the digital advertising on the web, which relates to all this data profiles.”
Opinion
Google and Facebook's Ad Duopoly Is Bankrupting Media Companies
“And so they're locking up all the growth in the industry, and that's what's putting out a business, things like media companies, as well as small business ad tech Players and other advertisers. No one can really compete with it.”
Assertion Supported
The New York Times Increased Revenue by Dropping Behavioral Ads in Europe
“Like after GDPR in Europe, the New York Times Decided to ditch all the behavioral advertising and put up contextual advertising only and they increased revenue.”
Assertion Supported
Google Still Makes the Majority of Its Revenue From Contextual Keyword Ads
“And if you think about it, that's really still what Google does most of the time on Google search because all the search ads are still bid on keywords, right? They're just using your search history in addition to target ads of you on YouTube and Gmail and the …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Government Surveillance Capacity Has Increased Massively Despite End-to-End Encryption
“If you look at, like, the overall information law enforcement and government has to surveil people, even with end-to-end encryption existing, it's way higher than it was 10 years ago, and way, way higher than it was 20 years ago before.”
Insight
Encryption Backdoors Built for Governments Will Inevitably Be Exploited by Adversaries
“If you enable a back door, which is what some governments are requesting it is really naive to think that that back door would only be accessed by that government who wants it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Government Surveillance Relies Mostly on Commercial Corporate Data
“Corporate surveillance has really spiked and they're actually related because government surveillance actually uses
The data you give to corporations. That's where they're getting most of the data from anyway.”
Assertion Supported
DuckDuckGo Studies Found Location-Biased Search Results for Political Queries
“We've done several studies on political terms and people in different areas are seeing completely different results when you search for things like gun control or political candidate name or something like that.”
Assertion Supported
Google Tracks 80% of the Top Million Websites; Facebook Tracks 25%
“Google's on about 80% of the top million sites and a lot of that's Google Analytics, but also, like the Google Ads and stuff like that. Facebook's on 25% and that's this Facebook pixel where it could be the Facebook login, or just sites run Facebook ads, or th…”
Insight
Companies Will Unavoidably Monetize Collectible Data Without Government Intervention
“My general proposition I've been saying for years is, if the data can be collected, and if it can be used to make profits, it's gonna be used for that by people, unless The government stops it.”
Opinion
True Tech Competition Requires Breaking Up Existing Data Monopolies
“Like if fundamentally you don't kind of break up these data monopolies in some way, then I don't think there's, I think it has reduced competition and there's no easy way for other people to compete.”
Insight
Privacy Regulation Alone Cannot Stop Big Tech's Monopolistic Practices
“Say you regulated privacy, the data monopoly piece they're already so big that they can still use their weight to do other Monopolistic practices, which would be bad for competition outside of the data monopoly piece. So you need someone else looking at those …”
Assertion Supported
One Third of Americans Have Taken Action to Reduce Digital Footprints
“And we've seen about a third of people take some actual significant action to reduce their digital footprint online in some Shape or form.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Online Privacy Action Rates Do Not Vary by Age, Income, or Politics
“It's like across all demographics, a decently similar percentage have been taking action. I don't know what exactly threads them it's not education. It's not income. It's not age. It's not political affiliation. None of the main factors that we get on like the…”
Insight
Mainstream Free Digital Services Cannot Easily Pivot to Paid Models
“On a market that is already free, it's hard to see a mainstream provider go paid on it because there's so much friction going from free to paid.”
Assertion Supported
Half of All Web Searches Now End Without a Click
“What's happened major in the last 10 years in search has been when you search, about half the time you don't click or use the actual web results.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Maintaining a Full Web Crawl Index Costs Hundreds of Millions Annually
“To crawl the web and make that deep index is probably hundreds of million dollars a year. Maybe. Shane Parrish: Just to maintain it. Gabriel Weinberg: Just to maintain it. Arguably maybe a billion.”
Assertion Supported
Desktop Search Volume Has Not Decreased Despite Mobile's Explosive Growth
“So like the rise of mobile search queries has been great in the last 10 years, but desktop search queries actually haven't decreased.”
Disclosure
DuckDuckGo Mandates Weekly Unstructured Career Advisor Meetings for All Staff
“In our company, everybody has a career advisor and there's a, they're, they have to have a one-on-one with them every week. And that's a unstructured meeting. That's the advisee it's their meeting, but it's a forcing function to get them to think about Anythin…”
Insight
Async Teams Should State Intended Actions and Proceed Absent Objections
“So what we try to say is there are a lot of other smart people in the company who may be able to do things faster, better, know the right answer. And so generally you should be coming back and validating your direction. And so the easiest way to do that is to …”
Assertion Supported
Post-Snowden Studies Showed Measurable Drops in Sensitive Wikipedia Search Queries
“Right after Snowden, there were two studies that were really interesting. One is people stopped searching terrorism related terms because presumably they feel that they might've been investigated if they searched. So the terms like Al Qaeda and stuff like that…”
Disclosure
DuckDuckGo Relies on 400 Partner Data Providers for Long-Tail Search Results
“We work with Yelp and TripAdvisor and there's literally like 400 different partners cause it goes into all the different long tail stuff.”
Disclosure
DuckDuckGo Operates With a Team of Only 65 People
“We're a small organization still. We're like, 65 people.”
