an Aiyiyi week in privacy with Ralph and K

Welcome to the Serious Privacy podcast, where Ralph O'Brien and Dr. K Royal, while Paul Breitbarth is out, discuss some reent events, namely graduation speakers, boos, and AI.

If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us!

From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.

Transcript

Tim 0:04

You're listening to the award-winning Serious Privacy Podcast sponsored by Trust Arc. Please welcome your hosts, Paul Breitbart, Ralph O'Brien, and Dr. K Royal.

Ralph 0:17

Hello, and welcome to the latest Sirious Privacy Podcast. Today we're going to dive into one of the biggest questions of our time. How artificial intelligence or AI is changing the world of work. From automation, productivity, creativity, job security. The world of yesterday meets the world of tomorrow, but what place is there for humans in it? I think it's already reshaping industries faster than many people expected. So let's explore those opportunities, challenges, and what humans still do best in the age of AI. Last week, K was out, and this week Paul's out.

K 0:57

Next week we're kicking you out.

Ralph 0:59

It's about time. So it falls to me to say, My name is Ralph O'Brien.

K 1:04

And I'm K Royal, and welcome to Serious Privacy. So the good thing is this is a family effort, right? My husband does the voiceovers beginning and end. Your daughter does the editing in between. Paul's dog likes to join us and give us inspiration as we go through. My dogs generally make themselves known. I show my little mascot, which is a pig, which I'm not done yet. She turned out a lot brighter pink than she was supposed to be, so I may try bleaching her and turning her purple or green. I will explain about the pig. I will explain about the pig, but first the unexpected question. If spiders were playing tiny guitars, would that be make you more or less afraid of them?

Ralph 1:54

That's another odd one. Well going for random this year, I like it. Spiders with tiny guitars. I don't have a hugest fear of spiders in the first place. And my kryptonite is geese.

K 2:08

Oh my god, he hates Canadian geese. I don't know if you call them Canadian geese where you are, but he hates them. That's why I'm calping lower so he doesn't hear me.

Ralph 2:17

I was chased by them when I was a kid, so it's uh it's a uh it is a struggle. We're talking about my mum, my daughter. We actually dropped her off but the other day when she was doing some political canvassing and uh there was a uh flock of geese by the river, and I urged her to get into the car, but she wouldn't do it.

K 2:33

That was my husband. He was chased by him. He absolutely teetally hates geese, Canadian geese, but I don't guess we really have any other geese.

Ralph 2:41

Well, that's true.

K 2:42

I don't know. Importing from Canada seems to be a good thing nowadays. So let me quickly go back to the pig, and I'll actually take a picture of the pig and show her. So my policy at work is the data protection and information governance policy, D P I G. So from the moment I published it and the first time it was abbreviated, my team started calling it the data pig. So you know me, I like compliance and law to be fun. So I am rolling out a pig as the mascot. Now I was able to actually find an old Miss Piggy flippet pig.

Ralph 3:23

I was going to ask because she's not those eyes.

K 3:26

But I don't want her to be Miss Piggy. So I scalped her blonde hair and we found her this awesome little Victorian curly wrinkly hair, but I also wanted to change her color and make her a little bit more pink, and now she is fuchsia.

Ralph 3:41

That's very pink.

K 3:42

She's fuchsia. So now I'm wondering, I'll try it first, but maybe if I put some light blue dye on the back and where nobody will ever see the back and see if it turns for a nice purple color, that might be doable. Or I can picture and make her green, like the big green eyes that are usually in my office.

Ralph 4:03

Pink and blue are very on brand for serious literacy, to be fair.

K 4:06

But I don't think this works anymore because the red doesn't really go with the pink, right? But it does oddly look cute though, doesn't it?

Ralph 4:15

We'll have to post up a picture of the pig with the podcast this week.

K 4:19

Exactly. Y'all y'all got and then I got a name or two. Her name can't be piggy. And it could be a boy. It doesn't have to be a girl. It could be a boy. It could be non-binary too. So maybe I need a non-binary name like Ashley.

Ralph 4:33

I I I would go with that.

K 4:35

I actually grew up with a girl named Doug. Maybe her name is Doug.

Ralph 4:39

I've never heard of a girl named Doug before. That's interesting.

K 4:42

Had a girl named Doug. It was Douglas, a girl named Doug. Most people have no idea if I'm male or female if all they see is my name, right?

Ralph 4:50

Yeah, that's true.

K 4:51

And now that I'm not a Ms. or a Mrs., I am a doctor, they really have no idea if I'm male or female till of course they meet me. So what should we talk about this week? A lot of changes in jobs and AI. So why don't I let you tell us about the Google guy that spoke at a graduation commencement? I think most of y'all have probably heard this yet, but I'd like that one to be the kickoff one because I think we have a lot to go from there.

Ralph 5:19

It is interesting because uh we're talking about AI, and uh by the way, I've always said data protection is a bit of a pig to handle. Soroughly support the pick. But uh yeah, this is former Google, former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, uh, who was doing uh sort of a commencement graduation ceremony address. And really interestingly, he talked about saying urging the graduates involved to talk about how they're going to shape the AI world, and he talked about AI being the next industrial revolution, and was basically booed off stage.

K 5:58

Holding up sides, booing him like crazy.

Ralph 6:02

Yeah. His response wasn't great. He said, Deal with it, it's here, it's a tool, which I don't think went down too well. And also, we've seen uh we've seen others. Scott Borshetter, the CEO of Big Machine Records, again doing a Tennessee State University commencement, also met with Jeers. And so it's really interesting.

K 6:22

Steve Wassiak did one, but they cheered him because he said they actually have actual intelligence and they love it. Now, Eric Smith spoke at the University of Arizona's graduation and booed. I was happy to hear that. I love AI. I think AI is going a great place, but I do think there needs to be rules around it. It can't just grow and multiply like bunnies in the dark. It actually needs some rules around it. Maybe we need to spay or neuter a little bit of AI out there. But uh Harrison Ford spoke at the Arizona State University uh commencement, and oh my God, I'm not even sure if he mentioned AI. Nobody cared if he mentioned AI. His entire speech was you can dream it, you can be it, you can do it, go out. Whether you change the world or you change the world for one person, just go and do and be you. And I actually played it on YouTube because you couldn't get but little snippets here and there. But oh my gosh, wasn't that amazing? But then Pope Leo says humanity needs to disarm AI before it's too late. And as y'all may or may not know, Pope Leo is an American. Is still an American?

Ralph 7:35

I think he's an American. He spent all of his life in Peru. I think the Peruvians claim Pope Leo as well.

K 7:41

But now that he's the Pope, his home is the Vatican, does that mean he has Vatican citizenship?

Ralph 7:47

I'm uncertain, but I should imagine so.

K 7:50

There is someone I just came across not too long ago that introduced herself as a Vaticanist. She's an investigative journalist and is a Vaticanist, which means she specializes in the Vatican. I'm not even sure if I'm saying it right. And I'm like, oh my God, I need to talk to you because I want to know what the Vatican does with data protection. Not everybody who works there lives in the Vatican. They pull their people from the countries surrounding it that work there, and then they go back to their homes. Don't they have to follow GDPR or whatever the local I've never really gotten a good answer for that.

Ralph 8:27

I don't think Vatican City, and correct me if I'm wrong here, someone will post and tell me that I'm wrong here, I'm sure, but Vatican City is certainly not an EU member state, and therefore No, it's not. And that and therefore probably has has uh the uh its own ecclesiastical law rather than anything else.

K 8:45

Aaron Powell It has published, I believe I saw a few years ago, its first privacy rules, but are they an international organization, so therefore they are not subject to GDPR? That's been an argument that's been made. I guess I can get co-pilot or someone to tell me. But just because it's not an EU member state does not mean that the GDPR does not apply unless they're an international organization like the Red Cross or something like that, in which they would be exempt. Or no, they're not are they exempt or they're just exempt from the cross-border transfer rules?

Ralph 9:20

I would say that uh certainly a bit like Switzerland being middle of the EU, that they will have probably passed uh existing law to harmonize with just to just for the transports.

K 9:30

And I don't think the Vatican has done that.

Ralph 9:32

I've also just been passed uh some messages from my roving researcher in the background who has told me that Vatican citizenship is granted exclusively to persons who perform specific duties to the Holy See or State Administration of the Vatican. So I'm assuming that includes the Pope.

K 9:49

That would include the Pope, which is pretty cool. So does that mean he's got three citizens? Can you hand tri-citizen?

Ralph 9:56

Yeah, when I was growing up, I actually dated a young lady who was uh resident of Hong Kong but was an Indian national and because of her Hong Kong citizenship also gained British citizenship. Yet she had three passports.

K 10:10

Oh, that does make sense. Okay, back to the AI. So we're hearing a lot of noise about commencement speakers and AI and people getting booed, but we're also hearing noise around people losing their jobs.

Ralph 10:26

Yeah.

K 10:26

Facebook or Mana just laid off like what, 8,000? And then I ended sort of made a promise not to lay off any others the rest of the year.

Ralph 10:35

Yeah, so it's really interesting essentially what AI means. And I just I actually I'm starting to struggle with the term AI because it's used to mean generative AI, machine learning, agentic AI. AI is just this umbrella term for meaning using machines more and therefore using humans less. And so obviously, management really interested in bringing in AI because of cost savings because people cost money, right? People need healthcare, people need pensions, whereas computerization doesn't. There's also another one, a little bit closer to home. I saw reported in Globes this week that one of the large data protection and privacy technology providers, Big ID, who are probably best known for a scanning tool that will tell you where your unstructured data is, have laid off 150 members of staff because AI forced them to do it, apparently. Now, I actually have a little bit of a problem with that terminology. The AI doesn't force the Israeli company to lay off people. That's got to be a management decision somewhere, right?

K 11:39

Yeah. I just pulled up a story asking about our tech companies laying off people due to AI, because I don't follow all these stories or news or anything, but it said, yeah, in 2025 and early 26, and I'm getting this just from a search. I don't know who this thing is. It's probably AI telling me this. AI-driven layoffs have continued across tech and other industries. Over 100,000 employees were impacted by AI specifically related layoffs in 2025, with uh more than 22,000 affected in 2026 so far, such as Accenture, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, Dell, and Citigroup. Now, I don't know what people have been laid off, but it says in reducing staff, particularly in corporate, non-client-facing or administrative roles. Now, I understand administrative because what do they do? They summarize documents, they make your calendars, yeah. They do a hell of a lot more than that. I'm not being really facetious here. But a lot of their main tasks probably couldn't be taken over with AI, right? But it seems to me it would be more tech people that would be impacted, right? Or am I just wrong here?

Ralph 12:59

No, I I don't think you are, and I do think that's the direction of travel. But it's not a question of whether you can replace someone's AI. The question is whether you should replace someone with AI. I personally think this is going to be extremely bad for the economy because the more people that are out of work the less less people that are out there spending, and the more people that will struggle. And actually, I've seen a lot of people online because our community on LinkedIn is data protection, product safety. And I've actually started to see those posts come in LinkedIn. I was let go from Meta Group today. And when you look at their titles, they're in privacy, data protection, product safety, which makes me concerned. And I think this goes back to these people at the graduation address because the students, you'd actually think that students should be looking to adopt new technology and be early adopters and go into it and thinking about how to make their careers utilizing the new tech. But actually, they're seeing it as an existential threat, right? They're seeing it as something that's kind of prevent them from getting jobs or making jobs harder to find rather than as a useful tool. They'll be looking at it. There's a survey that I'm looking at here from the Pew Research Center. And again, this is US. Half of all American adults, over half of all American adults, are more concerned than excited about the increasing use of AI, whereas 10% are more excited than concerned.

K 14:24

Wow. And I guess I never really thought about that early on. I knew that there were people who are worried about losing their jobs for AI, but then there's also jobs always open at companies. Why aren't they reallocating workforce resources to other open roles? Maybe they have to train them differently. Maybe they need to do a three or six month training job for someone, but it seems like the ones that are losing people due to AI, and I hope to God, it's not going to be me. Why aren't they reinvesting in their workforce? So it seems to me like they're just lacking a loyalty there, or are they really just looking at the dollars and cents and going, these positions are eliminated. We don't need them. They say they're mainly entry-level positions, a lot of finance-related positions. Uh, what else did I see? Uh logistics, consulting, media, retail, and manufacturing manufacturing roles in there, which I guess you could, because I remember the scare years ago, robots. Robots are taking over the world. We're going to lose our jobs for robots, which you mainly saw in a manufacturing sense. And a lot of people did lose their jobs. But then they retrained for other jobs. Is AI going to impact so many jobs that we really don't have a market to be able to retrain and reabsorb people? Or is it just going to self-correct so far, we're going to go the other direction?

Ralph 15:51

Yeah. Technology will certainly polarize and unsettle people. And I think I'm actually seeing some of that myself. There is a conversation about why would you get in a consultant when you could look it up on AI if the knowledge is there to be found and being ripped off other people on the internet, why would you turn to human knowledge? Of course, human knowledge comes with context and experience and all of that kind of good stuff. So I'm not going to say that I don't think that I've noticed a little bit of a fall-off in consulting myself. So no wonder whether smaller organizations, rather than turning to outside consultancy for assistance, they'll just press buttons on ChatGPT and try and get a sort of a knowledge patch that way.

K 16:35

I was just talking to a friend that said that their company or one of their vendors or clients or someone had an incident and it only impacted two people. And they plugged it into a technology using an AI, and it told them they needed to notify the Office for Civil Rights because it was PHI, and therefore it was a HIPAA breach. It was not PHI, it was not covered by HIPAA, and it did not trigger any breach notification laws, much less federal ones versus state ones, which we all know we have a whole bunch of those. And they asked the person, why are you advocating that we need to make a public report to the Department of Health and Human Services through the Office for Civil Rights for HIPAA PHI breach when there was no HIPAA data and there was no PHI? There's nothing that resembles it. There was no medical data. This was not related to anything. Persons like the technology told me to.

Ralph 17:32

Yeah, I think I've got some interesting sort of thoughts about the risks there, let alone the environmental impact, and let alone the fact that it's built for the normal distribution curve. It's a probability engine. Therefore, you will find that the marginalized and the disenfranchised at either end of the spectrum are not well represented, not well catered for. It'll deal with the primary use cases and won't be able to deal with the exceptions as well. Trying to get through to human, I found personally really frustrating. And I've got a bit of a personal story here in that I actually was asked to do some consulting for a company the other week where a company in California who wanted some uh uh European data protection advice. They asked me to submit some details on an online form, which I did, and then it would say stage two, it wanted me to go to an interview. I clicked on the interview button, and I had a AI adatar who asked me what I was interviewing for, and I typed it in. It asked me what I was interviewing for, and I typed it in. And then it said, okay, I'm going to go away on the internet, find out some information about that, and then come back and ask you some interview questions. At which point I said, Can I be interviewed by a human, please? And it wouldn't let me. It terminated the procedure right there. Which is interesting as a European with your Article 22 rights to not be subject solely to an automated decision. So yeah, I do wonder if you're not willing to submit to an AI interview, which I found, I've got to say, a little bit reductive, perhaps. Perhaps because they didn't have the in-house expertise to be able to do it. I don't know.

K 19:06

But seems like an interesting choice.

Ralph 19:08

Yeah, I found the whole thing very impersonal. I've heard tales also from the recruitment areas where they're using AI to recruit people and the people having to use AI to write their CVs so the other AI will approve them.

K 19:23

Right. And I think I saw somewhere that there were employers putting out notices saying that if you're applying through AI, we will know and you will not be considered.

Ralph 19:37

Yeah, I've seen a little bit of that interesting one in the vendor market as well. They're vendors telling their suppliers you can't use AI, but then using it themselves.

K 19:45

But that also aligns with uh the AI laws that we're seeing change. So I don't know. I think I've made a remark to this before, but for the first time in any history, I can recollect Europe is back down off a regulation. Slow down. So the EU AI Act, they didn't back down off all of it, uh, but mainly the high risk part and the definitions and the part that would apply to companies doing high-risk AI. They're saying it's deferred, but I think they're deferring until they can revise it. I've never known Europe to do that.

Ralph 20:20

Yeah, we've seen the timescales being put back. I wonder how much high pressure lobbying is going on behind the scenes here. But we are seeing the timescales put back slightly, which, as you're right, is unusual for the EU. Normally normally it's the US where we see the timescale slipping. So it is a first with the EU to see that sort of timescale being pushed back the way it is. Perhaps not a thirst. We've seen things like the e-privacy regulation that never emerged, actually. Yeah, digital omnibus took longer than it's finally just dumped it and said, yeah, we give up.

K 20:50

We're not doing it. But reminds me, back in the days of GDPR, that is now 10 or 8 years old, whichever way you count it. Back when we were helping companies spin up their GDPR programs, the one thing I kept hearing from companies here in the U.S., usually their CFOs, is they're just gonna defer it, right? They're just going to defer it. They're just going to delay it. They're just going to not enforce it. I'm like, no, Europe isn't the U.S. If they pass the law, they pass the law. They mean what they mean, they say what they say, they do what they do. No, they're not just gonna delay this from pressure from the companies that don't think they could do it. Well and behold, 10 years later, they are doing it. They're backing off. It surprised me. I have to say I was kind of glad, but it did, it surprised the heck out of me. And then Colorado backed off.

Ralph 21:39

Well, this is the Colorado law that was due to pass, um, was it last week?

K 21:44

Yeah, they wholesale replaced all the regulations. It's not that they threw out everything, but they completely overhauled their AI legal framework. They didn't just amend it, they basically took the whole thing and went out the door. It's much narrower. It's based on disclosure and rights rights. And they're adopting the same wording that California is using, ADMT, automated decision making technology. And that's where I was going with the conversation before is the definition of AI. Seems to be growing and growing because AI has been around for a long time. And now this very broad definition of AI, if you tell a company they can't do it, not necessarily my company, defer that. But if you tell a company they can't do something based on the definition of AI, we've probably been doing that thing 30 or 40 years. AI has been around for a long time. And now all of a sudden we're up in arms over it and we're throwing laws out, and the companies can't comply with the laws, so we're reposing them.

Ralph 22:50

Yeah. Funnily enough, there was a report issued here in the UK yesterday about what they call the neat generation, N-E-E-T. That's young people who are neat, not in education, employment, or training, not in education, employment, or training.

K 23:09

That's pretty neat.

Ralph 23:10

They say that's a that that's a growing segment of the market with one in six out of work, education, or training going on the highest level for more than 12 years. And they reckon it's not that people are not trying or snowflakes or whatever the current sort of disparaging word is. But they're saying a lost generation of young adults are a perfect storm of challenges, whereas rejection after submitting dozens and dozens of applications online, it's not that they're work shy work shy, snowflakes or soft, but it seems that the opportunities are shrinking. And when you get dozens and dozens of online rejections without human contact, that that doesn't do a lot to actually improve your self-esteem or morale or anything like that.

K 23:55

I'm hearing the same thing from people that are trained, from other privacy professionals that I've known over the years. Either they've lost their job or whatever, or they're just looking for a new job because they're unhappy. They're applying for job after job, and people that I personally know are quite highly qualified and they meet the requirements of the job. They're getting nothing. They're getting a rejection the next day, which tells you it's automatic.

unknown 24:21

Right?

Ralph 24:22

And that's that to me means the less jobs there are available, the less people there are contributing to the economy. One of the problems I've got with AI as well is this sort of stagnation of the ability to think as well. If we're used to looking things up and getting instant answers when you don't have to work for knowledge or commit the knowledge to your brain, there is almost this almost stagnation in the ability to critically think and research and work through problems. Instead, you just take on face value what's presented in front of you. And we all know that can lead to the thing.

K 24:52

Yeah, like the incident example I gave a little while ago. Didn't even think about it critically, just took what the technology told it and didn't even think of even checking it, didn't even think to look up the laws to see if it was a thing. But uh Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe it is our technology, and I don't like making generalizations at all, but maybe uh it is the technology age. We've said this is coming. People quit thinking for themselves. I don't believe that the newest generation has no idea of privacy. I think they do have an idea of privacy. They're just deciding it's not as important to them in certain contexts as others are.

Ralph 25:32

So they are they even presented with a choice?

unknown 25:34

Yeah.

Ralph 25:35

I've had situations where I've pulled up to park and you can't do it unless you have the app, right? You can't do it unless you do it online. There isn't the person sitting in the little booth that you give a pound or a dollar to No, or can ask anything.

K 25:51

Oh, I pulled in here by mistake, now I see your hourly rate. I can't do it. Can you open the gate and let me in and out? Because I can't back up into traffic.

Ralph 25:59

Yeah, an auto plate or automatic number plate recognition will fine you for that, whereas the person will just let you turn around and go, right? Yeah. There is a sort of a lovely quality to be able to speak to a human, which seems to be rarer and rarer these days. I had it actually again looking at my kids trying to get them registered in in uh doctor surgery. You know, go to the NHS app. Go to the GP's website.

K 26:25

You're like, I don't want your stinking NHS app.

Ralph 26:28

Yeah, register on the GP's website. Oh, oh, and then there's an AI chatbot to guide you through it. And we got stuck in an AI chatbot loop.

K 26:36

AI chatbots. I hate them. Okay, I've got to give this. So the AI chatbots, I don't know that this is happening anywhere else in the world, but here in the US, AI chat bots are being regulated. One, they're being enforced against under the wiretap law.

Ralph 26:52

Yeah.

K 26:53

Because some states are a one-party consent, some states are an all-party consent. So as long as one party consents, because all chats are recorded, y'all know this. They keep the transcripts they have and whatever. So that's recording. But they're saying that the only person that can give consent is the actual person doing the chat. So that's a one person consenting for those, is fine. But if it's an all-party state, that the AI is not capable of consenting for a company.

Ralph 27:27

So about a genetic AI or just a chatbot?

K 27:31

Just a chatbot. It's not capable under the law of consenting for the company in an all-party record state. So they're enforcing this under now. We're getting laws passed that chatbots are not allowed to represent, not I guess represent is a bad word here because they but they're not allowed to pretend that they are lawyers, doctors, or financial or therapists. Lawyers, doctors, or therapists, or I believe financial accountants are the ones that I saw too. Why do you need a law that says a chatbot can't do that?

Ralph 28:08

Yeah. Human empathy and uh human cognition and talking to people who understand people, uh, it has got to be better for you than some sort of AI therapist or AI companionship app, which I'll put in inverted comments. Or uh yeah, like it was quite funny. Once we'd gone through the, we'd exhausted the AI chat, but we then tried the phone. Uh the phone spent 25 minutes telling us why we should use the internet and the app.

K 28:35

Oh my God, right? It's like if I wanted to go use your app online, I'd go do it. No, I do not want you to text me a link to that app.

Ralph 28:42

Yeah. And then eventually we actually went in physically to the doctor's surgery. It's for the lady who was most helpful, I've got to say. The lady who was most helpful. And we got it done in half the time that we did sitting on the phone or on the internet. Or it's so it was really interesting.

K 28:57

Well, you know, the phone, the telephony recording things don't do well with southern accents, right? It just doesn't. It doesn't recognize what we say, no matter how smart they get. But there's a new feature now that they call a drop-in or a butt-in, barge in, barge in. It's called a barge-in feature that if it starts giving you this long spill, you can interrupt it and say, operator, or I don't want to do this, whatever. If it does not recognize your talking, you're usually going to hang up on it, right? So the barge in feature is critical when doing these AI telephony kind of things because people don't want to listen to 15 minutes of talking. They want to go, operator.

Ralph 29:39

Yeah.

K 29:40

Operator, help me. And then they get mad and they start yelling, and they're yelling at the phone with the stupid recording, and yes.

Ralph 29:48

I am the first person to ask for the uh for the human exit ramp, and that needs to exist in all automated transactions to deal with fringe cases, uh nothing else. So before we uh I'm looking at the time here, but we should actually move on from the topic and talk about a couple of things that happened this week before we finish.

K 30:07

Oh, why bother?

Ralph 30:08

I think one of my favorite things that came out of uh actually the EU AI Act was actually the way they look at it as a product safety thing. Um actually, if you're gonna build a product, don't hurt people. And I think what's really interesting.

K 30:21

Seems like basic human.

Ralph 30:23

Yeah, that's the basic human thing to do, isn't it? If you build a product, make sure it serves humanity, not takes away from it, right? And that's what we talk about in data protection is that use data, just don't hurt people, right? So what's really interesting is looking, in fact, sometimes wider at other laws. And I think and uh for that matter, the EU has issued uh a massive penalty to uh Timu, T E N U.

K 30:43

Now yes.

Ralph 30:45

Yeah. You might know Timu is a sort of a low-cost uh provider of uh things from China, essentially.

K 30:52

And if you install it, it will tell you if you order $100 worth, we'll give you $100 free. Here's your seven free items, but you only get one free item every time you spend one of your $50. So you're stuck in this ever, never-ending cycle of, oh, I can get free stuff. Oh, wait, I have to spend this money in 15 minutes. Oh, I can spend this money in 15 minutes. Look at this to get free. Oh, and they're giving me $100 if I could spend another $50 in two minutes.

Ralph 31:18

I've resisted the urge because those pressure-based sales tactics and I wonder when something's cheap, there's always a catch, right? There's always a reason why it's not.

K 31:26

I'd gotten called twice. We just got in a box of things the other day and they there were miniature penguins. And my husband's like, why do we have a box of 100 penguins? I'm like, I don't know. He's like, Did you install TMU again?

Ralph 31:39

Yeah, fair enough. So this is under the Digital Markets Act. And Digital Markets Act really concentrates on online platforms. And this is really for illegal products, really. I questioned whether to even bring it up. But this is, of course, an online marketplace, of course, which kind of does fall within our wheelhouse here. Non-compliant products, baby toys, small electronics that don't meet the right standards. Uh, and that's a hundred million. Now, of course, whether Teneri will pay it or Submit itself to the jurisdiction? Yeah, there is that as well, of course. But uh Digital Markets Act has got the same sort of extraterritorial extent as the GDPR, so so we'll see.

K 32:19

It's nice to see something happening in these predatory shopping games, markets. I don't know what you mean, schemes. Schemes is a good word. It's a predatory shopping scheme. And it's not the best of us in.

Ralph 32:35

And that follows the 120 million euro on Twitter as well, these very large social media platforms. So it's really interesting.

K 32:42

I haven't been on Twitter since it became X.

Ralph 32:45

No, me neither. Me neither, funny enough. And you can follow us on Blue Sky, I should probably add on the end of this as well. So come and find us on Serious Privacy or on Blue Sky. Yeah, I think we've abandoned X over some of those uh concerns, which I'm sure we've talked about before on the on the podcast. Any news on your side before we wrap up, K?

K 33:04

Nothing fantastically earth-shattering other than AI laws being backed down off, and California's gonna be a front runner. Just keep watching it.

Ralph 33:13

We'll keep watching. I think on that point, on the point, keep watching, watch this space. Uh thoughts go to Paul, who isn't here this week, of course, but uh hopefully he'll be he'll rejoin us for the next week. Must be my week off at some point.

K 33:26

It's gotta be your week off at some point, right? Faye doesn't get a week off. Sorry, Faye.

Tim 33:31

Until then, it's goodbye from me.

K 33:33

Well.

Tim 33:34

Now that was serious privacy. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. You can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Blue Sky as Serious Privacy. Feel free to drop us a question or a comment. We'd love to hear from you.