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This is good work. I love it. You made a new friend. Hello and welcome to Outside the Fox where we explore what's happening online and why it matters. I'm Kim Horcher. And I'm Steve Laven. And Steve, if someone were to give you a contract and they wanted you to sign it and what it does is it follows everything you do, everywhere you go, it analyzes that information, then it sells that information and shares it to you don't even know who, would you sign it? I would not sign it, but I think I know where you're going with this because
millions of us sign contracts like that every day except we don't do it with a pen, we do it with a click. Yes, terms and conditions are the contracts that run the internet basically. However, many of us don't actually read what we're agreeing to. In fact, one study estimated that if someone actually read every terms and service agreement that they encountered in a year, it would take hundreds of hours. Which means that companies know something important which is that the system depends on people not reading these contracts. So that begs the question, what is buried inside of these contracts that people aren't reading? It's a very good question and to answer it, I don't know, but our
guest today does. Please welcome Julia Jansen. Hi Julia, thanks for joining us. Hi, thanks for having me. Well, among the numerous accolades that Julia has received, she was actually chosen as one of Mozilla's Rise 25 honorees. So Julia, welcome. To start off, could you give us a little bit of an intro and a little bit of background on your work? Yeah, sure. So as an artist, I research the influence of technology, especially data AI and Big Tech on our society and I make physical and interactive installations or performative art to make people more aware of these very opaque and very complex systems. As you already said, like nobody wants to read the privacy policies. So I try to make these systems
more tangible for people to understand and also to understand what is at stake. For example, equality or democracy or autonomy and all these values that we very much see within our physical spaces but not always online. So as an artist, I focus on these kind of things and I'm also the ambassador of the Dutch Data Protection Foundation and we do lawsuits against Big Tech companies like Amazon, Adobe and X for like mass surveillance and illegal data collecting practices. That's amazing. I've actually been to your website. I love your work and I'm interested to know, how did you get interested in creating art that examines these different topics in technology, digital systems and structures that hold the internet up?
Yeah, it actually originated quite early on. I didn't know it at the time, but when I was 15 years old, for some reason I chose for my study program like higher mathematics and arts and my counselor said to me like that doesn't make any sense, but I explained like I need art to understand mathematics, but I also need mathematics to understand art and reasoning and logic. So I think the combination of both really allows me to both imagine new ways to design the internet, but also to kind of reason and see the bigger picture of what is going on and what bottlenecks we have to we have to take on. In 2016, this year 10 years ago, I graduated with an art installation saying privacy is really
the commodity of the internet and it wasn't really present yet in the public debate. My art teachers were very confused. They all said like why would you be concerned about this? Mark Zuckerberg was still a hero. So yeah, for some reason I really felt like I need to stand up for this and I really need to make these topics more present in public debate and make it visible what is actually at stake. Awesome. Well, in 2018, you created an exhibition called One Click. Can you describe that project and what audiences experienced when they encountered it? So like you said in the beginning, nobody reads the privacy policies. I didn't either
because they're taking too much time. I you just want to, you know, enter your website or your desired app. So for some reason, I was doing some research for actually another project and then I found out that there were some cookies installed on my computer that I didn't understand why they were there. So from there I kind of started digging and I visited the Daily Mail, the British news tabloid and from there I did something extraordinary because I didn't click on I accept but on cookie settings and there unfold this whole world of 835 privacy policies that you all accept with that one click when you click on I agree. So I visited all the websites manually. I copied the text and I designed this book with 835 privacy
policies. And after a year of exhibition in the book I thought like maybe we need to do something like bigger with it. So I built this pop-up radio studio which is called 0.0146 seconds and from there I invite people to read from the book. So it's a traveling exhibition, it's a read out loud collective performance where people step in and read from the book for 12 minutes and literally like gift their voice. It's kind of a almost a passive protest you can say it or a way to kind of show like this is no way to get informed consent. So you did something unique and I'm not talking about the art. You were reading and analyzing what we were actually agreeing to in terms and conditions. So what did you learn about them that most people don't know? So I
think content-wise I wasn't really surprised. But this massive infrastructure, that was really surprising for me to be honest because I really didn't know about this network which is everywhere and I think when you start realizing that these conditions are not for the user but to legally safeguard companies because one of the foundations to collect personal data is giving informed consent. And I think that is something to be questioned here because you can't really understand what you give your consent for. Companies now use that to protect themselves saying like well, you given consent so you have no rights anymore. So why do you think that art is a useful way to explore something like digital contracts? Yeah,
I think generally speaking art is a beautiful way to make these very complex and far distant topics tangible for people to understand. We're constantly going to the internet on a rapid speed and I think it's also the way that it's designed. So these buttons, they're annoying so you just click them away. I think people to realize to sit down, to do something that you will never take time for in your daily life. So I think yeah, that kind of was interesting to play with. So your work is beyond art as well. You mentioned earlier on and I'd love to touch back that you have taken part in legal action against major tech companies in Europe. How was that transition and what made you to decide to work that way as well? I was never really an artist for gallery spaces. I
was always trying to have my work in public spaces or at festivals or at tech conference or political conferences. So I think from there it really allowed me to also enter that space and to get in contact with very interesting people in the field who were not only bad people but also amazing people who are working on like super cool things. So after a while, I think it was 20 21, I get a very vague email saying like okay, hi, we're building a team to make some noise against Big Tech. Are you interested in joining? So after a couple of like secretive meetings and signing a lot of NDAs and having first some very unclear talks about what was really going on.
I signed and then they said like okay, so we're suing Twitter. I was like oh okay, this is something else. So after working on that in secret for about a year then we became public with the first case which was then against X because over that year Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the name. So it was kind of a roller coaster to be honest. We now have three cases against X, Amazon and Adobe because I think we all agreed that it's time to also really take action and not only agree with each other that there's something off. Quick follow up, can we be best friends? I would love that. This is good work. I love You made a new friend.
Rewinding back a little bit as you reflect on One Click back in 2018, right? Which seems like eons ago. It's the before times. Have things improved at all in terms of transparency or uh or have things gotten worse? Yeah, I think things definitely changed. The public debate around it changed. It became very present that tech and political power are merging and that we're more scared of that or at least are more aware of kind of what is at stake. So I feel like there we won a lot of ground. But I think what really didn't change is the system itself. We see that we now have a diverse choice in how we want our cookies to be collected, you know? Now you have options saying like oh yes, I do want my functional cookies but not third party
and no analytical cookies. But I think it only got worse by doing that because now people have to even more click on more buttons and then they switched the buttons so you're still clicking on accept everything. So I feel like they made it so much more difficult and so much worse actually than from before when it was just two options which was also still not working. So I think we really should reimagine how this consent structure work because this is definitely not it, but I think um about the one click projects. Recently I coincidentally kind of looked into the Daily Mail again because I felt like the projects became quite famous. It had a lot of media attraction. So I felt like maybe Daily Mail or DMG Media they wants to
you know make a good example out of themselves and change it. But it actually um got worse as well because from the trackers they placed in 2018, they now place 1200 something. Um I think this is hilarious, right? So you try to make a point, you really want to show how toxic and how inflicting and how also illegal this actually is and then they just make it bigger. I had my suspicions and it's so much worse than I thought. Uh Julia, after studying all of these different agreements and uh the topic of informed consent, how is that personally affected how you handle terms and conditions and your privacy online? Yeah, I actually think that you touch on a very important thing there um where I really want to make a stand that this is not an individual problem. So we
shouldn't address it as an individual problem or an individual action that you can take. Um I think this whole system is designed to hoard your data from all over the internet and combine that for profiling. And if you want to enforce your rights, then that's on you. But the thing is that's very complex and to put that whole bur- burden on the individual internet user, I think that is actually what is wrong with also the GDPR but also the lacking of the implementation of these rights. So I think what's happening all the time is that the narrative is that if you want to be safe online, if you want your data to be protected, if you want privacy, then you shouldn't use this
app. You uh should use a VPN or an app locker or you should deny cookies. But the thing is sometimes when you're actively denying cookies, they still place them, hence our Amazon case. But also a lot of app lockers, they only make it worse for you because they can also trade in data sometimes. I think that's super unfair. It's just too much for people to understand that and also know how to navigate this complex system. So I think there we really should um not put in the we really should not put the responsibility with the individual user but on the system. It's really time for the industry but also for politics to take responsibility and by default making the internet a safer space, a data protected space and
a privacy friendly space. In Dutch we say um een geklutst ei is immers geklutst. Which roughly translate as uh you can't unbeat an egg. Like once an egg is beaten, um it's beaten. You can't unbeat it. So once data is part of a system, you can't get it out. And I think now especially with AI, they're saying like you have to opt out before this time, otherwise all your um your comments, your photos, everything was it within our trading system. Um or they're not off- even giving you this option and they're just annexing it. Can we create online spaces? Not like an anonymous browser, that's not the same, but like re- real safe spaces where actually your data is not collected and where you're
not part of a profiling algorithm who's constantly um calculating your next step. Well, as we're winding this down, uh we got to know what's next. What's on the horizon? What other projects are you pursuing? Uh I just debuted a new work which is called Chatting in Davos during the World Economic Forum. Um so I'm touring with that piece as well. It's about how AI is kind of making reality into confidence sounding plausibilities um and how sponsored answers are now entering chat but conversations. So I think that's something that I really find very passionate about as well and want to explore more. So um and touching upon Davos, something that I really want to share there is what I found so interesting being there with
during the World Economic Forum with all the world leaders and um richest people in the world and industry leaders, I found it so extraordinary that the whole presence of the village was about AI is inevitable. It's there. We all need to make a business model out of it. It's here so we all better make it work. There is no questioning of like do we really like want this? Is it a solution to everything? No, it was just jump on this train and make a business model before it's you know you're you're too late. Also with like predictive AI, we're becoming so um comfortable with living within these margins of algorithms because I feel like also the world and the internet and everything is becoming so complex. Like there's endless choice whether it's on a
dating app or whether it's for a new bag a new hair product. There is so much to consume so we lean on these algorithms and these targeting algorithms but also generative AI to kind of navigate us through the complexity and the endless possibilities of the internet because I feel like there's just too much and I think that's quite interesting and it's an interesting space for me to research. I mean we can do very cool things with data and with AI. But completely designing this whole infrastructure and like collecting all these data and all these machine power to just target you with ads, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
Exactly. This has been so eye-opening. Julia, thank you so much for talking to us about our questions and walking through your work and the very important ideas behind it. I you know it's it's staggering to actually visualize what we're agreeing to and doing every day and how that upholds the internet as we know it. Yeah, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us, Julia. Thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure. Wow, that was so interesting and really touched a nerve for me when she was talking about cookie banners.
Mhm. That is the bane of my existence going in and like the worst are the kind that say uh by continuing to use this site, you've agreed to the cookies. But you know what? Cookies are off by default in Firefox. So that is a bunch of BS. And speaking of which, we also rolled out AI controls in Firefox. So uh so you don't have to use AI if you don't want to. We got an easy off switch. So um just thought I'd give a little plug. And I have a question for you, audience. Uh when you're assigning up your next app or service, are you actually going to scroll down and hit I agree without reading or will you take a moment, pause, and think about what that actually means? Let us know in the comments. That's right. And uh don't
forget to subscribe and download Firefox cuz you know it's the best. We'll see you next time.
