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This is a different kind of Techlore Talks. Henry sits down with Marloes de Koning, a Dutch tech reporter from NRC. This wide-ranging conversation explores tech policy from a journalist's perspective, and asks hard questions about age verification, digital sovereignty, news consumption, the rules & role of journalism, and more.
🔗 TAKE ACTION
• NRC: https://www.nrc.nl
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/MarloesdeK
• Marloes' Age Verification article: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/04/19/het-hoofdpijndossier-van-de-porno-industrie-controleren-hoe-oud-je-bezoekers-zijn-a4196562
• Marloes' Tornado Cash article: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/03/25/hoe-een-rus-uit-amstelveen-met-zijn-cryptomixer-voor-de-rechter-in-den-bosch-belandt-a4194203
• Marloes' Birthday of the Cookie article: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/10/11/hoe-het-internet-een-geheugen-kreeg-a4868671
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 INTRO
01:27 EARLY YEARS IN JOURNALISM
02:25 LEARNING & WRITING ABOUT TECH
04:28 DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY
07:08 LOCATION OF DATA/COMPANIES
09:01 THE RULES OF JOURNALISM
10:31 THE ROLE OF JOURNALISM
19:11 INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS
20:34 HOW TO FIND TRUSTWORTHY NEWS
30:06 IS CONSUMING NEWS EVEN WORTH IT?
34:55 AGE VERIFICATION
45:13 DO PEOPLE CARE ABOUT PRIVACY?
53:18 MARLOES' DIGITAL RIGHTS JOURNEY
55:19 WHAT'S THE END GOAL?
57:53 HOW TO FOLLOW MARLOES
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Creators and Guests
What is Techlore Talks?
Techlore Talks brings you in-depth conversations with the experts at the forefront of privacy, security, and digital rights. Hosted by Henry Fisher, founder of Techlore and long-time digital rights educator, each episode features meaningful discussions with the people building, researching, and advocating for digital freedom.
From cybersecurity researchers and privacy tool developers to open-source advocates and digital rights activists—if they're shaping how we protect ourselves online, they're on this show.
Topics include: privacy tools and technologies, cybersecurity threats and defenses, open-source software, surveillance and digital rights, encryption, tech policy, and digital sovereignty.
New episodes released regularly. Subscribe and join the community at techlore.tech.
Protecting children is very intertwined with the whole debate about age verification.
There's a risk, I think, that lawmakers will...
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Techlore Talks.
Today, I have Marloes, who's a journalist.
And this is quite a different style of interview.
We didn't really know what was going to come out of this going into it,
because we talk about digital sovereignty, journalism versus influencers,
if there's a difference, how we view ourselves, and what we're contributing to the space.
We talk about age verification, what that looks like.
We talk about some personal tech experiments, how to engage with news, perhaps in a healthier
way, and a lot more general questions.
Marluce has done a lot of great coverage for digital rights, and we both met at the NextCloud
conference because we were both doing coverage for NextCloud.
And we started getting into fun conversations, and we decided to just do this interview, which
I think was quite interesting.
So I hope you all enjoy this episode of Techlore Talks.
Hello, Marluce DeKonig from NRC.
Do you mind introducing yourself and just saying a little bit about who you are?
My name is Marloes de Koning.
I'm a Dutch reporter with NRC, which is one of the main publishers in the Netherlands.
We produce a daily newspaper, several podcasts, newsletters, etc.
And I'm one of the journalists covering tech-related issues and then with a focus on privacy, cryptocurrency, tech regulation.
Yeah.
So when you originally got started with journalism, did you start with those specific topics or did you start somewhere else and kind of slowly work over to those specific areas?
Yeah, I didn't start with these at all.
I started covering tech-related issues about three years ago.
Before that, I was always covering foreign affairs.
I'm a former foreign correspondent.
I used to be based in Istanbul and before that in Belgrade, Serbia and in Athens.
But increasingly, I got interested in tech-related topics also because they're also about geopolitics to a large extent.
The power of the big tech companies, American big companies, is huge and worth covering.
And the same goes for crypto-related topics, that they're hugely relevant because they are challenging the establishment.
Yeah. And so it sounds like you didn't have much of a tech background. So what has it been like for
you when you cover these stories? Are you also learning a lot about tech in the process? Are you
learning new things and then doing so essentially repackaging that and trying to educate others as
well? Is that? Exactly. Exactly. And that's what I'm doing. It's a very, it's very, it's a very
steep learning curve, but I also think that's valuable because a lot of tech related topics
are covered by and for tech-minded people.
So they speak their own language.
They use abbreviations that nobody else understands.
They have their own language, their own jokes.
And when you write for a mainstream newspaper,
like I do, you need to bridge that gap.
So I do consider myself the bridge.
You know, first I need to understand what it's about
and filter out a lot of bullshit.
Yeah, it's something I fall into as well.
It's a very easy trap to fall into.
Once you understand something,
even though my job similarly is to take disinformation
and give it to people who aren't familiar with the topic yet,
it's easy for me to use acronyms,
things that are now kind of normal that I don't think about.
And then it actually really upsets me
when I get a comment on a new video that says,
hey, you use this acronym, I have no idea what it means.
And I go, crap, like in a way, I didn't do my job properly for that specific video.
And so it sounds like we both have to somewhat navigate that a little bit.
I think so.
And that's where my colleagues, my editors come in because they keep reminding me when
I write blockchain, for example.
I mean, I cannot write the term blockchain without giving a bit of an explanation.
Yeah.
So I guess to really get into some topics, some of the hotter topics right now, we met at the
Nextcloud conference. It's more of their, I guess, enterprise-focused conference. And the main
topic that was being covered was geopolitical issues and digital sovereignty and how tools like
Nextcloud and open source tools are essentially giving companies, individuals, governments the
freedom away from big tech companies. Why is this a concern? And what have you seen in your field?
How are people talking about this issue? And where is it coming up?
It's coming up as something that needs to be discussed. So especially in the Netherlands,
I mean, it goes for the whole EU, but the Netherlands a bit more than other countries,
I would say the dependency on American cloud providers is huge.
It's also within our public administration, it's 80, 90% of our data is mostly on Microsoft
and Azure.
And with your new administration in power, that doesn't feel right anymore, or it's at
least an easy or it's seen as a security risk that perhaps we cannot trust American companies,
tech companies the way we used to do. It was sort of self-understood that, you know,
the Americans are our friends, our allies, our data is safe with them. You can call that naive,
of course, but that was the general narrative. And so over the past 15 to 20 years, most of our data
I just moved there into American cloud providers.
And now that became something to be discussed.
I mean, it didn't change yet.
And I wonder if it will ever change, to be honest.
But at least it's a topic of conversation.
And then while looking for European alternatives,
then Nextcloud is one of the companies being mentioned.
So that's why I went there.
I was curious.
I was meeting with the CEO, like you also did, to do an interview.
And I just wanted to see who the audience was.
You know, were there any representatives of Dutch ministries, for example?
Were they serious about considering migrating perhaps to a different cloud or using the suite of Nextcloud?
And I still think let's wait and see.
You know, like some people are willing to maybe experiment, but that's all there is for now.
Something I say a lot is use services you don't need to trust.
And what comes to mind is, you know, end-to-end encrypted services, where even a server compromise,
theoretically, would do much harm, assuming, you know, it's proper implementation and all of that.
So why is it that you're hearing a lot more discussion about, you know, the country of origin,
rather than what kind of technology? So I guess what I mean by this is, do you think the discussion
being about, well, how do we migrate to end-to-end encrypted alternatives or zero-knowledge
alternatives? Do you think that's a better discussion to have rather than where the company's
based out of? Or do you think both things are important? I do think both are important. I think
it's easier to discuss about countries than to discuss about technology, because in order to
discuss about technology, you need to know the technology. You need to know what you're talking
about and zero knowledge proofs or zero knowledge technology isn't that easy. It's like with a car,
you know, you need to, somebody needs to know what's under the hood, but you cannot discuss it
with just everybody. But of course, it's an important discussion to be had. It's also about
potential access by intelligence services, your visa rule, FISA, sorry, you know what I refer to.
visa yeah visa sorry so that's that's relevant as well and and that's where the change is actually
i mean the change is political it is because some things that we thought were self-understood
aren't any longer that's where the change is the change is not in the technology i think there are
a lot of you know technological answers to uh problems that are really there then they might have
own issues. For example, I mentioned cryptocurrency, and I think they offer some very interesting
alternatives to traditional financial systems. And you don't use cryptocurrency, right?
Because you cover it, but you said you don't. No, I don't. There's a rule book when you
work in journalism.
And one of them is that you don't have any financial interests
in companies or projects that you write about.
And I think that's important.
I think a lot of journalists or people covering crypto issues
are more like maybe influencers rather than journalists.
I think independence is really important.
And so I don't, I have maybe $50 or something in ETH and Bitcoin.
I do have a MetaMask wallet.
I tried a couple of things.
I created my own coin.
I did some transactions just to try.
Because in order to be able to write about it, you need to try some things.
You need to know how it works.
But that's it.
And that matters to me.
I think it's important to stick to certain rules in journalism.
You know, you need to make every effort to check your facts.
You know, if one person tells you something, one source is not a source,
you know, you need multiple sources to consider something as usable information,
or you try to verify it in other ways, you know, something needs to be written down,
or you need proof. So what other safeguards exist? Because I do think one issue I see,
and maybe I do think a lot of this criticism is valid, right? So I see where it comes from.
But there's this current climate that I'm sure you feel and experience that's like very anti-journalism,
as if journalism in itself is bad. And I think that's really dangerous because journalism has a
very important role to play in all of this. And so I'd love for you to kind of touch on what that
role is, as well as the safeguards that exist and how, you know, what's the difference to you
between proper journalism and improper journalism? And why do you think some of those frustrations
exist for people right now? I know it's a lot of questions, but I feel like...
So I do agree with you that there's a lot of mistrust and hostility and also misunderstanding.
And I think a lot of it also comes from assumptions about how journalists go about.
Or that we maybe just, you know, whatever, copy, paste, make some info, some sort of, you know, like an LLM.
Just, you know, grabbing some info, turning it into an article.
And that's not what we do.
That's not what I do.
And that's not what my colleagues at this newspaper do.
And I'm sure I can say the same for many what you would call traditional journalists, perhaps.
so what makes the difference the difference is in in independence like i say so there's no
financial relation between me and and the topics that i cover it's about checking facts um making
an effort to to verify the information that you use get information firsthand you know if you write
about somebody go to this person and ask questions and see if you understand and then also listen to
the counter arguments and it doesn't mean that you will do reporting saying a says this b says this
and then you know whatever it's up for the reader to decide what what's where the truth lies
no i mean you still weigh the information you still try to see what's true because you you verify
with other sources you cross check but you do need to listen you do need to make an effort
And I guess that's what it's about, you know, like an honest attempt at finding truth and using verifiable methods to do so.
And I think that's worth paying for.
You know, I mean, it has to do as well with a lot of information being available for free on the Internet.
So people aren't used to paying for certain services anymore.
And I guess that touches upon your field of expertise as well.
You know, the whole privacy issue, social media, people assume that certain things are just there.
They are free.
But perhaps if something matters to you, you should consider paying for it.
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap.
I never know how to describe my job.
But a lot of the things you communicate, I relate to.
But there's less requirement for that oversight, yet people still put more trust.
Like, here's always the issue that I have, and I'm sure it's something you see as well.
It's people almost put more trust in individuals who just have opinions online than somebody
who's, you know, trying to follow all these safeguards and has a lot of these systems in
place to hold themselves accountable.
They don't have financial interests.
For the most part, any influencer or creator out there is directly influenced by a lot
of different things.
And something that I've always said internally to my team and myself is that I could probably
make what I do five times more successful overnight if, you know, I leaned into fear,
I leaned into kind of like slightly misleading headlines, slightly misleading news, because
that's what a lot of people do.
And it's very successful.
There's a lot of financial interest there, but you have to like draw a line somewhere on that.
But that's just a choice I'm making.
There's nothing stopping me from doing that outside of, you know, wanting to think long term and building something sustainable and building like an audience that knows that something's legit.
But why do people put more faith in individuals than like a more established system that actually has proper safeguards in place is kind of my question.
Because I'm personally a lot more likely, maybe it's because it's what I do.
I'm a lot more likely to trust you and, you know, the information that you have versus even like other people I collaborate with who have collaborated with in the past.
And, you know, like we did cool projects together on YouTube.
If they gave me a piece of information and I was like, huh, that's kind of weird.
I don't know if that's true.
I'm going to ask for a lot more follow up from them to verify it's true.
But if I hear it from you, I'm a lot more likely to take it seriously right away.
So that's then my brand.
So it's not about, you know, my newspaper.
It's about me.
It's about knowing the safeguards that exist for what you do professionally.
Because I know as someone who's in my role, I can make whatever the hell I want up.
And there's very little oversight.
There's very little accountability for me if I say anything that's incorrect.
But your audience would probably desert you, don't you think?
Like, I mean, you have a critical audience.
They know what you're talking about.
If you're spreading bullshit, they would just unsubscribe or whatever, not click your videos,
right?
I think the danger of the internet is yes.
I think the current audience would surely leave because they have a high expectation.
They have the standards and I'm glad they do because that's what keeps me going as best
I can on the road.
But I don't, you know, I never want to directly call anyone out, but there's other channels
out there that are much bigger than mine that spread a lot of bad information sometimes.
And so there is an audience for that.
I think there's always an audience for information out there.
And that's the problem with the internet is if I say something that's, you know, if I start
saying that water is not real or something on my channel, yeah, everyone's like, oh, this
isn't even privacy content anymore.
Why is he talking about water not being real?
This is crazy.
But, you know, you upload a few videos, maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 30.
And out of nowhere, you start building up your water is not real community.
So it's really easy to pivot and start, you know, building a new community that follows you for a different reason.
I think that is the problem is you're always going to be reinforced.
And there's always a community that will connect with what you say on the Internet because it's just such a mass scale.
And, yeah, those are, I suppose, my thoughts on that.
It's a topic that's on my mind as well, of course, and I don't have any easy answers.
Part of why I think it's interesting to talk to you is also because I think people don't know enough about journalism.
They have assumptions, but they actually know very little of the work we do.
They know more about why to distrust certain mainstream media than why to actually trust.
And in a way, that's weird.
You know, I'm 47.
I have an education as an historian and, you know, as a journalist.
And then I started working.
And some things that I thought that I learned were self-understood.
You know, like, of course, you know, you need to check your facts.
You need to listen to people.
You need to go directly to the source, you know, not take it from just wherever.
No, try to go to the source.
See who has an interest in spreading this message.
You know, why are they doing so?
But what I've come to see is that people, they don't know this.
I mean, they don't know that we play by certain rules.
So then there's only the trust or the lack of trust.
And that has to do with what you describe, you know, like with knowing a person or knowing their work or building trust online or through social media.
Which is, of course, also a love and hate relation when it comes to traditional media and social media platforms that are actually eating away our resources and audiences.
But we cannot live with and we cannot live without them.
I don't know.
No easy answers.
You mentioned assumptions that people make that you don't think are always fully true.
So what are some of those?
And do you want to speak to them a little bit?
Like I said, I think it's about trust, about media serving a certain interest or the interest of certain people in power or vested interests of companies.
You know, during COVID, the pharmaceutical companies or, you know, there were loads of theories about why media were reporting on something or why they were not reporting on something, you know, like who was telling them what to do, who was telling us what to do.
Nobody was telling us what to do.
We were also, you know, living through the moment just like anybody else and trying to grasp what was going on and do proper reporting.
And like you said, there are so many alternatives.
I mean, there's a channel for everything.
So if you want to find people theorizing about what you put into the water, you will find them.
I guess also a lot of, you know, misinformation is available for free while you have to pay for our content.
You know, it's behind the paywall.
So it might actually, you have easier access to bullshit than to things that we cover.
And so as someone who works in journalism, what advice can you give to people listening right now?
And this also goes for me, right?
I feel journalistically homeless.
That's a new phrase I just coined.
Wow, I like it.
And it's because I don't have a source that I actually have like full trust in.
But it's more from an attention perspective, actually, for me.
because I don't have an issue trusting a lot of the information I get from a lot of typical news
outlets. For me, it's more of an issue of they have direct incentive to publish and talk about
things that keep me on the website as long as possible. And I can see all the dark patterns and
all the things that they do to pretty much make it as, you know, enticing as possible to make it as
fearful as possible because that that works. And so, you know, I, I'll typically check Reuters,
because it seems like a pretty established, trustworthy news organization.
But I don't know how or why.
I don't have the language around that.
And I feel like that's most people.
So how do you, if someone is listening and they ask,
OK, I'm trying to find trustworthy news.
Where should I go to?
What should they be looking at to see if something's trustworthy or not,
based on what you know?
That's a really nice question.
I would start with a topic that I know a bit,
that you have some personal expertise in,
and then try to find a couple of journalists
that you think would be worth listening to or following,
and then just listen or read to what they do.
Give them a chance, you know, and then think it over.
Do what they tell you actually make sense?
And is it a service to you that they actually filtered
some of the information or, you know, perhaps many things that you find in there, part of
them you already know, part of them you don't, but the combination of sources and the fact
that they put it together for you, put it into context, that they actually weigh some
of the information, you know, like maybe not everything has the same value or the same
importance or not everything you need to know right now, you know, it might be worth waiting
a couple of days and adding some sources and then get a complete picture, I would say give it a
chance. And then, you know, if it's valuable to you, start paying for it with a small subscription.
Support what you think is worth it. I mean, there are a lot of interesting authors on Medium or
Substack or so spend a couple of dollars a month because it might actually help you to be better
informed. And when you talk about your attention span, you know, it's pretty tiring to keep up with
all that goes on on Reddit or X or wherever you get your news. It can keep you consumed
24-7. And perhaps that's actually not how you want to spend your time, you know, give it a try.
So what you're suggesting is don't follow news, follow individuals who are writing about things that you enjoy.
Yeah, I guess that's what I said.
Well, yes, but then because I do think that it might be worth subscribing to the media they work for because you don't want to be in one specific rabbit hole.
It helps if you know what's going on in the world, you know, so it's not just about following one topic.
It's also about being informed about what matters.
Other stuff than just, you know, your very narrow hole.
So actually, I think it matters to just, you know, look at what we used to call the front page,
but just, you know, the websites see what topics are being highlighted before you dive into whatever
your crypto or tech corner. Yeah. And actually I was going to somewhat ask this because I think the
one, the one thing that came to mind with the approach that you shared is I could see it being
a really easy way to just reinforce ideas. If the way that you choose what news to follow is just
based on, oh, this is what connects with me most, then all it's, it's never going to maybe challenge
And so I think that that strategy of also ensuring to branch out a little bit from that is very good.
I think so. But I meant it also as a way to actually check if it holds any value.
You know, if you want to be able to see if somebody is reliable, then it might help you if you have some point of reference.
Yeah. So I guess on this note, I promise I won't talk about this too long.
It's just something I'm personally interested in as well.
Because I have a really hard relationship with news.
And I'm very, I've taken very black or white approaches with it.
Because it's easier to do that, right?
It's easier to just say, oh my gosh, it's really important for me to consume news and be aware of what's going on.
So I'm going to be aware of what's going on.
Or, this is all pointless.
It doesn't do anything if I follow it.
So I'm just not going to check any websites.
Those are two very easy positions to take.
And it's really hard to find a middle ground between those.
So where are you right now?
Right now, I'm in actually kind of a middle ground as long as I think so.
Because what I'll do is once a day, I'll check Reuters like in the evening and I'll be on there.
And I'll just kind of scroll through the homepage, see if there's anything interesting.
And then I open in new tabs and then I read through whatever and then I close it.
And then the one I'm not as happy about, but sometimes there's some interesting value, is Reddit.
I'll just go through the front page of Reddit for a few minutes.
But I don't know how else to say this.
Reddit's brain dead.
Like, it's unbelievable how, like, because I would have just read the Reuters one.
The Reddit stories that are posted are the, like, heavily modified versions of the Reuters piece.
Because that's what's, like, most attention.
So like, you know, right now Trump is like a very big thing right now in the U.S., a very polarizing figure.
You either love him or hate him.
And Reuters will just cover, oh, Trump did this.
That's it.
There is no real bias.
It's just here's what Trump did.
Here's who this might impact.
Here's et cetera.
And then you go to Reddit and the same story is on the top of Reddit.
And it's Trump is killing this many people tomorrow.
And it actually is a bit misleading because, you know, they're making assumptions on what
this has made.
And it's actually not like I see why people criticize journalism when that's what they
see.
It is making a ton of assumptions and it is there to clearly serve the purpose of just
being anti-Trump, which I think is OK.
Like, I think people should have the right to be anti-Trump or for Trump.
But it's presented as objective, truthful news.
And that's the problem. And people read it and they go, wow, this is absolutely the way things must be.
And then you go into Reddit comments and those are even crazier.
And it's.
But it's important what you said that they don't take it from the source.
I mean, if they did like you did, like first check Reuters in this instance, read the full story, their perception would have been entirely different.
So they take some sort of summarized, distorted version of what journalists did.
Right. And it is in a way the internet is kind of like the game. Is it telephone? I think the game is telephone, right? Where you, and I don't know if you've played this, where you say like a weird statement, you write it down. And let's say you're in a classroom.
and you have 30 people,
you say the statement to the next person,
they say it to the next person,
and then at the end you compare
the last person and what they say
versus what was originally said.
And I feel like this is what happens
when you're on Twitter.
On Twitter, so Reuters will put something out,
and then a couple other news outlets
put things out that are a little bit less reliable,
and then it's posted to Reddit,
and then someone sees it on Reddit,
and then they post it themselves on Twitter,
and then by the time it gets to Twitter,
it's just absolutely crazy i i actually nothing to do with journalism anymore right i mean actually
your comparison is really nice because as a journalist if i want to do my own story then i
should go back to the first person you know like go back to the source ask you know is it correct
that this is what you said and what did you mean and what's your source of information yeah so yeah
I'm still developing.
I use RSS a lot.
RSS is a great resource for people who care about their time and attention and want to follow and subscribe to outlets or individuals in general.
So that's something I think is really powerful.
But RSS is just a feat, right?
So you go to a journalistic website, for example, or something else, and through RSS, you see what's there.
Still somebody needs to create it.
Yeah, and I guess on the topic of, you know, kind of sharing a bit of my news feed, you know,
philosophically as well, Henry David Thoreau, right, in Walden, he talks about how there is
no reason to ever check the newspaper.
This is, you know, way back, a couple hundred years ago.
And he was just like, if something's important enough to know about, I'm going to hear about
it, because then it's important enough to know about.
And I think there's something that sounds really nice about that, right? Because it's like,
theoretically, like I can just, I can just go for a walk in the morning. I can take my dogs out.
I can go have breakfast. I can get my work done, have a nice, beautiful lunch, get more work done,
evening, sleep. And whether or not I check news doesn't actually change anything about my day.
If anything, checking news will make the day, most days worse, right? So why should someone
still check news, if at all? Because it's something I'm really conflicted on. Is this something I
should even be checking? Even though, you know, I have found a nice middle ground where I only check
it a little bit each day, I almost never feel better at the end of checking it. So is that just
kind of a sacrifice we need to make in order to keep up with things? Or is this something we just
shouldn't even bother with? I know. And I know you are a journalist, so you're going to say...
I speak on behalf of journalism around the world.
So why should you check the news?
Well, I think it's important to, through communication, establish some sort of common ground and a common truth.
And I think society and democracy is something that we make together.
It's not something outside of us.
It's us.
It's what we do.
It's why we're having this conversation, because it's important to understand each other, to discuss about topics that matter.
And then together we shape society.
And that's what we do.
And if we don't do it, we leave it to other people.
And then we have to deal with the outcome.
But I would like people to engage with each other, to have conversations about what we would like our society to be like.
And of course, that's a big conversation, but it consists of a million tiny conversations that happen every day.
And in order to be able to have those conversations, you need to have some sort of understanding of what's happening and what the lives of other people are about or what the consequences of certain things that happen are.
Also to, what do you call it, to call truth to power.
And actually, I think, you know, I mean, your channel is about privacy.
And to me, that's also about, you know, quite philosophical questions when it comes to tech regulation.
I mean, that's also about human rights and civil liberties and things that matter.
So I also think that you and your audience are actually very engaged in a way with the world around you.
You wouldn't have anything to talk about if you weren't interested in the world around you.
You know, it matters what people feel and do and it will affect all of us.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So you see engaging with news and acting on it and discussing it is akin to a textbook in school that you then use to do something with.
Like you learn things in school, so that way you go out in society and use your skills for something else.
So I guess where I'm going with this is news kind of, you know, your information gathering,
so that you then can form opinions, thoughts, arguments that you discuss with others,
and then that's actually where you see the change.
So news itself isn't actually supposed to change the world.
it's that you're giving people the arguments and talking points to be able to then go.
Yes, I think so. I mean, news, that's why it's called reporting.
I mean, things are happening and we journalists are trying to describe what's happening.
And we're trying to do it in a factual way.
And of course, things change constantly.
So a story I write today might be outdated in a week because, you know, there are new facts that emerged or that we found or people do things.
And it's like the first draft of history, you know, people often say.
One thing we haven't talked about much, kind of really pivoting here, age verification.
So this is something, big pivot.
This is a hot topic.
I still don't have my full thoughts on it.
we've had some very, very polarizing threads on our forum.
Oh, really?
I should check them out.
Yeah, I think you find them interesting.
Could you summarize a little bit for me to know who I'm talking to?
Yeah, so to summarize the camps,
because I think most people listening will fall into one of these camps.
So actually, I'll give you three camps.
Camp one is, I'd say, the privacy absolutist camp,
which is all age verification is bad.
We shouldn't do any of it.
And the internet was designed to be for everybody.
And it's like parents' responsibilities
to deal with their own kids.
It shouldn't be something that we require companies
or governments to regulate.
On the other side, there are, of course,
people who are like, no,
like it shouldn't be so easily accessible
for children to access content
they shouldn't be engaging with.
This is something that companies are responsible for.
This is something governments are responsible for.
And like, we need to like really age regulate a majority of the internet and it doesn't really
matter how we do it. Then there's, I'd say kind of more of that middle camp, right? Which is like,
okay, there's probably some things that kids shouldn't be able to access online, but I have
a lot of concerns about age verifying the internet. And I would say we saw a blend of all of them on
our forum. Like the person who I think started the thread was actually a, I would say, between
age verification and the middle ground. They were somewhere in the middle between those two camps.
And they were pretty much making their arguments for why we should be embracing privacy respecting
age verification, because it's inevitable, it's going to happen. So we might as well like embrace
reality and talk about what the privacy respecting solutions are for doing that. And personally,
I'm kind of in the middle camp, mainly because of that, though, it's because of the whole well,
yeah, it's probably going to happen.
And I'd rather us talk about how do we do this
in a privacy-respecting manner?
Because that's really what I care about.
I mostly just care about if things are done
in a privacy-respecting way.
That's my main concern with age verification,
at least at this moment.
So that's the breakdown point.
I think it's an excellent summary.
I agree that it seems inevitable
that there's going to be more age verification
because worldwide, everybody, everybody.
I mean, there's a demand for it by both governments and companies
and people, individuals.
And I also think there's some sort of broad consensus
that it's possible to do it in a privacy-preserving way
with zero-knowledge proofs.
And I would prefer it to happen with zero-knowledge proofs
and not put it in the hands of the companies,
which is the current situation when it comes to age verification.
I mean, there's a lot of data collection happening
in order to be able to verify who or how old somebody probably is,
which I don't like.
It's a pendulum, you know, so it's from, you know,
the internet should be free, no regulation at all to,
oh, let's have age verification everywhere.
And then I think we're actually missing a point in the whole debate, which is about censorship.
You know, it's about who gets to decide which websites are only for adults or for proven adults, you know, 18 plus.
And I think that's a very slippery slope.
You know, it's like, OK, I mean, if it's about, you know, the sale of alcohol, sure.
You know, let's not sell alcohol to minors and let's, you know, use a wallet to verify if somebody is 18 plus or not.
Same goes for online gambling, for example.
Sure, you know, things that are in most countries, you know, we can use it there.
But that's not where it stops.
And you already mentioned parents and children.
And I see how the whole debate about protecting children online is very intertwined with the whole debate about age verification and the technical possibilities.
And since everybody wants to keep their children safe, there's a risk, I think, that lawmakers will agree to pretty far-reaching technological solutions or laws to protect children.
And there I do worry about censorship.
going from a free internet to internet where you actually have some sort of border controls.
You know, like you can only access this website if you're 18 plus.
Then it's about content and who gets to decide what's suitable for who.
And I don't think that's where we should go.
I think an excellent example is the whole porn industry.
You know, I think to a large extent, the whole lobby for age verification comes from anti-porn NGOs.
The debate is about CSAM, but it's also about, you know, are you allowed to watch porn as a teenager?
And I'm not a big fan of the porn industry, but I do think there's a value for teenagers being able to explore their sexuality online
or to find like-minded people with similar preferences
or people they can talk to, you know,
forums where they can be or images they can exchange if they want to.
I'm not saying they should.
I'm not saying it's a good idea,
but it's a bit of freedom that I wouldn't want to lose.
And also I think people are constantly making the comparison
to the real world, to the physical world.
It's like, oh, you wouldn't want a strange guy to walk into the playground and talk to your kids.
No, but in the real physical world, it's still possible to meet up somewhere,
to agree to meet somebody and to kiss behind the shed in the schoolyard.
I mean, that's also there.
You need the gray zone as well, I think.
I do worry a bit about us giving that up.
Yeah, it's a lot of interesting points.
And that is what I see as well online, is people do say it could be a slippery slope.
And I really enjoy how you brought up how if you're against something, then this is a perfect
opportunity to start to begin censorship.
And I think what you referred to with the porn industry and how a lot of the people pushing
for regulation and essentially cutting off access to the porn industry are just people
who are also anti-porn.
And we might see that for other things.
if you don't like a demographic of people.
Exactly.
And you want to now start lobbying to maybe make, you know,
resources for those individuals harder to access,
then you're going to start putting lobbying power forward.
You're going to really push to try to have that regulated
so that it's harder to access.
And once something is slightly harder to access,
then you've kind of begun that process of slowly chipping away
at how accessible it really is.
And I feel like that has a compounding effect.
as well. Yeah. So yeah, interesting, interesting stuff to think about. And I, I'm just so conflicted
on it still, because of things like the alcohol thing, the gambling thing, like we do age verification
all the time, even to sometimes I'm just going out to get a late meal. So I don't I don't drink
very often. And so I'll go into a restaurant and they ID me to get in. And it's like, well,
I'm just going to get food, man. But that's actually very American.
we wouldn't do that yeah yeah i assume in europe it's not as much of a thing and i was going to
say because i feel like the the legal drinking age there is lower than 18 now i think it's 16
i'm not i'm not sure it might have changed actually and then gone up interesting i'm not sure
yeah here it's 21 yeah so no so i think it's 18 yeah so yeah i guess it is just a normal part of
life. And then I do ask myself, well, yes, if this is a normal part of the real world, why isn't it
a normal part of the internet? So that's kind of where those conflicted feelings come from for me,
at least. But I generally have been trying to follow it from a tech angle on this one. So I know
that Google and Apple have been putting forward some really interesting technology to age verify
through their app store. Some of them use zero knowledge proofs. And so I would love to see more
of that tech because then at least it's privacy respecting, but it still isn't going to solve
the issue you're talking about, which is the potential censorship concerns of doing so.
And do I want these companies to have a role at all?
It's something like holding a passport, right?
I mean, right now it's my government issuing my documents, but yeah, do I want Apple to hold
my digital passport for me or to build the passport machine?
I mean, I know I can still put it, you know, in my personal digital environment.
Yeah, who's the issuing party?
Anyway, I think it's an important conversation to be had in society.
And we're not really having it.
So that's where I do think I should play a role or I play a role.
Have you done some writing about it or do you plan to?
Yeah, I do.
So I did several pieces on age verification.
And there's a debate within the European Union about EU ID.
So having a digital identity in a privacy-preserving manner.
But then, of course, there's always debate on how exactly.
I mean, there's a technical debate that follows the political initiative.
So do you think people care about privacy?
I mean, we discussed that a little bit the other time and we didn't really agree.
Because I told you that one of the things I find complicated is that people feel the benefits of sharing data, you know, on a daily level.
For example, sharing their location data with Google Maps or their whereabouts constantly with their family and friends or giving whatever company access to your phone book because it makes it easier to use their app for communication.
I mean, there's an instant benefit of sharing data and giving away parts of your privacy.
But it's not the other way around. If you do it, you don't actually feel the potential threats or the negative side of things. And I do think that makes reporting on an issue like privacy very, very hard.
And also, I think this has changed over the years.
People used to be much more privacy aware, at least in Europe.
Like, the assumption was that you didn't want to share certain data, or you wouldn't just,
you know, put your personal information on the internet where everybody could see it.
And that has completely changed.
You know, like the level of information that people share is so huge that changed the whole conversation.
But maybe not for you because your audience is interested in privacy.
Otherwise, they wouldn't follow you.
Yeah, it makes things hard because, yes, the audience came for privacy.
And so my view is that it matters a lot of people who care about it.
With that said, you know, if I, I think maybe a more valuable metric is the people around me
who are friends who aren't consuming the stuff that I put out.
And for them, I feel like they understand privacy and they understand the value, but they,
they don't want to do too much, if that makes sense.
And so they get it.
And I feel like, I don't know if it's because of, you know, the channel I run and I feel like
that adds some authority.
So when I bring up privacy issues with them, they're more likely to listen because they're
like, oh, well, he does this.
And this is something that resonates with a lot of people.
So it has to be real.
So I'm sure that plays into it and it helps.
But I really do think that the way people talk about privacy really changes how other people
view and see it.
What do you mean?
And so, yeah, so, you know, it has to be tangible to a regular person.
And it's like this with any human rights issue.
And I think this is why people like MLK were really good at what they did.
MLK Jr., his message, yes, was about bringing equality and, you know, building up the Black
community.
But it was more so wrapped in this broader message of racial equality for everybody, which
is why you also just saw a much bigger movement that was able to support him at the end of the
day.
And the privacy discussion hasn't had a lot of that, where it's like, OK, so we have dissidents, we have journalists, we have sources of journalists, we have politicians.
Like all these people need privacy, in some ways, like higher level people in the world.
But how do we package that into something that is applicable to everybody?
I find it a very difficult comparison
Because with Martin Luther King
I mean the inequality is obvious
So it's the injustice, the inequality is obvious
And that's the main difference here
I mean here it's actually the benefit is obvious
On a daily level
Like you're sharing your data, your life is more comfortable
all your apps work together, you know, seamlessly, where's the harm?
Where's the disadvantage from doing so?
I mean, it wouldn't be difficult to report on the life of black people and their disadvantagements.
It's harder to discuss privacy because how do you give it a face?
Where's the narrative?
Yeah, no, it's definitely challenging.
And it's not just about technology. I mean, of course, you can find technological solutions. So if you just talk about technology, then you're maybe missing the bigger story that's about human rights or about, well, people.
Yeah, what I've been trying to do, which has been somewhat successful, I would say, is someone asks, well, why should I care? What's the point? The questions that I'm sure you see all the time.
I'll say, well, this is a really important thing for all the people we've already listed, dissidents, journalists, etc. And when we treat privacy as that right that everyone deserves, then we actually are able to make basic rights accessible to everybody.
like and maybe this is a big difference privacy is actually somewhat of a means to an end
in my view which makes it a really hard thing to talk about and i think this is what
is kind of difficult you can't really have any other human rights without privacy being a part
of society is is what i believe so when it comes to racial equality people probably can't fight for
racial equality without a layer of privacy during protests or any other issue. Like people need
privacy to protest. They need privacy to do news coverage. They need privacy to share their opinions,
share their thoughts, have free expression, free ideas. So privacy is somewhat of a requirement to
have all the other human rights. And that could potentially be a part of that answer that you're
talking to or that you're asking about is because it's really it is hard to make privacy the thing
because what is there to gain if everyone has privacy?
It's like, okay, everyone has privacy.
Cool, thanks.
But when you see it as a tool
that's a very important and necessary tool
to fight for all the other human rights
and everything else that you want to talk about
and to have the autonomy to be yourself,
to talk to the people you want to talk to,
you need privacy to be a part of that.
Now, how to convert that
into someone actually taking privacy seriously,
I don't know how to do.
And into a story that they actually want to read.
Yes, and into a story they want to read and engage with.
I'm not sure.
But maybe you don't need to do that.
Maybe you just need enough people to understand why it's important to agree with the people
who are actually living, breathing, and fighting for this.
As long as you have enough people who agree with them and the overall numbers are there,
maybe that's all it needs to be.
I don't know.
But I feel like a lot of movements, they don't convince everybody to join the movement.
They just have a lot of passionate people behind the movement.
And there's enough people who are going, yeah, well, what they're fighting for makes sense.
And I don't disagree.
Sure, but that's the essential difference.
I'm a journalist.
I'm not an activist.
I'm a journalist who feels certain issues are important and are worth covering.
And I care for them.
And then I try to turn my thoughts into questions and into stories.
that I hope will touch a nerve with other people.
But I'm not an activist.
So that's the difference.
So that's someone else's job.
Sure, yeah.
And then I can interview the activists, yes.
The last part of the interview,
I'd like to talk a little bit about your digital rights journey,
how it started.
You mentioned before the call that you're kind of going
on your own digital independence journey.
So I'd like to hear a little bit about that.
And yeah, it'd be interesting to hear about it.
So how far back do you want to go?
But if I just stay in the now, I write a lot about digital independence, but then it's about, you know, Europe trying to gain some sort of digital independence.
Or should we do different whatever procurement to not end up with the same companies always?
Or does it matter at all?
I mean, perhaps we're fine, you know, within the American clouds.
But since that's a constant topic that I keep on coming back to, I thought, you know, I needed to also test my own relationship with big tech and try and become more digitally independent or autonomous.
So I'm in the middle of that.
Yeah.
So I bought another phone with an open source operating system.
And now day by day, I'm trying to decide which apps to install, which I can do without, which work fine within this system and which don't.
And if they don't, why don't they?
Is it because they're so intertwined with, for example, the whole Google universe or because my employer doesn't allow me to use certain open source solutions?
Which open source operating system did you use?
Is it a Fairphone?
Yes, it's a Fairphone.
It's EOS by Murina.
Yeah, yeah.
So you got it from Murina, I assume, and they pre-install it?
Yes, they did.
Nice.
What's been the biggest challenge so far?
I'm sure there's been at least one big hiccup.
Actually, two of them.
So using the Microsoft apps that my employer uses, and I do miss Google Maps.
Is your goal to essentially eliminate all big tech apps on your phone altogether?
Well, that's one of the questions that, you know, by doing this, I end up asking myself a lot of questions, you know, like, why?
I guess to me, in the end, it's about me being in control and about being very aware of the steps that I make and the decisions that I take.
So if I do end up installing some apps with awful, you know, privacy scores, and a lot
of them are, then at least I did so knowingly.
And I just wanted to know what it's like.
I mean, I just wanted to know if it works because a lot of the debate on European digital
sovereignty centers around the possibilities, you know, like, are there any alternatives
out there at all? Or is, you know, Azure or AWS the only way forward or all the related apps,
of course, I mean, it's not just about cloud. That's cool. Yeah. Have you experimented at all
on your computer? Or is this just a mobile journey so far? So far, it's just a mobile journey. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, I played around with EOS way back in the day. And I actually wasn't the
biggest fan personally. This was like five plus years ago. So this is way back then. So I'm sure
they've made a lot of improvements and they've developed a ton since that original review. So I'd
like to check them out again. But the Fairphone is an interesting device. I have the Fairphone 4
and like flashing it yourself's a bit annoying on the Fairphone because of the bootloader situation.
It's kind of like this weird process you have to go through to unlock the bootloader yourself and the
fair phone so uh you probably saved yourself quite a bit of hassle by just buying it with it pre-installed
think so right it's a really cool journey to go on so i'm glad that you're going on it and i wish
more people went on it because even if you end up going back to just an iphone and just using all the
same apps um you learn a lot on that journey and you kind of gain appreciation for how how the tech
works and you exactly you get a lot of takeaways from it yeah sure yeah google maps is one that i
can tell you will you'll never find a good replacement for it fully i hate to break it
that's depressing answer yes yeah a lot of people like magic earth i've heard good things about magic
earth so that's one thing yeah to try but yeah nothing's quite as good as google maps i'm afraid
So, yeah.
Yeah.
So I guess just to finish things out here, where can people find you and read some of
the stuff you talk about?
And is there a specific article that you'd send them to?
Ah, well, on the website of my newspaper, of course, www.nrc.nl.
Yeah.
Or just Google my name or not Google, but find my name, brave my name, whatever.
And perhaps we can put something in show notes.
Yeah.
I'll leave everything.
Yeah, and I do like my article about age verification that starts with somebody in the porn industry or the birthday piece for the cookie.
Or I think your readership would maybe appreciate my coverage of the Tornado Cash trial in the Netherlands.
You're more crypto-minded, but also privacy-minded.
Developers community that's maybe following you.
Yeah, so those.
Yeah, I'll try to leave some of those linked down below so people can check you out.
I've read the Tornado Cache one and I believe the Age Verification one.
And I learned a few things and it was a really good read.
So it was great work and it was great to meet you.
Likewise.
In person.
And I'm excited to keep up with other stuff you're doing.
Thank you so much for your time.
Yeah, thanks.
Okay.
Stay in touch.
And that is it, everybody.
I want to thank Marloes for coming on.
this was a very different conversation and it was nice to have some more banter in a techler talks
episode this is definitely more of a discussion based one so if you have any thoughts i'd actually
love to hear them in the comments there's still things from this interview i'm thinking about to
this day you can check out links to marlou's stuff down in the description and of course i want to
thank you all for listening and taking your digital freedom a little bit more seriously
and i would also ask you all to support uh what we're doing back here these episodes take a lot to
edit, produce, and deliver to all of you. And we can only do it because of our supporters. So any
way that you can support Techlore is much appreciated and allows us to continue growing
the podcast as the years go on. You can view all the ways to support the podcast down in the
description. I want to thank you all again for listening and I'll see you next time on Techlore
Talks.
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