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The future deserves better questions. Curious & Inspired is a cultural commentary show exploring tech, culture, and society, hosted by Matt Vandrick. New episodes Bi-Weekly, Thursdays at 8PM.
A free AI tool built specifically for black history and culture. TikTok refugees may have found a new home in black owned social app Spill. Why OpenAI wants to scan your eyeballs to prove your personhood. The importance of protecting your intellectual property and my thoughts on why people taking credit for things that don't belong to them is as American as apple pie. All this and more on a special Black History Month episode of Curious and Inspired.
Matt Vandrick:Welcome back to a brand new episode of Curious and Inspired. I am your host, Matt Van Drake. So this is our Black History Month episode, and so we'll be exploring, honoring, and acknowledging Black creators, innovators, and changemakers in the tech, social, entertainment, and AI space. I'm so glad to be here with y'all. Let's get into it, shall we?
Matt Vandrick:This week, seen on the Internet. First up, TikTok deletions may have led many users to migrate over to the Spill app, a visual first social networking platform designed particularly for black and queer voices. It's intended to serve as a safer, more culturally engaging alternative to Twitter and X. And although it's been out for a while, could likely see some gains due to audiences needing an alternative platform. Actress Kerry Washington, one of my faves, is one of its investors, which only adds to its credibility and potential.
Matt Vandrick:Good luck, y'all. Chat Black GPT, a free service offering educational content specifically focused on black history, culture, and contemporary issues. It also provides ethical AI solutions while educating and empowering communities through free knowledge and access. It's a custom GPT built into ChatGPT, so you can stay with the interface you're already used to. This is great for students, researchers, and academics to access and explore complex topics with cultural context that mainstream AI tools often miss.
Matt Vandrick:The fact that this exists and is free is huge. Shout out to founder Aaron Reddick and the team for this one. You guys go check it out. Kendrick Lamar broke the record for the most Grammys held by a rapper with 27 total wins. Jay Z previously held the record with 25.
Matt Vandrick:Now some people might think that this has no AI or social media relevance, but they would be completely incorrect. Lamar's 2025 sweep and 2026 continuation were driven largely by Not Like Us, a song whose success was strongly bolstered by viral social media momentum, becoming a massive cultural phenomenon on TikTok, X, and Instagram. Long gone are the days of traditional radio play and industry buzz. We already know that. But I also want to acknowledge how the groundswell of culture also made it impossible for the Recording Academy to ignore.
Matt Vandrick:Before the 2026 ceremony, AI chatbots like Grok were being used to analyze voting trends, betting odds, and cultural impact metrics to predict Lamar's win, helping forecast it by processing massive amounts of social data in real time. That's the intersection of culture, technology, and social media that I like to pay attention to, all converging in one artist's historic achievement. Shout out to Kendrick. Now on to signals versus noise. Nicholas Merrill just launched Freely, a mobile virtual network operator that's being marketed as a privacy focused cell phone provider designed to minimize the personal information it collects about subscribers.
Matt Vandrick:Freely's sign up process requires only a ZIP code as a mandatory data point, and that's purely for tax purposes. Everything else, including an email address for account recovery, is completely optional and left entirely to the user's discretion. On the technical side, Freely uses a type of zero knowledge proof based cryptography to confirm that your account is paid up while keeping your payment processing completely separate from your ongoing phone service records. They've also made it possible to prepay for service using privacy focused cryptocurrencies like Zcash and Monero, giving users who really care about financial privacy an option that traditional carriers simply do not offer. So this one is a signal because Nicholas Merrill is the first person to file a constitutional challenge against the national security letter statute in The USA Patriot Act back in 2004.
Matt Vandrick:He basically sued the FBI and the Department of Justice over privacy rights and came out on top. He then spent years running Calix Institute, an organization dedicated to education and research on privacy issues. So he's not just all talk. He's been in the trenches fighting for digital privacy for two decades. Now he started a privacy focused cell phone provider.
Matt Vandrick:Merrill thinks privacy in tech is a serious problem and is now presenting a solution he thinks is viable. And I want you to use that notion when thinking about things you wanna build as well. Identify the problems you see in the world and create solutions for them. Your cell phone provider has access to more sensitive data than social platforms, and the big players, Verizon, T Mobile, and AT and T, have been collecting and sometimes selling that data for years. This is exactly where something like Freely comes into play.
Matt Vandrick:Users who are tired of privacy concerns with those traditional providers now have a new option. And, honestly, this is capitalism at its best. When customers get frustrated with the status quo, someone steps in to provide an alternative. If Freely is willing to take on the absolute stronghold that is the telecommunications industry, you can bet other entrepreneurs are watching closely and will find ways to do the same in this or other industries. The market is clearly signaling that privacy matters to consumers.
Matt Vandrick:And where there's demand, supply will follow. Freely might be the first mover here, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see more privacy focused carriers emerge in the next few years as people realize they don't have to accept invasive data collection as the price of having a phone. OpenAI wants to create a biometric social network to kill the social media bot problem. They're building a social network and seriously consider using biometric verification. We're talking eyeball scanning orb from Worldface or face ID from Apple to ensure that users are actual people and not bots.
Matt Vandrick:So this is being marketed as a humans only platform, but let's be clear. They're competing against x, Instagram, and TikTok who don't do any of that. The app is allegedly asking users to provide proof of personhood through face ID or the world orb, which literally scans your iris. Every dystopian sci fi movie I've ever watched just flashed before my iris. So this is a signal that's also incredibly noisy, and I wanna talk about why.
Matt Vandrick:On one hand, this seems almost reasonable on the surface. Right? OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT and Sora wants to build an app that has zero bots. Sure. So let's just scan some eyeballs.
Matt Vandrick:Right? What's a few 100 eyeballs between friends? Wrong. Dead wrong, actually. Because what happens to that biometric data if it gets into the wrong hands?
Matt Vandrick:What if OpenAI decides they want to partner with a government agency somewhere down the line? What if there's a data breach? What if they get acquired by someone with different values? Or hell, what if they just decide to monetize it in ways that we can't even imagine yet or that we don't agree with? This is where the signal gets really noisy.
Matt Vandrick:If OpenAI genuinely wanted to create a social platform free of bots, why not just ban suspicious accounts? Why not blacklist users who don't follow the rules or exhibit clearly automated behavior? It seems simple enough. Can't they just detect patterns and behaviors that feel bot like? Of course they can because they literally gave us ChatGPT.
Matt Vandrick:They are one of the most advanced AI companies on the planet. But instead of using their considerable power to actually do some heavy lifting, like building sophisticated internal software to identify and eliminate bots based on behavioral patterns, they want to collect even more of your personhood. Our locations, emails, and phone numbers apparently aren't enough anymore. They want us to believe that the only way they can possibly create a better social media landscape is to literally scan our eyeballs. That's the noise in this whole initiative.
Matt Vandrick:We know they can build a bot resistant platform without harvesting our biometrics. They absolutely have the technical capability to do so. But here's why this is also a massive signal and one we need to be paying attention to very closely. It's letting us know that big tech is ready for the next step in evolution of social media platforms, and that step involves taking even more of our personhood. Face ID today, eyeball scans tomorrow.
Matt Vandrick:What's next? DNA samples next week? I mean, that's facetious. Yes. But only somewhat.
Matt Vandrick:This initiative is a clear indication that users should be prepared for social media apps and most of the apps we use to start demanding more from you. I feel like this is a trial balloon. This is big tech testing the waters to see how much people will tolerate, how much of themselves they're willing to hand over in exchange for a, quote, better or safer platform. I see it as a warm up act. And for that reason alone, this is absolutely a signal of what's coming down the pipeline, even though it's kinda noisy.
Matt Vandrick:The real question we should be asking is, what are we willing to sacrifice for convenience? Because once we normalize handing over more and more of our biometric data, which we've already kind of gotten accustomed to with things like face ID, there's no walking it back. Once the president is set, it's really hard to undo. And OpenAI knows that. In fact, they're kinda counting on it.
Matt Vandrick:YouTube has started deleting major AI slot channels on the platform, and this is a big deal. So YouTube has begun a significant active crackdown on low quality, repetitive, or mass produced AI generated content. February 2026 reports say that YouTube has taken down 16 of the most popular AI generated channels, which collectively amassed over 4,700,000,000 views and 35,000,000 subscribers. 4,700,000,000 views and 35,000,000 subscribers, gone overnight. The channels that they removed were characterized by low effort, automated, and repetitive content specifically designed to game recommendation algorithms.
Matt Vandrick:So we're talking about fake AI generated movie trailers, repetitive brain rot videos that just loop the same nonsense over and over, and in some disturbing cases, content deliberately targeting children with zero educational or entertainment value. So quality content was not getting caught in the crossfire. This was straight up industrial scale content forming. This represents both a policy shift and a clear signal coming out of YouTube. CEO Neil Mohan spoke out in early twenty twenty six about the platform's commitment to reducing spam like AI content.
Matt Vandrick:And they're not just talking anymore. They're actually doing it. The platform is using its existing detection tools to actively target inauthentic low value uploads and remove them at scale. So this is a signal because YouTube isn't banning all AI content. I wanna make sure that we're very clear on that piece.
Matt Vandrick:They're specifically targeting content that provides no human value. And the key distinction here is that AI is meant to be a tool used to enhance creativity, not replace it entirely. We've talked about this before in other episodes. There's a massive difference between using AI to help edit a video or generate a thumbnail or even help you write a script versus letting AI generate 47 channels of mindless garbage that you upload without even watching it. So, unfortunately, if you're one of those users who's been in a race to spin up 10 different YouTube channels all churning out AI slop thinking that you found some kind of infinite money glitch or hit the lottery, that's probably not going to work for you much longer, unfortunately.
Matt Vandrick:YouTube just sent a very loud message. Find a way to be more creative on the platform or find somewhere else to go. The days of gaming the algorithm with zero effort AI spam are over, and honestly, good riddance. In what may be the most spectacular corporate miscalculation in recent memory, Ring, the Amazon owned doorbell camera company, actually thought it was a good idea to use the Super Bowl to brag about their new search party feature. You probably saw it during a big game, the one where they can scan footage from your camera to help find missing dogs in the neighborhood.
Matt Vandrick:Heartwarming. Right? Except one tiny detail they glossed over. They didn't ask permission to access your camera feed. Ring stood up in front of a 100,000,000 viewers and essentially announced, hey.
Matt Vandrick:We can hijack your security camera whenever we want, like when someone loses a dog that has nothing to do with you. They even boasted that this feature helped them find more than a dog a day. How inspiring. The backlash was immediate and merciless. Senator Ed Markey didn't mince words saying, quote, Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans.
Matt Vandrick:They won't ask for your consent. This definitely isn't about dogs. It's about mass surveillance. And he's absolutely right. Meanwhile, tech analyst Brady Smith called it out perfectly.
Matt Vandrick:The Ring ad was awfully dystopian. Let's trick the public into allowing us free reign of their home security cameras by using lost puppies. Let's break down what's really happening here. A pet goes missing. The owner uploads a photo.
Matt Vandrick:Ring's AI scans recent footage from participating cameras around the neighborhood. The owner of the content gets notified and can choose whether to share the clip. But what they're not telling you is for search party to work, your Ring camera has to be constantly monitored by AI looking for pets. That means all your footage of everything your camera ever captures is being processed. Your neighbors walking by random cars, kids playing, delivery drivers, package thieves.
Matt Vandrick:Sure. But also everyone else. And processed is just a sanitized word for surveilled. Oh, and one more thing. Search party was enabled by default, so you didn't opt in.
Matt Vandrick:You didn't check a box. Ring opted you in and hope that you wouldn't notice. That's the noise right there. So Ring announcing search party during the Super Bowl wasn't about reuniting families with their lost pets. It was a flex.
Matt Vandrick:They launched the feature with maximum fanfare, banking on the fact that most people won't question or dig through advanced settings on a security product that they already trust. So now Ring will tell you that no footage is shared without consent. And, technically, you know, I suppose that's true, but that's not the point. The violation is the ongoing surveillance and analysis itself of public and semi public spaces of people, vehicles, daily activity, all running through Ring systems without you ever explicitly agreeing to it. There is no PR statement, no reassuring blog posts, no privacy commitment that should make you feel okay about the fact that Ring is surveilling more of your life than you realize, and they've opted you in by default hoping you never notice.
Matt Vandrick:This is Noise wrapped up in a Super Bowl commercial with a cute dog bow on top. It is Black History Month. And when I sat down to write the thought of the week, I was thinking of going in many, many different directions. Celebrating Black tech founders, reflecting on the marvelous inventions we've contributed, or even contemplation on black futurism. But something has been bothering me that I would rather talk about.
Matt Vandrick:Story time. So a few weeks ago, I'm scrolling through Instagrams, two AMs, in the dark, dozing off, and a post pops up. And I recognize my rhythm, my framing, my cadence, repackaged, repositioned, presented as original thought. My first instinct was sitting straight up in the bed and audibly saying out loud, they stole my shit. The problem is that over the past year, I've seen this repeated in too many different ways by too many people to name.
Matt Vandrick:And one specific one we'll get to in detail in just a bit. The rest are mostly irrelevant. People with, yes, bigger platforms, but clearly smaller points of view. It is what it is. People with all the audience, but none of the allure.
Matt Vandrick:Because as far as I'm concerned, if you're the front runner, why look back at what everyone else is doing? I see my language in your mouth. I see my ideas in your posts. Your thoughts are proof that you see me. And now you know that I see you seeing me too.
Matt Vandrick:And so while my initial response was a mix of rage, confusion, and betrayal, I realized what I really wanna say is thanks. Because you all reminded me of something I don't even think I even could have thought myself really. You'll never fall behind someone using you as a compass. But the feeling though, that searing familiar feeling of watching your work show up in someone else's packaging, I know that it's not just me that feels that way. And it certainly ain't something new.
Matt Vandrick:If you are a black, brown, and or a builder of a smaller platform, one that's just getting started, if you've ever created something, anything, you know the feeling that I'm talking about. The feeling of theft being stripped, the feeling of watching people take credit for what they didn't create. So on this episode, in recognition of Black History Month, I wanna talk about how taking credit for things that don't belong to you is as American as apple pie. This country was built on stolen land by stolen people. We know that.
Matt Vandrick:Theft and the benefits that come with it are very much a feature of this operating system. 1955, Chuck Berry picks up a guitar and invents rock and roll. The duck walk, the showmanship, the distortion, the energy. He built a genre. Then we watched Elvis Presley become the king of it.
Matt Vandrick:And Elvis didn't hide it either. Nobody did. But the industry didn't need Elvis to be original. They needed him to sound like somebody black in a body America was comfortable buying from. Chuck Berry knew it.
Matt Vandrick:He watched Elvis and he knew he was the source, but he kept playing anyway. Because, I mean, what else was he supposed to do? Stop being Chuck Berry? That's the pattern. Hip hop.
Matt Vandrick:Born in The Bronx and becomes the most consumed drama on the planet while the people who profit most from it aren't even the people who built it. Dapper Dan gets shut down by the fashion houses in the eighties for reinventing fashion with their logos creating an entire aesthetic straight out of Harlem. Then thirty years later, Gucci comes back and hires him like he wasn't there the whole time, waiting for them to catch up. Let's talk about slang. Drip, slay, no cap, hits different, slaps is given.
Matt Vandrick:Every one of these started on black lips, in black group chats, in black culture, and ended up in a brand's marketing debt credited to nobody. Corporate America is out here using African American vernacular English to sell sneakers and smoothies while the people who created it don't get a dime. Strip the face from the source, repackage the genius, sell it back in a more palatable package. That's the pattern. That's America.
Matt Vandrick:And now fast forward to the content era, a never ending feed where it's easy to say things and harder to trace where they started. And idea deficient content creators are stealing at will. And this is why it matters right now. In the age of algorithms and AI, the cycle of black innovation to mainstream adoption isn't a decade long arc anymore. It's months, sometimes weeks.
Matt Vandrick:You post a framework on Monday. By Friday, someone with a bigger platform has independently arrived at the same idea. The algorithm doesn't care who was first. It cares who was loudest. It cares who had the most followers when the idea hit.
Matt Vandrick:And AI is about to make it even worse, scraping our ideas, remixing our language, erasing the fingerprints entirely. December 31, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, posted a carousel about AI and creativity. On slide six, it said, authenticity is becoming a scarce resource. The bar is shifting from can you create to can you make something only you could create. Seven months earlier in May, I wrote an article called The Bar Will Move, Creativity Capitalism in the Age of AI.
Matt Vandrick:In it, I wrote, the human touch will be the new scarce resource. Whenever everyone reaches the bar, the bar moves. In a world where everyone has access to the same tools, what makes your work undeniably yours? That's me bar for bar. No pun.
Matt Vandrick:I asked what makes your work undeniably yours, and apparently the answer is just be big enough so nobody knows you stole it. Same pattern, different century. So I had to sit with that. I let the bitterness breathe, and then I caught myself and I said, this is exactly what the system wants. Me spiraling, paralyzed, so focused on what was taken that I forgot I'm the one who made it in the first place so I can make more.
Matt Vandrick:And then further, I realized if I'm feeling this, you're feeling this as well. So let's talk about it. Every black creative who's ever watched their genius get repackaged, every black builder who's seen their framework show up in somebody else's mouth, every black thinker who's felt the weight of being the light source in the world constantly trying to drown you in shadows, we could let it stop us, or we could recognize it for what it is. All of that taking is evidence that you are the source. To be great is to be inspirational.
Matt Vandrick:To be great is to be the blueprint. To be great is to be stolen from. There is clarity and power in honoring that fact, And I want it to serve as a fire for any of you who contemplate giving up when you feel like the odds are intentionally stacked against you. We contribute to American culture. We are American culture.
Matt Vandrick:The music, the fashion, the language, the movement, the swag, the innovation, resilience. We set the tempo while the world tries to catch the beat. So people will take your cadence and call it a trend. People will take your frameworks and call it an insight. People will take your whole vibe and call it a pivot.
Matt Vandrick:But the show goes on. The moment you stop letting the expression flow is the moment they get to pretend the river was always theirs. But all of us are connected to a source that never runs dry. People can take the water, but they can't take the spring. So to every creator watching this, every builder, every thinker who has ever felt this weight, you are not behind.
Matt Vandrick:You are the blueprint. You'll never fall behind anyone using you as a compass. And if all they can do is copy, that means all they can do is wait for you to move first. So let's move. Keep building.
Matt Vandrick:Keep thinking. Keep doing. Black History Month and every month. Show up. Show out.
Matt Vandrick:Do you. Be you. That's the one thing nobody else can do. As always, stay curious. Stay inspired.
Matt Vandrick:Now time for ask Matt. Question. Hey, Matt. Been watching the content, and I didn't even realize you work in tech professionally as well. What are some of the challenges you face being a black man in tech?
Matt Vandrick:Probably too many to name. But if I had to name things off top, it would probably be, first onboarding. So tech can be very synchronous. If you are someone who likes things to be laid out clear and have a predefined objective, you will have a hard time starting out. It really takes a lot of work to cut through the chaos and find your footing in big tech organizations.
Matt Vandrick:Try to avoid imposter syndrome. It's gonna be very easy for you to fall down those rabbit holes, but try to avoid it. Find allies, make friends, and figure out ways to add value to the business as soon as you can. Nobody's gonna tell you what you should and shouldn't do, which could be empowering but could also be confusing if you're not prepared for it. The first year is going to feel like one big riddle, at least for me it did.
Matt Vandrick:Then I would also say the importance of self advocacy. It's a common cliche that your career is in your hands, and it's your job to be in control of it. Manage up, manage down, manage all around in order to create visibility for yourself and ensure your contributions are meaningful and known. That is the case in corporate America in general, but I found in tech for me anyway, it's that times a thousand. You have to stay alert.
Matt Vandrick:People will represent your work like it's their own. People will misrepresent your work as though you didn't do enough when you did. Backchannel conversations that can determine your trajectory, and overall just make it really hard for you to thrive and grow. There's also a very intense promo culture in most big tech organizations. So people will literally make every choice about how they can posture themselves to look good for a race.
Matt Vandrick:If you are someone who really just wants to make cool products and overall enjoy what you do every day, you may or may not find that working at some of these places. So it's a highly personal experience. And that is the show, ladies and gentlemen. I am so happy that you watched. I had a great time here with you today.
Matt Vandrick:Happy February. Happy Black History Month. As always, stay curious. Stay inspired. Y'all be good.
Matt Vandrick:Peace. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And stay tuned for new episodes, Thursdays biweekly at 8PM. Connect more with me at curiousinspired.com and at curious inspired on all socials. Thanks for watching.
Matt Vandrick:As always, stay curious, stay inspired. Y'all be good? Peace.