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Fascinating conversations with founders, leaders, and experts about product management, artificial intelligence (AI), user experience design, technology, and how we can create the best product experiences for users and our businesses.
Kyle (00:01.226)
All right, welcome to another episode of Product by Design. I am Kyle, and this week we've got another awesome guest with us, JB. JB, welcome to the show.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (00:10.225)
Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here, Carl.
Kyle (00:12.59)
It's great to have you. Let me do a brief intro for you, JB, and then you can tell us a little bit more about yourself. But JB is a tech.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (00:20.133)
You froze on screen dude, I think we have a problem.
Kyle (00:24.478)
I, am I still frozen?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (00:27.191)
Yeah, you kept through all of that you were kind of like
Kyle (00:31.954)
Okay. It, um, sometimes it freezes right at the start, but we'll... Here we go. Yeah.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (00:32.964)
Pfft. Hehehehe.
Yeah, it's the buffering thing. You gotta love it because Riverside actually use, I think they're using Vanaj in the background and Vanaj have this thing where if you use them for with their WebRTC, the beginning always has that little uh before it gets so it's one of the telltales of using Vanaj. I know, because we use them in box message. Ah.
Kyle (00:56.554)
Okay, here we go. Let me do a brief introduction for you, and then you can tell us a little bit more about yourself. But JB is a tech maverick reshaping the digital landscape. He's introduced the world to Vox Messenger, which is a trailblazing post-quantum encrypted messenger, Vox Crypto, which you'll tell us a little bit more about yourself and many other things. So JB, again, welcome. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (01:23.525)
Thanks, I'm JB. I'm the CEO of three different tech companies actually And we've now kind of put them all together into a single holding company because there's only one of me and there's only a finite number of hours in the day So my first company is cryo tech where I created the world's first post quantum encrypted video chat messenger What is post quantum? I hear everybody
saying, okay,
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (02:14.197)
But it's kind of cool that we're already out there. Now, it's just one part of an entire ecosystem. We have built it. We have basically built decentralized, interoperable alternatives to the current web-to-mainstream paradigm of social networking. So we have our own version of Facebook called Voxelive that has zero ads, zero exploitation of your data, and zero chance of your data being sold to Cambridge Analytica or any political party for direct political advertising.
It's not for free. You can start using it for free. But again, we have to support it. And that's how we do it. End-to-end encrypted, all kinds of groovy stuff. We even have, even when you subscribe to Voxelive, one of the great thing is, is for your $20 subscription, you get access to three AIs. So in terms of even having something, having good value for money, if you're using Voxelive, you have ChatGPT, DaVinci, and Replicant, all in one place as opposed to paying multiple subscriptions to them separately.
And then of course you can monetize that in our marketplace. We have Vox Edu, where you can learn and get rewarded for taking courses, but you better pay attention because your activity is monitored and tracked inside of the courseware architecture to make sure you're not gaming the system like you can with Udemy or any of the other educational platforms. That's just, we have Vox Crypto. And Vox Crypto solved a fairly big problem in the Ethereum space, which is...
How do you send lots of transfers out there without spending thousands in gas fees? Because as, say you wanted to say, send $50 to 50 different people, how are you going to do that? Because that's 50 times 50 plus your transfer fee. And those gas fees go up scalar to the amount of the scarcity of processing compute capability on the network. And given that we're at meme coin season, that scarcity is high. So yeah.
gas fees are high. Now what we have done is I created a smart contract that is known as a pass through smart contract. That basically means no, your money does not go into a big fat juicy wallet and then gets subdivided out which creates this juicy attack vector for founders to claim, you know, I accidentally burnt the keys to it guys. I don't know what's happened to it. Sorry, mea culpa. None of that. What happens is the smart contract is clever enough to be able to wrap all of your transactions into a single transactional fee.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (04:32.241)
while still generating all of the transactional records for each individual transaction. So you could send out 50 transactions in a single transaction and pay about 30% of the total price in one plus our fee, which is for a limited time at the moment, only 1%. So we have that. We are expanding that to Solana because we have a partnership with Solana, Super Team UK. And that's just one of the companies. And then at my other company, Dejin, we solved another problem, which is, how do you make
the metaverse equitable? How do you make it so that you don't have to be a millionaire to get a decent digital twin? Or having access to software so you don't look like a blemange with the semblance of a texture of a face, which is kind of like what Ready Player Me and all of the other automated avatar creators kind of give you, heavily gamified. Biggest problem with adoption of metaverse as an environment for the future is the cost of hardware, the cost of producing content for it,
and the ability for anyone to participate. So we fixed that. We created an algorithm that allows you to use incredibly cheap sensors to engage in a markless camera sync so anyone can create photo-realistic digital twins for less than a third of the current industry price. I'll give you an example. The nearest equivalency of the software that we have in the market is $3,000 a month, and we're only going to charge $39.99 for it.
In fact, our software is so revolutionary that it will work on your mobile phone. And no, you don't need to have a $1,500 iPhone to actually facilitate that. Because we actually made it so that you can use cheap sensors like the Luxonis Oak D, which are so powerful, but so low-consumptive in power, they can actually work from a single USB-C cable in a standard mobile phone. And then my third company is Gorgon Black Box.
where we basically take the technologies I develop at CryoTech and Djin and we turn these into, we create military, private and public security applications out of them. Because the only way you can create something that can be used in the private or public security space safely and in a way that is not exploitative to actual civilian public is by controlling the entire ecosystem, be that the encryption or the data handling. And of course, making sure that you exist in an environment that forces data compliance.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (06:55.313)
This is the reason why all three of my companies are headquartered in Europe, in Dublin, in Ireland, because the United Kingdom has some incredibly crazy privacy laws, which would force me, even if I didn't want to, to give up customer data to the British government, even without a warrant or a denotus. Sorry, my responsibility is to my customers, to my shareholders, but really my shareholders, their responsibility is to my customers too.
And that's how I run all my companies. My companies are based on a firm foundation of personal accountability and transparency. You know, as far as I'm concerned, if it's not good enough for me, it is not good enough for my customers. Plain and simple. My responsibility at the end of the day is to my customers because my customers are the ones that provide the food and the bread and butter that's on my table. You know, so I'm, you know, being a customer in this world, I'm very passionate about making sure they get what they pay for. Now, as we move into the...
As we move across the 21st century into the 22nd century or the so-called century of abundance, where we have industry 4.0 taking over, robots replacing the common man in most industry, generative AI replacing all middle management, stuff like that. In that future, there has to be a way for people to still make money and live. Now, if governments are not gonna provide universal basic income, and if most of the corporations are so...
anally retentive and obsessed with their own profit making, this basically means it falls on individuals to try and come up with a solution. And that's what we've done. All of our products, we have a commitment that within Akuma, which is a company that I've put all of my companies under, we have the commitment that on the fifth, at midnight on the fifth of November 2030, a multi-signature wallet spins up out of the ether. And this wallet will be taking a fraction of all of our profits from all of our products.
across all of our companies to fund a universal basic income wallet that will be, which will be made available to everybody and anybody, anybody who uses our Vox Pay or Vox crypto app will be able to participate and take part of this. And no, you won't need to stick your eyeball into a magic silver eyeball. I'm looking at you, Sam Ollman, you know, in some vague kind of data snatch where we're stealing your biometric data in exchange for some.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (09:14.569)
vague form of universal basic income for which we have not delineated sustainability. By the way, we have costed this and we have charted how to make this sustainable and we can present that at audit. No, we are instead just going to be following the commercials and financially regulatory standard of KYC and AML and giving everybody access to this and hopefully other...
Benevolent corporations will follow this given that called some of my you know, my peer competitors are literally making millions of dollars a second exploiting human data Hopefully they will see that there is something to be gained from joining us in participating in a voluntary Universal Basic Income Bear in mind for what we have delineated, you know Our pitch to bringing Universal Basic Income to this to the world does not require a tax increase
for the 1% so they can all stop panicking and stop lobbying their senators. Calm is all good, you get to keep your money. And it doesn't require a taxation on tech companies. So all of those guys can all calm their britches and calm down and actually do something good for once, other than building rockets to go to Mars. We have created a methodology that actually does lead to a sustainable route to universal basic income. Now people are gonna say, why is that beneficial to a corporation?
You have to think of it like this. If your consumers are unhappy, and they're unhappy because society and the economy are shot to pieces for, should we say, whatever reason, we're not going to point the finger at all of our governments. If these economies and society is generally pretty much screwed around them, these consumers cannot spend. The economy collapses in on itself. It collapses, you know, literally swallows itself whole and dies. So how do you fix that?
You fix that by giving consumers confidence. How do you give consumers confidence? You allow them to feel relaxed. How do you allow them to feel relaxed? Well, you take care of their basic human necessities. What's the basic human necessity? Having a roof over your head, having clean water to drink, access to food and access to education. You know, these are very basic things. These are fundamental human rights and these can be provided. This is the crazy thing about the modern world, AI.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (11:30.725)
and blockchain gives us the keys to being able to provide all of these things to all of humanity for next to no cost. This basically does mean the old world has to think of a new way of making money. No more can you make money from exploiting those data streams. And that's fine. I've built these companies from the ground up where none of our revenue streams are in any shape or form reliant on the exploitation of personal data.
So I say to all of my competitors, it is possible. It's just not gonna be lazy. You know, it's not free money at that point. You've got to put some effort in and build a product that your consumers actually like. And this means building a product that they use, not a product that they only use because you are able to lobby governments into squeezing out all competition from the market, thereby creating a virtualized monopoly. And I suddenly realized, I spent ages answering that question.
Kyle (12:29.906)
You've kind of touched on a whole bunch of points that I wanna like pull on a whole bunch of different threads. But I mean, how do we, this last point that you've kind of made, as the world starts to change and as we shift from the way things were to this new paradigm and this new way that things are.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (12:31.934)
Good to talk.
Kyle (12:57.478)
and we see like new technologies and new ways of working. And as we see kind of this displacement, we're going to need more and more of these types of ways of companies managing, kind of like you were saying, like this universal basic income, this new way of people being able to be supported.
But that's not something that most people are going to do, especially most companies. Like how can we start to bring about more of this type of change? Like, I mean, you're doing it, but like, you know, I don't see many other people like following that. How can we do that?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (13:43.673)
What I'm hoping is that as we go from pre-revenue generating, which is where we have, we do generate revenue, but again, these are mostly with institutional direct contracts. We have introducing revenue streams into our products, but we will release a product into the market first and actually get people to test it and use it and see if it brings utility to their life before trying to ram a price down their throat. Is there a point to it? And we don't do the Y Combinator.
Freud and what Barney's way of building a product where you do customer surveys and try to find this tiny 1% of people who will actually give you that niche product That's pointless to us. We don't we don't build or design products for a trend We build products like you were talking about for the world that is coming for what is coming next And what I'm hoping is that as other people see the see that you can generate profit and that you can still give up Some of these profits back into this system
and they see that it actually does increase your user base because if people start seeing themselves being incentivized for utility, you better believe you're gonna start seeing, I mean, it's a very easy thing to see. When you look in blockchain and particularly in the crypto market, you can see that proper incentivization does actively work. It actively keeps a user base rolling. I mean, these act, even the promise of incentivization.
is so good, it'll even get people sticking with projects that even claim to lose $10 million of their money. This is, incentivization works, but you cannot, but there is a difference between real incentivization, i.e. incentivization that benefits the end user versus fake incentivization. And what do I mean by fake incentivization? Fake incentivization is things like saying to people,
Oh, you're going to get given some imaginary points that you can then trade in for some imagine for some for some very cheap thing that was probably made with child labor and incredibly cheap region of the world. So that doesn't solve anything because what you're doing is you you're taking one form of exploitation to fuel another form of exploitation while you yourself are still keeping your margins seriously sweet. That is not how incentivization works.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (15:56.549)
Incentivization should actually benefit the end user potentially more than the actual Incentivizer because what you're looking at is what you're looking at scale effect The scale effect should be that incentivization of that individual leads to three four five six seven eight nine ten More users joining your ecosystem because they're not they are actually seeing the real-world Application you're not saying to people. Oh, we're only going to give this to you if you refer ten people. Why why do that? That's fake incentivization
That's a pyramid scheme, man. That's Ponzi. You know, we're not in the market of creating fake products. That's the reason why we go for true incentivization, which is that we are going to literally just give everybody access to our incentive. Our incentivization is you will get universal basic income and you will get universal basic income as we generate revenue. We intend to be generating the kinds of revenue by 2030 that easily facilitate that. Come and join us. You know, and by the way,
This is part of a smart contract, which means when the smart contract is deployed, people can interrogate it. People can visit it. This thing happens with or without us. And because of the way in which we handle our internal finances, we handle our internal finances in an incredibly modern way. Even for corporate funds, we use multi-signature wallets, which basically means these multi-signature wallets give us the mechanism to automatically interact with them at a code level.
So yes, at midnight on the 5th of November, 2030, it is very easy for a smart contract to spin up and to actuate all of these connections and roster our products. I've designed everything from the ground up. This is not like us saying that this is something that we promise to give. If people research us, they can actually see the foundations are here. And I'm also not being funny. If people check my interviews for the past couple of years, they can also see I'm incredibly consistent. I'm like a dog with a bone with this. My...
A lot of my shareholders hate it because I am very, I keep reminding them the reality is, guys, we are going towards Unibrow Space Game. Yeah, yeah, JB, no, I don't think you understand, guys. It's happening. You know, so, and I'm kind of, because I'm about accountability and transparency, if you get me up on an interview in a few years' time and say, JB, if so and so happened on your network, do you not think you're responsible for this? The answer's gonna be yes, I created it.
Kyle (18:07.851)
Thanks for watching!
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (18:23.909)
You know, as a parent, you don't see when your parent, your child goes off and burgles somebody's house, you don't go, well, it's not my problem. Yeah, maybe he's an individual being. No, I'm afraid not. Until he's 21 in most countries, you are legally responsible for him. When you're a designer and a product developer, guess what? There is no age of maturity on this child. You are responsible for it forever. So yes, Elon Musk, you are responsible for what happens on.
Twitter and the rise of racism and discrimination. Yes, Zuckerberg, you are responsible for the manipulation and exploitation of children on your platform. Because at the end of the day, they all like to say the buck stops with them. Well, seemingly, apparently it doesn't. With me, it does. I don't do this pick and choose component. And if we do screw up, we're gonna hold our hands up and go, yeah, we screwed up. We know we screwed up, we're gonna fix it.
and we'd like you to overview us fixing it.
Kyle (19:25.034)
Yeah, I love that. And tell us more about, I mean, you've talked a little bit about blockchain and the technology that's kind of powering some of these things. What is it, how is it that you've incorporated that? And why do you see that as such an important part of the businesses that you've created and how that can maybe play a part in the future of some of the things that we do.
going forward, you know, it obviously has the ability for some of these smart contracts and other things. So what are the applications that you've used it for, as you've kind of mentioned, and what is the potential for that going forward?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (20:05.137)
the potential for the correct utility of blockchain is huge. And the reason I say correct utility of blockchain is because just like AI and every other bubble in existence, there is kind of this idea that if you shoehorn blockchain and smart contracts or you shoehorn generative AI into something, all of a sudden you've got an amazing product. Ah! No. Mm.
It's kind of like this idea, it's kind of like making a movie and you think that just by putting an A-list star in it, all of a sudden it will be an amazing movie. I'll give you an example, Terminator Salvation. A lot of critics would say that film is a empiric failure, but just because it had Christian Bale in it, a few people go, yeah, it's amazing. Now, I hate to say this, the critics in this case who say it was a empiric failure are absolute morons because by and large film critics are like some of the most...
They're the least intelligent critical thinkers in society. That's the reason why they're film critics in the first place. If they weren't, they'd go make a movie. Then they'd realize how hard it is to actually make a film that's decent. Sorry, I used to be in film production and filmmaking. It's one of my pet peeves, man. It's just a thing. Blockchain allows us to do what? If you apply it for use cases which are focused on where equity.
accountability and transparency are requirements, then it's perfect. Now what use cases are these where these would be requirements? Well for example, local governance, running a town. You don't need lots of councillors to run a town because most councillors are just facilitating effectively administrative duties, i.e. moving money around from different accounts to make sure that different civic functions like the dustman, the road sweepers, yadda
or get paid. The reality is you don't need humans for that job. You could replace 90% of that administrative function with smart contracts. Now, what advantage does this have? Well, it has the advantage that there's, you're not paying wages of a bunch of people who are just paper shufflers. It also has the advantage that there is no ability for human corruption or greed to come in and start tampering with the utility of those funds. That's interesting.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (22:24.525)
Another place where blockchain is the perfect utility would be effectively voting. Because if you want a system that cannot be co-opted, controlled or manipulated by anybody who's a technology or a platform provider, which by the way is always a risk if you're reliant on a private or a public corporation to provide that kind of service, the blockchain becomes again the most natural solution because it's non-repudiable. What does non-repudiable mean? It means...
records and choices cannot be changed once they are made. Again, perfect for voting. Once these things, once a vote is placed on the blockchain, it cannot be miscounted, it cannot be misidentified, and it cannot be claimed that it was illegible, or any of these other things that are attributed and used for reasons why votes and elections can be manipulated. In some components of banking, in fact, I would actually go as far as to say
all banking blockchain has an actual utility because really if we think about it what is the industry that should have the highest level of accountability and transparency if not financial management. However the reality is black money or dark money or money that is being moved round and fairly.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (23:45.641)
non-legal ways, of course, do not want that. Now there is a, again, if you look at all of the applications of blockchain, you can easily see, based on things I've spoken about, that all of these things have applications in a large proportion of our lives, but they are applications in a large proportion of our life that is run by groups of people who literally earn nothing by moving to blockchain. And that's the problem, because
We have two worlds that we are moving from. We have the Web2 world of Freud and Barney's consumer capitalism, where the platform was king. And the agreement that we had with the platforms, the governments, and the corporations is that if we give you free access to our digital souls, you will give us something that improves our lives. Now, the reality is that's not happened. The reality is we've given over the keys to our digital souls.
And in exchange, we received nothing but mental wellbeing issues, self-questioning of our personal identity up the Azu, and pretty much nothing else, really. Oh, and now direct political advertising. That's a new thing in the 21st century. Direct political advertising. In the Web 3 world, the paradigm is different. You are king or queen of your world. This also means it comes...
with the additional responsibility. It means you are responsible for your security. You're responsible for ensuring that you protect your keys. You're responsible for making sure you know who you're speaking to and who you're communicating with and who you're doing business with. This is a big shift because you'll find a lot of people have had accountability and transparency kind of trained out of them. How many of us have had a discussion with someone, even in a business or in our personal lives where we've gone, so and so didn't work?
And somebody will go, oh, it's a motha ho! Straight away. You'll be like, whoa, I did not point the finger at you. I didn't even assign any blame anywhere that you immediately took yourself out for running. And this is happening, this happens in our businesses, with our tech CEOs and with our individuals. It's systemic, it's everywhere. I'm hoping to change that by being a different example, by actually saying in every single one of my meetings and interviews, question me.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (26:08.105)
Question me on everything I do. Be it now when I am just a CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation, or be it when I'm in the future, when I'm the CEO of trillions, trillion dollar corporations. I am never ever going to be above accountability. I am never ever going to be above answering the question of a journalist. Because a journalist's job is to find out for the public if you are being accountable and transparent.
You know, it's mind-boggling to me. But unfortunately, consumers are also not their best friend in this space, because a lot of consumers also accept this. And they accept it because of a couple of reasons. A, you're trained to, at school, to accept this because of the educational system. You're trained to some extent by society at large. It's also easier, isn't it? You know, what's that saying? We all want to have an easy life, you know? Sorry, ladies and gentlemen.
It's the 21st going into the 22nd century. There is nothing easy about this shift. It becomes easy for the generation after this. That's when it becomes easy. When all of the things, when the revolution has happened and the world has finally shook off the chains of consumer capitalism and moved to the world of abundance of AI and universal basic income, until we get to that reality, it's going to suck. You know?
But we just kind of got to lean into the suck. In fact, there you go. That could be one of the little clips there. Lean into the suck, because it's going to be like that until we completely shift over to web 3 and decentralization and interoperability.
Kyle (27:48.478)
Yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree with that, that leaning into the suck, that views that phrase many a time. So completely agree with it. And I wanna kind of touch on the point that you made, like the fact that we've kind of traded our, like our digital soul in so many ways. And it's a point that you've made and that you've been trying to address with a lot of the things that you've been doing.
tell us a little bit more about that. Like what is wrong with the way that things are structured now and the way that we have traded a lot of our digital soul and our data privacy. And what are some of the things that you have been doing to address that and that we should be thinking more about rather than just kind of accepting the way that things are right now.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (28:49.073)
Sorry about that, you had frozen there a moment. Okay, so how do we address that? Okay, digital soul, the reason.
To shift, the reason why we all give up our digital soul, actually probably what we have to think about first is what is a digital soul? What is your digital soul? Your digital soul is the data points that you leave when you interact with any digital device. For example, when you're walking around with your phone, you are leaving breadcrumbs of where you've been, who you've spoken to, when you spoke to them, how you felt at the time based on the emojis and the likes that you expressed.
All of these things, once you put all these data points together, allow a person to build a profile of who you are, what you love, what you hate, what you admire, what you want to be, what you wish you could be. All of these things are expressed in the involuntary interactions that you have with these networks. The reason I say involuntary, because largely for a lot of people these are involuntary actions now. The amount of time somebody will click a like, just like that.
just because they like something, because we have now got trained into conflating, indicating our emotional state visually, and feeling the necessity to do so. That's our digital soul. That's your digital footprint. Now here's the kicker. In your everyday life, would you go up to a complete and utter stranger, and then literally tell them 21 facts about yourself that would literally give them access to your bank account? Consciously,
you wouldn't, but subconsciously you do every single day. And this is one of the things I keep saying to people is that we need to start getting, we have to retrain the way we think about things. The world has not actually got more complex. If anything, the world has actually got simpler. It's just, we need to actually become more mature in how we think about things. So it becomes more of a focal point when you realize what can be done with your digital self. So what can be done with your digital self?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (30:51.313)
Your digital self, be it a picture of you taken from your social media that you inadvertently left set to public, matched up with a load of quotes of said about yourself, your digital self could be used to power a digital twin or a deep fake of you that all of a sudden says, I don't know, I love Nazism. That digital soul, that digital data about you can be used to create a digital twin or a version of you that goes and says some crazy inflammatory stuff.
all in your name, all in your image. That digital data about you can be used to unlock your bank account. That digital data could even be used to steal your rights to your child. And for those of you who understand anything about parental rights, we'll understand how that can happen. Those of us who've been involved in family court cases can understand how that can happen. Our digital, the data that we put out there is incredibly useful. It's incredibly useful to everybody.
Bear in mind, one of the reasons why there was such a focus on Cambridge Analytica and the sale of that data from Facebook to Cambridge Analytica is because that data was then used to craft messaging that was used to manipulate people during elections. For the first time in our history, we are having the data, the information that people know about us, crafting direct targeted political messaging to make us make a very specific choice
that does not just, the outcome of which doesn't just affect us personally and individually, but also affects the entire society around us. And they're doing this without our permission. This almost feels like, what's the nearest equivalency to this? A nearest equivalency to this would be kidnapping some people from their country of origin, slapping some chains on them, and then making them earn you money. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, we're entering the age of digital slavery.
But the difference being is you're all unaware of it. You're all unaware that Massa is most definitely taking everything you've got. And you're doing it willingly. The way I address that is by educating people as much as possible around me in my own personal life and in my business life and my consumers. And I also make sure that every single product I build, every single business decision I make, I ask myself those questions.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (33:16.257)
are we exploiting somebody in this? I'll give you an example. All of my shareholders and any VC that invests in me has to get very comfortable from day one that we are never running AdMob or any other external ads platform on any of our platforms or ecosystems. We may allow communities to advertise to each other, but it's not going to be reliant on targeted data. So again, we are.
We are addressing it in how we run our business, right to the root level. It's not a case of us saying, oh my god, guys, we want to help society. We hate ads, by the way, to use our products. You best like ads. But we promise we are handling your data really well, even though we're buying the stuff from exactly the same people as everybody else. But ignore that. Don't watch that, bro. Trust us. We're good. No, we're not doing that. We check and we basically, I'll give you an example. When we make our business decisions here at CryoTech.
Degene, Gorgon, and Akuma Engineering, I ask myself, would I be happy making this decision in a public space during a Twitter Live space? Would I be happy having that conversation there? And if the answer is no, then I start saying to the people in the meeting, you know what, guys, I don't think this is for us. Because if we cannot be comfortable having that meeting in the public space, then it means we're possibly doing something that consumers would not be happy with. Now, I'm talking about conversations about products and services.
There are of course some conversations you need to have in a business privately. There's financial regulation I have to stick to, of course. And there is GDPR and COPPA, et cetera, et cetera. I'm referring to those things where we're talking about how do we make money. When we are having a meeting about how, guys, should we try this? If we don't want to have that conversation in the public space, it probably means it's a little bit nefarious. Now, what I'm hoping is that other corporations see this. I'm hoping that my consumers see this.
and my consumers start demanding more from the personality CEOs that they're currently giving all of their money from. So what does that mean exactly? What it means is if you're a Facebook user or an Instagram user, then maybe after seeing one of my interviews, I'm not saying go use my products, which I would love because hell, I wouldn't mind making some money too. What I'm saying is, look at the products you're already using. At the bare minimum, make sure that they are not
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (35:39.401)
harming your life. Now I'm not saying the product doesn't have to necessarily profit you financially, but the use of that product mustn't put you in danger. The use of that product mustn't put your children at danger. Now people are probably going to say to the hearing that, what's he talking about? How is he using Facebook putting my kids at danger? And I would say to you if you as a parent actually think that you've been asleep at the wheel for the last couple of years at least half a decade because the reality is
Creditors can get to your children. It's incredibly easy for a child to sign up to Facebook and any of these platforms Even though these platforms say we're not for children the reality is and they've already admitted this in their own research and their own findings They do cater to children. They do market to our children. That's the reality And as a parent knowing that we as opposed to stamping your feet saying don't use Facebook You better get wise realize your kid is probably using it
Kyle (36:29.134)
Thanks for watching!
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (36:37.089)
and get wise to what can happen and what can come to them via that. I'll give you an example. If you have children who are of secondary school age and your children are coming home and they're continually morose and unhappy, there is a high chance they're being bullied. But not just bullied in the way you or I were bullied. No! When we were bullied at school or at college, you got to go home and you got away from the bullying. No. Our children are getting bullied on every single device that they have.
So that bullying doesn't end when they get home. Now, unfortunately, the platform providers are part of the equation in this because the platform providers are aware that this mechanic exists and that this is happening. But they ignore it, why? Because it's still users and that's what they care about because users and the existence of the user on the platform generates them what? Revenue via ads data. We do not have such, we don't have that issue in our network.
We do not profit from somebody doing something wrong. So yeah, we are actually, as a company, we're more actively incentivized actually to maintain order in that respect, to periodically check if our users do appear to be underage and if they do, query and kick them off the platform. As opposed to this carte blanche, you know, you guys, we're operating freedom of speech. No, you're not. You're operating freedom of complete irresponsibility. Big difference.
So I would say that's how we kind of address it. We make sure that everything that we, everything we do in our company does not force us into a situation where we could use as an excuse that we have to engage in a certain revenue generating activity that unfortunately has this negative downside. You see what I mean?
Kyle (38:20.554)
Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree that when I look at these products and tools as somebody who builds products as well, like it is your responsibility. Like you said before, like you own it. You can't just be like, well, it's a misuse of it or it's not supposed to be for underage kids or that sort of thing. If they're using it, it is your problem. If people are bullying on your product.
It is your problem. Like you are responsible for that. Like if I built something that was being misused, like that is my problem as the creator of that tool or that product and you have to own it. And that is like literally your responsibility as the person who has done that thing. And any misuse of it isn't the user's fault. Like you have created a product that is being misused and now you have to like own.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (39:08.001)
And any misuse of it isn't a user's fault. Like you have created a problem.
Kyle (39:17.282)
that and take responsibility for it. So completely agree with it. I'm interested too in your thoughts on these, both the platforms and the responsibility, but also like what is the role of government in some of this? Because you mentioned earlier too, like, you know, the surveillance that government is doing in some of these different places, but also like the responsibility.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (39:18.505)
Thanks for watching!
Kyle (39:41.19)
over some of these platforms and over some of these products. Like where do you see that as far as like data privacy and the just the general.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (39:49.057)
Okay, I mean in terms of where does the government sit in all of this? In that chain? I've got to be honest, the government has no business in it. The reality is, unless the world's governments are going to create state-owned social networks, state-owned social media platforms, they literally have no business.
interfering in the operations of a private corporation whatsoever. Unless they're going to provide, unless the government is funding these corporations, now that's a different matter. Now if the if the corporation in question is being funded through tax relief or some other form of public money, then yes, governments have a part to play, most definitely. But if it's a private corporation with private revenue streams, no, sorry, no, the FBI has no business ensuring that they have a person in the
to gain access to information. Bear in mind, one of the biggest arguments that has been used in the US Senate right now against bite dance and against TikTok is that the Chinese Communist Party have people in their data center for compliance. Well, earthquake time, ladies and gentlemen. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, every single Western social network on the planet has either the FBI, the NSA, GCHQ, or one of these three-letter agencies in their data room ensuring compliance.
I'm literally the only platform that does not. So when people are trying to say, China this, Russia that, please remember what your own government is doing to you. There's a reason why you're being told to look the other way, because it means you're not looking, you're not looking at what is being done to you. I'll give you an example. It's about false equivalences. People will say, oh my God, it could be a lot worse though. I don't, what do you mean it could be a lot worse?
If it, oh, that's the class one, it could be a lot worse if you lived in Russia. If I lived in Russia, I'd be living in Russia, but I'm not living in Russia. I'm living in the United Kingdom or America. So why are you telling me it could be worse? No, no, no. What, you're trying to say that just because you wanna set a moving standard, that is now the baseline? When did that, when, when did that become the case? These are just excuses used to gain access. Now, the question a lot of your listeners are probably saying is why do, why are governments even getting involved anyway?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (42:10.533)
The reality is, governments like the British government or the American government will say we need access to your data to protect you from the paedophiles and the child traffickers and the human traffickers. And the only way we can protect you people from this is if you give us all the keys to your messaging. Yeah, no.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (42:38.809)
Let's take a look at human trafficking as a global market. Human trafficking as a global market is worth more than the entirety of games. The reason why this is important is because the gaming industry is the biggest and most valuable growth market in existence other than pornography and human trafficking. And human trafficking eclipses it by a large mark. Now, if we have, given that we have so many world governments,
so many international organisations working collaboratively to stamp out human trafficking, I would perhaps hazard the question of why have they not been successful thus far given the fact they have had access to unlimited resources. We are now being told the only way to deal with it is by giving up all of our privacy. Do you not realise that basically means that every human being is classified as assumed guilty until proven otherwise?
That is not a key, I thought the core tenet, one of the core tenets of justice and liberty and democracy was innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. However, technology companies are all bending the knees to governments and society is shifting the other way. So to a world of assumed guilt. Sorry, that is not a world I'm building for, at all. So in answer to your question, do governments have a place?
in private corporations, particularly in secure messaging and social networking? No, they do not. Unless these governments are going to invest in the infrastructure directly and build their own state-run and publicly labeled as state-run social networks and communications platforms, unless they're doing that, they have no business involved. Period. No business in the data centers.
No business telling anybody who they can do business with. None of it, at all. That's, yeah, that's, oh my God, I suddenly sound so libertarian, man, jeez.
Kyle (44:43.607)
Yeah. It's one of those super frustrating things because you kind of like you mentioned, you get this, especially as we're seeing with a lot of the discussion, I know at the time of this recording, there's a lot of the discussion around bite dance and TikTok and you get the discussion around data and privacy.
but the real subtext there is around power and control. And that's what the thing that nobody wants to talk about out loud is that really as a government, we want the power and control of the data under this presumption of, you know, we're just trying to ensure that your data is secure. When in reality,
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (45:36.109)
your data is secure. When you... your personal data has...
Kyle (45:39.018)
the, your personal data has never been secure. Like I, you know, I, right here, like I'm, I get these types of like letters all the time of like, Hey, you're, there's been a data breach and all of your data is gone and nothing, nothing is being done about that. But as soon as it's like, Hey, there's an app that we're not fully in control of as a government, we need to, we need to take care of this and make sure that we can get inside it.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (46:05.477)
Well, when has 80% When has, whenever in US history has over 80% of the Senate ever actually voted cohesively? I mean, what? You see.
Kyle (46:21.989)
Yeah. Yeah, within a couple of days, just almost unanimously working on something, never.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (46:34.205)
Sorry, I didn't get the end of that because it said you kind of froze on screen.
Kyle (46:36.298)
Oh.
Yeah, the US government working unanimously on something within a matter of a few days does not happen in the history of ever.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (46:52.641)
Unfortunately, it could be that the powers of B do not want me to hear that comment, because every time you're about to say that comment, the whole thing freezes. And this, you know, every time, it's like, okay, try again really, really quickly.
Kyle (47:00.642)
That's...
Kyle (47:06.806)
All right, yeah, the US government working unanimously on anything, that quickly never happens in the history of ever.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (47:13.989)
Yeah. And that in itself becomes the red flag. You know what I mean? When you have a history of people consistently not cooperating, or when a bill is being passed, only about four or five people from either side showing. But then all of a sudden, for one particular bill, every single person who's getting paid shows up. Then it does force you to ask questions. And they've got nobody to blame but themselves for that one. Unfortunately, if they didn't want the eye of the public on them on this one.
maybe roll a little more sneakily. Because there's some very obvious things here. It highlights how the systems operate, if you know what I mean. What I have discovered is that if I had access to tens of millions, I could literally sway British politics, I could sway political movement here in the United Kingdom. We have, not many people realize this, but we have lobby groups too here.
but they're not called lobby groups, they're called working groups. And they're very cheap. Only cost 10,000 pounds to join a working group. And you better believe that every major corporation in the world is in one of these working groups here in the United Kingdom, shaping behind the scenes British policy. You know, the reality is the British public actually have zero control of the decision-making that is made in this country. Voting does not actually make that decision because we have...
two main political parties run by exactly the same people. And I jest you not, they even have the same marketing agencies. Again, I jest you not, they didn't even try to hide this. So what I'm hoping is that with the companies that I'm building and the infrastructures that I'm building, I'm hope that we'll be able to bring some form of personal freedom to the general public that is not reliant on a government, you know? And bearing in mind, people also, there's another thing that we should address because people are easily gonna say, well, JB,
You have all of these corporations. You're replacing everything. What stops you from being the next Zuckerberg? Well, I mean, it's really easy. First of all, I came from a council estate in Birmingham and I don't come from a family that has any form of emerald mines whatsoever. So my background is from a background where, I come from a background where I understand individual and personal loss. I understand personal struggle. So there is that. There is also the other component, which is that whenever it...
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (49:34.349)
if when my each of my products gets to the billion dollar valuation, the product is being spun up as its own company that I have nothing to do with. So I will not be in control of it. I will not be in control of it till the end of time and stuff like that. And I have no interest in being a personality CEO, even though that's what people apparently want. All I'm interested in is trying to help as many people as possible before I slip off this mortal coil in this particular dimension, this particular reality.
Because as we all know, death is just the beginning. That's a whole other conversation for a whole other time. But I just want to make sure that I leave the world a better place than what I left it in, you know, that I came in. I mean, I was kind of, I was listening to a track by Tupac on Are You Still Down, the Do You Remember Me album, Heaven's Ghetto, Is There a Ghetto in Heaven? And I was listening to that track, first time I heard that track when I was about 16 or 17, and it rung true of society then.
and I'm here I am at 43 listening to it in the shower and I was struck dead like a bolt of lightning by how it literally, what he describes in Heaven Got a Ghetto is exactly what we live now. Nothing has changed. So I'm even more determined now that my children are not gonna have to go on BLM protests, aren't gonna have to go on to protest for freeing people, just stop, you know, just protest to remind people of their humanity even.
That's my goal, to try and change it. I'm a firm believer in the individual can change the entire world. There is nothing too big that an individual cannot take on.
Kyle (51:11.818)
Yeah, yeah. I absolutely love it. What advice would you have for anybody who wants to do something similar, who wants to start a company or wants to do something like you are doing?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (51:24.225)
My advice would be ignore Y Combinator, ignore Pioneer, ignore a lot of incubators because almost all of the incubators will say We'll ask you to follow the Freud and Barney's formula for consumer capitalism Which relies on what? It relies on exploitation of personal data at its very core I'm a multiple alum of Y Combinator and Pioneer
And people need to realize that, yes, when you go into these incubators now, they won't be going on about ads revenue generation, they'll be going on about AI. But people need to realize that we have swapped one data stealing monster, ads, retargeted ads for another data stealing monster. And that's called generative AI. Because what is it they're telling us? Oh my god, guys, if you want the best customizations, if you want it to look like you, talk like you, connect you to your friends.
Give us all your data, it's okay. It's not like the days of ads retargeting, we promise. We promise it's gonna give you a good experience, man. It really is. We've just swapped one monster for another. And unfortunately, it's an even less opaque monster to deal with than retargeted ads actually, because the level of manipulation that can be exerted through it is even more subtle. But back to your question, what is my recommendation for people?
Do not build for trends, because if you're building for a trend, the reality is, especially now where we can buy access to chat cheap ET for $20 and we can literally say to us, what are the top 20 trends, create a marketing strategy for the top 20 trends. It's pointless because a little 12 year old kid in Taiwan will have already gone and done it before you. No point in doing it. Your best bet is to shake your magic eight ball, take a look at the world globe and build a product for a problem that's coming.
And believe me, we've got enough of them. There's a lot out there. There is a lot of problems to solve, ladies and gentlemen, literally for everybody. So you don't need Y Combinator to tell you that. Unless you were literally born in Buckingham Palace or you were born in the White House or you were born with a little spoon sticking out your mouth, I'm telling you now, in your life experience, there will be problems that you can use modern technology to solve that will actually profit you.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (53:47.857)
So my advice is be your authentic self, ignore the mainstream paradigm a hell of a lot because the mainstream paradigm is pretty much just mainstream media at this point. And back to why I said first of all, be authentic to yourself. If something doesn't feel right, don't do it. Don't sell your soul just for, I don't know, getting a five movie deal. If you don't feel comfortable going onto SNL wearing a dress,
Don't go on SNL wearing a dress. If you're not feeling comfortable standing up naked on a stage in exchange for something, don't do it. Simple as, you know, just be true to yourself. And the reality is, with the easy access to technology that exists now, all you need is a mobile phone and a broadband connection and you can make money. Literally, you don't need anybody else to make money anymore. You know, you just gotta look at the problems, be creative, you know?
Think outside the box. And if anybody ever tells you, that's a stupid idea. Why are you doing it, man? Chances are you're onto a really brilliant idea that they lack the foresight to actually deal with. Bear in mind, the reason I know this is back in 2012, I was a PhD candidate for University of Kent. And if you read my PhD proposals from 2011, I was pitching Palantir and mid-journey technology back in 2011.
And I was constantly being told, you're a mad man, JB. Nobody's gonna have this stuff. Why don't you focus on, stay in your lane, JB. You're a good designer. Be a designer, man. Yeah, no. There is, my other piece of advice would be, stop believing that the world is too big for you to change. It is not. I can tell you now, an ant does not believe that the whole world is too big for it to take on. The ant just goes dust. Yes, admittedly, the ant has a community of committed other ants that help it along. Very true.
But it still starts with a fundamental understanding that the one is just as important as the whole, because without the whole, the whole still doesn't exist without the individual ones. So be authentic, don't do anything immoral, and be creative. Don't sell your soul.
Kyle (56:03.35)
Yeah, I think that's absolutely great. Well, JB, this has been a really great conversation. I do have kind of two wrap up questions, but before we do that, is there anything that you wanted to add that we talked about or maybe didn't get a chance to talk about?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (56:10.621)
Mm-hmm.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (56:19.161)
All that I would add is everybody who's listening, get out there and check out the products. They're easy to find. Just Google Vox Messenger, Vox Crypto, or even just Google my name. It's unique enough. You literally find me. There's only one other JB Web Benjamin out there, and that guy was a confederate who died in the Civil War. I don't quite know how I feel about that one, but it is what it is. I'm not going to go to Google and ask them to get rid of him just so I have a clean
thing on my name. So I'm very easy to find. Get out there, try the products. I'm very easily reachable individually. If you have a comment or you have an opinion or you have a suggestion, visit me on Twitter, jbwb2020 or email me t3kaos.live.co.uk. Come at me personally. I will answer those questions. There is possibly something I may have even missed. I value those interactions. Yes, I'm insanely busy. And even if I don't respond immediately, just know I will respond to you because as an individual.
you have value, it doesn't matter what the question is. You know, it's, even if you messaged just to say, hi, I'm really lonely person, and I just wanted to say hi, that's cool too. You know, sometimes we all just need to reach out and say hi to somebody. The point is, it goes back to what I said before. I've kind of given up my own personal life in the knowledge that I have to be ultra accountable and ultra transparent if I'm gonna try and build this stuff for people. But I don't mind that.
Because if it helps people gain something in their lives, that kind of makes me happy. If it actually makes their lives better, yeah, it brings a smile to my face, even if I don't have any life of my own to some extent. It is what it is. Look, if other people were doing this stuff, I wouldn't have to do it. So it takes at least somebody to just step out of thinking for themselves, I guess, to just go do. So that's what the bit I'm doing.
Kyle (58:12.002)
Okay, well we will put all of the links in the show notes as well so you can check those out. All right, two kind of wrap up questions are, have you read or watched or listened to anything recently that you want to recommend? Or have any favorite reads that you like to go back to?
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (58:30.737)
Oh, okay. First book I would recommend that everybody should read. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Yes, another JB, funnily enough. An incredibly important book in modern philosophy. For though, maybe some people will need a pop culture attachment to maybe get into it. If you've watched The Matrix, then you've already seen it. Simulacra and Simulation is the name of the book that Neo takes the...
Sony mini disc out of in the very first film when he is building the hack for those people that tell him he's their Personal Jesus Christ when you read so the book Simulacra simulation is a con discusses the concept of how we live or could live in a simulation and what the ramifications of that are Incredibly good book definitely readers In terms of something I've watched recently that I would recommend Rebel moon
Everybody needs to get out and watch Rebel Moon. Zack Snyder, that guy, not only has he got an incredible visual eye, I mean, his visual cinematography and his visual language is second to none. Rebel Moon is a film that is very much for the now. You know, it's very if you watch Rebel Moon and you and you get its plot line, I would suggest that you should absorb that and remember the plot line, because the plot line basically tells us what it tells us that no empire is too big.
to ever bring down. And that's an important message. We are coming to the end. We're coming to the end of Web 2. We're coming to the end of the, all of the empires are wheezing their last breaths as we move deep into the 21st century and towards the 22nd. And we have to think of what this means. There is a reason why the tagline for Rebel Moon is no more heroes, only rebels. Because what have we discovered in our lifetimes, particularly us Gen Xers? We have literally seen every
single person and group of people who are meant to be our heroes are chosen, turn into the bad guys. And it's all happened in our lifetimes. So I would say if there's something to watch right now, it would be Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon. There is a message there and it's a message very much for now. And if you get the message, you'll understand what's coming next.
Kyle (01:00:47.794)
Yeah. Oh, that's good. And I didn't know, I've kind of been waiting because I know that there was a follow-up or a Snyder cut of the Snyder movie that is supposed to come up. So...
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (01:00:57.073)
Ah, okay, so Rebel Moon. Yes, okay, so what it is on the 19th of April, which is exactly three years to the day that the Justice League, the Snyder Cut, was revealed to the world. Exactly three years, I love what this guy does. Part two, The Scargiver, is being released. Now, just at the beginning of summer, the R-rated versions, the Snyder Cut, the four-hour, unabridged, gory.
Kyle (01:01:02.967)
Yeah.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (01:01:24.457)
Pornographic, yes I said pornographic. Zach for unabridged, not for children version of Rebel Moon is being released. And by the way, they're releasing parts one and two back to back on the same day. Now, the reason why we've ended up with the PG-13 ones is because the deal that Zach Snyder did, Zach Snyder made sure he was never gonna get treated the same way he got treated at Warner Brothers. He was, you know, so the deal they did was, you can do whatever the hell you want. Just make us a PG-13 one and you can go nuts. I mean, bear in mind.
You know, we've got apparently this tentacle porn in the R8.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (01:02:02.701)
It's gonna be wild. But as we have seen with all the Zack Snyder films, there is never anything there just for the sake of something being there. For those of you who've actually watched Zack Snyder's Justice League, you'll see that these are very incredibly deep storylines have been wove, subtext and additional storylines are woven into this visual cinematography. And I think this is also part of the reason why Zack Snyder gets so much hate in the industry actually, is because, let's be real,
We don't have a world of critical thinkers. And if you're watching a Zack Snyder movie, there is a lot of thinking involved a hell of a lot of the time in working out the subtext, seeing the symbolism. You know, there's so much there that is always packed into a single shot of one of his films. And we're kind of moving, we have moved into a world where, you know, we're being told, don't think, relax, consume. Don't think, relax, consume.
Zack Snyder movie is not that. You know, it's gonna be, you're gonna have to give, you're gonna have to put a piece of yourself into watching this thing, you know, and I like that. I like those things. It's like the difference between reading a Harry Potter, reading a Harry Potter book and reading War and Peace. You know what I'm saying? There's a qualitative difference.
Kyle (01:03:25.902)
That's, yeah. And I like that idea of putting yourself into the work, because I think there is kind of like you said, a qualitative difference between some of these pieces of art and like actually having to put the effort in to get something more out of it. So.
With that, I think that's probably a great place to end it. This has been a really, really great discussion and the more you put in, the more you're gonna end up getting out of it.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (01:03:59.721)
Hey, I design my products like that. At the end of the day, my products are designed the way if I, how I would want to experience something or like something, you know, I, and luckily enough that seems to align with a lot of people, but I, you know I personally hate ads. Then you won't have ads in my products. Luckily enough, there's also a really good reason for it too. So, you know, it's not, it's not like an arbitrary choice. It's a choice that actually there's a good reason for it. You know, I do not want to find my world filled with ads trying to manipulate me into doing stuff.
I would feel really bad about even owning a product that did that in the world. I'll give you an example. We've seen the financial modeling this stuff can take and it can make obscene volumes of money. I could not sleep at night if I know that in the process of making that obscene volumes of money, there is a large proportion of people and children, for example, who are worrying about who they are as individuals because of what I have put out there.
You know, I'm not going to sleep well knowing I've made money from somebody committing suicide because of a product of mine. No way.
Kyle (01:05:06.13)
Absolutely. Yep, couldn't agree more with that.
Kyle (01:05:17.698)
All right, well, JB, this has been an incredible conversation. Again, I appreciate all of your insights and the work that you're doing. I'm excited to see where this goes over the next little bit, where it is now, where it's headed. So appreciate, again, the discussion and everything that you're doing.
JB Benjamin :: CEO/Founder (01:05:38.225)
Well, thanks. It's great to have these discussions, and it's been great talking to you, Carl.
Kyle (01:05:42.742)
All right, and appreciate everyone for listening.