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Marques Brownlee (a.k.a. MKBHD).
A few weeks ago he posted a new episode of his podcast with him and a few others. They talked about Nothing Chats and Sunbird, the iPhone getting RCS and the usual OpenAI drama. At some point Marques mentions the fact that iMessage with RCS will still be "unencrypted". Following that they ponder over why RCS wouldn't have this fabled encryption, such a weird thing that RCS doesn't support encryption from the get-go, and after brainstorming for a bit someone adds the information that it indeed will be encrypted in-transit, but not end-to-end encrypted. And what comes next boggled my mind: Silence ensues. No-one says anything. You only see the faces of four grown-ass tech influencers that are stunlocked and completely unable to process what this neverheard difference between encryption methods might mean. It all just ends with "I've been trying so hard to figure out what that means. I can't." And then.......then they simply move on, not even addressing for a second this knowledge gap and solving it right there on the spot. You can watch it if you want. What hurts the most is that Marques' co-star, David, the guy that looks the most confused, made a 1+ hour history-lesson type video a few months ago about the history of the internet and the importance of HTTPS encryption.
Now, if we're talking about visual quality and overall visual production quality, his videos were insanely enjoyable to watch. I also don't want to shame anyone for not knowing something and I understand that this is in part the consequence of an ever growing company at this point. The channel is still growing and has reached 18 millions subs. Him (and his team) also cover a constantly growing tech sphere, from phones to laptops, from e-vehicles to supercars, from tech politics to tech blunders. But coming from a guy that has been a "tech influencer" on YouTube for 14 years, a guy that over the years had the chance to interview Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Sundar Pichai and surely had the chance to surround himself with experts on all sorts of topics, a guy that dedicated entire videos to Nothing Chats, the role of Quantum Computing in encryption or the dangers and potentials of the Metaverse, this kind of shocked me. I just couldn't take him seriously anymore and I hate myself for it. But it's like my grandma not knowing the difference between a normal call and a WhatsApp call, expect that he's been talking about tech for more than a decade.
Tbf Mkbhd has never been smart or technical. He has good video editing that's it. His phone reviews have always been pretty trash too. He kept asking for bigger batteries and now he whines that the phones are too big and heavy.
It really triggers me that he has become the face of "black tech Youtubers" when there's people like Jeremy Fielding out there
Well, he's played a role in getting me and I'm sure many others interested in tech in the first place (remember the OnePlus One days?). So I'd say he has a bit more going for him than just video editing, he summarizes tech really well and he just....sparks that tech passion in his viewers! But I simply can't believe that in all these years he never stopped and pondered what in-transit encryption vs. end-to-end encryption might mean!
To hammer my point home: This means he doesn't understand why people would use Signal instead of sending a DM on Facebook or Instagram. Why any sane mind would pick Proton Mail over something like standard Gmail. He's absolutely clueless as to what a data breach into popular password managers like Bitwarden or LastPass might mean. When Apple says things like (and imagining this in Tim Cook's voice makes it a hundred times better) "What stays on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone." or "end-to-end encrypted, meaning that not even Apple can access it", he doesn't understand any of it and just moves on. And mind you, these are Apple presentations we're talking about, catered to the simple understanding of an average consumer.
Yes, naturally everyone has to start somewhere, but I wish him and his team (c'mon guys, I KNOW you'll read this!) would put a bit more effort into fillling knowledge gaps as soon as they come up, instead of just relying on their selective research each time a new video gets made and arrogantly thinking that in all other aspects they must still be ahead of 99% of all other people. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself: After one of his co-hosts asks people watching the podcast to tweet at him to explain it, Marques replies: "Good luck getting a tweet."
But hey, I hope these are only the first of many steps they'll take in the big world of data protection, transparency, open-source, privacy and, of course, encryption ;)
P.s. sorry for the wall of.....text.
Edit: clarification at the beginning.