Let’s Talk Privacy & Technology Episode 1: Building a Privacy-First Company with Richard Vibert
As part of my fellowship with Santa Clara Law’s leading privacy law program, I‘ve created the Let’s Talk Privacy & Technology video series. Each episode features a privacy expert, practitioner, academic, or innovator. We discuss the intersection of privacy and technology, covering topics ranging from privacy engineering, privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), and data ownership, to data ethics, privacy tech, cybersecurity, and more. I will publish episode notes in this blog, starting with episode 1.
Episode Description
We kicked off the Let’s Talk Privacy & Technology series with Metomic CEO, Richard Vibert, who is building a privacy-first company. We covered Rich’s journey into privacy tech, his inspiration for his startup, how they’re addressing GDPR and CCPA compliance, and his predictions for the privacy tech landscape.
Episode Takeaways
- On building a privacy-first company: Rich and his team wanted first and foremost to understand what their customers are going through. While compliance is a common goal in privacy, they wanted to go beyond compliance and put their customers first. He admits that it’s not easy. They faced some clear obstacles, including: not using analytics (including Google Analytics) without consent, retargeting, and data minimization. Rich dwells on both their privacy strategy’s positives (being in a position to come up with solutions and potential product ideas) and negatives (product development slow down due to lack of existing privacy infrastructure).
- On contextual consent: Rich shares his belief that consent should not frontloaded, and sees how we obtain consent today as a design issue and a jarring experience that can be improved.
- On the future of privacy in technology: Rich feels “a hundred percent hopeful” about the future of privacy in technology. He’s confident that privacy is going to have a big impact on the Internet, completely redesigning the way that we use services and the way that companies build technology in the future.
Episode Theme: Cookies
- We talked a lot about cookies in this episode, both their essential and nefarious uses. Rich shares some of his ideas for tackling cookies’ darker side, including some of the tools that they’re building.
Episode Links
- This episode is available on Santa Clara Law’s YouTube page.
- For upcoming episodes, check out the Let’s Talk Privacy and Technology series page on the Santa Clara Law website.
- Rich can be reached online on Twitter and LinkedIn.
