Ethan

Welcome to the social media law cast I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall and with me is my friend and co-host Shawn Depa squali hey Shawn not much man, good good traveling this week out in California.

Shawn

Um, what's up buddy how you doing where are you this week

Ethan

I am yeah staying over in long beach but over at a friend of mine's house today. He stepped out for a little bit. So glad we could squeeze the podcast in while I'm on the road.

Shawn

Tight. Okay, well we have a fun show planned because we get to talk about 1 of our favorite things which is ourselves. Um, now we love ourselves with this is it.

Ethan

Oh fantastic. Finally, we're 28 episodes in. Ah.

Shawn

We're doing a new positivity thing on this show where we love ourselves so give us a you-go girl if you're out there listening and yeah, we listen. We always talk about different businesses and startups and how we can help them and tips for startups and tips for new businesses. All these things right? and we often will say oh a hypothetical. Let's say I'm building a a dungeons and dragons company or whatever. Well, the reason we're using that hypothetical Ethan as you know is because drum roll. Please oh wait.

Ethan

Oh wait, you have a drum roll. But no, that's not it. But oh no wait a minute I was I was in the fourth grade band and I actually did the drums so I'm taking pens from my friend's office.

Shawn

Have that? Oh no, it's a rim shot boo. Well anyway.

Shawn

Okay, drum roll please.

Ethan

Hope it does not mind.

Shawn

We are starting a dungeons and Dragons adjacent Adventure role-playing game tabletop company I said that so badly.

Ethan

We are yeah no look. We're a bunch of nerds that love play in D and D and so we are now writing and publishing our own adventures for other people to be able to play and experience and we're probably about realistically five months.

Shawn

But.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

Down the line at this point of building this company and drafting our own adventure so we are literally the startup that we that we speak to on this podcast. It's it's us. It's us and it's what we're doing on our and our sidepiece.

Shawn

It's us. Yeah, and we thought it would be fun to kind of you know because we're always talking about this like amorphous business that you might start or maybe in the process of starting it would be fun to kind of do what we normally do. But. Specifically talk about this thing that we're trying to build and some of like the problems we've already encountered and some of the things that we've avoided because we have an attorney on our side. Um, and and and hopefully this discussion will be helpful just from a standpoint of other people. Even if you're not. Starting a dungeons and Dragons esque company or working in the tabletop gaming space. Um I think the process of starting something from scratch and protecting yourself legally in the process is pretty similar for.

Ethan

Yeah I would say so I think regardless of what type of business you start, there's foundational legal things that every business needs to do whether you're writing dungeon and dragons campaigns or you're building the next Facebook. And then there are niche things that are going to apply to 1 business or another that may apply but are going to be prioritized differently or may not apply at all. So totally agree.

Shawn

Right? So like 1 of the base things and this is something we've talked about on this show before is copyrights and Tradesmark and trademarks we came up with an idea Ethan actually came up with an idea for a story to tell you know he. He approached me and was like hey I have all these ideas and I want to make ah you know like a tabletop game rpg module but I I don't really know where to start and I'm not you know I'm a lawyer I'm not a writer even though you know Ethan does write and he writes well um. You know it was like a different muscle so he had this great idea about this, you know, cool. Um, ah you know mansion or Manor that's like kind of haunted and has all these like fun interactions and encounters and puzzles and stuff inside. And we started like crafting this idea but 1 of the first things we had to do is a title right? What is our title going to be and Ethan originally you pitched now I can't remember because I only know what it's called now what was it originally.

Ethan

Yeah, so the working title was mysterium manner.

Shawn

That's it mysterium manner and for quite a while we were referring it like even in the body of the text you know we were using Mysterium Manner Mysterium manner. Um, and then of course as we started to get a little more serious about the whole thing etther was like you know what? let me do a search. As you do right? as you've said on the show many times. Let me do a search for the title and when what happened what? what was the result like what what ended up? What did you uncover there.

Ethan

Yeah, so ah, of course I uncovered. There's a popular board game out there called mysterium and on the giant cover of the box of the game is a giant manner. Okay, and so this kind of begs the question in a way. Of whether I independently created Myster manner because it's supposed to be mysterious and there's a mystery to be solved. That's there and it occurs in the matter or had I just seen the game at 1 point in full disclosure I never played mysterium. So I just knew it from going to board game and comic bookshops and things like that wasn't subliming in the back of my head where I was like oh mysterium manner rolls off the tongue. It sounds good I don't know one of the signature copyright cases involving music back in the day was the beatles were sued for copyright infringement because they created a song. Had like an identical riff or an identical tune to some other song. The Beatles were like on deposition in Affidavit saying I never heard this before and ultimately I think the court ruled against them because they said it was so similar that it was impossible for you to have independently created this because it was nearly identical and that.

Shawn

Wow.

Ethan

The the rationale is it must have crossed your stream of consciousness at some point and subliminally you had heard it and kind of replayed it or remade it Even if you didn't intend to copy it. It was so close. So yeah in this situation like many business owners.

Shawn

Interesting.

Ethan

I fell in love with the name and then realized you know we're making D and D. They're a board game. It is different mysterium Mystery Lots of people out there can use it but my internal gut told me this is close enough. That it could potentially be an issue and that while I wanted to advocate just like my clients do for let me use the name that I love because I I Love what I don't I love it and that domain is available and everything it was better to change it now than for us to.

Shawn

Ah, yeah, yeah.

Ethan

Publish this spend more time energy and effort promoting this only to get a season assist letter later and learn that we're infringing upon this other games trademark and that was going to be a lot worse than figuring out a new name for our game.

Shawn

Now.

Shawn

So we change the title now. Do we I don't know even know this This is not me like asking this question for the benefit of listeners. This is me genuinely asking. Do we own now. The new title do like officially like is that something that is owned.

Ethan

No so ah one we own the domain name. Ah so we own the domain name and the domain name links to right now. My personal website that has a landing page buildout for like a coming soon for the game. Um, and.

Shawn

No, and I'm that then I'm not gonna say it. Ah.

Ethan

I've done a trademark search seems to be pretty clear. Ah, and so yeah, we're kind of still in the r and d phase but it would be useful for us to file a trademark application soon because the process takes about 15 to 16 months. It to finalize once. The application is filed. We have priority. So ah as a business when you're thinking about what are things to do in the beginning versus what are things to do later filing a trademark usually is in my top four. it's not number you know but it's but it's not number one usually it's clearing the name is kind of number 2 on the list number one create a company number 2 make sure that your name and branding is clear. So even if you don't want to spend the fifteen hundred bucks on our law firm. For example to file the trademark application for you. You don't want to go to legal zoom and pay five hundred bucks and hope that they can do it for you correctly because you want to save that money in the beginning. It's smart to run a trademark clear and search or have a trademark opportunity do a search so you can at least know is my name dead in the water possibly like mysterium manor was. Or okay, this feels clear. Let's proceed with it and then decide when do I want to pull the trigger and file the application.

Shawn

So The once you have a name presuming that name is not incredibly common and you know it's clear and you even can buy the website for it. Your professional opinion is. If. At that point you're not quite ready or financially there to do it you you have a little bit of time.

Ethan

So it's hard to say because look I I will run a trademark search for a client. So let's say a client comes to me and says I just want to clear the name. Okay, don't really want to go through the whole kit and caboodle yet cause I don't know if I'm gonna pull the trigger on the business. So I conduct a search and I say look There are some of these trademarks or existing applications that are out there that are similar I'd say that you still have a pretty strong chance of getting a trademark There are a risk but the risks are low and you can even make them better by adding a logo to it or switching up the class if you're going to file in or whatever but you got a good chance and clients says awesome. Not going to pull the trigger yet. But thanks. Three months six months one month twelve months later they come back hey ready to do it I'm like awesome Let's do a quick trademark search before we file make sure nothing has happened and there are times where someone it's gone someone has filed the exact same thing and I don't use this as a scare tactic because I can't say.

Shawn

It's gone.

Ethan

Happens often I'll probably say it happens less than 10 percent of the time. But for those 10% of the people that it happens the the the look upon their face when they say fuck I should have done it. Um.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

And I'm kicking myself for not spending the extra seven hundred and fifty dollars between the cost of a search and the cost of doing it and now I'm going to redo everything else it it really sucks. It socks do feel that way. So I'm not saying my professional opinion is wait what I am saying is if you have the money to do it. Do it.

Shawn

There.

Ethan

Early and don't kick yourself in the butt for not doing it but not everyone has unlimited startup budget and I get that and so but you can't what you can't do what I think is really stupid is have a name. Don't.

Shawn

Yeah I.

Ethan

Search for it and then spend money building a company around it building a logo building a brand buying a domain building a website and then saying let me check now and realize you're committing Trademark infringement because someone else has it. That's really stupid because now how much time energy and effort and expense have you spent. Without knowing whether what you're doing is putting yourself a legal risk or not and you're either going to maybe you won't be caught but you're likely can't get a trademark can't grow your brand and can't grow big because then somebody else is going to notice it. They're going to sue you for trademark infringement or send you a ceaseynthesis letter and it's worse later.

Shawn

Yeah, well so okay, we don't know in ours yet though. So that's important note Maybe we should get on that I'm not gonna say what we've changed the name to suffice to say it's still a manner I'll tease.

Ethan

Yeah.

Shawn

Um, so manner. Let's just call it manner for now for the purposes of this discussion. We're working on manner so that was one of the for. Yeah there you go So sure one of the first things we did Obviously we did the whole what is the name. How can we clear it right.

Ethan

Yeah, we're working on but working on mystery manner. It's not the name that's ordo. Yeah.

Shawn

We also have a company that we're going to start to put these books out through right? a sort of ah ah I don't want to say publishing company because I mean I guess it is anyway, we we want a brand right to release these books under and and Ethan you know our nomadic friend here came up with a great.

Ethan

Yeah.

Shawn

Concept of the wandering Dm ah dm for those not in the par lance is dungeon master. It's short for dungeon master. So the wandering Dm this is you know a nomadic ah sort of ah you know enigmatic figure. Who wanders around collecting and telling stories wherever he goes um and interestingly and ah you know I least I think it's interesting. The the idea for all of this and I think you should talk about this a little bit came from sort of you. Going to different places in the world and seeing sort of like the homespun stories there and being like oh that's cool and and and jotting them down. Um I know in the original pitch for manner you you know, kind of called out different. Kind of locales that you had been inspired by you know for different rooms in the house and things have changed through iterations. But I I still think there is there are elements of it in it and I think the concept of as a whole is really looking to embrace the idea of of actually collecting. Stories from around the world but then Reffiltering Reffiltering them out in this fantasy world. We're building you want to talk about that a little.

Ethan

Yeah, I'd say sure so the initial concept I've been nomadic for 4 years now my dream in life is to travel and explore the world and to do good along the way and so. Part of my travels I will say oh there's a place that I find really interesting I want to move there for a month or so and explore that area of the world and see what it's like so a classic example I was always interested in Easter Island there's an island out in the middle of nowhere. And somehow the indigenous people from the island spent thousands of years carving these giant Moais these big giant head statues and there are a thousand of them around this island. How did these people build it. How did they get there and so. Flew to Easter Island stayed there for a while with some friends and learned all about the lore and ultimately was like wow there's an incredible story here that I think needs to be shared and so this idea came of like this type of opportunity is not accessible to a lot of people to be able to travel so what if I could take these stories and really honor them in a wonderful way. And then share these stories to regain that people can learn about it and then they can go on their own adventures and and find this exploration and um, so that was kind of like where this idea started and my brother Keith.

Ethan

Was like what about this idea of a wandering Dm. You travel the world you collect stories and now you could bring them back to people and as you travel and meet other people interested in gaming. You could sit around the table at a pub and run a game for somebody and share these different stories. So it's ah you know one of the tales is oldest time. Learning stories and retelling them through our own voice and sharing them with other people and so the idea for mystery manner um was that creating a really big campaign at the outset felt overwhelming for us because it was our first time doing it. So instead. There were like really interesting neat things I had seen across the world like meow wolf in Santa Fe that was like this mysterious arthouse this oddity museum in London it had like cool stuff and I was like what if I take really interesting elements of things that we loved and put them in this ever shifting changing house. So that we can add these different elements in and create something that was easier for us to get off the ground with a self-contained story and then that can live in part of the world that we're going to ultimately grow and build the more stories there are the like the world building concept the more of these things come in. That's really kind of where the idea of the wandering Dm came from and the specific story that we're starting with.

Shawn

Yeah, and you know so within all of that we then started to. We did the basics right? So what is our product. We know our product is going to be this first book right. And so then we started to look at well. How do you put one of these books out. What are your options for releasing this kind of book. Do you go to? do you just print a book and bring it to a bookstore. Do you do it on Amazon where you know are there niche places. Ah you know there are is the answer to that. Um, and and there are are 2 really main hubs I don't know how interesting this stuff will be so I'm not going to go too deep into this suffice to say I bring it up though because there are different legal rules depending on where we decide to release this book. Um, ah Ethan do you want to kind of explain that a little bit like what I mean and and you know I'm not legal like the police are going to come after you but you know.

Ethan

Yeah. Sure, yeah, totally. Although when I was a kid and I would watch these movies on my vhs tape and the first thing you would see is the symbol of like an eagle. It was like unauthorized pirated version send you to jail and I'm two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine and I'm like du should we do this and he like stole a movie off Napster. He's like they're never gonna catch us and then boom the door kicks in right? It swat riot gear. Throws my dad in jail and I and I was orphaned.

Shawn

Yep, yeah, and that's that's that's how your father died in those prison riots All those years later stress. He started them to be fair ah trying to escape.

Ethan

So new. So okay, right? So what Shawn's bringing up in this specific instance is so because this is not going to apply to everybody. Not no one. Publishing a book. Very little people are probably listening to podcast publish a book but sharing your own business but we realized there was unique legal compliance issues that applied to our business. That's also going to be similar to yours. So for us. We had copyright issues because we're building stories. We want people who are interested in dungeon and dragons to play and we want to publish them on these websites that are made for people who love d and d well dungeon and dragons is owned by hasborough they own intellectual property and there are certain rules of what you can or cannot use in your books. Depending upon what site you want to publish at all, you want to publish on the big site where everybody is awesome. You can also use intellectual property. Great. You gotta give us 75% of every single darn book you sell or you can sell them on the second or third popular website. Still really good options but you can't use any of our intellectual property. But. You can make 75% so we had to navigate unique legal copyright issues for our business where somebody else might have different legal issues that they need to navigate at the outset.

Shawn

Yes.

Shawn

Right? So the important thing to in the general sense I think the important thing to remember is that that next step after okay, we have our idea we have our names we have all of our titles. All of these things is. What legal loopholes do I need to look out for what what or rather pitfalls do I need to watch out for what are going to be the compliance issues that I might run into because you don't want to run too far in 1 direction you know and then find out in our case, this would have been ah you know had be written a whole story involving. Um. You know, ah these characters that exist in the dungeons and dragon world called beyonders right? They are like these giant eyeballs that fly around had we written our whole thing and anchored it all a big bad guy is going to be a beyonder and then done this research we would have found out. Well if. We want to use beyonder. It can only be sold on the site that's going to take 75% cut and that's because that is a creature that is created and owned by Hasbro now interestingly in this space we can use. Ah you know elves. Because elves are not the creation of dungeons and dragons and I and I believe they even share some of those properties on like a they they have like a hey we'll let you'll use some of our intellectual property but only certain ones and they're the more generic ones.

Ethan

Right In a nutshell we can use elves but we can't use Legalus from Lord of the rings. You know? So there's there's certain things that can be done in your business. You're going to experience these things too If you are a company that wants to make cookies.

Shawn

Um, but you know that? yeah.

Shawn

Now. Yeah.

Ethan

And you want to make it out of your own house as opposed to renting a space awesome. You could do that but you probably have to get licenses where your kitchen is approved to create commercial goods that you're going to be able to sell so you've got food compliance if you're going to be a company that's going to run online giveaways. Yeah.

Shawn

Tell it ye, That's what I was gonna say I was gonna say online giverways. Yep.

Ethan

Right? Maybe you want to giveaway on don' what you're gonna say yeah right? you want to right? Then you gotta know what are sweep stakes and contest laws and how to comply with those or if you're going to be an influencer or a creator that's gonna create Awesome Videos. You've got to learn understand what are the influencer laws and if people are sending you free products or paying you money you have to know what they are so regardless of what type of.

Shawn

And and what platform you're going to put your content out on much like us is going to ask in return for allowing you to put your content out because nowadays there's different rules all over the place for what they own what you own I mean you know.

Ethan

Yeah, there right? So at the beginning you figure out one I know we kind of skipped over this because but 1 you got to create a company at some point.

Shawn

And that stuff's also it has to be a decision you consciously make I think.

Ethan

For our standards I already have an education company that as Shawn mentioned I wrote a bunch of books never wrote anything creative like this so I'm like cool, let's not create a new company yet. Let's run things through the existing company and but we're ultimately going to create an lllc specifically for the d and d stuff. Um, and so that's one 2 clearing the name and then 3 you want to figure out what are the legal issues that are relevant to my business and how am I going to address those things in the beginning before I take off and run an online giveaway and then have my page banned. Didnt follow the site rules or I sold a bunch of cookies and I get a letter from the attorney general saying you're not registered as a business and you don't have this license or shutting your ass down. Um, you know you you could take the risks but the risks are bad and it's up to you what you want to do. But if you're going to be smart running a business you're going to take some of those steps and figuring out.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

But laws and regulations that apply is a good initial step.

Shawn

Yeah, and I mean you know I I guess teach his own and people will take risks but I do think from I mean I know from personal experience that the the the risk is not worth it because the the setback from the you know. To to sometimes get far and then have to start all the way over because you didn't do the due diligence in the beginning sometimes makes you walk away from the product entirely. So It's worth it to slow down in the beginning and really have that plan so that you're not working backwards or. I mean resources are so precious for startups in the very beginning money time. All of it So anything that is like great I did all of this for nothing has a huge impact. Emotionally you know on on your like on your drive financially. Yeah on your you know all of it. So.

Ethan

Um, financially do yeah.

Shawn

It It feels like a slowdown sometimes but I think that ultimately ah, you're really helping yourself in the long in the long term. Um and and you know and then from there we started creating a thing. We've got a whole thing Written. We're getting. Closer and Closer. We've made it to for our purposes a play testing stage so people have actually played our game now and we've gotten feedback from those people on what they thought of the game and we've made changes based on that feedback. It's all very exciting. Um, and so where are we? yeah.

Ethan

Yeah, and I would even just well we're just gonna pause for a second just to say how great the feedback process is. We're working through that right now is we thought we had something great and then people played it and they're like oh that's cool, but this sucks. Why is that there and we're like no the thing's so darn important but getting feedback from others even if it's not a legal thing is really important of being able to listen to that feedback and decide how much weight that you give that and so even as a business having a mentor having. Someone who's gone through this before to bounce your ideas off of and stress test. Your ideas is important because we are wired and can only see things in a certain Way. So Just want to emphasize. Well, it's not legal I think it's a really good important tip to make sure that you're running that by people getting feedback and then listening to your own gut and figuring out what to do with that feedback.

Shawn

Yeah, no, that's good I'm glad you I'm glad you slowed us down to flag that good because I was going to you know, sort of move us into so so what is next both for the theoretical startups out there and for us right? we. We did all of the first like 4 steps. Basically we're getting ready to release our product or our video or our cookies. Whatever it is right? You're at now at that precipice stage. You've secured your trademark. You've done all of your things. What is is there anything that we're missing before we go is there are there last things that we should know tips that you have ah both for people listening and for us to then go like oh yeah, that's actually something we should add to our list.

Ethan

Yeah I mean if you're gonna be doing business with people in some form other you need to have a contract and need to figure out what contracts might apply to you. So for our instance, we hired a look Shawn is an unbelievable writer. He's incredibly creative. Um.

Shawn

Thank you stop.

Ethan

I wouldn't say designing maps was your strength and neither am I I'm a lawyer I got the creativity of a newt. Um, so you know or at least the artistic ability of a newt so it so I had to hire someone to design the maps for the game and as part of that I had to have a contract and the contract had to say hey.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan

You're creating this map for me I own the map you get whatever the fee and she charged me a higher fee because she's like can I sell this on my my website. Ah and I said no I don't want to I want the exclusive right? She's like great. Well I'm going to charge you 25% more and I'm like done. Let's put this into a contract.

Shawn

Yep.

Shawn

Um, great. Yep.

Ethan

Um, if this is gonna be sold on our website. Okay, which it will be um then we need to have terms and conditions for our website or our app. So I would say you know a couple things are before you go to launch, you need to make sure that if you're gonna do business with people.

Shawn

Who.

Ethan

Don't just have a handshake deal no matter how much they trust you or vice versa and 2 You want to have your ducks in a row we are going to need to have our specific llc created the specific bank account tied to it.

Shawn

Da.

Ethan

Because if I run the business through me or through our existing company and something goes wrong I'm personally liable or you could be personally liable if you're signing contracts a Shawn Dea squali um as opposed to wandering. Yeah, we'll see.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Well I don't I Never I I never use my real name on any contract that I've ever signed in my life. So and you'll never find out what it really is.

Ethan

What do you did I just blow up your your spot with your name. Oh oh your you your alias is it Shawny d.

Shawn

Don't worry about it I don't know what you're talking about.

Ethan

Shawny d with a w like SHAWNIECapital d

Shawn

Ah, it's Horace bright fellow now I am going to cut this out of the podcast and I never want to speak of it again. Please don't mention Horace Brightfeow no one mention Horace Brightfellow do not send mail to him. Do not try to find him or look him up because he is not me. Anyway, Ethan this has been a very very very very informative episode I hope um and if not I hope that it was at least interesting for people to kind of see that there's ah you know other stuff kind of cooking for you outside of. You know, being an incredible attorney. You know you you have a lot of ah great ideas and and a lot of ah you know, really ah achievable goals. Um, and it's fun that this was one of them and that we're we're like almost there you know it it. It is very gratifying to get close. And I understand now why people like to be part of startups because it's like fun you like figure it out along the way and it's like then everyone gets frustrated then you figure it out again and everyone's happy and then you launch and you're like yay and then you know the Ceo like skims a bunch of money off the top of the company and the company collapses and. And someone else comes in and swoops it up and buys it and at least that's how I assume it goes. That's what it happens on Tv anyway.

Ethan

Yeah, if if if I see Horace dipping into our bank accounts for any unnecessary expenses like Spiderman 2 and a new ps 5 for the holidays which is not. And approved business expense for the wandering Dm. Yeah, that could be what an abundance mindset. Yeah, right? just? um.

Shawn

Um, no, but it is a great listener gift to your favorite podcast coasts. We got to get a P O box.

Shawn

Get a pinot box eat then just in case, you never know someone could email us tomorrow and be like I was listening and I was getting ready to send it and I realized I don't know where to send it? Um, but if that is the case where can people find us online to try to reach out to us so that we can get our PS 4 with Spiderman to bundle.

Ethan

Good.

Ethan

Yes, well they could first reach out to us. Oh yeah I was like all right man you want to aim low I'm sure they're just giving those things away at this point nothing with with the black ring of death. Did you just get the eyes. Oh damn frustrated.

Shawn

PS 5

Shawn

I would like an original Xbox please. Ah.

Ethan

Remember going to cheese. What was what's the what was up the the electronic store in South Florida it's old thing. Super cheap. It was a giant massive warehouse you to get a ticket not circuit city. No it was near the Sawgrass Mills mall it you like got a ticket.

Shawn

Circuit City Circuit city.

Ethan

And then they like give you the item like at the end it's good right? after I bought the damn xbox I take it back. Forget black ring of death takes like a month to return anyway, you could find us since that's probably going to get cut out ah by searching for the social media law firm.

Shawn

Oh I Know what you're talking about. But I don't know the name but I yes.

Ethan

On social media or if you want to go to ethanwwall.com you want to dig around. You might find the new name of the book because there is a landing page under latest project on ethanwwall.com so that's for you.

Shawn

Um, interesting. That's right.

Ethan

Might be able to find that along with a cool documentary and some other like fun stuff who knows ah.

Shawn

Yes, and it's still early days of this project. So please only positive feedback. We need the encouragement and we are not emotionally prepared to take any type of criticism yet.

Ethan

Yeah, we just read our play testing second session play testing feedback and we had a good cry yesterday. So positive. Yes, sure where can people where can people find you and not horace.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, is enough criticism for one day ah

Shawn

Know you can find Shawn Deepa Squaly this person who ah is the only name that I do have ah ah on Twitter at seanwrights and elsewhere online under the name Shawn just search Shawn and I'll pop up somewhere I'm sure maybe even in your living room to do a little dance. Into your heart. Um, all right? Ethan this was a fun time I think we might have 1 more in us before holiday time. Ah, but you know I'm not entirely sure let me look at my calendar up here on the wall. Ah what is.

Ethan

Ok.

Ethan

Oh she's this we hold on whoever my friend is ah just gonna knock on the door. Ah you hold excuse me hold on for a second.

Shawn

Oh that's that's so weird you got knock on the door I also got a knock on my door with the fuck is going on. You'll knock on.

Ethan

Who's knocking on my door who is even out here in my living room what is going on. Well.

Shawn

Um, well well Well, what do we have he here I more ah I.

Ethan

No, all Ethan's me now.

Shawn

For those who are listening only we literally just switch spots because I've been in Shawn's living room. Mix those were so excited for it. Ah ah, ah how do I end the podcast ah smash the bell subscribe a Ethan's good to see you see next week bye I'm Shawn did did d to did de d.

Ethan

Um, this bit makes no sense. Ah all right? You have to end the podcast press the button.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media law cast I am your host social media attorney Ethan wall with me is my friend and co-host Shawn Deeppasquali hey Shawn

Shawn

What's up dude how you doing merry merry holidays merry christmas we're both jewish so it's weird saying merry Christmas to you feels fake merry Christmas happy hanukkah it's over.

Ethan

Now it's cool. Brilliant yeah happy holidays merry christmas look it is but I was so glad I got to celebrate it with you out in California the big spoiler at the end of our episode a couple weeks ago

Shawn

Ed.

Ethan

I was I was in your living room the entire time lighting the menora with you and your wife was awesome. So but I have to apologize I'm sorry a lot of things over our twenty plus years of friendship. But.

Shawn

Yeah, there was yes yes, good for which thing. Okay, all right.

Steve Lantz

Um.

Ethan

But first and foremost or I guess the the biggest apology is I didn't get you a gift for the holidays this year but I have the perfect person to give you your gift this year

Shawn

Yeah, it's true.

Shawn

What Ethan what? no way eat Ethan on my roof. Ah, he's.

Ethan

Um, yeah, ah yeah.

Shawn

He's walking around. He's clumping around up there. Ah oh my God Oh he's trying oh my good. He's really its a buy got a giant roof. It's really big. It takes him a long time to get to the Chimney probably Wow Ah, ah.

Ethan

Um I understand way.

Shawn

What's that wait? Ah, ah at my fireplace even look. It's so magical if although you can see it's just happening right off camera oh my gosh. It's Santa Claus he's

Ethan

Um, I know yeah.

Shawn

He's here now. Ah.

Ethan

Ah, yes, John I am so excited to introduce to you my good friend. Not only Santa But Steve Lance Steve is an accomplished actor. He's a longtime friend of mine for over fifteen years he is the executive director of team respect a nonprofit that supports student athletes. He's a chaplain for a university football team and if all of that is not impressive enough. He is also Santa Claus Steve

Shawn

Your home.

Ethan

Welcome to the show.

Steve Lantz

It's good to be here guys. Can you can you? So for those on the video feed can you see me now these glasses. It's like the opposite of Clark Kent without the glasses I'm just Steve.

Shawn

Um, yes, ah.

Shawn

Sure there he is. Wow.

Ethan

But a yeah there he is I me see about it. Oh.

Steve Lantz

But then you you put these bad boys on now and and if someone wants to give you kiss on the cheek you do one of these. It's it's it's it's fun man I'm so glad to be here.

Ethan

Ah.

Shawn

Ah, well and speaking speaking of cheeks in case, the listener is not aware. This is a rosy cheeked white bearded baldheaded Jolly looking man.

Steve Lantz

Um, hey hey easy on the ball easy on the ball I I still use of Hairbrush and hair products all right.

Ethan

Ah.

Shawn

Ah, yeah, ah it is. It's it is Santa Claus but also it's Steve because Steve and santa they I mean he's he's got the overalls the red suspenders I mean the whole deal the whole bit. He's in the workshop. It's It's really remarkable. Ah so Steve I guess let's start at the very beginning. How does one is do you age into Santa Where one day you get up, you get out of bed. Oh you look in the mirror and you go oh shit I'm the guy now.

Steve Lantz

Okay.

Shawn

Or do you go like someday I'm going to play Santa Claus and I'm going to live the lifestyle that I need to live to build to this moment where I'm going to be someday old enough and wise enough to embody this mythical figure.

Steve Lantz

You know there's a little of both in there as Ethan mentioned I'm an actor and what he didn't mention is I used to be a craft beer bartender and we we was at a place where we met where we were on the cutting edge of the craft beer revolution.

Shawn

Cool.

Steve Lantz

And I had a big giant beard long before hipsters were doing big giant Beards. So one day I um I was fortunate I did a home depot commercial about fifteen years ago and then. About twelve years ago there's another home depot commercial and a friend of mine said Steve you really really should do this and um I checked it out. It turns out they they didn't have any roles for white actors which is fine. You know there's a break. There's what they call a breakdown but 1 of.

Shawn

Check.

Steve Lantz

The the roles in the breakdown was Santa Claus and I was I was just barely forty years old I go you know what I got a big beard I can do this so I told my agent to submit me she was hesitant the casting director was hesitant to put me on camera but I said no I went down to Sally beauty supply. Sprayed it out I've got pictures somewhere. It didn't look like this at all. But I auditioned I got a call back I booked the role and so I was in ah I was a home depot Santa Claus about twelve years ago and I figured first off I thought it'd be the Christmas commercial that would repeat every year. No it wasn't it ran for three weeks so there went my retirement plan b ah and and then after that I didn't get any more santa rolls last year someone

Ethan

Ah.

Shawn

And oh sir.

Ethan

50

Steve Lantz

I finally said you know I gotta do this and I got I mean I'm um, last year I'm fifty years old I'm thinking if I can do this now. Get it while I'm still young relative to other old santa guys I could have a gig for a long time but I just didn't know it. it's it's it's funny there's this

Shawn

Ah.

Steve Lantz

There's an industry. There's a Santa Claus industry out there and it's kind of hard to it's kind of like that. It's a little it's a little strange they don't reveal much. They don't tell you what they get paid on gigs.

Shawn

Tight like a secret network like a secret Santa network.

Shawn

Yep.

Steve Lantz

Um, they they they don't share. Ah they share some information they like say here here's how to get a good suit here's some ideas like like I've learned they don't give an all away but you know.

Ethan

Right? They can't give away all their secrets right? or also a secret santa society in the first place.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Um, this is this is interestingly this is ah there's a lot of Parallels I'm hearing too I have a a friend who is a magician like a professional magician he in these.

Steve Lantz

Month back.

Shawn

You know, ah got a membership to the magic castle and he performs in vegas the whole bit. He's been on the pen and Teller show so he's like in as a as a magician and there's a whole secret language and network and and customs and understandings and places where they go to do their. You know shopping for their tricks that they would never tell anyone you know to go if they want to like start out in the industry. It's really amazing and so this sounds like a similar thing where you know they have their vendors. They have their places where they know they can get the real looking santa suits as opposed to the shitty Amazon buy yeah.

Steve Lantz

Yes, yes, and and and and and some things they reveal and you feel like oh they really got my back and then some things you find out and you're like ah that was that was like a half truth there. Um.

Shawn

To check.

Shawn

Interesting.

Ethan

Yeah, there's little petition in the in the Santa Market for sure now. Ah.

Steve Lantz

There shouldn't be I Honestly there's there should not be I think there's a there's a you know you sort of like just let the cream rise and let let the best man win but I find sometimes they they like to stack the deck so to speak. But but.

Shawn

No I agree.

Shawn

Sure.

Steve Lantz

Let's talk about the good side of it. This has been fantastic I was very reluctant you talked about thank god I didn't wake up one morning and look in the mirror and look like Santa Claus my stomachs bigger than it should be but um, my hair this is not my natural hair color.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Ethan

So what? my then.

Shawn

Um.

Steve Lantz

And it's actually kind of hard to make your hair white because nobody wants white hair so you have to well I had a little bit so it wasn't hard to get this part but you know, but it's like little thing so I mean what man.

Shawn

Right.

Ethan

Yeah, you're telling me Steve you see this beard right here. That's good.

Steve Lantz

Wants to be told you know you'd make a good Santa Claus everybody wants to be told like like. For example, if you were an Elvis impersonator. You'd make a great young Elvis you don't want to be old Elvis you don't you don't want to be ah you know jumpsuit fat Elvis.

Shawn

Ah, no, no, you don't want to be nobody wants to be toilet Elvis um.

Ethan

The writer.

Ethan

No, we won't be the meme Santa Claus with with the he's Jack. He's got the system and there he's just got the slate there that goes back there and that's when I think of you Steve that's the Santa Claus I think yeah yeah, yeah, right yeah for she? no no no I think of that.

Steve Lantz

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Um, you think of them you think of a meme. Yeah, right? Yeah for sure.

Steve Lantz

Um, ah.

Ethan

The burley the the lumberjack style and still has the classic features but your face is now one that that is not just known from Chris Kringle but people know you because you have been all over.

Steve Lantz

Are the.

Ethan

Social media the today's show good morning America tell us how Santa Claus went viral.

Steve Lantz

Yes, well part of it starts. You have to a little bit of my backstory I'm ah I'm a husband and a father and I've got two kids ten years old and six years old ah a son and a daughter and um. I'm also a minister but I was ah I was a bartender while I was a minister. So I think Ethan can vouch that I'm not the the beach over the head guy I'm not going to attack you with the bible or anything like that I'm I try to follow the model of Jesus that drew a crowd and threw a party and that's.

Shawn

Share.

Steve Lantz

My model for how to be a minister not be an a whole like that's that's I'm not I'm not the a wholele guy I'm I At least I try not to be I try not to be.

Ethan

Unless you didn't pay your tab and try to run out then the other slide kind of came out but I've never experienced that I think that I remember Trump.

Shawn

Um, yeah, but that's you know that's a dining and ditching is one of the sins. So that's one of the it's the eighth deadly sin dining and dining and dashing.

Steve Lantz

Ah, you know one one it it is if yes, yes it it didn't make the top 7 but it was so close I actually went to a ah family. Ah.

Shawn

So close so close.

Steve Lantz

A table 1 time I got like about a thirty seven cent tip or something like that and I asked them what was wrong with my service and I was reprimanded for it. But I said no no, they deserved it. They it's like but a hundred dollar tab so yeah

Shawn

Yeah, well yeah.

Ethan

Hundred percent yeah they were on the naughty list that year for sure.

Steve Lantz

Well so here's what happens with the santa I'm trying and now also as a minister I'm trying to say okay, we've got Santa the the product really of Coca-cola advertising in the twentieth century. That's the image of Santa Claus we have in the us but he was based on.

Shawn

Um, down.

Steve Lantz

A guy named St Nicholas and folks are in the greek orthox church are familiar with him. He was Greek parents wealthy god well wealthy parents when they died they left him a lot of money he used that money to help purchase people out of slavery essentially move people out of poverty. He did a lot of good with his money. And think about it. He did so much good with his money that Santa Claus was invented based on his life I mean bill gates is giving away money. Warren Buffett's given away money and no one's going to tell the legend of bill gates or the legend of Warren Buffett but St Nicholas became St Nick became Santa Claus chris Kringle hell of a guy.

Ethan

Who.

Steve Lantz

I mean what a guy so I was thinking I have a responsibility to be bring that guy to life not just santa from the commercials but santa the guy who whose faith drove him to love people in a sacrificial way and and I'm also a parent. And I'm a husband and so this little girl comes to me this is this is at the ah the Ritz Carlton the cubas game and it was an odd number of things all came together. They gave me a chair that was way too small. So when I sat in the chair. My butt was like six inches above the floor I felt like a. Dork. The lighting was bad. They didn't have a professional photographer to take pictures. It's just people with their cameras. So I'm sitting down I'm sitting crossle and you know crisscross Apple sauce and so yeah, I'm a big I'm six two it's like my knees are out in front of me. So little kids tiny kids they would just come and just sit on my knee automatically I wasn't asking them to I would have preferred to have a bench or something but even toddlers I was looking up to them I was so low on the ground. So this little girl comes up and she kind of hesitates and I just said.

Shawn

Um, ah.

Steve Lantz

I used the word lap even though it was really my knee and I just said hey would like to sit on my lap and she said no and in that moment I'm like well what do I say? Well we've taught our own kids because we don't want them to get molested or anything like that and. And we want them to respect people when they get to a dating age and that sort of thing so it just clicked what I tell my own kids and what I tell my own daughter when she said no I said to her good for you. You know I don't remember the exact quote someone can pull it up. But. I just said you know way to go. It's your body and then you're in control of it and you don't have to sit on anybody's lap and even if Santa asks you to sit on his lap. You can say no and I and I even said her I said way to go I said you are a woman you're a young woman but you're a woman and you're going to be a powerful woman one day because you know how to say no.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Lantz

And you respect yourself enough to to voice. What is true for you.

Shawn

Well, that's that's beautiful I mean I First of all could not agree more with the with the sentiment behind it. The message behind it. It's a good way to raise your children not just. You know because you want to teach them about the dangers out there. But also to you know they're in control of their body. It is their body and they should be in control of it as as soon as they're born until they they aren't any you know and and and like.

Steve Lantz

Yes.

Steve Lantz

Yeah, the.

Shawn

That's it. So it's It's a good thing to teach a kid. It's lovely that you had that little interaction and it's beautiful to me that the reason that you went viral is because everyone was just so touched by this beautiful wonderful thing that happened that's it's just you know so.

Steve Lantz

Yeah, what would there were a couple other elements to this perfect storm. Um the the woman who did it. Her name is Katie Love and she had already been teaching these things to her child so there was that and.

Shawn

So Oh go ahead and. Got it? okay.

Steve Lantz

She is a social media kind of an expert. She has a firm that where she ah you know helps people go nuts on social media so she was recording I didn't realize she was recording what happened was I heard her say ah, what did you say to? my daughter can you repeat that. And the way she said it I thought she was speaking as a parent who had never heard this before I thought it was new information. So in that moment I was like okay I need to say it again but I need to say it clear and I need to to so to basically expand on what I've said because I thought. It was a teachable moment for her. It turns out it wasn't she's an amazing parent. She's already taken care of her daughter extremely well. But the beauty was because I didn't know these things she's recording it and my sort of instructions that went a little bit longer than normal went out to almost. Like the whole world. It's insane I had ah ah a santa commented today. He said no, anyone can sit on my lap or not it's their choice but I've never made a diatribe of it. This is cringe worthy and then a few minutes later he deleted the comment. Um.

Shawn

That's amazing.

Shawn

Ah.

Steve Lantz

Guess he realized what's cringe worthy about affirming the dignity of a child.

Ethan

Um, yeah.

Shawn

That's Interesting. So So you are getting some of this. Ah you know, whatever it is backlash that comes with this kind of thing that you do something nice something innocuous something that like most parents. You would think would be like oh yeah, good fair I mean whether either they knew it beforehand or you explain it to them and they go like oh yeah, that's a fair point and like yeah, that's good, but so but people always want to push back. So what?? what? how does that you you are a man of faith right? So How does.

Steve Lantz

Um.

Steve Lantz

Um.

Shawn

What is your your response to some of that pushback to like the oh he's he's a woke Santa or whatever you know it's it's so sounds nonsensical right? because like you're just like a dude who's like said a thing that he says to his kids so I want to know what is that like for you. And and you know how have you been in responding to it.

Steve Lantz

Well first off the the term I'd rather be awake than asleep and I'd I'd you know I'd rather be able to see than not see I'd rather be conscious than unconscious. So. In in the strictest definition of the word I'd rather be woke than not but with all the baggage attached to the word I'm not I'm not woke in the in the vernacular of today I'm so far from that so when someone calls me woke. It honestly, it's it's so stupid and ignorant and just completely out of touch. It actually doesn't bother me and I'm the kind of guy who gets I'm I'm very sensitive that that helps me be an actor I think being sensitive helps.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Sure.

Steve Lantz

To be a good santa. It also means it hurts when you don't get the part. Um, it hurts when people say mean things. But these mean things they haven't hurt because they're they're just dumb like what's the alternative. What's your.

Shawn

Cho.

Shawn

But because there there's there's.

Steve Lantz

Little girl sit on his watch hey listen if a strange man tells you to touch part of his body. You just say yes because that's the way it ought to be what dumb ask crap is that come on now.

Shawn

Yeah I mean and that's that's that's why I said I prefaced it with I think it's remarkable that you know I think if you isolated this and you just asked casually any random normal human being. They'd be like oh yeah, that makes total sense. But for some reason when you frame it in a certain way. People get in their head that like it's like some kind of attack on their beliefs or their morals or their religion or whatever it is and it's like ah you know I think you're a clear-cut case of like Nah. This was just a guy saying the kind of the most normal response you could say to a little kid saying.

Steve Lantz

Um, yeah.

Shawn

I Don't want to sit on your lap. You know like I mean and look yeah there is a version I guess where guy could have said like oh no, it's okay, come on. It's fine thatda and like coaxed her on and maybe a parent would have been like. Yeah yeah, yeah, get on there so I could get the picture and digit it up.

Steve Lantz

Um, yeah.

Steve Lantz

Um, not.

Shawn

And and I guess these people that are mad. Maybe that's what they wanted you to do but that doesn't ring true to you as a guy I would imagine as a dad. Even.

Steve Lantz

Yeah, well and part of it too is is you know we live in a world where people look at headlines and they believe the headline like okay New York post woke santa well you read the article. There's I'm not described as a woke guy at all.

Shawn

Red.

Steve Lantz

And and if you if you read the woman who originally posted it. She explains he said something to my daughter I asked him to repeat it now she said she asked that I repeat it so she could record it and I was like fine I I didn't realize that. But apparently that's what she asked fine I'm glad she recorded it. I'm so thankful. That this has gotten out there and it's become a teachable moment for a lot of people but I tell you ah go ahead. Ethan I was going to say I um, a friend of mine. She's probably in her sixty s she sent me a black and white photo of her screaming on santa's lap trying to get off a santa when she was a little kid.

Ethan

So what is it good? No please god Steve.

Steve Lantz

Um, recently I won't say the establishment because it's a wonderful establishment but I was at a a fine high end establishment recently as santa and there was a small boy probably about 4 years old began screaming now I was just kind of walking around on the property he was screaming. His grandparents took him away and the parents were they were about twenty feet away from me and I said now again I'm Santa in the moment. So I'm I'm realizing this kid. He's going to see me again. Not me Steve Lance but he's going to see Santa again. He's going to see a movie with Santa Santa is everywhere. And it might be the first time I see a kid but it's not the first time they see me and it's not the last time they see me because I'm Santa Claus this this guy who almost has god like qualities. He sees everything he knows everything he's everywhere every mall every party there. He is oh my god how does he do it and I just said to them please.

Shawn

Tear.

Steve Lantz

Tell your son I'm so sorry, please apologize to your son say Santa apologized for making you scream he is so sorry and they just laughed at me. And I realized in that moment I had more respect for their child than they did.

Shawn

Sure yeah.

Ethan

Sure now now. Yeah, tell us just because I know that your're reindeer I can hear their hooves they got about 8 minutes until they got to take off to the next clouds. Um, tell me a lot of people who listen to the social media law cats some of them are.

Steve Lantz

Yeah, yeah.

Shawn

Ah.

Ethan

Big picture creators influencers. They are already they are prepared to and their goal is to go viral. Okay, so they're ready for this and they know it and they're creating things all the time This wasn't you It wasn't an opportunity.

Steve Lantz

Um.

Steve Lantz

I.

Ethan

Where this was your time to strike. You didn't even know that you were being recorded. What was it like as a while You'relaner Claus a normal human to go viral having 5000000 views I think in 24 hours being on national news. What was it like to hear the ups and downs of this. And you know what happened next once you've realized wow this thing blew up in a way that I could never imagine.

Steve Lantz

Well, here's what's funny I was I was on a show this happened on on a Sunday night. It was December ah tenth December Tenth December twelfth in the morning I'm on the show called this be a thought Meica wake up America it's like the. The spanish good morning America Univision shoots over near doral. So I'm there and I'm I'm doing a live segment for a product I've got a couple dogs and and and it's fun I have a I have a blast and I'm thinking to myself. Wow this is big. This is big and it was.

Shawn

Sir.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Lantz

It was big I then I come home. The guy who's been hiring me as Santa great guy. He yeah, he sends me a text says you'll be getting a call from the today show about your gig at. The Ritz Carlton on Sunday night and I'm I'm just baffled I have no idea why zero and I I I get a text like I mean immediately from someone hey this is so and so from the today show and I'm gonna be giving a call and and I told my wife and you better. Ethan Linda I said Linda the today's show is goingnna be calling. She's like why no idea and this person says well you have a video I should have pulled it up but she says you got this video and it's going viral and we're all applauding you for it. And I said what's the video she didn know that I didn't know and she sends it to me. Yeah, you recorded it. You know here's what's funny I created Tiktok account.

Shawn

Oh Wow So right because it was this ladies video and and and so did you ah have a social media account at this point it for her to tag you or she didn't even know who you were You were just a a guy.

Steve Lantz

Don't know Tiktok I'm like my dad now' I've hit that age I can do Instagram I can't do tiktok I struggle but I knew enough to know that I was gonna have to have a Tiktok account so when I started the whole santa season. First thing I did is I looked for a domain name and I don't even know if that's the first thing you're supposed to do anymore cause. That seems like the last place anybody's going to look but I found a domain I was trying to find something short and creative. The Rev Santa I found v revs I was like okay that's going to be it. That'll be me. And that sort of helped me define. Okay I'm going to connect it to St Nicholas and try to emphasize the reverend part but still Santa. Um, so then I was not sorry. It's rev Santa rev Santa but then I go on Instagram there's already a rev santa so I to be the Rev Santa

Shawn

Ah sure. Yeah.

Steve Lantz

Like yeah I might as well match on pickokck I'm the Rev Santa but there's like periods like the dot rev dot I don't know how Hots got in there but I didn't have an active account so I go on and I see it's already over like one and a half million views or something so I'm putting in you know. Ah, putting up my picture and sending a friend request and I'm trying to send you a message but you can't send a message unless someone follows you and by the time it's already over like millions of views. Um I wasn't tagged in the video and stuff so I don't even though there's millions. Ah, views of me I don't know if I'm going to qualify as a Tiktok creator or not um, but you know I had the stuff in place thinking that okay eventually but turns out I I had I should have been ready. Um I didn't expect this.

Shawn

Share.

Steve Lantz

But it's a good lesson that if you're if you're gonna be going out there and you're doing something that has the potential to go viral then take care of your business and at least have your basics set up when the today show I said well ah ah I guess I better activate. Put something on my domain now I've got a basic land and you go there. It'll take you to my Instagram from the Instagram you can reach me so I figure at least if somebody really wants to reach me they can but I was not ready. Not at all.

Shawn

Um, yeah, sure.

Ethan

So you don't have to send a postcard to the North pole to get a hold of you Now you can reach and but go and go into the website. Ah, for example.

Shawn

Um, yeah, good well and and that that's a good. It's It's the perfect landing place as as I hear ah you know the? ah.

Steve Lantz

Yeah, it's 1 one more way to reach santa you know one more.

Steve Lantz

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Getting ready of there. Rudolph's getting anxious because he likes to be very timely. He runs a very tight schedule. Ah so where can people find you you know what? what? What is the the website. What is the you know the exact handles and where so that people can reach out and.

Ethan

More thing.

Steve Lantz

Um, yeah.

Shawn

You know, give you a virtual hug.

Steve Lantz

The the simplest thing is um well I'll give you but the the website is rev santa.com I've got.org and the and I need to have all of those points to rev Santa so if they put the or on Instagram.

Shawn

That's great.

Steve Lantz

The Rev Santa on Instagram and it's from there. You'll find me and I don't have millions of followers I've got like 200 ah

Shawn

Okay, great. Well and you're about to get another one because I'm I'm gonna follow you ah for your wisdom and insight and to say that I know Santa Claus because of.

Ethan

I.

Steve Lantz

Hey everybody's that's the 1 thing I've really enjoyed a lot of posts have been shared and they say I know him I really know him and you too can say that you know Santa Claus

Shawn

Cool.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Ah, that's super fun and even if people want to file complaints about this episode because we didn't talk nearly enough about Hanukkah where can they reach out to you.

Steve Lantz

Let me say one 1 thing and this is really cool, really really cool in the I think it was in the people magazine article. They had a quote from me where I said 1 of my goals as Santa is to bring god's light into dark places.

Ethan

Um.

Shawn

Yeah.

Steve Lantz

And 1 of the best ways to do that is affirming the dignity of a child and I mentioned god's light coming to dark places while Hanukah was still in action. So not only am I awoke Santa I'm pro hanukkah to.

Shawn

Show.

Ethan

There We go there. We go and and that's that is um, one of the things I love most is that the wrong people sometimes go viral or people go viral for the wrong reasons but not your case.

Shawn

Ah, that's good.

Shawn

This was all the right reasons. Yeah.

Steve Lantz

I without.

Ethan

Exactly you're you're the right person with the right message at the right time. The internet needs you and the world needed more reaffirming messages like that. So so so very grateful you want to find the social media law firm. You search for the social media law firm online. You want to find the cold things at Ethan.

Shawn

That's right.

Ethan

Wall is up to visit ethanwald.com you can learn about the new game that Shawn and I are creating together learn about travels and learn about more cool things like my friend Steve Steve I could not be more grateful for you to be here so grateful for our friendship and so grateful that your wonderful message has gotten out to the world.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you so much for doing this. We really appreciate it by Santa I've been so good.

Ethan

Ah, really terrific.

Steve Lantz

Oh Merry Christmas and happy hanukkah.

Shawn

Ah, he did it ah by even.

Ethan

Ah, this on.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media law cast I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall and with me is my friend and co-host Shawn Deep Esquali hey Shawn

00:23.92

Shawn

yes yes I am hello hi yes I'm here I'm I've made it ah Ethan it's almost the holiday I'm very excited I want some time off.

00:37.89

Ethan

Like you need some space for for me.

00:41.60

Shawn

No like I need to be alone from everyone isolated in a quiet place for a week to then emerge like a butterfly for burchrysalis.

00:53.80

Ethan

Um, okay.

00:57.87

Shawn

A new person in a new year

01:00.29

Ethan

Okay, all right? Well I'll see you in a week ah yeah you know, but you okay, cool, but you did get Christmas off last year and you're jewish so at hanukah is like basically done.

01:02.11

Shawn

Yeah, well we can do a closer to Christmas I really want to time it out. Yeah.

01:14.59

Shawn

It's that's true I it's true I really you're right? You're right? No all right? Thank you I appreciate it? Um, but in the meantime Ethan we've got podcasts to record so many of them starting with this one right now that we're currently in middle of recording.

01:17.16

Ethan

At this point. Yeah I'll take it under advisement cool.

01:33.40

Shawn

Why are people listening to this and what are we talking about? true.

01:34.36

Ethan

Well, they're listening for you. It's certainly not for me I've been reading the the treasure trove of comments that I've been digging through on the podcast and all I could say is they want more sean less ethan and they also want to know what the hell is happening with lukecombs. On social media and this two hundred fifty thousand dollars lawsuit that he sued a woman for.

01:56.91

Shawn

What? Okay first question very important before we move forward who the hell is Luke Combs is it should I know this name is this a person that's famous.

02:11.99

Ethan

Luke look. There is a world outside a fortnight and outside of social media and part of that world that lives out there is 2 time Cma.

02:19.71

Shawn

Go on.

02:26.41

Ethan

Entertainer of the year Lo Combs Cma is the country music awards lurs big guy bury good think of like ah he kind of looks like a wwe wwe wrestler like you know, kind of like portly big guy cheery you know country music song so he's a famous country singer and he's got a lot more.

02:28.80

Shawn

Revenge.

02:35.10

Shawn

Okay.

02:40.96

Shawn

Okay, ok tight listen it's not my bag but more power to you I look like that music is good in all forms. So okay, so country music star named Luke Combs

02:45.53

Ethan

But more followers in social media than you and I combined to type. Yeah.

02:54.43

Ethan

Um, totally yes yes.

03:00.59

Shawn

Let's call him Daddy Luke so Daddy Luke is Daddy Luke is suing who and why.

03:04.89

Ethan

Straight so all right? He sued a woman who was selling like ah, not coffee mugs but like you know, big tumblers with his face on them on Amazon.

03:16.93

Shawn

Okay.

03:22.42

Ethan

Suitor and won a judgment for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars

03:26.10

Shawn

Ah, okay, and this woman is she like one of those big Chinese Manufacturers like she's like the head of like a big Chinese manufacturer that like knocks people off and and and you know and then sells stuff like at a cheap rate because like that if so awesome. That's one for the team in my opinion you can't just like steal. People's you know faces and I p.

03:45.95

Ethan

Right? So she is not but lucomb said look as a as a trademark owner as a copyright owner as someone who profits off of his name image and likeness. He should have the exclusive right to be able to sell tumblrs with his faith on it or his licensees who he sells them to. So his lawyers do go after tons of these big companies that are making millions of dollars selling merch without his permission this moment.

04:06.57

Shawn

Right? Sure okay, well so she she's not a big company but she's like making millions of dollars right she must be some kind of like millionaire.

04:17.45

Ethan

I think she sold like 18 tumblers with this face on it which is still illegal. But.

04:22.61

Shawn

Wow. Okay, see this is what happens when you have lawyers on retainer. They need to find something to do and they're like well I guess we'll go after this lady who sold 18 tumblers with Luke Daddy Luke's face on it. So. I don't understand are people mad I would assume.

04:46.97

Ethan

Yeah, apparently people are mad so what happened is look First of all, no one is going to protect his image unless he and his lawyers do so so if you're a brand and you have a trademark and you're making um. Igloo coolers and some other company starts creating fake igloo coolers with your name on it and these counterfeit goods. The government doesn't come in and stop these people it really is up to the lukecombs and the igloos of the world to sue people who are making counterfeit goods without their permission. So it's doing that. But.

05:16.12

Shawn

Sure.

05:20.42

Ethan

What happened in this particular situation is lucomb says he woke up one morning at five a M went to go to the bathroom has probably taken a shit and this is his words. Not mine saw on his phone a news story out of Tampa about how country music star Luke Combs just sued a woman who sold a few tumblers in her basement on an Amazon account for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and she doesn't have enough money to pay her bills and so he he realized I got to do something about this.

05:43.63

Shawn

Ah.

05:51.24

Shawn

Okay, so did he cancel ah did he kill a lawsuit. Oh no, So what is he doing.

05:53.45

Ethan

No lossuit's already over he won. There's a judgment for 250 k what were yeah well what's interesting about this lawsuit is in most.

06:04.31

Shawn

It'd be really funny if he just signed some Cds and he sent them to her like sorry my bad.

06:08.26

Ethan

Right? Like sell these to get your judgment back I'll give you permission just to sell those so in most so it's crazy about this lawsuit is in most states like Florida where we're from if you want to serve someone with a lawsuit. You've got to literally serve it on them with a process server that will find you at your house.

06:23.47

Shawn

Right.

06:27.26

Ethan

In Illinois I guess you can serve a lawsuit via email and apparently she got an email in her spam folder on her Aol email address says she never saw it so she never responded to the lawsuit. So this is a default judgment against her.

06:39.11

Shawn

Oh my god.

06:42.50

Ethan

And so she kind of like woke up one morning went through her spam folder and it's like I was sued by lukecombs and I owe him a quarter of a million dollars so I guess lucombs wet on social media. She made a video about this on Tiktok like Lukecomb sued me for 200

06:49.17

Shawn

Wow.

07:01.92

Ethan

Thousand dollars this got picked up on the news. So lucombs did a stitch of the news story with woman of the background saying like man my heart's broken about what happened with this woman I'm sick to my stomach I didn't know about this lawsuit. So I called her send her 5 or 10 grand and said we're going to find a way to work this out like.

07:26.80

Shawn

Wow! Um, Jesus I mean that's crazy. So so it's interesting to me that really no one knew this lawsuit was happening presumably not Luke. Not the lady. This was all just like without anyone's involvement. Just. Some lawyers in it and and some judge just were like all right. This is it. Let's ruin this lady's life. That's mind blowing one. The other thing that kind of maybe blows my mind a little less about number one is is there any possible way. This guy didn't know this was happening.

07:49.56

Ethan

Right.

08:02.33

Shawn

Like could you be that out of the loop or could he have that many lawsuits that his lawyers don't check with him before doing something They don't need to get his permission like like how does a retainer work can I Just like pay a lawyer a bunch of money and then they can just Like. Do whatever and they never need to talk to me about it. Mm.

08:21.77

Ethan

Of course I need to talk to you about it? Um, so okay, first thing is I haven't looked at the lawsuit itself but I don't know if it's Luke Combs suing personally or if lukecombs has licensed his name image and likeness to some sort of company that then has the ability to.

08:38.64

Shawn

Interesting.

08:39.14

Ethan

To prosecute it. So the question is did Luke Combs know I don't know I've got to say but you and me we would certainly know for suing somebody I'm sure it's possible that he's on a monthly call with his lawyers lawyers are like look we got these 10 infringers. We got this. Factory whatever we got Susan whoever is selling an Amazon Account these are the lawsuits that we're filing. You know he's supposed to be authorizing these things before they go ahead and get filed I'm sure him or his manager or his agent knew. But I don't have any personal knowledge of whether Luke comb said hey lawyers.

09:06.97

Shawn

Um, okay.

09:10.73

Shawn

Interesting.

09:15.60

Ethan

Look at sus in an Illinois selling these tumblers. You know.

09:16.77

Shawn

Right? right? so there's so okay so let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt it is highly probable that he had people working on this that he may have not been directly involved. It's as probable to your point that like yeah. Maybe there was some monthly call that was like hey found 10 more infringers were going after him you cool he was like sure whatever and and then this happened so okay, let's give the guy the benefit out and say that happened that sucks. Um, that sucks the woman. Um. Did she give any reasonable explanation for why she did this in the first place like in her video was she like oh my god I just like or was she just like yeah look I did infringe I did try to make a bunch of money selling tumblers with this guy's face on him like.

10:10.33

Ethan

Look ah, there's so many people out there selling counterfeit stuff and and that doesn't mean that it's okay and usually they say I did know that I couldn't do it or I didn't think that I was going to get caught or look at these hundred other people out there. They're doing it that I'm doing it as well.

10:14.21

Shawn

True.

10:28.10

Ethan

Ignorance is not a defense to the law and I think look whether you listen to the social media law cast on a regular basis and you learn from Shawn you can't sell tumblrs with somebody else's face on it because that's illegal whether you know it or not you know in your gut that what you're doing was wrong and I'm sure she knew what she was doing was wrong. Whether she thought she could get sued for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for 18 tumblers cause I guess there's a statutory legal minimum that says counterfeit goods have a minimum threshold under the law of this amount of money she probably didn't know that but she probably thought I'm gonna get away with it. I gonna make a little bit of money. It's gonna cost me two bucks a mug to screen this I'm gonna buy a hundred mugs I'm gonna flip this thing on Amazon or on some online store for twenty bucks a mug I'll make eighteen bucks a pop and I'll have enough money for the holidays. Um.

11:18.40

Shawn

Wild.

11:21.25

Ethan

So I don't think her legal position is really I didn't do it I think hers more of like I'm shocked that I got caught and I didn't know that there was a lawsuit and had there been a lawsuit I would have contact an attorney they would have done something about it and they would have worked out deal because she said.

11:29.58

Shawn

Sure.

11:40.74

Ethan

Pulled it offline I'm not selling it I'm sure she would have worked it out I've been like I'll never do it again. We destroy all the mugs here's all the profits that I've made times 2 I'm sorry but a quarter of $1000000 as I think where the issue came in along with the surprise.

11:43.48

Shawn

Yeah. Right? right.

11:57.50

Shawn

Yeah, that's a lot Wow So that's crazy I mean I guess good on the guy that he reached out ah publicly to say we're gonna try to figure this out and work this out. You know it's interesting that he had to use social media to.

12:14.75

Shawn

Fix a problem caused by social media like you know or at least use the internet to cause fix problem caused by the internet. That's interesting to me. Um, so I mean yeah, what? So okay I'm a.

12:16.18

Ethan

A hero.

12:31.67

Shawn

Brand right? or a business owner listening to this. Do you in your professional opinion think that there is a threshold for when this type of legal action is outweighed by the potential public backlash and maybe isn't.

12:48.65

Ethan

So yes, of course there is and so a lot of people will say look I had a video go viral. Okay or a photograph that went viral all these other people are using it I want to sue all these different people all right because look.

12:49.14

Shawn

Words it.

13:08.70

Ethan

Stuff was stolen just like lukecombs. It's unfair. They should profit off it. It's super reasonable. Ah, and now the question is how much time energy and effort. Are you going to spend filing these lawsuits against people and what's going to be does this make financial sense.

13:12.21

Shawn

Right.

13:25.72

Shawn

Her.

13:26.97

Ethan

For you and what's the backlash going to be and what do you do about it? Okay back when I was a lawyer I remember the case that I hated the absolute most and I worked on some really great cases that was super interesting and I worked on some real shit cases over 8 years the shittiest case was a lawyer that was pissed off at Directv. Because they gave him the runaround so he sued direct tv in small claims court and he's like I just want to get my day in court and just dig the needle and he's like you should be happy. You're getting paid your hourly rates being paid by a big company but direct Tv was like we want to defend this lawsuit because we want to set the standard.

14:04.85

Shawn

Right? sure.

14:05.37

Ethan

You can't just sue us that we're going to defend this thing whether it's bigger or small and they didn't really care about the public backlash here. Um this situation I think is more like what we discussed with our friend Sarah shake from the market co on a few episodes ago which is how to deal with a crisis.

14:11.30

Shawn

In.

14:23.90

Shawn

Um, yeah.

14:25.90

Ethan

Sounds like the lawyers did their job. They stopped somebody and this was probably a situation that they were like look It's small potatoes but we need to send a signal to other people. Don't do it. But once it came out that that good old boy Luke Combs so has ah a good reputation as being like a good guy. Had this come out in the news. Probably the manager was like we need to do something about it or Luke's internal thought was like oh shit I didn't realize this I need to get ahead of this before the public backlash. Starts spiraling out of control and I look like a big evil celebrity suing the little perth and I need to make good. So I'm going to use a tikt tock stitch to say I didn't know about it I'm heartbroken look what I'm doing about it where kind of at the same side. Suing people on the 1 hand for doing it and then using social media as a way to say you know I'm not the bad guy I didn't know about it and I'm going to make it right.

15:24.83

Shawn

You know it reminds me and I'll always bring this up when ah when a major celebrity sues an individual person but it reminds me of Metallica back in the Napster days. You know Metallica took a big swing. Ah, and look on a long enough timeline. Did it really affect them. I'm not sure you know they still put out music. They still do shows. Um, so ah, you know on the 1 hand like their fans are their fans I guess you know, um, but. I know it impacted a lot of their fan base at the time and I and I don't know I don't have an intricate enough knowledge of the band's numbers to know. Did they ever recover or did they take a major hit but you know going after you know Lars? Whatever his name is solve a problem in in people. Using nabster I think they went after nabster itself. Um, but realized that you know the root maybe cause was individuals and so I think as a scare tactic they started to prosecute individual people for doing this. Um. It's interesting to me that that practice seems to have gone away I would guess that it went away because it was ineffective because at the end of the day people are selfish and they're myopic and you could sue 150 people but that doesn't mean that it's going to make the guy who wants to do it.

16:56.66

Shawn

Didn't get sued stop doing it. He's just gonna be like well they got caught and I didn't you know? Whatever what are the chances. They'll get me. Um and so I think it was a terrible scare tactic tactic if that was the the intent and I can't really what else would there have been behind it. It's not like they were gonna get much money from these individual people. Um, so it's you know? Ah, but you know even in that case much like this one we see that like the the big the the goliath going after the David never ends well for the goliath. It's always a bad luck.

17:26.50

Ethan

No, it doesn't and look There's like 2 big takeaways here first is it's hard like as someone that became famous or as a brand owner one of the worst things that can happen is. Getting your stuff stolen other people profiting off it. It's not fair and to like just let it happen. Okay means other people are gonna keep doing it and it's gonna make the problem worse I got a friend of mine and Jamie Smallonee I havent talk to Jamie in 20 years went to camp monroe with Dave Kushner together I remember.

17:43.13

Shawn

Sure yeah.

17:56.73

Shawn

Camp.

17:59.75

Ethan

Jamie created a really cool product or something and he kind of became famous as I'm going to prosecute everybody because it's not fair what they're doing and that was kind of his shtick is is I need to be able to do this and for him at work because he wasn't really a goliath. He was a small guy going after these different people.

18:08.69

Shawn

Frame.

18:16.62

Shawn

Sure.

18:18.90

Ethan

But as a brand owner from a legal perspective if you don't prosecute people for selling manufacture goods and you know about it and let it happen. You can lose your trademark right? So as a business you've got to be able to balance what do I need to do legally which with how. This is going to affect me legally and practically and make the right decisions so you don't end up in the Metallica situation.

18:41.41

Shawn

You know every six months or so I get an email because I have a little Google alert set up for all of the different comic books that I wrote right? and every like ah you know I yeah I would say like six months or so I get a little alert and I go ooh someone's talking about 1 of my comics. And I go to the comic I go to the alert to see what they're saying and the alert is simply oh this comic is now available on some other illegal free comic book website and you know I'm flattered quite frankly like I think it's cool I think it's neat that someone's taken a time to upload. It.

19:14.80

Ethan

Um.

19:17.72

Shawn

I Think it's cool that more people are getting a chance to see it. You know it doesn't really bother me and and I have more to lose because I'm a independent creator certainly um, but like you know I I don't know I'm very torn as a creator and as a. Consumer I'm very torn on how I feel about pirating things. Um, you know, big corporations. How much are they really losing individual artists are different I guess.

19:44.37

Ethan

Yeah I mean think about this to play Devil's advocate here in a real way you and I on the side are building a dungeon and dragons adventure. We've spent five months I told you I was up until two thirty in the morning writing this. We're spending a lot of time we care about this a ton.

19:54.99

Shawn

Sure yeah.

20:03.36

Ethan

We're going to sell this thing in the new year all right if it sells wonderful if it doesn't we made a great game together. But really, how shitty is it going to be if this thing gets a little popular. We put this thing on the websites and we find that someone else is just making their own copies and selling it for five bucks a pop as opposed to $10

20:05.40

Shawn

Um, yeah.

20:18.37

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

20:21.74

Ethan

And is undercutting us and it you know it. It is unfair and it does suck and I and I don't of course might not have a bleeding heart for the marvels and the Disneys and the big brands of the world. They're making millions. But for the startups the smaller companies the creators this this can hurt and look There's a way that this could be spun you were like hey I felt good look my comics still out there and it could be a fun pr spin of like which game is it like this is the fake game. It doesn't have you know stone on it has Timothy like you know making a fun thing out of it but it still hurts.

20:49.74

Shawn

Um, yeah, you know to to your point. Also I think the the key difference is what you just said right? I Think if we put all this effort into this game and we put it out there. Whatever it's selling. It's not selling. Whatever. If I then find out that there are free copies out there I think I'm considerably less bothered by that than if I find out that someone is selling copies because then I go hey we're and especially if we're not selling Well then I go like hey what the fuck with no by our version. What the hell that would piss me off.

21:18.95

Ethan

Um, right.

21:24.89

Shawn

Same with the the comic. My commentic you know if I found out that someone was like making a mint selling them I'd be mad because the book did not sell Well the fact that that it's out there for free I go and I don't know I did doesn't tear me up that bad I'm like I said I'm glad someone I guess is looking at it. Um, you know.

21:40.91

Ethan

Yeah I.

21:43.74

Shawn

Ah, but yes I think to your point it it. It is in the interest of us to at least be vigilant right? and then to pick or choose our battles based on on how it. Deeply it impacts us and and and what it looks like from an outside perspective and that's probably a good lesson for everybody.

22:00.20

Ethan

Yeah, I'd say yeah I say the second lesson you talked about this earlier about remember Mila Kunis how she got scooed for selling not crypto, but and at ease right.

22:08.12

Shawn

Um, ah, Nfts. Yeah.

22:13.99

Ethan

And this was probably something where her manager or lawyers said hey this is a great deal post this on social media. They're going to pay you I don't know what it was half a million dollars for this. She ended up getting fined and investigated by the scc for selling these investments and and.

22:21.30

Shawn

Yeah.

22:32.40

Ethan

Your takeaway was look this probably isn't Mila Ku is sitting there being like I'm going to violatate securities laws and make all this money. It was they listen to their lawyers and their managers and they didn't pay much attention and as a result of this they got in trouble because they're the celebrity. This is probably the exact same situation.

22:34.96

Shawn

Lin jia.

22:51.57

Shawn

Um, yeah.

22:51.95

Ethan

With Luke Combs he's focused on selling albums making people happy creating music. Of course he wants people to shut the stuff down. He probably didn't know about it. But as an influencer or creator who's listening to this podcast. Growing a larger following and starting to get brand deals and as you do that you focus more on your craft and you leave the business to other people. It's really important to stay dialed in because the people who work for you that you trust think that they have their best interest in mind but they may not think about this from a Pr perspective. They may think about it from a money perspective.

23:15.20

Shawn

Um, yeah.

23:22.42

Shawn

Yeah.

23:26.14

Ethan

A legal perspective and you are the one that's going to experience this backlash and I can tell you Luke Holmes did not want to wake up yesterday morning and make this tech talk and say that I'm sorry he would rather have not dealt with this issue at all and just.

23:36.85

Shawn

Yeah.

23:42.19

Ethan

Prepared for winning the next Cma award. So I think that's kind of the other takeaway is we trust the people that we partner with. But ultimately the buck stops with you and I think he's I don't know he um know he's taking responsibility here but he's at least doing something about it and being like I fucked up and and.

23:43.59

Shawn

Um, yeah.

23:58.15

Shawn

Sure.

24:01.50

Ethan

Um, kind of try to make right in this situation and at least he's taking that degree of responsibility and dealing with it. But that's not the pr that he wants to have especially as the holiday season comes up and he's taken money away from this woman who wants to put you know a playstation 3 under her kids' Christmas but she can't put a paycheck.

24:19.34

Shawn

Sure she can't even afford the new playstation. She's going to playstations back this poor woman. Well listen. So I think this is a good place ah to imagine a little scenario.

24:21.60

Ethan

And we yeah we go sco food for a quarter million dollars by country music singer. But.

24:37.41

Shawn

I wake up I'm Luke. Whatever whatever that guy's name is Daddy Luke I find out that my attorneys did this I'm livid right? Oh my god I look like such an asshole. Everyone hates me on the internet.

24:41.25

Ethan

Daddy Luke I think you were calling look.

24:52.86

Shawn

Why did they do this even if I gave them the okay, why did they think this was okay why I suggest this and I'm furious I run to the internet I needed a new attorney I need a social media copyright attorney bad someone that's gonna fix this problem for me and never. Let something like this happen again I need Ethan Wall even how do people find you in these dire circumstances. Thank you Thank you.

25:20.79

Ethan

Shawn I hope that that never happens to you personally. But if it did you'd search for the social media law firm on social media you listen and subscribe to the social media law cast and you would tell us you tell me Ethan. Need 2 things I need your help and I need more daddy Luke on my Spotify Radio ah so so you could be the next Cma country music star. But yeah, follow the social media law firm on social media. Check out more episodes of the podcast. Don't sue small people who just need to make a few bucks and putting your name.

25:49.62

Shawn

That's right type.

25:56.56

Ethan

Um, bug.

25:56.76

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, don't lay up. That's all good advice. Um, and that's it. That's it for the podcast I leave me I.

25:59.25

Ethan

When or can they find you and say hey for where is this new dungeons and dragons game if you guys are creating that you can't use dungeon and dragons. Where's this 5 v compatible game. Yeah.

26:12.25

Shawn

It's making me so uncomfortable. All this attention. Ah, you can find me online at seanrights on Twitter or on Instagram ah, when the book comes out as there's more information I will post about it. There. Um, and also. Ethanal.com ah, you can find more information about the book and all of Ethan's projects and all the stuff that we work on there as well. So that's it for this week Ethan I will see you next week and then I'm taking my week off and I want no funny business. Okay, all right.

26:40.59

Ethan

Deal State it.

26:44.34

Shawn

Bye buddy.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media law cast I am your host social media attorney Ethan wall with me is my friend and co-host Shawn DePasquale hey Shawn.

Shawn

I am ah I am wearing comfy clothes because it's cold here today I want it just just be known that I have Ninja turtles sweatpants on right now.

Ethan

Wow I did notice that you were wearing a hoodie inside and you live in Southern California how how cold is it 60 I'm literally looking at a mirror.

Shawn

It's cold today. It's like oh let's see. It's 60 out right now but this morning when I woke up it was 56

Ethan

There's snow outside it was ° this morning and I'm wearing that short sleeve t-shirt is kind of it's true. Let's head.

Shawn

Um, right? but you have heat on I see we didn't turn the heat on because that's overkill right? because you don't want to. So we're in this precarious place where like overnight it was like ° out it was cold I mean that's cold in the inside of a room. Yeah, we have Heat. We've sent. We have gas.

Ethan

Do you then have heat I I didn't know because I because we grew up in Florida right? So I thought all hard were right one never turn the heat on and 2

Shawn

Never turned the heat on.

Ethan

I didn't realize air conditioning in a car is an optional feature. You know some cars they they just come with heat where I'm like why how it's ° outside all the time.

Shawn

I moved to Southern California and didn't realize air conditioning in a home is an optional feature because when I first moved here the first 4 apartments I lived in did not have central air and what's interesting is. Thirteen years ago when I moved here. It was basically fine. There were like as like a week every year where you'd be like oh my god it's so hot and you just like go outside and like or go to the library or do something in the last thirteen years it is so unbearably hot for such a long amount of time now. That like I have seen more and more places every place that gets built. That's new has central air in it. So.

Ethan

Totally we look. We're going to talk about a lot of lot of things that are wrong with America and the american legal system today. But what I can say in living in like two dozen different countries across the world for the past couple of years things like hot water air conditioning. Roads that are serviceable and not having the military standing with guns on the side of the road. We. We pretty much take a lot of these different things for granted so that when we find a car that doesn't have air conditioning or a house that like doesn't have it. We're like what are you talking about all of these things do and really, we're kind of. Boiled in that department because we kind of expect those basic creature comforts I guess yes.

Shawn

Those are the tenants for you I think that's interesting. So I think I think it's really interesting that those things are the things that like if any of those parts of society collapse or change over the next few years ah you're going to be the first person that I text to go like it's it's happening. Like now I know I have you on board like if we got military people on the side of the roads going forward at some point of the future I'm texting you first to be like dude we've made it dystopia's begun.

Ethan

Um, right.

Ethan

Right? I'm I'm literally I'm living in Mexico right? And so a few things one like if you have hot water all right in your shower. You got it for like a minute. You know so you got to like get it use it really quickly. You can't like stand outside wait for it to heat up. You got to get the hot water where you're going fresh water. Nope they have like tanks on the top of the of the houses right? You got to fill up those tanks every once in a while and I'm and I'm out living in ah ah San Jose Del Cabo New York kabo San Lucas

Shawn

Right.

Ethan

There's all these military trucks and like people with machine guns and I'm like should I be going back inside and and the the coworking people that I was living with they're like no that means it's safe like they're here to demonstrate. It is safe because they are not here to keep you out. They're here to keep out.

Shawn

Whatever cartel and bad guys. Yeah, what a world? Well okay, none of this has anything to do with what we're gonna talk about today but but listen listen this is the social media law cast.

Ethan

Cartel and bad people. So when you see them that means it's a good thing and yeah, it's what a world I.

Shawn

Part of social media is socializing. We did the social part now. Let's talk about the media. Let's go so I want to talk today to you about Tiktok. We've talked about this a little bit in the past, but it's an ongoing sort of ah living. Creature right now that is constantly changing the the legal battle I'm talking about the legal proceedings around tiktok is its is its own sort of living thing right now. Um, and so there's like little updates to do and so I thought it was worth checking in you and I have been trading articles back and forth over the last couple weeks. And kind of going like oh that's interesting. That's interesting. So I felt like let's talk about where we're where we were where we're at and and and where where it's going to go now from here. It's a good time to like check in because this is the. Only app in recent memory that I can think of where people are like pitchforks and torches. Let's get this app like. There was like a period right? Where like people were like oh we got to like talk to Facebook and Twitter and investigate them and the government was but that was like 20 years into Facebook and Twitter existing at all, you know what? I mean it wasn't like this is like Tiktok is only like maybe 11 years old and in that time.

Ethan

If that.

Shawn

If that and in that time it's become reviled people on both sides of the aisle and and and there's a ton of you know let's get this out of the way early on right? There's probably a lot of xenophobia wrapped up in a lot of this because it's like it's a China company the chinese want to get us. They're trying to get our kids with the dance videos and it's like the algorithm is going to turn all of our children into communists because China wants that I guess it's insane. So there is a lot of that wrapped up in this but within that there's also you know genuine concern I think about ah data privacy and child safety on social media platforms now the thing that Tiktok has. To be fair to to the its critics right? that maybe some of these other social media platforms didn't have in their although Youtube maybe in their nasient stage was is is a lot of children are interested in this app. It's almost similar to snapchat. But oddly enough snapchat was an american company and so like yeah kids are like doing a lot of sexual things on snapchat and exchanging sex videos all under age minors. You never hear about it. No one asks any questions that no even talks about snapchat. It's fascinating to me when you talk to anyone under the age of like 16.

Shawn

Ah, all of them use snapchat they all use it. It is the primary mode of communication. No one talks about it. It's fascinating. It's like this little weird world. So again, the xenophobia I think plays a large role in this. In at least starting the conversation but it has led to some genuine concerns and and questions right? What is Tiktok doing to could take to guard against all of the data that it's acquiring. Um, you know Tiktok does have a. Particularly strong algorithm that that really does seem to ah have a good predictive sense and a good learning ability to really deliver on on what. viewer is looking at and looking for so much so that it's pretty easy to even reprogram your own tiktok It's not like ah you don't need to be like a scientist you literally just like like some videos skip some other videos. Don't like videos that you normally would like and pretty soon you're getting fed a whole new slew of think you've moved into a whole new. Realm of tiktok as it were so you know it's an interesting app and there's a lot going on around it. So why don't we start with that stuff I'm gonna throw it to you now? Ethan why don't you kind of briefly walk us through like.

Shawn

What are some of the major concerns. What how have those concerns led to what are the major lawsuits that are currently pending and then we'll kind of dive in from there.

Ethan

Yeah I think it's important to both acknowledge the xenophobic aspect of this which is this company is created from China China is the us's enemy this isn't my words is the words of politicians and and whomever and therefore.

Shawn

Um, sure exactly.

Ethan

It's bad and we need to ban it and I think that there is there's 2 sides to this coin there is the xenophobic side which is wrong which is just because something is created from another company. No one is saying shut down Facebook shut down meta shut down x they're saying regulate it.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

They're saying change it but they're not saying that you shouldn't be in business so there is that.

Shawn

No. Also Sony has existed in this country for I don't even know how long and that's a japanese company and no one goes don't buy a playstation. It's turning our children into communists so it's Sony is Sony is.

Ethan

Yes, is that Japan or is that chat is that that so chinese japanese okay, so so we're looking at developing as yes. Yeah.

Shawn

Japanese company. Yes japanese company. That's what I'm that's what I'm saying but with what I'm saying though is Sony is a Japanese company japanese Japan is considered an ally and as such no one has said well what is the playstation doing to our children and how is it controlled. You know this is a.

Ethan

Yeah, they've said that they said about video game right? Yeah, they've been arguing about that for video games for forever remember like grand theft auto and how violence in America is as a result of a video game. Um, but.

Shawn

Very much a China Tiktok thing.

Ethan

I think on the other side of the coin there. There is factual evidence of people in China chinese citizens chinese governments just like Russian Citizens russian governments who are creating technology systems too. Steal data from people in other countries particularly in the us for competitive reasons I think we saw this play out in Russia in the twenty Twenty election and there's hard and fast evidence that people are doing it and just today in the news.

Shawn

Correct.

Ethan

Facebook or meta came out and said we shut down thousands of fake accounts that we saw were originated by someone in China that was designed to just share content from x about polarizing political issues on both sides of the fence.

Shawn

Them.

Ethan

Gearing up to have peep and it meant made it look like they were real american people who liked things so that as the election came they'd be able to to create you know, writele up, people's opinions. So I think that there is on the 1 hand a reality which is there is a changing world order.

Shawn

Um, yes.

Ethan

America has been the world order forever in our lives China is now growing and will become probably the new world order at some time from perhaps an economic standpoint and things of that nature. Just the world is changing. And so there's both fear against China and chinese companies because of that changing world order and two because there are practices that happen in those companies or in those countries that are either government related government sanctioned or just government allows it to happen because there's less regulations. In China which allows them to create lower labor stealing intellectual property has kind of been a huge thing for like a long time. So so it's not just xenophobia but I think that that's probably the driving factor from a political standpoint. For a lot of these lawsuits that we're going to be talking about today.

Shawn

Okay, so where are we at with the lawsuits. What are the major concerns. Um specifically about Tiktok right? and and who's suing whom and where.

Ethan

Yeah, so I'd say we've got excuse me 2 types of lawsuits or actions that are happening right now we've got the federal government and many state governments.

Shawn

The.

Shawn

Um.

Ethan

Who are banning the use of Tiktok by governmental agencies because of the fear of a chinese company being able to collect data and because there is a law in China that requires companies to cooperate with their federal government for information sharing purposes that they're banning use from federal employees. That's.

Shawn

Okay.

Shawn

And this is specifically if you work for the us government though. So this isn't like ah my 13 year old niece can't have Tiktok on her phone. Nobody cares. This is if you work for the government. You can't have Tiktok on your phone. That's what you're saying.

Ethan

Kind of.

Ethan

Yes, and this is happening in a number of different states as well. I'd say about half the states are are kind of having these things that's one area.

Shawn

Well, all right? Shawn's ruling let it happen I don't understand what the problem is judge Shawn says yeah, why are you on Tick Tock government employees. What are you doing. There's no reason for you to be on Tiktok. Go govern okay, tell me.

Ethan

Wow. Okay I'll play Devil's advocate all right? um government governors. Ah people who are politicians have the right to engage in speech they can speak.

Shawn

True.

Ethan

They've got first amendment rights that are a little bit more limited because they're members of the government but in a number of these cases. There has been members of the government that use Tiktok or Facebook or meta to spread out their messaging to conduct advertising and to limit or restrict their ability to use these platforms to communicate with their constituents.

Shawn

Right.

Ethan

May infringe upon their their first amendment rights.

Shawn

But is this saying they can't have a presence or is this saying they can't personally use it because that's a huge distinction right? like I get like I don't want. You know a senator to sign up for Tiktok and put all his information and then have tiktok on his phone and be walking around the white house holding his phone and being like I'm looking at fun Tiktok videos that seems shady but like could not their you know publicist representative or whatever start an account in their name and yeah is there.

Ethan

I think it becomes and I think it becomes a distinction without a difference in a way because then they still have their profile their presence they're still having correspondence communication that's happening even if it's through an agent. So I don't think that's the.

Shawn

That distinction.

Shawn

Um, ah, interesting I say.

Ethan

Big deal where these politicians are kicking down the door saying no I want to use Tiktok to be able to make funny dance videos to my constituents where I think many of those lawsuits are happening are government. Ah, people are either like restricting people's speech like blocking people who are making bad comments and they're saying whoa wait a minute this is a public forum. You're not allowed to be able to do these things. So I think there's lots of issues tied in with the government's use of ticktok the other horde of lawsuits that are coming out are.

Shawn

Then.

Shawn

Um, right.

Shawn

Right? That makes sense.

Ethan

State lawsuits by and large some in Indiana and Montana that are trying to make it illegal for people to use Tiktok within those states.

Shawn

Um, okay.

Ethan

Yes, banning ticktok. Yes, the month the Montana.

Shawn

Individual people normal human beings everyday folk. Okay, this feels this feels like a um hold on I'm going to know this because I'm both married to an attorney and friends with an attorney. This feels like a violation of bang tech time you get first amendment that's like a first amendment violation potentially to say like I got a freedom to what what it like I to express myself I also got a freedom to look at.

Ethan

Yeah, video dances.

Shawn

Dances and spend my money how I want to spend my money too isn't there like a thing that says like I'm so I'm not breaking any laws like Also it's a free app.

Ethan

Yeah, so that is one of the major defenses to these things. So a lot of these states and spoiler alert they're coming from conservative states and I'm not saying this not saying this not saying this to create like a political battle discourse I mean.

Shawn

Um, oh why? ah.

Ethan

Full disclosure I'm socially liberal I've got generally moderate views to be able to kind of see both sides but the fact is these lawsuits are being filed in Texas Florida Indiana Montana very conservative states because there is both 2 sides to their coins. They're saying 1

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan

We don't like big tech and big tech is doing bad things with our data which I think a lot of people can kind of agree with there's not transparency in how data is being used particularly as it relates to children. Um.

Shawn

Sure, Absolutely sure. Ah, absolutely, but do they not really like big tech because of that or do they not like big tech because they feel they're being on fairly.

Shawn

Difold from saying whatever thing that they want to say wherever they want to say it and that's really the impetus for a lot of this is oh well I don't want Tiktok to exist because Tiktok told me I can't say something hateful, but then you go fall into the other problem which is what they're. Private company so they can tell you whatever they want to tell you about what you can say on their thing. Yeah.

Ethan

And that's the other side of the coin is that a lot of these social media sites and this one really isn't directed at Tiktok as much as it's directed at meta x and others. So this kind of loops everyone into the fold is is content moderation and.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

What and how can these platforms moderate because what happened in the timeline is 2020 election people from Russia and or elsewhere create these fake accounts and it influences the election. It does either. There was kind of facts out there. Whether or whether it.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

Tip the scales 1 way or the other who the hell knows but there was a concerted effort to be able to do this and so congress brought in Mark Zuckerberg and everyone and it's like you're not doing enough to moderate content. We're going to create laws to regulate you unless you do something about it so Zuckerberg and co just talking about all the other social media sites are like cool.

Shawn

Yeah, ah.

Ethan

Get it. We're gonna start moderating Content. We're gonna create our own Policies. We don't need you governing Us. You shouldn't We're a private company but let's not get there. We're just gonna get ahead of it. Do content moderation. They do it and they create rules or policies and they say things like you can't post racist Stuff. You can't post. Hate Speech They come up with these different categories right? things that are very plain on them on themselves. Okay and they either hire people or they build algorithms to try to find Keywords or activity to flag these things.

Shawn

False information misleading facts. That's this kind of thing yes should be.

Ethan

And Lo and behold. What's happening a lot of conservative-leaning speech is being banned or flagged particularly by politicians and so now the politicians are saying whoa. Now that you're moderating the content you're doing in a way that is discriminatory to our views and it's unfair to us and you are big tech your liberal leaning companies. So we want to be able to regulate you so some of the lawsuits that we are seeing now are a. Should we just ban Tiktok because of likely some of the xenophobic or data privacy type issues that are there or b how can you moderate content or we're going to create laws like in Florida and Texas that says you can't moderate content that hurts.

Shawn

And.

Ethan

Conservative-leaning views and each time you do that? There's going to be some sort of a financial penalty.

Shawn

Ah I mean okay as an attorney as this person who studies the law. What feels like the likelihood of that kind of that last 1 right of saying you can't moderate right.

Shawn

Right? Wing views because it's like a who gets to decide What's right wing and what's not and at what point like at what point does freedom of Speech go beyond and become like incendiary speech right? And so like And. Also is the rights argument in this scenario that like stifling their speech includes like they can say like any anything about anyone at any time is that I don't understand.

Ethan

So sure to look at this from a legal perspective. Let's do a super quick rundown of the first amendment not going to go too far back and I have the tendency to do that. But in a nutshell basically freedom of speech. Allows people to basically say and do what they want. Okay, but there can be limits on that speech if the speech is and and some of those limits are creating more limits on what the government can or can't do but it doesn't put the same restrictions on private citizens.

Shawn

Him.

Shawn

Right.

Ethan

Why because the law says congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of Speech and so therefore the government can limit government speech and governmental entities and it can limit. It can allow for speech to happen within what are called Public forums.

Shawn

Correct.

Shawn

Interesting.

Shawn

Okay.

Ethan

Parks and sidewalks they need to be a place where free speech can happen but the government can place reasonable restrictions what they call time place and manner restrictions on how that speech happens. So it means you have so it can't be content specific. You can't say and this is really bad that like. Nazis can't speak but you know mothers who make cookies can you can't make a content specificcific but you can say you you can only do it between noon and four p m these weekdays you have to apply for a permit you have to have police come out there to make sure that's whatever they could put certain restrictions on it. So the government can.

Shawn

Right.

Shawn

But if nazis want they can March like people that believe in that can file for a permit get together and March down the street right? We've seen it. It happens it happened in Florida recently like they can do that under the terms of America's first amendment.

Ethan

Right.

Ethan

Right? And let's be Frank between 2 jews here. It's fucking awful. But but but but yes because we do have a constitution and there are various amendments and 1 of the things that's very important in a.

Shawn

They are free to do that is that fair to say yes, but it is legally they are allowed. Right? but.

Ethan

America's culture as much as we may not like what's happening is we left england because they were restricting speech and look what's happening in Russia throwing political prisoners away from being able to speak bad about Vladimir Putin look what happens in China they have controlled media that.

Shawn

Um, bright are yes.

Ethan

That blocks Facebook and other things and look let's face it in America you got Fox News on the right you got seeing an m on the left you got everybody in between you got very few neutral news sources other than the social media law cast but it is Shawn Smiles because it's not it's not it but um

Shawn

Who.

Ethan

We do value our freedom of speech and that allows if we yeah we I know it got me at 1 point. Um, but like but we allow nazis to March because our disdain for hatred and anti-semitism in America which is which is a true value. Okay.

Shawn

Um, fair and balanced. Ah, but ah.

Ethan

Is is a slightly lower value than our collective freedom of speech and ability to do that without government restriction. So now to tie it together and I said I'd be short but I can't because that's how my mind works is the question are social media sites. Where people now go to share information and where Twitter and x was calling itself the virtual town square are those considered public forums that the government has the ability to create certain restrictions.

Shawn

Right.

Ethan

Or laws or regulations that Govern How Speech is going to be restricted or not or are they solely private companies where they get to choose their rules and do what they want and the government can't keep their hands there and your alternative is go create truth social.

Shawn

Right? right? at 1 of the one of the things I like about law is that I can relate it to improv in a very one very specific way which is law does this cool thing where it does if then what else.

Ethan

And use a different social media platform and that's really where this issue comes down.

Shawn

Right? And it's something that I think a lot of and correct me from wrong. But I think a lot of judges have to play this game when deciding on a ruling because they look at okay well what's the precedent. What's already there. What's in place and if I rule a. In opposition to that and start a new thing and make a new ruling if then what else What does my decision here. How does that then impact the next legal case that is maybe not exactly the same but deals with similar circumstances and so this is where I think this. Is a laughable push on on the on the republican side I think it's silly because I think at the end of the day unless you get ah unless you get a judge who's fully willing to not play that game and is just like in the pocket and is like sure whatever I feel like the game of okay, well if then what else. When you start to do this to private companies is too vast like the the detrimental damage that this could do to what the rights of corporations are as private entities would be so vastly damaged by a ruling like this. I think at the end of the day. no one in no one in 1000000 years is going to do it and even if they maybe consider it I think there's way too much corporate interest out there to not push back very heavily against something like that because it it. It's a Pandora's box

Ethan

It It is and that's why this is an issue of law versus politics. You know if you're looking at this from a neutral standpoint I think people would say the liberal side leans more towards.

Shawn

Kind of.

Shawn

The.

Ethan

People Consumer rights and are willing to have more government involvement in order to have more government services so we'll pay higher taxes so that people who are poor or old can get more money and we want to tax corporations higher and I think if you think an objective view of the conservative party.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

Is to have more rights for corporations and for the wealthy and so businesses could have more freedom. There should be less legal regulation less government regulation less taxes right? and and so think right? but now we want to have more regulations.

Shawn

Um, yes, yes, yes, yes, except here. Ah.

Ethan

And more government interactions on corporations. So it is. It's and you and you think to yourself doesn't this create a legal pandora's box from a from a law of perspective or doesn't it fly in the face of the general perception or values the conservative side but that's. Because you're thinking about it from a legal standpoint. Not a political standpoint. The political standpoint is the conservatives are your everyday people and we hate the big tax and we hate the amazons and the Facebooks and we like the mom and pop shops and we don't want.

Shawn

Right. Right.

Ethan

Our world to go the way of the dodo where everything is owned by a few different companies and it makes it unfair and so that's a big rallying cry to let's say were against big tech even though the owners of big tech. Even the big tech are corporations and the owners of them are usually rich people. So it's It's a really true.

Shawn

Sure fair. Yes. Are move and mostly conservative rich people. It's crazy. Yeah, so well. I mean if that's a case then it's like you know that aspect of it seems to be.

Ethan

Super off.

Shawn

Nih Impossible to achieve. We'll see right like good luck godspeed with you I would be fascinated to see what happens if you start to put those kinds of legal restrictions on private corporations from a federal standpoint and it does seem to.

Ethan

Well look.

Shawn

Fly in the face of what republicans generally say they want So I Also wonder from a political standpoint. What is the blowback there. But even from a legal standpoint Once you do that a little bit I feel like doesn't that then mean, okay, well can't we put other restrictions on corporations that are considered private that they're not and then. If corporations are people as we've previously established in other rulings then does that mean that you can put those restrictions on people too.

Ethan

So it's it is. It's both a ridiculous slippery slope on the one hand. It's also the reality that we have a we've got a conservative supreme court.

Shawn

Yes.

Shawn

Consider.

Ethan

Um, this is the time for conservative conservative governors and politicians to file these lawsuits because look what happened to Roe versus wade and and you you do have conservatives on the court like John Roberts who I very much respect. Find him to be very moderate even though he's very conservative and I have seen liberal judges that kind of lean in the middle as well. But then you have both liberal and conservative judges that live all the way on the other side Clarence Thomas on the 1 hand you probably as much as I loved her Ruth Bader Ginsburg potentially kind of on the other hand and I don't think to that extreme.

Shawn

Right? yes.

Ethan

But we do have a situation where there's an imbalanced court and I'm not going to say that they're going to rule all on conservative issues just because that's their leaning but we also have to embrace the reality of there's a majority conservative court and so I think we do have I believe four cases. That are going to be on the us supreme court's docket that runs I believe now through April Twenty Twenty four that relate to the social media first amendment rights and there's some of these cases. We talked about the beginning about politicians rights to use social media and block people is it a public form. Is it not.

Shawn

Yes, um.

Ethan

And regulation of the speed. So I think we are going to start getting some answers for better or for worse you know at the end of the first quarter of ah 2024

Shawn

Now all right before we wrap up I did want to touch on 1 specific thing that I thought was interesting and just get your opinion on and I think that's a good place to kind of leave off but in this ah in this ah, where was it. What is this. With the book an Indiana in this Indiana Lawsuit this guy judge de groot or girl this judge judge de gro I am de gro is I'm sure the judges catchphrase every time they walk into the court. Um, and ah but the judge says and I have a couple of questions here.

Ethan

Indiana lawsuth.

Shawn

My My biggest being I Wonder who appointed this judge but the judge says in their ruling ah that they see this lawsuit as quote being a largely political posturing. So if this judge. Has noted that in their ruling.. What do you feel that portends for how other judges will view this type of thing does that sort of indicate a feeling of hey I'm not going to let the court be used to play politics is that what that judge is kind of. Pointing at there.

Ethan

So yes and I and I don't think I don't remember if it was that state judge or if it was the appellate court that sent it back down I wasn't sure which which one made that particular comment. But um.

Shawn

Are okay.

Ethan

I think that that is focusing on the reality of the situation that we just discussed because the indiana governor I think is kind of come out and said and maybe it's the indiana governor or it's the Montana governor or and you know one of them basically said I'm going to be to thorn in the side of big tech and.

Shawn

Right.

Shawn

I know I can't remember. Yes.

Ethan

And started initiating these types of legal actions and so I think people's words and their behavior reflects in the motivations for their lawsuit. So in indiana super conservative state. But basically this was the first law that was filed to ban Tiktok their arguments were you misled children. You said that it was going to be a safe place for children. But there's salacious content on there and that's not okay and 2 you're not protecting. Children's data or our data and that can get in the hands of of China and ultimately this lawsuit was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction saying these are California companies.

Shawn

Um, right? oh.

Ethan

Don't have jurisdiction over it and this Indiana specific consumer protection law they said look because downloading an app is free. It is not commerce. It's not a transaction. We have no jurisdiction. Basically the Indiana judge in a nutshell just said you file it somewhere else I don't want to do.

Shawn

You filed the wrong lawsuit I'm sorry.

Ethan

Yeah, or you followed it in the wrong place is nothing that I can do because they probably don't want to create the law and maybe they they don't have legal grounds to but that 1 comment about this being political is true and that's the thing I think if you're listening to this podcast and you're like hey I'm on team Shawn like this is super bad like what's happening.

Shawn

Um, right? sure. Yeah yeah.

Ethan

Or if you're kind of thinking if you're on the opposite side of the spectrum saying look at these two lib tar. Are you know room.

Shawn

Get oh look at this liberal Idiot They're probably saying about me all with his glasses and his jewishness. Of course this guy and I would say to you sir watch your tone.

Ethan

Click if right or.

Shawn

Watch your watch your tone. Let's be respectful here on the social media law cast. We love you and you love us and that's it. We're all united by our love for Ethan Wall thank you

Ethan

That's true because I'm going to try to just say from sitting closer to the middle is just remember this. Okay, we're all human beings all right both us and the judges. And we also have our own values. We've got our own beliefs and they influence our decisions and while that stinks because we think that the law should be the black letter of the law and what the law says the people who are interpreting or creating these laws have agendas and have values and have beliefs and they're going to play themselves out. And oftentimes we're going to disagree with it and it's going to suck and it's going to be unfair but that's just kind of the nature of what it is and I think that this was a wonderful thing for someone to kind of highlight this looks like political posturing because as this lawsuits gets refilled elsewhere. There may become a time and it would be wonderful if the supreme court had this and said look stop bringing politics into our court here's what the law should be regardless of what side that it goes on.

Shawn

Yes. Correct.

Ethan

But stop doing this to get more votes do it because it's right? or it's wrong and and leave it at that.

Shawn

Yeah, and I think that's that's like I said I thought that was a good place to wrap things up because we don't know what what's going to ah come out of all of these I think you know obviously as more. These lawsuits get pushed aside or solved or resolved in some way we can keep checking in and and follow the tiktok saga. It's a saga now in my mind so this was part 2 of our Tiktok our ongoing tiktok saga I can't wait till. All of these things are done and it's decided and I'll edit together a supercut of like the full story of Tiktok I'd be so fun it'll be so fun I have nothing better to do I'm very lonely and bored. Um I'm not lonely I'm just bored. Um.

Ethan

Perfect hope are right.

Shawn

Okay, Ethan maybe from the same room that would be weird I don't like to be in the same room as other people when I'm podcasting then I really do have to? yeah yeah, you're gonna sit in the kitchen. Um, ah I don't know how we're gonna do that I haven't even thought about that yet actually good point.

Ethan

You're only board. Maybe we'll do next week's podcast together out in California.

Ethan

So you're gonna make me sit in the kitchen. Okay, cool.

Shawn

All right on that note, that's a fun tease for next week but on that note Ethan in the meantime people want to see the show they want to do whatever they want to reach out to you and the social media law firm how you what do we do.

Ethan

Go to your local courthouse bang down the door and say chief justice Roberts we need more ethan and ah them or if you don't have the time to go to Washington d c you could just search for.

Shawn

Give me Ethan.

Ethan

Social media law firm online. We're on social media somewhere subscribe to the podcast smash the bell blah blah blah look we love doing this stuff. Be great if you subscribe and if you thought this was interesting. Share it with your friends and you also follow Shawn and.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, going to Twitter or to Instagram Shawn writes just Google me or carrier Pigeon works. You can just tell the pigeon to.

Ethan

Learn about what he's up to buy.

Shawn

Go to the heart of Atlantis and it it will find me um because I'll be it. The atlantis resort in Jamaica baby you be okay I think that's it is it? No, it's in the Bahamas I screwed that joke up. Perfect place to end the episode goodbye goodbye Ethan.

Ethan

Cabael see.

Shawn

Ah.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media law cast I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall and with me is my friend and co-host Shawn Depasquali. Hey Shawn!

Shawn

I am coming to you from an undisclosed child's bedroom.

Ethan

Wow He just went creepy right from the get-go.

Shawn

Ah, um, no I I was I wasn't sure whether that was gonna be my opening or I was gonna go I'm in my childhood bedroom which my mother has kept hermetically sealed since I was 5 but no I'm down in Florida in our old stomping ground visiting family and my.

Ethan

Um, yeah for.

Shawn

My mother's office now is ah is a room for my niece and nephew to come and play in. So ah, oh well, that's not theirs that's mine for business I do business on that and which is why we're here today because I've got.

Ethan

I was going to say I Love the cash register in the background for sure.

Shawn

This business. Um, it's a hypothetical business but hypothetically I've decided to get into selling dungeons and Dragons Adventure Modules Um I have written my own dungeons and Dragon Adventure Module Ah I'm going to call it h ah.

Ethan

Have any.

Shawn

Eternal mansion and eternal mansion is a really fun game and you like go into a mansion and then you get to like explore it and you have all these fun adventures and like it's going to be great. It's like a 1 and done thing but I have.

Ethan

Um, yeah, it's wow This sounds just exactly like the dungeons and Dragons adventure that I thought we were writing together called Immortality manner that.

Shawn

No idea where to begin with selling it online.

Shawn

Oh all, right? We do also have that I forgot that's also completely unhythetical. Well sure I guess we could talk about that one too. But I yeah.

Ethan

Sounds like you have stolen purposes of this intro. Ah.

Ethan

Um, yeah, now look you? Yeah you ah so you want to know how to market this thing and you don't want to make a giant mistake in doing it kind of like you know, stealing my ip that would have been a big mistake first performance.

Shawn

No I don't want to do it and make the same mistakes I have made with the 47 other previous adventures that I wrote that nobody knows exists because I clearly didn't market them right? I want to hit the ground running and I want to do it right? and I don't want to have to do it over and you're the social media Attorney. So I figured Um, you must know a ton about marketing because that's how attorneys work right? Mm yes.

Ethan

Wrong and that's why I scoured the internet and said to myself if you're going to create marketing strategies that work you implicitly also have to know marketing strategies that don't work.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

And so I had to find an outside the box thinker who would be able to actually provide you with real actionable advice and steps because I would have just sold you hair tonic like something that would not have worked so I'm so excited to introduce you to my friend. Adam C Sinkus Adam is the managing partner of a purpose partnership a contrarian agency with a strategic mindset that informs tactical approaches to exceed their clients needs. Adam's got over ten years experience in marketing operations customer journeys maybe dungeon dragon modules we'll find out soon.

Shawn

Um, cool.

Ethan

But he has worked I know with some of the largest us companies in tech health insurance transportation and logistics and he also founded the pay it forward Tuesdays initiative to support entrepreneurs startups just like you Shawn and your d and d startup. So Adam welcome to the show. My man.

Shawn

Thank you.

Adam Sinkus

Thanks so much for having me really really appreciate it and you know I got in in in my background I got some toys too. But I mean I'm gonna own it. They are mine and I am proud of that factor.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Yeah, hey own it buddy I mean you know? ah.

Ethan

And.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah I play with legos at least once a week so you know it's all good.

Shawn

I just put together a um ah Ghostbusters firehouse lego set which was one of the most satisfying things I've ever accomplished in my life and that's take that for what it's worth. Ah I've been married I mean but the firehouse was really right up there with the wedding.

Ethan

1 there right 1 and one a right there.

Shawn

Like neck and neck. Yeah, so Adam I mean look thank you for coming and ah you know I don't I don't know if if dungeons and dragons modules is in your wheelhouse but I would imagine that the what not to dos.

Adam Sinkus

Absolutely.

Shawn

Are pretty standard right? like the things to avoid the pitfalls. The mistakes people probably commonly make kind of don't change no matter how big you scale or what industry is that about right.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah, yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Well, you know like it cracks me up because everybody I talk to people in a multitude of industries and everybody goes. Well yeah, but my industry is different I'm like no like marketing is marketing like there's little things that will be different industry to industry. But. Research is the same core strategies are the same how we approach you know building brand and and strategically putting it out. There. All are relatively the same so you know whether we're talking d and d or you know the next multimillion dollar shipping and logistics company.

Shawn

Next.

Adam Sinkus

You know there are some things that that work and some things that don't work and you know today we'll focus a lot on social media. Um, because I think you know as we look at the landscape now and I was just yeah I just put out a a gripe I got on my soapbox this morning on Linkedin about. Ai and Ai generated pitches in Dms and and how much I hate that. But you know I think social media is is a way we're consuming a large majority of our content these days so we'll hit some stuff on social media today you know that we can work on.

Shawn

So when we're talking ah marketing and then we're talking specifically digital marketing are there are there are there elements to digital marketing that sort of change the game from from a traditional print market strategy or or those kinds of things. Ah, just to kind of get an overview of what we're talking about then we'll kind of dive in.

Adam Sinkus

Absolutely yeah, so you know digital marketing. We are in the information age. Everything is coming at us a thousand miles a minute um ai is just making that more and faster and um.

Shawn

Yeah.

Adam Sinkus

In a lot of ways better and also worse all at the same time. So you know when we think about digital right? You know we think about you know where are we hitting our our potential clients customers friends family. Yeah, it's a social your major social media networks. It's maybe a blog. Podcasting is you know quickly becoming a large part of that content strategy. But then it's also you know there's also not necessarily putting an article in the in the times these days but putting an article on New York Times Dot Com right you also so similar type Pr.

Shawn

Sure yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Strategies that we're seeing and some of the ad strategies that we're seeing but instead of trying to go out and find a billboard or radio spot commercial or direct newspaper article. We're now just pushing at content online to those same platforms. But just in a digital space.

Shawn

Cool. So what are you know? what is your number 1 thing that you that people should avoid that that maybe they don't even know that they do.

Adam Sinkus

Ah, so you know I think sending automated messages I kind of already keyed into this a little bit right? number 1 easiest way to build a dis and genuine brand that people will run away from runs kicking and screaming from. Yeah I don't know what your Linkedin inbox look like but mine I I probably deny 15 to 20 in mails a day that start out with hey I saw your in filling the industry in this location and I thought it'd be great to connect. Great.

Shawn

Men.

Adam Sinkus

You want to sell me a product that you've designed for this industry in this location and the first thing you're going to do is give me some long you know 4 paragraph sales pitch that I'm not going to read. So yeah, so we need to get away from this.

Shawn

Um, yes.

Ethan

Ah.

Shawn

Yep.

Adam Sinkus

Automated messaging strategy that so many people are trying to rely on because the Linkedin experts the lead Gen experts are saying oh it's all a numbers game fact is.

Ethan

Right? with the twenty ten was the was the saudi arabian prince has located you know $2000000000 with your name on it and now in 2020. It's your Linkedin spam and Linkedin messages and even had a client of mine. Um. In a separate marketing agency reach out and we do email marketing and he's like hey dude like why don't we just start sending people these text messages and I'm like do you How do you feel when you get an unsolicited text message from someone is the feeling positive or is the feeling what the hell are you doing like get out of my inbox and. And it's negative and I think the same exact thing happens with these automated messages on Linkedin. You can tell so quickly whether someone is just interested and wants to get to know you or they're immediately trying to sell you something and my response is decline and then click the button that says I don't know this person to let Linkedin know.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Um, yeah, um.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Ethan

that that I'm probably one of 1000 people that's being spam today.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah, yeah, absolutely our our report and report and block those people all the time. Not that my individual report is going to shut their shut their count down or so or shut down their ability to message. But if they get enough of those over time they will shut their count down and blacklist their account.

Shawn

Um, yeah, well and.

Adam Sinkus

So um, you know it it helps for the bigger cause.

Ethan

It does I actually had someone reach out real quick and then ah ah, followed over to youha and I had someone reach out recently and said I was banned from Linkedin for sending too many requests and I didn't know that I could do that can you help I know. Unfortunately we cannot help you with that like it in my head. But continuation was because I don't support that and it's spammy and you probably deserved you probably violated their terms I deserved to not be there. John.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah.

Shawn

Well and I was going to say and I I think there's you know and I'm sure Adam can speak to this but I feel like there's a ah you know people don't want to feel impersonal with your brand if people love to feel I mean you know for whatever it's worth. People love to feel like the brand is a thing that that they like and that likes them back and there's like a relationship and ah it probably heartens back to our you know, ah earliest you know commerce days of like knowing Jim who owned Jim's hardware and Jim knows my family and Jim watched my kids grow up and.

Adam Sinkus

Mr.

Shawn

Jim's kids run the store and they were friends but you know we want that still we crave that so you know I would imagine there is like a bit of that a kind of trickery to it now.

Adam Sinkus

Well I don't trickery is a bad word right? You know, um because it insinuates that we're doing something nefariously and and the reality is is we should be doing exactly the opposite opposite of that right? you know? um.

Shawn

Um, you.

Adam Sinkus

I have roughly I think I'm up to like 6 or 7000 connections on Linkedin. You know there's no possible way that I can talk to 6 or 7000 people. There's really only about 400 to 500 at any given time that are regularly engaging with me but what I do is I focus on turning. That four or five hundred over to different people over time. There's always going to be a core group but you know if I can get 200 new people looking at my content and reengaged out of my 6000 followers. You know every couple of months then get new eyeballs on it. And we already have a relationship because we're already connected. We connected for some reason at some point in time. So now. It's a warm conversation right? You know I could check in what's going on my favorite question and to ask in Dm when I reconnect with somebody is what's new and exciting right? because it's hard to be like in a.

Shawn

Um, sure.

Adam Sinkus

Crappy mood when somebody's like what's new and exciting. You know? yeah you want to talk about your wins. You want to talk about what's going on which then opens up opportunities if as long as you're reading, you know between the lines a little bit opens up the opportunities to find the gaps where you could potentially help them out.

Shawn

Sure Yeah, it's a good question.

Ethan

Yeah, it's Del Cariggie how to win friends and influence people talking in terms of other people's interests. You know, asking them about what's excited in their world not like hey I wrote this real exciting blog about marketing and I thought of you when I wrote it and here it is because you know so no one gives a crap.

Adam Sinkus

Right? And this is yeah yep.

Adam Sinkus

Ah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so that's one way to approach it. You know the other thing the other big mistake I see people making on social media right now is only sharing like text updates or text in like 1 picture. Updates right? You know video is huge Linkedin has you can actually share like Pdf documents and it works like a document slider which then people can also download as well. Um, yeah, so um, really kind of a cool way to create some interactive um material for folks. Yeah.

Shawn

Um, cool Oh that's kind of cool.

Shawn

Yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Video like probably three years ago everybody was slamming the you know I'm walking down my street getting my daily exercise cell phone video but you know what those videos kill it they still kill it. Um, you know it's. 1 minute of content really consumable as long as you have a plan and something to talk about for 30 to 60 seconds take that cell phone video pop it up online. It's a different way for people to engage with you and when you use video. Um you know. People tend to connect with you as a person because you get your personality in there.

Ethan

Yeah, kind of.

Shawn

So So for for like you know my project right? I could start you know an account or or go from my existing account with you know my existing context that that I already have and maybe you know I'll start doing stuff like this where I can you know, whatever walk down the street fold some laundry do whatever. And I can talk about you know my dungeons and dragons interests and and why I wanted to write this thing and and what kind of adventures I like to do or tell stories of like fun game moments that we had. That's the kind of thing that would work. Yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah, absolutely that the other thing that I think you could do with that right? is you could use part of like an introduction to the story as a hook right? You know, um, it's almost like a thirty second commercial right? But you walk into the tavern and.

Shawn

Oh.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah, there's an orc in the corner and he's looking at you crosseyd. What are you going to do next right? and fire takes care of everything.

Ethan

I Cast fireball. Yeah, just burning this down and everything in it seriously I was playing a forcerer last night.

Shawn

Ah.

Shawn

That that.

Adam Sinkus

Ah, but yeah.

Ethan

In a bottom of a winery in borovia in the curse of strod campaign. There's a bunch of evil druids and vine blights in a basement and I'm like I cast fireball and yeah, they're all dead and then they're like you've got 1 turn to get out of there before this entire place explodes. So that's exactly what.

Shawn

A.

Ethan

Yeah, um.

Adam Sinkus

Ah, run like hell and hope you roll a 20

Ethan

Um, exactly.

Shawn

Exactly exactly exactly So. Okay, so these are great things because I feel like both of these these ah tips so far are things that people would maybe instinctively want to try and and it's good to to avoid doing that and it's also you know. Starting starting social media. Once you start to take it seriously is like oh this is something I have to do for my business can be extremely intimidating I think for a lot of people and so having a starting point of like look literally all you have to do take your phone have something to say and just go do something take a walk.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah.

Shawn

Whatever go to a park sit in a cool environment. You know for my thing I could maybe go to walk to the comic bookstore and have you know and like that makes it at least it gives someone a starting point for for what to do So that's really hopeful. So what is.

Adam Sinkus

Um.

Adam Sinkus

Absolutely.

Shawn

What is your third like okay definitely avoid doing doing this. Okay.

Adam Sinkus

So 3 and 4 go together. So three is don't just link to influencers. You know, don't just like drop their name tag influencers in your comments and in your post anymore. Be purposeful about that right? because um.

Shawn

Sure.

Adam Sinkus

We got to think about it from a quality. Not a quantity standpoint it used to be you could tag everybody and their mother and they would all get notified and then you get some engagement. Well, the fact is you know us us marketing people. We caught onto that and we we killed that? Yeah, just frankly, we killed that right. So now we have to be a little bit more purposeful about it right? and so I always think about it from ah if I'm going to tag somebody First of all, will it benefit my readers right? Will it benefit my audience to tag this person Second of all I'm going to reach out to them before I tag them. And make sure it's okay, right? hey I want to tag you in this post and talk about something that you just posted the other day a book you just wrote that I read whatever right? get there kind of get their blessing because then they'll be more engaged to or more inclined to engage with it. Maybe even share it to their network.

Shawn

Um.

Shawn

That makes sense.

Adam Sinkus

And then the last piece is lead with quality like don't just tag them to tag them right? You know like hey you know I just I was just reading Rob Gordon's book. Ah the energy bus and yeah, he really made this really cool point about you know how you connect with people that share the same kind of energy as you.

Adam Sinkus

And I tag Rob Gordon in that but there's a purpose and an outcome to that right? because we're talking about you know a benefit to for the reader. So the.

Shawn

The.

Ethan

Yeah, that makes sense. No one I think likes being no one likes being spam tag like like spam tagged in a post um like that's not fun for anybody. It's not like a great surprise like you come in for Christmas oh my gosh. What is this? it's when I've been tagged in a post by someone that's not Shawn.

Shawn

For sure.

Ethan

Or Dave or like 1 of my closest friend. The immediate thought is like what what schmuck is tagging me in something that I want nothing to do with. It's going to show up on my tagged poster feed or have to make me. It's gonna it's gonna hook my attention I'm gonna get a notification or I'm gonna have to turn them off. Um.

Shawn

Like a friend. Yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Who.

Ethan

So yeah, it's never a positive impression.

Shawn

That's a good point. It is never you never go like oh I wonder what cool thing This random stranger brought me into it's almost always like oh I don't want to deal with whatever this is gonna be garbage. Yeah, so that that's a good point and and I think you know it also makes sense to reach out to you know.

Adam Sinkus

Um.

Shawn

Person that you are goingnna involve because you write to your point. You know if you if you have that kind of communication and that kind of relationship having the heads up is certainly going to help for them to not miss it when you do it and be able to reshare it if they want to do that or jump in on the discussion. As opposed to if you don't let them know and then six seven hours go by and they go oh I didn't realize you did this like well you know now it's 10 hours later no one really cares anymore.

Adam Sinkus

Um, death.

Ethan

That's a great point and in the context of your hypothetical in the beginning about building a dungeon dragons adventure you may want to ultimately communicate as part of a community with dungeon dragons influencers and 1 at the very top is Jeremy Crawford who's the one that that writes all the rules and I was actually researching the other night.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Ethan

How the moonbeam spell works for druids and someone asked Jeremy Crawford like hey how does moonbeam work and and then he responded both you know, replying to that person's tweet.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan

And and shedding light on information. That's both useful to jeremy to to clarify some ambiguities within a spell you know it's gonna get out in front of the entire d and d universe you're now replied in that tweet that you can be able to see sort of tee this up to this influencer first and said hey. Hope this isn't gonna be bothersome but I've got a question about how this spell works we're writing it into a campaign would it be okay if I if I tied you in a tweet and he now knows if especially if he says yes, he's more than likely going to want to engage with it and know that it's coming. So I think it's a great strategy.

Shawn

Yeah.

Shawn

Totally.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah, yeah, so this like ties right into the other piece which is just asking people to share your content right? You know? um we are so just nose blind to the you know like share comment piece at the end of every post right.

Shawn

Ah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Um, it's it's overdone. Um, yeah in it in as much as you know those are important things we need people to like comment and share our posts for engagement. Um, we need to do it in a way that actually matters So when we look at Content. There's 2 things that really hit right? So we look at Arousal and Dominance. So Arousal is just the eliciting some sort of emotional response to it. Positive negative doesn't matter some sort of strong strong enough emotional response dominance is about creating something. That's very clear precise and high energy.

Shawn

5

Adam Sinkus

Around a topic or post right? So think about like celebrity pictures right? You see a picture of George Clooney you know in the tabloids walking down the street with his family. He's got high dominance presence.

Shawn

Show.

Adam Sinkus

High arousal because you know everybody's enamored that George Clooney's out in the public with his family right? You know.

Shawn

Um, right? yeah.

Ethan

And some guys a silver Fox man. What can you say? ah.

Shawn

Ah, true true.

Adam Sinkus

Ah, yeah, and so those are that's a better approach to getting people to share your content is focusing on how we get them emotionally invested into it and create a high dominance statue stature status for that post.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

All right? So I gotta figure out how to get George Clooney to play my game and then I'm good to go.

Ethan

Yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Um, cat just cast him as the as the Tavern keeper I'm I'm just saying.

Shawn

There You go exactly? no but that that's also I think you're right I Do think that there is you know? um.

Shawn

Like share subscribe has become white noise at this point right? You almost don't even hear it when people say it at the end of a podcast or the end of a video or you're like yeah yeah, okay, um, but you're right, you know appealing directly to. An individual or even to your audience in a different way that's outside the norm of all and at the end like stripeda. You know that could be ah ah a much better motivator and reminder to people. Ah, you know I once heard long ago that you'll you'll always hear. From more people that are unhappy than the people that are happy cause typically if you're happy, you're happy. You know I mean for the most part even in your own lives. It's like if something goes Well, you don't typically go out of your way to like go can I talk to the manager hey this went Great. You're just like cool this went smoothly and I'm out. You know? Um, so.

Ethan

Probably.

Shawn

I Think people a lot of time. Ah, forget that like if you communicate to the people that are happy and ask them to do something they usually will because they're happy and they're like oh yeah I can do that for this thing and I love this thing so that that that's really great advice too.

Ethan

Yeah, and I think it syncs back to Adam's first point which is authenticity. You know I think if you're putting like comment share heart emoji it's it's it's not super authentic unless that's really kind of part of your whole shtick and you kind of built it in there for me as like a 42 year old guy I'm like.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

Like common share heart likes. It's weird but you know at the same you? Yeah yeah, yeah, like today for example I made a post on Linkedin about the podcast promoting it and and I wanted people I wanted people's feedback.

Shawn

Um, but hilarious, Objectively funny. Ah.

Adam Sinkus

It's hilarious. Ah.

Ethan

Was like hey here's the link I would love to hear what you think of this episode or what you think of the podcast or what you want to hear and I hope that that type of engagement was more authentic because really I do want to know I'd love to know hey more of Adam More of Shawn Less Ethan more d and d talk more cluning like.

Shawn

Yeah.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan

That's super helpful I and want people to gauge pose something that's more self-serving you know, share this with your audience because yeah, it's It's not something that is authentic and I think.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Ethan

Coming back to authenticity as a brand or as a creator or a small business or a giant corporation. Super important.

Shawn

And this isn't new just to keep the the conversation sufficiently nerdy. You know this this idea of cultivating community around your products is like that tells all this time right? I mean this goes back to even you think about the letters columns in the back of Comic books I mean that was.

Adam Sinkus

If.

Shawn

That was the old snail mail way of being like hey tell us what you think and maybe we'll print your letter and then we'll maybe respond to your letter and you know that sort of became you know comic book forums which became Discord rooms which now exist but like you know and and obviously social media has made it much easier to directly speak to. Creators you like and people you like but but it's always been there. This sense of tell us what you like and let us respond to you and and that does engender a ah very a loyalty I think in people for sure you know.

Adam Sinkus

Well, you know I think it's interesting. We talked to you guys talk a lot about like the positive side of the authentic brand right? But today my my headline on my Linkedin post was Ai and automation are killing Linkedin selling right.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Very solicits a very emotional response guy. Sales guys are out there just cursing my name today right? you know because they're like no, it's not this is this is helping me kill my numbers right? I'm like yeah but it's also killing your audience and your brand at the same time you know.

Shawn

Um, yeah, sure.

Shawn

Down.

Ethan

And your reputation and that's you know and that's the thing I think you know you mentioned this at the beginning Adam and it's something. That's that's been on my mind often in that we are on a short attention span generation in a way. And that we want immediate results and people see things and forget them in 30 seconds so we're trying to find a way to stand out but sometimes the short-term benefits of doing something that is going to make life easier like using Ai to generate all this content is going to have long-term unintended consequences of.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Ethan

That's a spammy guy that's just trying to sell me stuff that uses ai and I don't think and Ray Dalio talks about this in his book principles first level consequences second level consequences last night I had a meatball parmesan sub first level consequence. It was delicious. Second level I feel like shit today you know. And like the workout I did. The gym is not going to be as effective because I don't think about what's the long-term effect on my body but in your example on my reputation because people are going to forget that clever cool thing that made you popular for 30 seconds but they will remember you as the guy gal or brand that spams them.

Adam Sinkus

Um, yeah.

Ethan

Or that all people out or does something inflammatory for attention.

Shawn

Absolutely listen I remember more politicians that spam me to vote for them than I do anyone else? Um, it's like oh I hate this guy I get 12 texts a day.

Adam Sinkus

Death.

Shawn

Don't forget to vote Guess what buddy I Definitely won't forget to not vote for you. God.

Ethan

The.

Adam Sinkus

Yeah, no I think you know it's interesting ai is is creating just so much content. But the reality is in this is this is number 5 this perfect segue unintentional but perfect segue right.

Shawn

Love it.

Ethan

Nailed it.

Adam Sinkus

Ai is creating so much content right? because you can go on chat gbt and you literally can type a prompt and go take this blog article and I need forty forty social media posts from it. The problem is most people are just copy paste directly from chat gbt. No personality no thought to it. Nothing. You know they haven't thought about brand voice things like that and really what that's doing is it's hurting your reputation because it's so such a generic content at that point that you're not leading with that value that we've been talking about that authenticity. So um.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Adam Sinkus

I'll be first to admit I use a ton of automation a ton of Ai to do a lot of work for me, but it's the starting point. Not the ending point and that's the key so writing blogs like I don't have it write the blog for me I have it write an outline for me.

Shawn

Yes, yeah.

Adam Sinkus

Once I have an outline like it's really easy for me to hammer out a blog in in 20 minutes you know and then a couple edit cycles and we're good to go you know social media content. Um I have it right? You know a hundred social media posts for every 20

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Adam Sinkus

That I actually need to post why because I look through all of that content and I pick a sentence from here a sentence from there add my own thoughts into it and build unique posts out of all of those inputs what ends up happening is you you switch from this like really you know compute very clearly computer generated content to. Now content that seems to hit a little bit differently. It puts a different spin on it. It involves your brand a little bit better use switch words out for your brand words I was just working on a project for a client that has a branding tool called the brand constellation and so we're writing a landing page for them. Ah, you better. Believe it I used a whole bunch of space metaphors in that content right? you know? and so we pick pieces apart for that to make sure that it aligns with that brand constellation Overall brand. Yeah.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Yeah I mean then that's the way to do it. You know I think anyone that's you know, artificial intelligence like anything else is a tool and and there is no magical shortcut tool it's just a tool like anything else. And I think people want it to be this magical. You know the guy that goes like I have a million ideas but I never sat down and wrote a book. But now I can and it's like guess what now you probably still can't because if you never sat down and wrote a book then you don't know how to write a book and asking a computer to write a book for you. The computer's writing the book. You're still not doing it and it's not gonna have. Any of your thoughts or your personality or any of the passion that goes into creating things whether they're you know stories to tell or or even self-help books I mean you know think about some of even the dryer stuff. It's like could you imagine how much more dry that stuff's going to be if at least it doesn't have someone's. You know, zing behind it. Someone's point of view. So yeah I think you're spot on. It's about using it as a tool and not letting it replace you or your employees because then you're just going to have homogenized content that's generic and sounds robotic.

Ethan

Right? Neil Gamon wrote back in Sandman and in his first 10 episodes like tools are the subtlest of traps because we we take away our power and think the tool's going to be able to do it for us and the tool's supposed to assist us and not do the job a hammer can't build you a house.

Shawn

For sure.

Shawn

Yeah.

Shawn

Right? exactly.

Ethan

But can assist you and and hammer the nails and Shawn you this has probably really hits home for you and the other writers out in hollywood as you were addressing the ai provisions with the writer strikes of look the tools there. We're not saying completely ignore the fact that a tool that can help us exist. However, it. Does not and cannot replace us and doing so is going to create shit at the end of the day and so we got to find how do we use these tools as a way to assist us achieve our overall goals in a way that still keeps the human element and aligns with what rhythmly want? yeah.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Well yeah, yeah, um I mean I mean you know we were trying to avoid being undercut because that's the other problem with tools right? is is. There's always someone who tries think oh well can I use this tool to undercut someone else and and pay less or.

Adam Sinkus

Shift.

Shawn

Invest less and and at the end of the day you you still end up with the same result that Adam's talking about which is you cut yourself off at the knees because it's like you know, yeah sure I guess you could you know say come up with 20 good movie ideas and then you could hire someone pay them a little bit less to make those actually good. But at the end of the day you're starting with rot so there's only so much you know I mean it's though you can't put lipstick on a pig and call it anything other than a pig with lipstick on I mean let's be honest, you know.

Adam Sinkus

Just just just remember ah Ai is only as strong as the shittiest input that's put into it.

Shawn

Exactly and at the end of the day it is still programmed to by human beings Ai did not create and write itself ai does not get smarter on its own. It was not you know yet, but like our current Ai is not actually learning anything on its own people are teaching it stuff. So.

Adam Sinkus

Um, ah.

Shawn

You know this? It's still only as good as its teachers and and and only as good as its user, but you know this what we've done here you know is is you can't replicate because you need the the people you need the experience I think. Adam you're like a perfect example of like you have lived it and you have done it. So now you know what not to do and you have you know you've immersed yourself in it. You're not just randomly pulling from things that you've read online. You know you've got the lived experience so you know. This this was really fantastic because I think it gave me certainly a good sense of kind of where to start and what to like put my time and effort into and and kind of how to chip away at the mystery of like okay well so how do I get my thing out now to people.

Adam Sinkus

Absolute.

Shawn

Ethan from a legal standpoint before we wrap up is there is there anything that people need to know to avoid on the legal side of things when you know applying any of Adam's tips or or you know first trying to start marketing their their brand.

Ethan

Yeah, just let's let's piggyback off the last point and using ai ai is great. It's ah it's a great starting point for you to use something. But if you take an Ai generated image or Ai generated text. You don't know where this is being pulled from and if you use it. Just like you think that you find an image on Google and you use it for your social media thinking. It's out there. It's in the public domain. It's in the ether. No, you could be committing copyright in friendshipement and so if you are a brand saying hey I want to start using images for dungeons and dragons to be able to promote my games so I'm going to Google d and d. Or use an ai creator one you like you almost definitely don't own or have permission to use any of the images that you find online and if you're using Ai to create something even though Ai is new courts have come out to say ai can't give you. A copyright over the material because the ai is not an author and so you're not the owner you're risking infringing upon someone else's intellectual property. So again, it's not don't use the tools but you've got to be the human filter by within which these technologies pass through use your gut. Use your intuition or use experts in the field like Adam to be able to pass these strategies through and make sure that you've done your due diligence before you get out there or else you can find yourself in some legal trouble.

Shawn

Awesome! So Adam ah, how do people find you online. How do people you know is there a way for people to reach out to to you know, follow you on Linkedin get your services. Where's the best place to find you.

Adam Sinkus

Absolutely so you can just Google search Adam Cinki I have dominated like the first 8 pages between my podcast Linkedin websites you know all the like other podcasts as well. Um, but um.

Shawn

Nice.

Shawn

Oh.

Adam Sinkus

You can find me on Linkedin I am the one and only Adam Cynki on Linkedin um, and that's probably the best place to connect with me and you can also find ah find more out about what we do in marketing and business consulting at a purposepartnership.com

Shawn

Awesome and Ethan as always where can people go for legal advice or to you know, engage with your services as a social media attorney.

Ethan

Like comment share like comment. Yeah, the social media law cast for more tips and information on social media commentary. But if you really want to engage.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

Okay I want to do one of 2 things you guys search for the social media law firm online. You can search for Ethan Wall or just go ahead and dominate and arouse by just googling George Clooney photos you know I start you know. Visit our social media and then just wash it clean with the beautiful Silver Fox that is George Clooney

Shawn

And as you know as always I will spend the week in between shows figuring out how I can also dominate and arouse in order to you know sell as many of these ah dungeons dragons modules that i. Created and you know I'm sure it was a good idea but I did preemptively have 20000 of them printed and so they're currently sitting in my garage I'm sure it won't be a problem I'm sure I'm gonna sell through them. They'll sell them like hotcakes. But this was great. Adam thank you so much for doing this as always. We'll see you next time.

Ethan

She.

Shawn

On another social media law cast Ethan I'll see you next week buddy but

Ethan

See you Shawn thanks Adam.

Adam Sinkus

Thanks so much.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media lawcast. I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall and with me is my friend and co-host Shawn Depasquale.

Shawn

Hello buddy. How are you good I've been experiencing all all sorts of crazy backlash online for some pretty inflammatory things I wrote about.

Ethan

Yeah, yeah, and you're you're not the only one I think on the podcast not not to not to not make light of your situation but we've ah.

Shawn

Disneyland and I'm really stressed out about it and I don't know how to fix it.

Shawn

No make light of it. It's fine. That's what friends are for.

Ethan

Yeah, we've talked about a lot of backlash lately on the podcast whether it is personal backlash from influencers or creators like Ashton Kutcher who said things ah positively about Danny Matherson and then yep.

Shawn

Masterson. Yeah.

Ethan

That which was which was terrible. He had all this negative pr he's now off the board of directors of his own nonprofit and then even we had an episode recently about pa and the brand who made the one chip challenge and how someone died after eating their spicy chips. They didn't handle it well and all of their products are now pulled from every single shelf in every store across America so if it makes you feel any better. You're not alone when it comes to backlash.

Shawn

No I mean listen I just I just said some things about some of the new rides at Disneyland it's not like I defended a convicted rapist. So I'm in a way better place than Ashton Kutcher so I like I'll take solace in that but it does bring up an interesting question of what do you do in these situations. Is there any legal protections that I have or that anyone has or like what do you do right? I've assumed that because you're an attorney of social media. You have all the answers and you're the only person I have to discuss this with.

Ethan

Yeah I know yeah.

Ethan

Right? And when you text me about this and I said hey I don't have the answers I didn't want to leave you high and dry because I brought in what I believe is one of my go to brand marketing experts I can't wait to introduce you to a longtime friend an expert in the subject matter and that. Sarah Shak the founder of the market co a boutique branding and public relations and marketing collective Sarah Guides emerging and establishing brands just like you shohan to international growth through transformative ideas powerful experiences and an audience first approach.

Shawn

Yeah, that's mean.

Ethan

Sarah's expertise stretches across strategic communications, creative directions and under the big umbrella that I would call brand marketing I've worked with Sarah personally over the years professionally over the years I've referred clients both startups and giant established brands with 10000000 youtube followers and she has been able to guide them in their brand direction time and time and again I know that she's going to have the answers to you. So Sarah welcome to the social media law cast.

Sara

Thank you guys for having me I'm dying to know what you said about Disneyland you guys totally buried the lead on this one I didn't know we already had something to solve here.

Shawn

You We don't have to get into it. It's not. It's it's it's It's not important isn't it elicit. It's it's It's not important suffice to say ah you deal with this stuff a lot right? but blowback and and crisis right.

Ethan

Ah.

Ethan

You should get.

Shawn

They call it crisis pr is a term that I heard one time I don't know if it's a real term is it tight. Okay so crisis Pr right? Ah brand and influencer a celebrity whomever right? says something does something gets everybody mad at them.

Sara

That's real. Um.

Shawn

Typically online I feel like right like I feel like when I was a kid and things were like newspapers and magazines there wasn't a ton of personality crises that even happened like.

Ethan

But.

Sara

Um, always online.

Shawn

You'd get a scandal right? Oh guys on drugs and they they they got him in the tabloids running around the street or something but this this you know the whole internet gets mad at you because you said or did something This is new right.

Sara

Yeah, absolutely I mean I think that there's There's so much access to information but it also opens up so many more opportunities for people for brands for companies to put their foot in their mouth and make a mistake.

Shawn

Ah.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Sara

You know and I think the interesting part about crisis communications because I know one of our kind of questions today is like what can we do to prevent this? Well unfortunately you don't really know you're in a crisis until you're in 1 right? So so much of this planning comes on the fly and that's why. You know, depending on who you are or what kind of company you are. That's why it's really important to have a professional either pr company or marketing consultant that they have to kind of know what to do in that moment. There's no playbook for something you know we've gotten calls. We've had dead bodies found on properties. We've had.

Shawn

Home.

Sara

Bugs and food. We've had all kinds of stuff anything you can imagine and there's no canned response for those things you you have to kind of take it 1 by 1

Shawn

I mean I was going to say what's one of the worst things you've had to deal with but I would assume it's a dead body I'd assume it's a corpse.

Sara

The debt body was an interesting one to wake up to you know I think when you you know when you are in the marketing or Pr world and and people say like no two days are alike like you're not assuming that one day you're going to wake up with.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Sara

17 text messages from your client saying please call me. We have an emergency you know? Um, but I do have a quote.

Shawn

Weirdly enough Ashton Kutcher was once in trouble for his proximity to a corpse that was his girlfriend who had been murdered by a serial killer moments before he showed up to her house to like pick her up from a date. And so weirdly I'm sure he was also on the phone with his pr person before he probably even called the police to go I don't know what to do I am here and she is dead I did not do this? Yeah so I guess it's a common thing man.

Ethan

Yeah, that emphasized you right? Whether you right? Whether you're celebrity or whether you're a brand like unfortunately these things are going to happen and usually these things at to Stara's point are outside of your control. You never plan for this to happen. You know if you're a restaurant and there's and there's bugs and food. Okay, that's.

Shawn

Now.

Sara

No.

Ethan

Awful. But it's within the realm of what might happen. But Sarah you know what's something that's kind of happened from a ah big deal that that kind of one one of the brands dealt with and how you were able to help them deal with the situation.

Shawn

Right.

Sara

Um, I think one of the worst situations that I saw I was thankfully not the publicist on that account. Um I was the creative agency side of things and the thing with um backlash right? is that people are. Pretty savvy and they know that they can they can take to social media and they can get noticed. You know like into your point we weren't always able to get noticed right? We could yell and scream and show up in a place and and throw a fit but but on social media they kind of know that that's the way. To get a brand's attention. So in 2020 we were representing a cruise line again. Not on the pr side thank god but they found themselves in a situation where cruises has halt had halted and their staff was on the boat and they were not letting their staff. Leave the boat. So what several of their crew members did was they took to social media and they started leaving comments on Miami Herald's Instagram and they were saying please help us we are trapped on this cruise ship. They won't let us off.

Shawn

Smart. Smart.

Sara

So you can imagine how tantalizing that is to an editor at the Miami Herald they're like how can we help so this blew up it ballooned into a 13 part media series which eventually turned into a lawsuit which I was just doing some.

Ethan

Ha.

Sara

Research on that they ended up settling for eight hundred and seventy five thousand dollars but this is something that because we didn't take care of it because we didn't address it because we didn't have a game immediately have a game plan and pivot it ballooned into a disaster right? like this was a this was a.

Shawn

I.

Shawn

Right.

Sara

Genuine disaster. Um, and I think that that is the mistake of some brands. It's like not addressing it. You can't just address it on social media. You actually have to fix the problem right? and so it's fixing the problem addressing it not ignoring it but then actually.

Ethan

Um.

Sara

Trying to pivot and avoid that situation in the future.

Ethan

It's interesting because it's for smaller type things ah creator, a brand post a video and and we know that people go crazy in the comments and so sometimes the advice is don't feed the trolls.

Sara

Um, when.

Ethan

Don't read the comments don't respond to everybody who's angry but when it comes to a Pr perspective. It seems like the guidance is different that you can't ignoring it. You can't ignore it and ignoring it is going to make it worse.

Shawn

Um, well doesn't that depend on I mean you know I think your your story Sarah was reminding me of I was trying to think of examples of well who who seems really prepared in this world for like catastrophe and how to like handle and then I would.

Sara

Yeah I'll go ahead.

Shawn

My brain immediately went to like okay Disney right? people get hurt on rides all the time we almost never hear about it unless it's like horrific and even then it's like a little story that pops for like a day and then it's gone and it's never discussed again. They're great at that right? however.

Sara

What.

Shawn

Then there was this past summer where the head of Disney right? Bob Ier is in the midst of negotiating with a writers strike and an actor's strike and he does this interview at a a literal what is called a billionaires retreat on this like beautiful vineyard and he. Is asked like what about all these strikes and he's like I don't know it seems like these people just want too much and it's like ah that's not something Disney was prepared to handle I'm sure's ah they didn't have that in the game plan. But then they had to quickly scramble and deal with it and interestingly enough they kind of didn't.

Ethan

Um.

Sara

Right.

Shawn

People got mad they bitched they called him a monster and eventually they just ran out of energy and you know he never addressed it Disney never addressed. It. They just forged ahead and eventually made a deal. So. It's my question to you is. Where's the where does that decision come in when do you ignore it. And when do you address? it.

Sara

I Can't think of a good use case for ignoring anything. Um I think that what what we talk about in our agency um day in and day out is everything is an opportunity and you work with a lot of hospitality clients and.

Shawn

Interesting.

Shawn

No.

Sara

You look for if you're a good hospitality brand you look for that opportunity to fix a bad situation and the reason for that is if you can overcome a bad situation with someone you've created a client for life. You've you've created a brand champion and so I think that look if somebody's just being you know.

Shawn

Yeah.

Sara

If someone's being disrespectful if someone is being ah just plain mean they're name calling they're doing yeah for me, that's a block that's a delete you know, but I think if it's just like the typical kind of feedback and sometimes negative feedback can have some virtue to it. So.

Shawn

Yeah.

Sara

The way that I see it is everything is an opportunity I don't think that anything should really ever be ignored unless it's just blatantly, you know it's defamatory. It's it's crazy. You know, expletives and things like that in that case, Yeah, in that case I think it's It's just it's a block. It's it's that kind of stuff. But.

Shawn

The right unjustified hate. Yeah, okay.

Sara

You know we have clients all the time they get a bad review or they get a bad comment. We'll just delete it. No Let's not just delete. It. Let's address it because if we address it publicly and our other followers or you know the people that are that are watching our every move see that we're addressing it with integrity. Then it helps build the brand for them. So you know again I think it's like you always have to respond what that response look like looks like can be different. It doesn't always have to be apologetic. It doesn't always you can listen I'm all for the companies that.

Shawn

No.

Sara

Make the best out of a bad situation, especially some of the ones that we see get really creative like a Wendy's or a target or some of these that have really gotten customer service down. Um, but I really do think that positive or negative. Um I think that you can always turn it.

Shawn

Again, yeah.

Sara

You know into an opportunity for the brand.

Shawn

So there used to be like companies had like customer service people right? and that was like their job right? But now it seems like it's kind of your job like it's kind of now fault to right is that like.

Sara

Um, next yeah.

Sara

Um, one hundred and six percent

Shawn

And that never occurred to me until you were kind of describing it and I was going like so did this did did the earlier you know, kind of shift to the internet that we talked about also shift things there where there's the companies are no longer internally hiring people to handle customer service. They're really kind of going out to like Pr firms and marketing firms to be like hey help us. Hand because now every customer service complaint is a potential pr incident is is right.

Sara

Totally so totally. So we we right now maintain about 40 social media accounts on different platforms and things like that and what that means is when someone takes to social media.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sara

the the gm at the hotel is not seen that first we're seeing that first because it's our job to monitor that so we really are that first line of defense to escalate something. Um as it comes in which is a whole nother conversation about having a social media partner that's truly invested and making sure that like these complaints aren't lagging for a couple of days. But.

Shawn

Yeah.

Sara

The reality is somebody can be sitting in a restaurant they can be sitting in a hotel something can go wrong rather than speak to their server ask for a manager ah try to try to address the situation in person they will sit at their table and go.

Shawn

Um, yeah, yeah.

Ethan

O.

Sara

I'm sitting here right now and the server is ignoring me and rather than saying it to the person because they want to avoid that confrontation so much they'll go I mean we've had it where like somebody's literally sitting in the restaurants and we're texting the Gm and the gm is having to walk to the table going. I'm happy to fix this for you if you would have just said something to me so people are so much more likely even when they are on property you know or in the moment you know, not everybody is a brick and mortar. But they're so much more likely to go to social media which is wild because that is a new thing that is not something that.

Shawn

Me home.

Shawn

That's crazy. Yeah.

Sara

Our parents did that's not something that us as older millennials would ever think about doing.

Shawn

Well, you used to have to you know if you had a complaint to escalate you would reach the you would go to the company first right in the case of like a corporate like if i. Bought something at Sears and it didn't work I'd go to the store and I'd go this sucks and if they were like we can't help you I'd go I want to talk to your manager and then I'd talk to the manager and I'd work my way up and then I'd have to I mean I remember my grandfather writing a letter to like the Ceo of a company he was mad at.

Ethan

2 Yeah.

Sara

Um, me.

Shawn

And waiting and getting him thing back from like the Ceo's secretary being like he saw this and we're sorry and we'll take care of it and here's a hundred pounds of Hershey's kisses you know as an apology like so that used to there used to be a whole process. So and and you're right now we cut out the middleman and we just go like ah at.

Sara

Um, sure.

Sara

Um.

Sara

Yeah.

Shawn

At Jetblue I'm stuck on your stupid plane and I hate you which is literally a tweet that I've made you know.

Sara

And the problem and and and we're we're in this like awful customer service vortex because it actually you actually get shit done by doing that. Yes.

Ethan

Ah.

Shawn

Yes, so.

Ethan

Yeah, like you actually get things happening so it sounds like in today's environment different from in the past you can't really count on being reactive because the damage is already going to be done. People are going to go right to the social channels and by the time it gets to your Ceo's desk damage is done and the ball is now rolling down the hill getting worse and worse and worse. So it seems like brands need to be more proactive rather than reactive in having a good brand strategy. So that people know like and trust the brand already so when these things come up.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

They're they're able to get ahead of it. How do you now? advise any company whether it's a new restaurant. A cruiseline, a new airline. Someone comes to you and says look. We're just starting off our goal is to be a great big brand that's going to connect with people and be popular and I'm sure at some point things are going to go Wrong. How do we set the table so that we go through the best practices to make sure that when these situations arise in the future we're positioned as best as possible to be able to deal with them.

Shawn

And is your is your first comment to them just don't be shit because it's kind of starts there right? like just be a really good company. Be proactive ah to your customers and you'll never need me should be the speech.

Sara

Just don't be shit. Yeah me.

Ethan

But.

Shawn

I'd imagine.

Sara

Yes, um, the way that I would say don't be shit is identify your core values and make sure that your core values are communicated through your brand messaging so that people know who you are and what you stand for as a company because you know the the whole.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Sara

Reason that people pay for Pr is to have this person that's not them right? Typically a credible third party media outlet say that place is great. This person is smart that place has value. You know so. That's the thing is the more that you build your brand and you let people know what you truly stand for as a brand and also how people can experience your brand and how your brand makes them feel as you build that kind of brand equity. Um what we see is that. You know when things do go wrong and I think you see this a lot with influencers because influencers. They're always saying the wrong thing they are always just you're like yeah just don't say that but what you see a lot in the comments is like people going like oh my god give her a break. You know she didn't mean it like that. And when you have like your people coming to your rescue. It's a lot better than you having to you know what we call eat the shit sandwich and go like hey I messed up what you should do anyway. But when you have that loyal brand following and they're following you because of who you truly are authentically right? So going back to don't be shit. Um.

Shawn

Here.

Shawn

Now.

Sara

Then they're going to come to your defense and they're going to know kind of like the real you the real brand the real company and most people are pretty forgiving. You know when it comes to a consumer I remember I bought a bellenciaga bag. It was like the first big bag purchase I made. It was a gift to myself after I had my second child literally I think it was 72 hours that bolanciaga got canceled. It has blown over for the most part and what they got canceled for was like pretty bad. It was on the scale of like scary that was pretty bad.

Shawn

Yeah time. Yeah yeah.

Sara

You know and I think for the most part people like the news cycle moves on people move on like life goes on and I think that unless you I mean we do live in this cancel culture. But like ultimately I think people are pretty forgiving as long as you kind of fess up to it and try to make a change.

Ethan

9

Shawn

Well yeah, and I mean it's like to your point of Blensiaga it's less cancel culture and more just like temporary consequence culture right? because like bill said they're still here and they're selling bags. There was nothing was canceled. They had like two bad weeks so like I have yet to see anyone actually get.

Sara

Um, me friday.

Shawn

Canceled because everybody comes back and and it all blows over so like it's more just like there's consequences for your actions sometimes and we now live in a world where more people are easily going to be able to say hey you messed up or you cross the line I wonder. I you know I know we don't have like a ton more time but I have like a couple of like quick questions. You know? Um, ah that I'd like to get your opinion on as far as um, ah navigating this current world as a brand. So what is your feeling on you know. do brands need to do brands need to um what's the word I'm looking for do brands need to sort of embrace the ah unnecessarily politicized. Um, ah you know. Changes of the modern world at all or are they better. You know does does Eminem have to diversify their eminems or could they not and just let people be a little mad and move on or is it better for brands to. Go hey this is where the general consensus of the world seems to be going and like there are women in the world and black people. So like let's just make one m and m sound black who cares like where from your perspective like if you're giving the advice on hey should we even do this would.

Shawn

Where would you fall.

Sara

I Think that you always again have to come back to brands. You know if it feels authentic for you as a brand then you should do it if it feels outside of your brand. You shouldn't do it like we have a client that you know.

Shawn

Um, and.

Sara

Went into a new community where there's a lot of programming that is probably not within their brand ethos. They felt like well I'm in this community now. Do I need to start doing these things but it doesn't feel right for my brand you know so it depends a lot on what you're trying to do.

Shawn

Right.

Sara

You know, are you trying to be a brand that is everything to everyone or are you trying to create something that's very steadfast in who they are um to me. Yeah to me I think that the latter is the way to go because I just feel we see it a lot right? You see it with.

Ethan

Yeah, look what? me.

Shawn

Um, that's really interesting.

Sara

And and my thing is like just from a you know again, an an exposure standpoint not exposing yourself. My feeling is that you do not need to get involved in every conversation that is happening on the internet If you're a fashion brand for kids you do not need to talk about.

Shawn

Yes.

Sara

You know abortion you you don't like it's it's maybe maybe that one's a close 1 but you get what I'm saying you don't have you're candy brand. You don't have to talk about politics like if it makes sense if it affects your industry and it feels authentic for you to be part of that conversation. Then I think you should if that is authentic to your brand.

Shawn

Right? right? No, but it's it's so right.

Ethan

Um, wrote it. But.

Sara

If you just feel like I'm going to tack on to this internet trend to gain some relevance in this conversation. That's when I think brands can get into hot water because their true following. That's been following them. You know up to that point is going to go why you doing this.

Shawn

M. Right.

Ethan

Yeah I think the classic example of the last year is probably Bud Light um Bud Light came out to support transgender rights which what we support transgender rights and should support transgender rights. But.

Sara

Yes.

Ethan

It didn't really seem to fit with their brand ethos and you had a bunch of people on the 1 side saying hey I drink bud light to like drink football like to go to tailgate drink football. What are you talking about and on the other side you had the transgender community being like we're being attacked and you're not sticking up for us and bud light kind of sat in the middle of like What do we do because they got into an issue that was important and took a ah positive stand on an issue but it probably wasn't consistent with their brand ethos didn't know what to do one way or the other and they've suffered huge massive. Um, the.

Sara

Yeah.

Shawn

Well, they could have just not done anything right right? and.

Sara

They they were not prepared for that and that was you know and what? what? What I would say to them is don't shit where you eat and what they did by advocating for that group was totally alienate. The loyal audience that they spent billions of dollars building over the last how many you know decades so that is a good example and I think Bud Light is hurting from it because they didn't even know how to how to react.

Shawn

Um, well and and there's a way to do it. There. There has to be there has to be a better way too right? So I like. Is sticking with the Bud light. It's like okay so someone at that company was like hey um, Trans people probably drink beer and also probably drink Bud light. So like we wouldn't like why don't We just show some support for them. I Wonder if the better move would have been to be like hey you know what. Like let's just start putting more Trans people in Commercials. We don't have to make a big deal out of it. Let's just cast Trans people and like that's it and it's just a normal but light commercial with Trans people and that says all it has to say but they went the opposite direction which is like look at us look at Us. We get this and we're part of your world now and like. Maybe that's the problem is is like you're saying and trying to tag up on it and like make it a thing you know instead of just doing it.

Sara

I Think and I think it's and I think the like dirtier word for that is virtue signaling right? like if it feels like that. Um then your brand audience is gonna pick up on that and and I think that that was just a stretch for them as a brand in in in general. Um, and.

Shawn

Next.

Sara

I agree there was probably a million other ways that they could have supported the trans community without going the route that they did that would have been way more acceptable to their audience as a whole and they wouldn't have felt this you know extreme backlash that they felt.

Shawn

Yes.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

Right? So like wrapping up all of this into like a couple bits Shawn is like don't be shit. You know be good treat people well but be authentic, be true to yourself because that's how you're going to connect with people whether you're an influencer a brand or a creative. Trying to go outside of your scope and please everybody will please nobody but be true to yourself. Be true to your band brand be nice, be respectful, um, be you and things are going to work out just fine.

Shawn

This was so much fun Sarah you have to come back because I still have a thousand more questions and I want to talk about so many more. It's got a lot of stuff to talk? No but I think that there are a lot of.

Sara

Um, he's like he's like I've left a lot of really negative comments and I need to go through that with you.

Ethan

Are.

Shawn

Um, real world examples to explore and I think it is fun to explore it with someone who deals with it and and it's probably extremely informative to you know brands and startups that are listening to hear this kind of exploration. So We definitely want you back?? um. Where can people find you or reach out to how can people ah get your help if they really need it.

Sara

Absolutely um, they can go to the market co is our website you can find us on Instagram um, you can look me up on Linkedin and we're we're pretty much everywhere. So um, thank you guys for having me. We'll definitely be happy to come back.

Shawn

Great and we'll also ah throw a link down in the description under the podcast. So if you're listening to it and you're like oh no, my company's in trouble. We got you just click on a link. And Ethan where can people find you and your law firm in case they want to I don't know Sue someone.

Ethan

Yeah, well well we we don't file lawsuits and you know this shame on you by now. But yeah, if you want to learn about the legal fallout of social media, legal news tips and resources for entrepreneurs creators and small businesses. Of course you can find us at the social media law firm. By searching online and of course subscribe to the social media law cast for more tips on legal resources about issues like these and so when we can invite Sarah back for season 3 so we can get into Shawn all of your dirty laundry.

Shawn

Thank you all right? This was fantastic. Thank you again. Sarah and thanks for listening. We'll see you guys next week bye.

Sara

Thank you guys.

Ethan

Thanks Sarah for now.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media lawcast. I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall and with me is my friend and co-host Shawn Shawn DePasquale. Question for you: Do you feel safe?

Shawn

What up what up Ethan yes, not now that you ask that question. No why? What do you know? what's going on. Is there someone behind me. Oh.

Ethan

Well a method nothing about you personally, but you've asked me a ton of questions recently about whether or not your data is safe.

Shawn

Oh No I do not feel my dad is safe I feel like I'm constantly being ah monitored and that at my every movement is shared. Ah, on on the internet with ah every site that I visit so that they can better advertise to me and that's terrifying and I want to know what I can do from a legal perspective to protect myself and despite asking you multiple times over and over and over again. My self-proclaimed Attorney. You keep saying oh no I got to talk to someone ah have you found us someone.

Ethan

Well I have and I'm sorry I haven't had the answers for you. But when you I brought these questions up time and time and time and time again I told you that I have the go to Attorney who's not just a friend but a leader in this field.

Shawn

Pass.

Ethan

I am so excited to introduce you to my friend and colleague Al Cyclley al is here the privacy. Yeah, what's up out. Um al is both the the chair.

Shawn

Yeah.

Al Saikali

Um, and again know I've already made this you know.

Ethan

Of the privacy and data security practice at shook hardy bacon in Miami 1 of the finest law firms. Not only in Miami but across the country and across the world. He's a leader as a lawyer in data incident response privacy litigation. Ah, and compliance and I don't joke about this because I told you this off the air a month ago when you said I want to talk data privacy I said I have the guy. Ah. Not only do I respect al so much as a friend and colleague but he truly is the number 1 attorney in my mind in my heart and in so many others when it comes to data privacy and so I'm so glad to have you on the show today al thanks for joining us.

Al Saikali

Um, thank you guys? Um, it's a pleasure to be here honored to be here and um, you know you you know I think think the world of you and this is a great great podcast. So happy to be part of it.

Shawn

Awesome! Um, well okay, al So let's start on the surface right? What? What exactly is data privacy and and why should people be concerned about about it and and and be aware of it.

Al Saikali

Yeah, so man, you could spend like a full hour just talking about like what is data privacy right? And there's so many different definitions I think what's key to data privacy is the ability for an individual to control their data There are some people. Like me I you know I I don't mind sharing a lot of my data in order to get more tailored to advertisements look I know I'm going to get the advertisements anyway. So if they're more tailored for things that I'm interested in great but there are many people probably most people that would say no.

Shawn

Um, ah.

Al Saikali

I Want the ability to limit What information is is collected about me and who it's shared with and at the very least I need to understand what happens when I provide you with my cell phone number with my name with my address with social security number. Whatever it may be.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Al Saikali

Want to know what do you do with that who do you share it with how are you storing it? How do you use it? What ability will I have to say to you later on delete it I don't want you to have it anymore right? like those are all principles behind data privacy and I think they're important parts of the definition.

Shawn

Um, yes.

Shawn

Yeah,, go and and it's not just the name and address and my social and that right because what's also being collected is our interests and what we look at online and the things we buy and. You know if we go to a banking website. You know what kind of account. Do We have now a lot of times these companies will if you even bother to read the fine print which most people don't let's be honest, they will say things like yeah, exactly.

Ethan

But if I one of the only people in the world that I'm like oh actually love reading those things. But yes, so the exception for the rule.

Shawn

They will say things.

Shawn

Sure, Yeah, yeah, um, but but you know they will sometimes note ah you know, ah this this data will be anonymous right? So yes, we're gonna say someone came to our website to ask about Hemorrhoid Cream. We won't say it was you. But someone did but what they don't say is they might not say your name but they're getting so much else about you connected to that that it is not that hard to then if you had access to that data and a little bit Else. You could probably start to put together full profiles on people. That's where it gets scary and it sounds when you describe it like Scifi sci-fi right? like big brother. Oh they know everything about us you sound crazy. But it's not so okay so we know like basically what it is. We're trying to protect right? when we're saying Data. We're really saying like information about ourselves. That we're freely giving away. Um, so are there laws in place to protect us in general like do we have some laws already there that can help the individual or the or the business right from from keeping the the data safe. Um, and. And how can we use those laws to to to better protect ourselves.

Al Saikali

Sure. Yeah, so the answer is yes there are there are laws. But I think many would argue. There aren't enough laws at least in the United States and I think the best way to to describe. It is to kind of take a step back and look at the european system versus the us system right.

Shawn

Um, wrote.

Al Saikali

And even if you're not a european system. This will be interesting to you because it may be where the us is ultimately going so with the european system the general rule or principle. There is you cannot collect personal information about a person unless you you meet 1 of several like reasons. And unless you meet the reason you cannot you just can't collect the information in the first place here in the us the guiding principle is you can collect whatever you want you collect? Whatever you want about anyone as long as you tell them that you're collecting it and you know you comply with what you telling them about what you're you're doing with the data.

Shawn

Are.

Al Saikali

And and so it it you know it may be that the us moves more to the standard of the presumption of don't collect it right? like the default of don't collect it. But for now that's not the default. So okay, so what are the laws in the us then under this system that give people rights so you have a few different categories 1 are data to breach notification laws. And what that means is if your sensitive personal information is accessed by someone else. Maybe there's a cyber attack or you know the company that collected your data loses the data. Um, whatever it may be then they have to the company has to notify you within a certain period of time to say you're sensitive information. Was accessed by a third party here are the steps that we took maybe they will offer you credit monitoring or something as a result, a lot of people feel like that's not really sufficient like right like if you got one of those letters in the mail like okay so what do I do now right? like and you go ahead.

Shawn

Yeah, well so I I was a Sony employee prior to the Sony hack. So this literally has happened to me I did you know I was just like a low levelvel Sony employee I mean you know I just worked there and then like a couple years later I get this letter in the mail and in my email.

Al Saikali

Ah, you.

Shawn

All in the same day That's like bad news man your stuff's out there. Your social your name your phone number your email address your personal address. Everything is out there. We're really sorry here's some credit monitoring good luck and that was it I mean and to this day I'll still get every once in a while.

Al Saikali

Um, writes.

Al Saikali

Writes right? yeah.

Ethan

So.

Shawn

Hey your phone number is out there and I go like yeah I know and no one told me how to fix it or what to do or how to stop it I've just I just hope that my identity doesn't get stolen I guess and I monitor my credit closer you know So what do I do.

Al Saikali

Um, if you.

Ethan

Got it So we we get is yeah when we get these emails that's because the law requires these companies Once the data has been breached to go through certain steps and send out those different types of notifications.

Shawn

Right? But it's useless. So how do we fix that al.

Al Saikali

Um, right? right? and and and it's true I mean you know it it is. There's not much you can do about it and they've looked the reality is shown when you got that letter from Sony they're probably that information may have already been out there on the dark web from other breaches. Some of which the companies don't even know may have happened I mean again that doesn't make anyone feel any better. But I feel like we're all are now at a point where we're like you know what? I just assume that a lot of my information is just out there on the dark web I try to protect myself in terms of you know monitoring what's going on with new accounts that are being open and we can talk a little bit about that. But.

Shawn

Yes.

Shawn

1

Al Saikali

You know that's that's right, you know? and so we talked about breach notification laws as being one kind of law the other kind of law though in the us that we're seeing more and more of are these state laws that provide some requirements for what companies must do when they collect personal information. They must give. Consumers certain rights 1 right is a right to notice meaning you have to let people know I'm collecting this information about you and here's what I do with it and here's who I share it with and you know the second is you have to give them a right to control their data. So if al says I don't want you to have my stuff anymore then you have to delete it.

Shawn

Yes.

Al Saikali

And um, you know and another would be a right to to make sure that if that information is being with the shared being shared with a third party you have the ability to to pull it back. You know there's like right to be forgotten all of these like right to delete.

Shawn

Um, prevent.

Al Saikali

Different rights that can consumers now increasingly have and there are a couple of states California being one of them that are now giving a right to sue right? So if under the law called the California consumer privacy act if there is a data breach you know going back to that situation where there's a California resident whose information is impacted. Under the ccpa they have to get the notice that says your information was impacted. We are seeing a ton of lawsuits now against the companies that send out those notices under the ccpa which creates a private right of action that says if your information is impacted. And you know is it meaning it stolen by a third party or shared without authorization. You can sue for anywhere from $100 to seven hundred and fifty dollars per individual so there are a lot of class action lawsuits now that are getting filed against companies based on that lawsuit and it's it's creating a lot of litigation for sure.

Shawn

Okay.

Ethan

Yeah, let's run with that for a minute because let's say that I am just John or jane p consumer kind of listening to the program today I'm based in California I've had my data hacked and I'm harmed by it I'm going through the same exact stuff.

Al Saikali

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ethan

Shawn is talking about my data is everywhere. People are now opening up credit cards under my name I'm seeing my social media profiles running to be hacked all these different things and I want to do something about it. But. It's going to be really difficult for me to walk into a courthouse and file a lawsuit against the company because I don't have the time energy and money to do that. So how is that unfolding in actual reality today.

Al Saikali

Right? to the way it unfolds so you have your ah like your rose colored glasses way it unfolds and the way I think it actually unfolds the rose colored glasses is Jane Dos really upset and so she goes to a plaintiffs lawyer's office and says hey this happened to me and the plaintiff's lawyer says.

Shawn

And.

Al Saikali

That's really bad I'm going to file a class action lawsuit about it and so the class action lawsuit gets filed against the company and the lawsuit progresses that way the more realistic way it goes down is the plaintiffs lawyers have paralegals working in their office that are checking state ag offices every day like their website. And those websites list here are all the companies that have been breached recently that sent out notices is required by our state laws and so the parade will say there's a new one that just pop today. Let's prepare a complaint against them and at the same time. Let's launch social on social media. Advertisement saying have you been impacted by the xyzdata breach if so contact us it's it's kind of like a technological form of ambulance chasing in a way and then they find their client and then they run off to the courthouse and they follow the lawsuit.

Shawn

Her. Yeah.

Ethan

I see so when we see these ads have you been victimized has your data been lost by XYZ company have you been harmed by you know a weed killer product that's out there. It's because there are there's a law firm out there that is preparing or has filed.

Al Saikali

You wait.

Ethan

A class action lawsuit and they're looking for either named plaintiffs to put in the complaint itself who have the classic situation of being harmed as a representative sample of the class or they're trying to grow the actual class members so that they can establish a large volume of people who have been harmed.

Al Saikali

Leave.

Ethan

So that it it warrants a larger settlement for both the people who are part of the class who have been harmed and for the law firm itself that's going through the time energy and effort of seeking that relief for everybody.

Al Saikali

Hundred percent and and I won't get too far in the weeds on this but to your la to that last point Ethan the greater number of people that the plaintis lawyers can identify from their social media. The better position they're in when they go to the when they'd file the lawsuit.

Shawn

But.

Al Saikali

And the company responds. Ah you can't file a lawsuit here. We have an arbitration provision that says we don't do this in court you have to each file a separate arbitration then the plaintis lawyer says. Okay, we could do that but we've got 10000 people and each of them are going to file an arbitration, you got to pay the cost for all of that that's going to be way too much. So we're moving forward with the class action. So that's it's all kind of ah it it all sort of ties together in a way you know right.

Ethan

It's a little game in a way like there's There's a real harm right? There's people who are really harmed. There's a company that's really responsible, but there's arbitration provisions. There's logistical provisions and it sounds like it is a little bit of a a game of chess in a way. Um in order to.

Al Saikali

You.

Shawn

But and but but the the lawsuits are all well and good right? like that sure give me you know, whatever some money I guess for my data being stolen but it's not a real solution right? The real solution and you and you already brought this up a little bit. You know I'm a proponent of.

Ethan

Whistle.

Shawn

I like what europe has put into place I think there's far more protections there than there are here and I think it's a testament to um, probably the corporatization of America I think more than anything else, right? where. Our laws are much more lax and we're much more willing to give corporations stuff that clearly the european union is not. You know that it is not necessary. Um and and so I think the goal should be to get there because protecting people is more important than protecting companies. And and that should be like it that we need to protect people first and and and keep their data safe and let them and really it's it's about what you said al it's about control right? I just want to be able to control it I want to know when I go to a new website.

Ethan

Keep and I.

Shawn

Hey, here's all the stuff we're going to note about you here's where we're going to send it. Do you want us to do that or not and I'm even willing to pay a premium or what look at more ads or whatever I have to do to make it valuable to the company to not steal my data I'm willing to have that conversation as a consumer. I Think the lack of choice is the real problem so lawsuits are fine. But how do we move the needle forward on new laws on strengthening the laws. We have.

Al Saikali

Yeah, and you know I mentioned California and there are about 6 or 7 other states that have that. But what if you live in a state that doesn't have that to your point sea right? Like what protection is available to you there I mean every state has a dated breach notification law but only this handful have.

Shawn

Right? yeah.

Al Saikali

But what I call the privacy laws. The ones that require that give individuals control over their over their information and so at the congressional level us in congress There really hasn't been that much done. You know like I mean look not.. The reality is I mean I don't get into the politics of the situation but not a whole lot. Gets passed if if there are individuals on both sides that are just kind of intransigent and there's no compromise right? So yeah, like probably yeah yeah.

Shawn

All you you could have just stopped it not a whole lot gets passed and it would have been sufficient sufficient explanation for our current political situation. No matter what side of the aisle you're on.

Ethan

It worked.

Al Saikali

But the interesting thing is the interesting thing is this is an issue that kind of does have both people on the side of give people more rights right? because I know this is an over generalization. But the reality is like for the Democrats perspective they're thinking we want consumers to have the control over their information.

Shawn

Um, right.

Al Saikali

We don't like companies having that you know like like being able to do things with information in the dark so that seems like that should lock up the democratic support republicans especially the sort of a more pro populist you know group that has kind of developed over these last few years they are very and anti-technology but they. They are skeptical or cynical about these big technology firms. You know that have a lot of data about people and so they too seem to be ah in this group and we kind of saw this coming together here in Florida where we had a couple of iterations where the. The state legislature was considering privacy laws and first time around it didn't get done second time around didn't get done this last year. There was a law that was passed that applies to a small group of companies. But ah, you know it's been interesting to me because it seems a no brainer that there's enough political support there to make it happen. But it doesn't happen and so of course the cynic says well it doesn't happen because there are corporate interests. There are lobbyists involved. There are you know there are entities with a great amount of money that are preventing this from happening and that may be true but to go back to the point you made earlier Shawn about I like the european system there are some people that are like.

Shawn

Um, check.

Al Saikali

I don't know that I like the european system because the european system costs a lot of money for companies to comply with it and I get it. You may say why do I care that it's going to cost a lot of money but that results in like business is not doing business maybe in the eu and the same thing is happening with California or the cost of whatever they do goes up and I don't you know there's that.

Shawn

Ah.

Shawn

Um, right.

Al Saikali

Kind of cost-benefit analysis that comes into it as well. But you know I think to your initial point of okay, you've explained the status of everything but how do we take it to the next level in these different states and you know what is it that we need to do some of it is on the companies themselves and the the one progression I've seen over the last.

Ethan

Um, it ended.

Shawn

Ah.

Al Saikali

15 years or so that I've been in this area practice is that if you'd asked me fifteen years ago what are companies doing about data privacy in the us I couldn't told you it would have been very much right? Yeah, but now we are seeing a little bit of a better job being done by companies realizing there is a competitive advantage to being the company that offers more privacy. But at Apple right? How many times? do you see Apple commercials on television about your you know your privacy is of the utmost important to us here are things we do they are make they're turning it into a competitive advantage and I think more companies are starting to do that. Maybe it's not enough but it is a trend. Yeah.

Ethan

Yeah, and that makes sense and Shawn we had on 1 of our first episodes of season 2 the backlash against Zoom for implementing a new ai tool that was capturing people's data and that wasn't so much the issue the issue was they weren't clear about.

Shawn

Um, yeah, um.

Ethan

That in their privacy. Update: they're just like hey we updated our privacy policy and then there was this giant Pr backlash because it said hey we're going to start listening to your data if you turn on the Ai tool but they weren't clear about it. So I can see how it's being used as a competitive advantage and I think.

Shawn

Shown.

Ethan

You know, public opinion of companies does shift and change the more that there is transparency and I think ill really mention a great point which is that you know the european union know the Eu started with this big position of consumer privacy where the US started with data's open and so changing the.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

From her.

Ethan

Whole entire business trend overnight with let's make it like the Eu is both difficult practically hard because all of these systems already been set up so we're probably going to see the the needle moving very slowly 1 state law at a time another one begins to follow California is probably. Was the model act in the us that mirrored what was happening in the eu more states are starting to adopt it and we're we're going to probably move there slower than we would like but I do kind of see that that's that's the trend now flipping this discussion up a little bit Al John's been focusing a ton on what can I do as a consumer. But I think what about in the position of companies and businesses. Nobody wants their data to get hacked nobody wants to have to send Shawn that letter or that email in the first place and usually companies have the best interest in mind of being like hey I created an app I want you to use it I want this to be a safe place but there are hackers out there.

Shawn

Right.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

That have Ill gotten motivations to be able to do this and and that's where this is going Awry So now kind of flipping this around and turning ourselves to whether you're a big corporation or a startup business. What can you do.

Al Saikali

Um.

Ethan

To better protect your data comply with the law and create that safe place for consumers.

Al Saikali

Yeah I think there are are several things I think it starts with what we call privacy by design meaning when you're first rolling out your product or the the service. Whatever that service may be thinking about privacy as part of designing that service. So for example, you're rolling out a mobile application. Do you need to collect somebody's social security number. Do you even need to collect their name. You know thinking about in the first place did you need to collect that piece of information because if you never have it. It's not going to be subject to a cyber attack and I can't tell you how many data breach matters I've worked on are lawsuits we've defended where the the. Hacker got to information that was twenty thirty years old that the company ever really needed anymore. You know so one number 1 do you even need to have it and if you do need to have it then the second thing is thinking about encrypting the data so that if a third party got to it.

Ethan

Um, yes.

Al Saikali

They wouldn't actually be able to see what is in it right? they get scrambled in a way so that it's not readable to a third party you know in addition to that I mean having training every data breach has a human element to it. I don't care if it's a threat actor who breaks into your system or if it's an individual who sends an email to the wrong person that has a file with sensitive information attached to it. The threat actor got in because maybe it's a phishing attack right? Where al said got an email that looked legit. He clicked on a link and now created. And a door for the bad guy to get into the organization. So having that employee training to teach him here are the ways in which you know the the threat actors are getting access to sensitive information can help individuals realize okay in my in my job here are things I need to be thinking about to prevent this from happening.

Shawn

Right? but.

Ethan

Yeah, these fishing things have gotten incredibly sophisticated like ten years ago I was getting emailed by a saudi arabian prince telling me that I have a treasure in his castle but now on a daily basis I'm getting emails from.

Al Saikali

You know? Yeah, but.

Ethan

Microsoft 365 saying hey you need to log in to keep your account updated or I'm getting emails from what appears to be 1 of my employees or team members asking me to update their address in our payroll system and the email looks like it's coming from one of my employees and that they're getting more and more sophisticated more and more. Challenging to be able to deal with so I could see how training is gonna be important because actors are evolving.

Al Saikali

Yeah, and we we started to see a trend where companies were were trying to address a lot of this using something called multifactor authentication. Multifactor authentication is a fancy way of saying that. In order to log into something you have to do it in more than one ways like you can you can you can authenticate yourself with something you know an example would be like a password you can authenticate yourself with something that you are like a biometric face scan. Or you can authenticate yourself with something that you have and an example of that would be like your phone when you log in and then there's a text message or a notification that pops up. It says here's a pin use that in order to log in so companies started to use those and that was very helpful in mitigating a lot of these phishing attacks. But now what we start to see is. The bad guys do something called what's called Mfa Bombing Multifactor authentication bombing which means that you know al logs into his computer and you know he's in there and when he's in there for a while all of a sudden he starts to see the notifications that would be the multifactor notification saying here's your code. And or you know or you know did you did you try to access. Did you try to access and he knows initially he's like no this isn't me but eventually after the seventh or 8 time he's like sure. Yes, now with that last one because it's just happened so many times the individual gives in and says yes and now the bad guy is in the system because he had my credentials from.

Al Saikali

Some other data breach for. For example, so it's you know, whatever you do. There's always the bad guys come up with something else and then you got to come up with something and it keeps getting. It's like an arms race or whatever you know it's just and it of course it costs money right? It costs a lot of money for companies to to defend this sort of stuff.

Shawn

Share.

Shawn

Well and now we're seeing I know the rise of what do they call it like pass key adoption is becoming the new sort of advancement there which is and correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of it is. It's essentially um.

Al Saikali

Yeah.

Shawn

1 unifying identifier that gets you into places instead of having a password for Google and a password for this and a password for that the password for the other thing I'd have a Google password which would probably be tied to my fingerprint or my face like ah how I unlock my phone and then when I want to sign into Facebook. Just got to hold my phone up to my face and then Google tells Facebook yes, this is really him is that basically it? Yeah so so that's good I mean it sounds good right? like it. You know until they figure out how to steal our faces or our fingerprints and.

Al Saikali

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ethan

Um, the thought.

Ethan

Yeah, it sounds like a team of whack-a-mole in a way. It's like you know I I envision the hackers being Neo from the matrix right with all the different computer screens like figuring out new ways to do it and the moment that I from.

Shawn

And we're back to square one you know to your point.

Ethan

For me I use Mailchimp and to log in to mailchimp I now have to use the Google authenticator app but open up a second app to get a password that refreshes every 10 seconds and the hackers are now probably figuring a way to to figure that out and then it's going to be kind of something else. Um.

Shawn

Yep.

Al Saikali

Um, yeah, um.

Shawn

So what? other um, you know are there other things that that you know people talk about vpns as a way to protect some of your your information. What are some some other things that you you believe in as as good practice.

Al Saikali

Um, leader.

Shawn

Ah, for people to follow.

Al Saikali

So from like the the perspective of the consumer side or the perspective of the the companies and to the perspective consumers.

Shawn

Can let's do consumer first and then let's talk about what companies can do what what types of of technology there is for them.

Al Saikali

Yeah, so I think one of the first things is I think vpns are great if you're going to be logging in especially for work purposes I think definitely you want to try to use the vpn for that I think constantly changing your password. Um, at least every six months or so.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Al Saikali

Because what happens is if you never change your password. The reality is you probably use the same password for everything So when there is that compromise with with 1 with 1 with one company. You know one account that now gives the threat actor a key to your data in many different potential kinds and accounts at least with respect to the most. Sensitive information like your financial accounts try to change that more regularly turn on multifactor authentication which we talked about um you know I don't This is kind of maybe it's kind of weird but I don't like to give my cell phone number out even when it's like you go to a valley like you want to park your car these days and they're like what's your cell phone number.

Shawn

Yes.

Al Saikali

Like I I want to give you my cell phone number because you know I know what happens with that like and that's not even ah, it's not a security thing. It's ah I know that you're using some application that collects my cell phone number that probably then shares my cell phone number with everyone else and it becomes part of a database and I'm going to get tagged with 50 Text message is a day saying you know click on this link or so-and so's running for congress. But but but you know like I mean it just it's all all the time right? So I think trying to limit that one of the things I've done. There is create a separate you you know cell phone number. There's different services. You can use whatever to have that and that's my junk number.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Ethan

Catalog football. Yeah.

Al Saikali

Just I have a junk email address. You know like you.

Shawn

That's what I was just going to say I do thing with my I have a separate email address that I use to fill out almost any form unless I directly want the person to get in touch with me because yeah yeah.

Al Saikali

Um, right? right? right? Yeah, so you know and and Facebook sometimes there are like these games and puzzles that are there for the main purpose of trying to get you to interact and when you do reinact now. That the the creator of those games sometimes a nefarious you know bad guy now has access to your profile and your information so you know I think being kind of smart and limiting who you share your information with is a big is a big part of from the consumer side.

Ethan

Is' it funny that like that in the past having a different phone number like a burner account meant. Are you a drug dealer are you cheating on me in the relationship now. It's like no, it's just the best practice from ah data privacy perspectives. Oh.

Shawn

Um, and what about from oh sorry, go ahead.

Al Saikali

I right? Well I mean you know.

Shawn

Fair Hey why not both even so okay.

Ethan

That's why I've cut all these different numbers.

Al Saikali

Like going off on a tangent a little bit but 1 of the things I was doing at 1 point was giving my phone number and then just like changing the last digit and like that's horrible because whoever has that that that of phone number is now getting a ton of messages and spam because of me changing that last digit every time to a.

Shawn

Um, death.

Ethan

Um I think.

Al Saikali

4 whatever you know, just it's anyway. Yeah.

Shawn

My mother and grandmother's cell phone numbers were all 1 digit away from mine. So if anyone did that. That's exactly what would happen and like if someone changed my last the last number of my cell to another number.

Al Saikali

Um.

Shawn

My mom or my grandma would just get screwed so that doesn't work. So okay, so what about for.

Ethan

So I'm gonna send you not safe for work content I need to really be careful that I have keyed in your number correctly. Sorry Chag's Grand off.

Al Saikali

Um, this would be.

Al Saikali

Um, if we.

Shawn

Be precise. Please don't don't don't do an 8 Don't end with an 8 I'll tell you that um, so okay, so but what about companies because it's very very different for a company because we're you're not just talking about.

Al Saikali

Um.

Shawn

Outside actors breaching the company right? Which sure there's lots of protections. You can pile on there but companies are full of people people are idiots. They do dumb things they make mistakes as to your point right? There is no breach that doesn't have some kind of human element in it. So How does a company you know. Ah, protect itself and its people without also becoming again. Big brother right? Where like you can't do anything and you're stuck in this like very you know, ah secure air gapped internet that doesn't get out and you can't look up Information. What is the happy medium.

Al Saikali

Yeah I think you know one of the things that we tell new clients is you can hire these third party experts these days who just come in and do a deep dive on the security side of things and they don't have to be expensive. There are some really good consulting firms out there. We refer to smaller companies and the nice thing about it is they will do their assessment and give you a list of 40 things that you need to do which may be overwhelming but then they tear it and they say tier one. This is the stuff this is like hair on fire. You got to get to this now.

Shawn

Who.

Shawn

Right.

Al Saikali

And and then like tier two is these are things you need to be aiming for in the next year or 2 and then like tier 3 being okay, long term and you can also gives you better sense because you want to know what is the budget for doing all of this as a company so having an organized that way can be can be very helpful. Um.

Shawn

Okay.

Al Saikali

You know? but I mean I know we've talked about you know the training some of the technical you know having Mfa in place using you know, like vpns. Um I think you know just it's it's it's ah having someone responsible for security at a company that is not's not necessarily a given you know, maybe big companies.

Shawn

Really.

Al Saikali

That but smaller size companies. Don't have a seeso or you know like anyone like that it just it's.

Ethan

Like a gdpr data privacy officer or something which I remember when I was like assessing this and like we would work with banks and banks are primari in the Us but they have some Eu residents and now they need gdpr compliance and're like well who's your data privacy officer. They're like what are you talking about? So yeah, it's.

Al Saikali

Um.

Ethan

For for a company of 2 5 having someone designated to do that is is probably you know one out of a hundred companies. But I think even the bigger companies are still trying to learn that the world is changing that data privacy is changing and this needs to be a priority. It's like lawyers and e-discovery.

Shawn

Interesting.

Al Saikali

Life.

Ethan

You know ten fifteen years ago they were like it's only for the big apples of the world. But now we we realize it it is now the world's changing and that's needed and I think that's one of the things that companies need to be able to be thinking about from day one so that they don't get too big and have to redo all of their systems later. And then figure out how to implement data privacy practices when you've created an infrastructure that had none contemplated in the beginning and now it's going to be much more expensive I so much more difficult to deal with.

Shawn

It seems like the best advice I think I heard this whole time from ah a comp for for a corporation honestly was al's first bit of advice which is like if you don't need it. Don't take it like don't take it There's no reason to have it if you're trying to protect yourself. Go only take what you need and then be very very precious with it because it's it's a disaster so all right before we wrap up I want to talk a little bit about the future I don't want to get too bogged down into this because I don't you know I don't. I'm not sure how I feel about this topic but I know that.

Ethan

Meaning Shawn will have a rant at a fit if we go off on this too far.

Shawn

When we talk about the future of ah data privacy. Um, a big thing that continuously comes up in that conversation is blockchain right? that this is the future. The blockchain is the future but everyone's got to put their stuff on the blockchain. I Have a very rudimentary understanding but my but my general understanding of it is that this is some sort of ah shared way of of storing information right? which doesn't really make sense to me if I'm trying to keep my information private. Why would I want to spread it all over the blockchain where a bunch of people potentially are storing it that just feels worse Somehow how deep into that world have you got now and and and what are what are your thoughts there. Do you do or or are you like no I don't I have none I hate it.

Al Saikali

Um, it Yeah I mean I can tell you it hasn't really come up that much. Um and I don't know a lot of our clients. They're really thinking about using it from a security perspective right now it might be the next thing that arises I think you know from a.

Shawn

Sure.

Al Saikali

The perspective of what can consumers be doing in the future I do like the past key kind of concepts and I like the move to having information about you being stored on your device rather you know where rather than it being shared with a third party that then can do whatever it wants with it.

Shawn

Yeah.

Al Saikali

So for example, take Apple right? We we talk to them on but like with the biometric information. You know when you use face id or thumbprint or whatever id you want to use the information your template you know what you look like and the minutia points in your face that allow you. Allowing you to be authenticated. That's all stored in your device so that if if a third party if they were to have that information and they suffered ah a cyber attack or breach you know arguments are are being made that that that might be subject to unauthorized access and misuse. But when you have it on your own phone and it's never shared with a third party you feel like you have more control over it and we could see we could see that as a trend as well. You know I think in the future.

Shawn

That sounds like a great solution. Honestly I mean the idea of yeah if if an app or a company or whatever for whatever reason needs that information from me. Yes, better that it's all stored on my phone and then the the app when I sign in says hey. We'd like to look at this this and this is that cool and then I get to go? Yeah, cool, you know, check it out. You know or well you can see those 2 things but I don't want you to have a you know tracking my weight or or whatever it is. You know? um, that's.

Al Saikali

Right.

Ethan

Yeah, the real question is how many years away are we from being in the minority report where as soon as they walk into the mall. My eyeballs.

Al Saikali

Um, yeah.

Al Saikali

And.

Shawn

Precog you on precogs man we're talking we're talking pass Keys Ethan's already on precogs. So um, this was fantastic I am sure that listeners are.

Al Saikali

Here.

Al Saikali

Um, and.

Shawn

Ah, feeling a little better about what protections they do have but also maybe filled with questions. So um, if someone's got a real claim or or real thing that they they need. Ah, to reach out to a lawyer for where can they find your firm al and and where can people reach out.

Al Saikali

Yeah, sure so they can learn more about me and my firm just by googling shahar and bacon I'm located the firm's Miami office. We do our clients are our companies and you know we do defend companies and represent them and advise them. To help him get into compliance with some of these laws that we talked about but I mean it's yeah I mean if it if anybody feel free to to reach out. You know if you have any questions or um, want to discuss any of this further because it's they're really interesting issues I think.

Shawn

Cool.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah, and better mentioned.

Ethan

Yeah I think for the business owners that are out there knowing look if your dad has been breached picking up the phone and calling al is is the first call that you should make but I think for most of you who are listening out there being proactive rather than reactive is going to be even better.

Shawn

Um, yes, yes.

Ethan

And so yeah I'll I'll and and the folks at Shook Hardy and bacon are are really going to be primed to be the ones to go to before There is a problem and then in that event. They're definitely the ones to call.

Shawn

And Ethan what about you? The social media law firm this podcast do all of the things.

Ethan

Yeah, if you're like hey Ethan I wanted to contact al but I forgot the name of his law firm and you want to reach out to us First of course you could search for us by looking for the social media law firm across any of the social media platforms. You want to follow my. Vagabond travels while also getting legal updates you can check in on Linkedin by searching for Ethan Wall and of course if you want to get more legal tips news and amazing, incredible and just the the best guess in the business like my great friend al of course you could follow us right here.

Shawn

Yes, and as always I am ah a mist in the night completely unfinable anywhere on social media. You'll never get any information out of me unless of course you were part of that Sony hack in which case you know everything about me um al this was fantastic. Thank you so much for doing this.

Ethan

On the social media lawcast.

Shawn

And ah sitting there and while I raj you with ah very silly examples and questions of things. Thank you so much for doing this really appreciate it. Awesome! Awesome Ethan I'll see you next week for another exciting episode of whatever it is. We do here.

Al Saikali

No, it was great. Thank you for giving me the opportunity Good talking to you guys.

Ethan

Thanks Out. You got it brother see that.

Shawn

All right Bye buddy.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media lawcast. I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall with me is my friend and co-host Sean DePasquale.

Shawn

Hi how's it going Ethan. Okay, great talk to you later bye. Ah.

Ethan

Do you remember when you asked me a ton of questions about online defamation and I was embarrassed because I didn't have any of those answers.

Shawn

I Do remember I do remember although I do want to put on the record I was talking about my hypothetical friend who hypothetically had written some very inflammatory things that that wasn't me. But yes, why do we have answers now.

Ethan

Well unfortunately I still don't have the answers but I have brought in a friend and expert in this area I'm so excited to introduce you to my friend Michael Peligali Michael Works with mink law. He specializes in online defamation.

Shawn

Ah.

Ethan

Not only does he have all the answers for the questions that you have but Michael has helped my clients before when they've experienced online defamation issues online harassment or outside the box issues in the social media and online world that I didn't have the answers to I sent them to Michael. I'm so happy to have you on the show today.

Shawn

Um, Wow. And yeah I mean Wow We found a real expert.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, Ethan and Sean thanks for having me on the show I'm looking forward to it well that that's a great introduction that was experts you know something but that that was a nice introduction. Ethan.

Ethan

Absolute pleasure.

Shawn

Um, all right? So let's dive in with basics right? when we're talking about defamation. What what is the the legal definition of defamation to start.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, what's coming.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, across all the states they they have individual rules but basically the elements of defamation are a false assertion of fact about the plaintiff that is negative defamatory and causes harm that harm. Can vary obviously depending on what's said and how it is said but reputational harm is oftentimes the biggest component of those damages and makes the most sense with what defamation is as a cause of action.

Shawn

And like everything on the Internet Internet Internet Ah the word defamation gets thrown around all the time right? Ah, people are always saying it. Um, but but it's you defined what it is um what it's not is a lot of things right? So like.

Michael Pelagalli

A.

Michael Pelagalli

Wait.

Shawn

If I call someone ah a jerk or if I say this guy is a nazi and the worst person I've ever seen on Twitter to him. It's not that doesn't really apply right? because it doesn't hit any of the there's no damage. There's no reputational damage certainly from my.

Michael Pelagalli

Be done.

Michael Pelagalli

It was.

Shawn

1 tweet but is there minds that can be crossed in that sense where it does become a problem for ah your average you know angry internet cometer.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, absolutely and and what you had mentioned first was touching upon some defenses to defamation some big defenses 1 being opinion. You know if someone calls you a jerk online. That's their opinion. You may believe it's false. It is not though a false assertion of a fact that courts are looking for. The issue there is you need to be able to objectively verify or disprove what is being said about you and when it's you're a jerk. You can't really objectively prove or disprove that um the thing that you said Sean about hey if someone calls you a nazi online that actually may cross that line that you're talking about there. Obviously um, you know being described as a nazi is negative and defamatory. It is not something people want to be described as and what that would come down to that analysis would likely be what else has that person said do they just you know respond to a comment say oh they're a nazi or are they saying that they attend meetings and they're registered and. They have associates That's where those lines can definitely be crossed.

Ethan

See sean you can finally breathe easy from that time that we were sixteen years old at a high school party and you called me a jerk unfortunately I cannot sue you for it cases closed and you can you can rest well at night.

Michael Pelagalli

Are.

Shawn

Um, statute of limitations.

Michael Pelagalli

I don't want to break privileges. But that's how Ethan and I met he had told me about this incident and I had just told him hey statute limitations forget about that. But there's other issues you have and talk to Sean about it.

Ethan

Um, but.

Shawn

Don't worry. We can definitely find something else Sean has done that's horrible enough to go after him for was the was the um, okay so.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, you can call me then all right? This is so pretty.

Ethan

Um.

Shawn

This is helpful right? This is clarifying because I think there is a lot of question online about what you can and can't say and how far is too far and and we definitely live now in a world where um, you know a lot of.

Shawn

Opinions are litigated online and and and that is not always done ah in ah in a civilized manner right? and and things get said a lot now my understanding of like defamation was always ah that it had to come from like ah like ah like an official source. But.

Michael Pelagalli

6 like if you're spending on making anything.

Shawn

But you're saying no right? Anyone can be accused of that at any point um and and potentially held accountable for that right? um.

Michael Pelagalli

Absolutely anyone single social media Users groups online. They can all be held accountable ultimately for defamation. Yeah.

Ethan

Yeah, and I think 1 thing that Sean might be touching upon it might be helpful to shed light on this Michael is the difference between saying bad things online about let's say a celebrity or Donald Trump or Joe Biden somebody that's within the public news as opposed to someone like.

Michael Pelagalli

Place a pop.

Ethan

Sean or I who is a private citizen look Sean's awesome but I'm not particularly that that interesting and not really a public figure. Um, how does how does approaching situations like these differ when you have someone that is famous versus someone that might not be so famous.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, body.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, yeah, and even you said it right there in terms of being a public figure or a private individual. So for the individuals you referenced Ethan Biden or Trump or a celebrity they are going to be deemed public figures and what that means for them actually is that they as. Public figures and celebrities have more difficult times advancing cases of defamation if they've been spoken about in the public and it would otherwise qualify as defamation to a private individual. It may not for public figures and what the courts are looking for in these cases is you know let's just take a private. Individual who's being defamed online by another private individual if it's Sean if you're being defamed online and you want to go after that person. All you would need to prove in terms of the person who posted the content's intent is that they were negligent. They just made a mistake. They were wrong and it's false.

Shawn

Heavy. Okay.

Michael Pelagalli

That's really the the minimum threshold for a private individual when we talk about defamation cases against public figures that public figure has to be able to prove with sufficient evidence that the individual who defamed them did so with malice they did so intentionally knowing that what they were doing was false and they did So anyway that is where.

Shawn

Um, wow.

Michael Pelagalli

The key distinction becomes and it can pose a lot of issues for celebrities though. They have been overcome recently.

Ethan

Gotcha So it's almost easier in a way to prove a de a defamation case against a private individual than it is a celebrity because it's a lower threshold that needs to be proven for the motivation or intention behind those false statements.

Michael Pelagalli

Exactly.

Shawn

Um, so you said and you mentioned celebrity at the end of there and you said until you know until recently, what's changed recently in that regard.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, there have been a lot of celebrity defamation cases over I say the past two years some really popular ones like the Johnny Depp versus Amber heard um, another popular one involved the rapper cardi b and in her case specifically. Arguments like you know her being a public figure were raised by the individual and in that case it was a believe it was a Youtube creator who had made a video commenting on Cardi B and basically said the classic we call them defamation per se um. Attacks. She was a prostitute she did cocaine she has a sexually transmitted disease all of which cardi b and her attorneys were able to objectively prove to be false and they then put on evidence of malice. 1 of the key things that they did in that case was.

Shawn

Um, and then.

Michael Pelagalli

When the initial video went up Cardi B and her lawyer sent a demand or a cease and desist letter to the creator. The creator took that and made another video 2 days later doubling down on everything she had said so in the court's eyes that was a big piece of proving actual malice against that individual who defamed cardi b and. The jury in that case awarded cardi b I believe in excess of $1000000 so fairly significant case.

Ethan

And access dollars. So Wow for everything.

Shawn

So basically criticism of ah of a public figure or a celebrity so long as it's not disprovable.

Michael Pelagalli

Please go speak frank.

Shawn

Is a pretty safe area. You know I mean if you can prove hey you're doing X Y and Z or you know for a fact, this person is doing X Y and Z great. You're safe to basically say whatever you want right ish or.

Michael Pelagalli

But you.

Ethan

Yeah I mean I would say Mike would like truth is an absolute defense to defamation and so I think if someone is out there doing something shady and you call them out for doing that thing no matter how harmful it might be because you have.

Michael Pelagalli

The.

Michael Pelagalli

Do me.

Ethan

A large or influential platform and how damaging it might be to the person. It's not defamation because it's the truth um or an opinion you know now I'm sure people try to to couch intentionally maliciously false statements as in my opinion.

Michael Pelagalli

And.

Ethan

Cardi B is a prostitute and she did cocaine or something like that and I think courts can kind of get around. You're just trying to play games by couching it as opinion. But really, you're not doing it and all of these other objective factors prove that. But yeah I think at the end of the day you know truth is an absolute defense and so.

Shawn

Raf.

Shawn

Interesting.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, it yeah and courts to your point et think Courts have been really consistent across the country that using magic words like throwing alleged in between every nasty horrible false thing you say that's not enough to save you know you from liability for defamation.

Ethan

Yeah, you're not, You're not going to be laughable but things like that.

Michael Pelagalli

Now if it's truly you say hey it's been alleged by others and there's substantial basis for what you're saying you have some defenses. It's not quite truth being absolute but substantial truth most of it being true can be a defense as well.

Ethan

Um.

Shawn

I have 2 follow ups I'm not really sure which direction to take us I guess let's start with um, well let's continue on this and then I'll I'll take us to a new place. So on that note, right? and you brought up depp and and and and Amber heard right.

Michael Pelagalli

Step. So.

Shawn

So now in in the u k right? Johnny Depp was found to be a wife beater right? full stop but here he wasn't so if I call Johnny Deaf of a depp. A wife beater is he am I in trouble I mean.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, this.

Ethan

Um, water up.

Shawn

You know where how does that now work for commentators on that situation I mean obviously between him and Amber heard that's been settled but you know, um if you're commenting on it or you're ah ah, an influencer online who you know comments on these kinds of things where is the safe space to fall there.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, as Ethan knows there's no absolutes in the law. Everything's case by case. But what you just described in terms of you making a comment about Johnny Depp being a wife beater and you're going to say if he sues you well that was based on my reading of the british court cases and the findings and conclusions there and. While you may say it's not true here. It has been proven true there and at minimum I'm not being malicious against a public figure you Sean being you know, not being malicious. You were taking information publicly commenting on it now if that was a private individual. You were talking about and the facts were different. Maybe you are a little bit more exposed to liability. But.

Shawn

Um.

Michael Pelagalli

Being Johnny Depp being all the court cases out there I think you're pretty safe.

Shawn

Interesting. Okay, so then to shift like because we talk a lot on this show about you know, social media right? So where in the ecosystem of all of this Stuff. What responsibility does the social media platforms hold. Um, or have been held accountable to is there is there any basis for for discussion. There.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah I'll start with you know, the biggest thing on this topic is section. 2 30 of the I believe 1996 communications decency act it affords platforms tech companies like Facebook Meta or Tiktok. Ah, immunity from liability. They are not under the you know, um communications decency act. They are not considered publishers or speakers of content that is published on their platforms that they have some control over but it's put by another individual. So.

Shawn

Um, sure.

Michael Pelagalli

You know if you're defamed online a lot of questions we'll get is hey I want to sue the person defaming me and I want to sue Facebook I want to sue them for allowing this It's absurd. We have to talk to them about section, 2 30 and section two thirty was actually just this past month or 2 um, it was brought up to the United States supreme court in a case called gonzales v Google and that case had to do with um Google who owns Youtube they were alleged to have acted in violation of section two thirty by allowing ads that were. Targeting isis individuals or or advertisements that were promoting those types of beliefs and it was brought by the family of an individual who was killed in a terrorist attack and it got all the way up to the supreme court deciding hey is Google the the parent company of Youtube responsible for their algorithm producing that type. Content ultimately the supreme court held that they were not. It was always going to be a difficult case for them to overcome but it started to raise a lot of really good questions and good discussions nationally about should section. 2 30 be changed. Is it good as it is and that's I think where we're at.

Ethan

That's interesting. So it it seems like an analogous situation that we discuss in the podcast a bunch of times is the digital millennium copyright act meaning same concept would Youtube be liable if a user posts copyright infringement material on their platform.

Michael Pelagalli

Um.

Ethan

And the answer is generally no, they're not liable so long as they follow these safe Harbor provisions to allow people to report copyright infringement and take it down does the community decency act have similar exceptions. Where a platform might be liable if they don't act reasonably in response to certain types of online defamation.

Michael Pelagalli

Um.

Michael Pelagalli

Yes, and I don't know all off the top of my head but I know for some sort of circumstances excuse me. For example, if some sort of revenge porn is posted on a social media site and they're notified of it and they fail to take action and further damages result as. You know, ah flowing from that people may have an argument to not only you know, go after the person who put that up there but potentially also the platforms. Um, if the platforms themselves publish or make any sort of statements or proclamations that that treats them as a publisher but there are some exceptions it. Not many or maybe not as much as some people would like but but.

Ethan

Sure, Okay, that makes nice.

Shawn

Um, yeah, that's really interesting. What So what? What is your I mean your personal and professional opinion on.

Michael Pelagalli

Um.

Shawn

Whether or not this needs to be something. That's maybe walked back a little bit to to hold them more accountable or not what what? what? Where do you land on that.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah that's a great question I think it's just I've seen it described and I agree as as a necessary but flawed tool. That's how I've kind of seen it described and necessary in that I think the court systems would be overrun with lawsuits against Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and it would. Render a lot of these cases meaningless I think in the grand schememing things. It would dilute a lot of the legitimate claims and I think it would create ah a logjam in the court system. But I I do as as a practitioner in this field feel as though there can be some changes made and and maybe one of the changes that I personally would like to see made is that. Um, when a statement has been deemed defamatory by a court. So if someone's defamed and they take that next step of trying to hold the person accountable and they are successful right now the way the the landscape works is that if we obtain a final judgment saying that these statements in our case have been deemed defamatory. We can take those to the platforms or to Google or toever and say we've won. We'd like this stuff taken down consistent with the court order most of the time the vast majority of the time platforms will not give any issue. Um, it may take some time more time than we'd like. But they typically will we have started to run into some issues there and what I would like to see is some provisions in section. 2 30 that say if there is an order that deems content defamatory even though you are not liable you you must adhere to the court order within a certain period of time and remove that content. That's where I think.

Ethan

Yeah, that that seems to be really helpful because there was a practical solution with a close friend of mine in that exact same situation. It was a dear friend in Miami was defamed online and people said some pretty terrible stuff and they posted it on a third party website.

Michael Pelagalli

It could be tweaked a bit. Yeah.

Shawn

So.

Ethan

The friend sued the the person who made the defamatory statements got a judgment saying that it was defamatory and then went to the website and said please take it down and website says I don't got to do it and they had to sue the website owner to seek a mandatory injunction requiring that website to take it down. But.

Michael Pelagalli

Are.

Shawn

Ah.

Ethan

Person had to go through all of these extra steps and go through the litigation and hire a lawyer and if he didn't happen to have money or a good lawyer who was willing to kind of push through on a difficult issue. He would have been s o l so I do think a change like that seems to be 1 step in a positive direction.

Michael Pelagalli

What happened.

Michael Pelagalli

Are.

Ethan

That makes the social media sites or the internet service providers take reasonable action. Not I believe this person is defaming me but here's a court order Now you've got some reasonable period of time to take that down.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Well I think I think in general you know my my personal opinion on this is that the more onus you put on the publishing platform the the more careful they're going to be.

Michael Pelagalli

I.

Shawn

So there I think there is a balance you know I I completely agree with Michael's point about not wanting to overwhelm the court system not wanting to bring up all these frivolous lawsuits. But I also think the the carte blanche they have right now is.

Michael Pelagalli

Will make.

Shawn

Is not healthy for the for the internet honestly for the ecosystem. Um I mean you know I think Twitter is a great example right? now of that of you know? well this is what happens when you get someone who doesn't care at all and has been given no legal reason to really care. Um.

Michael Pelagalli

All these needle.

Shawn

About anything being said on his platform you know.

Ethan

Yeah, it's it's true and it makes it makes it difficult for a person who is a victim. So let's let's pivot there in that situation and Michael I'm going to toss you a hypothetical and I'm going to let you decide how you want to take it but but I'm sure that a lot of people who are listening to this program are people who sit who.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, but he.

Michael Pelagalli

Both you and so.

Ethan

Victims someone said something bad about them online. They're being harassed online. Maybe it's a revenge porn issue. Whatever it is they are harmed and somebody posted something illegal about them on the internet and they don't know what to do.

Michael Pelagalli

They married a and become.

Ethan

And so what would someone in that situation. Do you know? how would they go through that process when they pick up the phone and call you you know you could take it in any direction that you want. But how do you help somebody who's a victim of online defamation.

Michael Pelagalli

Preaching.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, one of the first things I tell anyone who calls in is to start taking screenshots preserve the evidence of these posts and our firm can do that as well. A little bit more formally with more robust features in terms of where it was captured. But. I tell everyone involved if you've been the subject of an online attack defamation reviews anything start screenshoting make a file because these things can come up and come down fast and while that doesn't totally extinguish a claim. It is always much much easier to pursue these when we have the exact. Written words. So number 1 is start preserving evidence and the other big rule I say at the outset is do not respond publicly until you've spoken to a lawyer. It's almost a rule that I think applies in every circumstance whether you are a business and it's business related defamation claims you know fraud or.

Shawn

And.

Michael Pelagalli

Poor service things like that or if it's a private individual being accused of you know, being a creep on a date by someone else. You know don't publicly respond before you speak with some you know an attorney that.

Ethan

Now and and why you know a sure victim sees this online and the the time it might take to get a lawyer on the phone is not immediate. You know I'm sure the same day somebody calls your office somebody follows up immediately. But that's there It's doing in their brain. So why not respond to that.

Michael Pelagalli

Let.

Ethan

Harmful Negative Defamatory content.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, it's a great point because time is really of the essence in these as the days go on with this defamatory content out there. You don't know how damaged you are because not everyone who sees this is going to call you and say hey I'm not going to be your friend anymore because of this they just may not talk to you again.

Shawn

Yeah.

Michael Pelagalli

Right? So um, it is a very natural thing to think I got to fight back I've got to say something soon and that will come and at some point in time but it it can make the situation worse people have said things that I've seen in cases where. They're operating they believe in self-defense self-preservation and they make a few missteps in what they say and it doesn't mean that they don't have a case anymore. But if you've been defamed and then in your defense you say something that could give the person who defamed you potential wiggle room to to. Bring claims against you from what you said then it becomes this back and Forth. He said she said or he said he said and it doesn't serve to be as productive as people may think it would right away.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

That makes sense and it makes sense really in the broader litigation environment as well. We had a client recently who had believed. They had their trademarks infringed and it was by a larger company and they're like we want to go to the news and make a big stink out of this and kind of our guidance was.

Shawn

Ah.

Michael Pelagalli

Who.

Ethan

Look You could do whatever you want, but that might give them ammunition to now have claims against you if you say things that are false or you might be battling this out in the court of public opinion and there might be things that are going to hurt you in your case so that makes a ton of sense is it's I'm sure really hard to show restraint. But.

Michael Pelagalli

Not belinia.

Michael Pelagalli

A.

Ethan

It's going to be really important to allow you to be able to do your job in the best way possible to advocate for them by not having those things you know being held against them.

Michael Pelagalli

Exactly and one of the things that I always tell potential clients or actual clients when we're thinking about hey do we want to make a public statement. Do We want to put something out there even while we're behind the scenes maybe working to resolve this.. What do we want to put out there and what I tell clients is hey let you and I will draft this together and we will. Craft it and design it such that we are going to assume it is going to be taken by this person and twisted and mangled into the worst way possible, but any reasonable person reading. This will be able to hear the story and we get to frame it in a truthful honest, but in a way that. Doesn't make the person who's the defamer look good doesn't give them any you know outs in the eye of the public and we tell them that hey whether we send for example, just like a private demand letter or whether we're going to put up a statement. We are going to assume everything we put in writing will be used against us. So I say talk to a lawyer first because a lawyer will be able to kind of. Help put together something that down the road won't cause harm but will also help to mitigate the damages that are happening at the moment. So.

Ethan

Um, for example.

Shawn

Um, so what? Ah, what's the Um, what is the most common type of defamation that comes across your desk ah from from you know online based defamation.

Michael Pelagalli

1 of the most common is Google reviews with businesses we have seen you know over the past several years an influx of cases where ah successful I mean usually it's successful businesses because that's when you start to get haters or attackers is when your business is doing well.

Shawn

Boom.

Shawn

And.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, it can obviously be in result to a bad situation or a bad event but typically it's successful businesses. Will you know an owner will wake up one day and they'll be met with 45 1 ne-star google reviews from names on these Google profiles that they've never interacted with. They search their client or customer records. No interactions whatsoever but their star rating goes from a 4.8 to three point one overnight and it's it's been really detrimental to businesses I think a long time ago people would say hey sticks and stones. It's not going to do much damage but as the internet has grown and as. Google reviews and and review sites like that have been so prevalent and at the top of people's minds. We've seen cases and we've been involved in cases where we have financial documents showing that once this defamation occurred via multiple fake Google reviews. Profits dropped or we lost customers or people called canceling citing the reviews. So Google reviews or yelp reviews review sites are one of the more common for sure.

Shawn

Wow.

Ethan

Yeah, that's got to be huge I mean just think of any type of service if you're looking for an online defamation lawyer. You search for 2 people. 1 ne's got a 4.8 greeting and 1 ne's got a 3 who do you think you're you're going to call like of course it's going to influence you and so. Fake reviews could be incredibly damaging what what can those could say what can you do in that situation. Once you have somebody picking up the phone and calling and saying I've got these 45 1 star clearly fake reviews overnight.

Shawn

Um, what.

Michael Pelagalli

I.

Michael Pelagalli

Right? So in that case, the 45 overnight not something that you'd want to spend your money trying to approach each of these individuals 1 by one one because you don't know who they are the Google accounts they're using are likely burners or fake or not identifiable. So when a. Business owner comes to us and says hey I've got this problem. Unfortunately Google isn't being very responsive to their reports or Google can be inconsistent in how long they respond and they say what? what can we do and really the only way that you can attack a Google review like that. 40 plus or 30 plus twenty plus is to file. What's called the John Doe Lawsuit and to initially immediately subpoena google for all the information they have associated with those particular accounts and we've done this numerous occasions across the country. Um, to.

Shawn

Um.

Michael Pelagalli

A lot of success. You know we've been able to work with Google and obtain data and identify individuals associated with these accounts and a lot of times what we see is. For example, you know hypothetical situation will be ah a physician calls my office and says you know I just got all these reviews on vitals.com or webmd the physician will say I suspect. It might be a family member from a patient I had that the result didn't go well, you know I don't know who though and it's causing harm and we'll go through the process of unmasking them through the subpoena process and you know we found that.

Shawn

Um, ah.

Michael Pelagalli

Sometimes it's really not a family member and it's another physician from the county over trying to poach business. And yeah.

Shawn

Um, well that was that was gonna be my question is is what is the common source because you were mentioning the restaurant review thing and I was thinking. Yeah, but who would even do it like why who does like is it random I mean I know there are like random online trolls and groups of trolls who just.

Michael Pelagalli

Um.

Shawn

Target people and do horrible things is that typically what it is or or is it much more personalized harassment.

Michael Pelagalli

Great point, Good distinction there I think when the reviews come in response to some bad event that happens something public with a company or a business you are going to start getting like a beehive attack where people who have never dealt with you or never dealt with your business will start leaving reviews because they see.

Shawn

Yes.

Michael Pelagalli

The issue on Facebook someone on Facebook is saying go tank this business. They're not ethical and then they'll go to that point. Um, if it's not in response to some specific instance that the client can point to it is typically the act or the efforts of 1 person or a group masquerading as many.

Shawn

Right.

Shawn

Um, ah.

Michael Pelagalli

You know masquerading as legitimate clients and the way that we've been able to navigate this in the court system is you know because one of the things here is that speaking anonymously is not violative of the first amendment you can speak anonymously leaving Google reviews anonymously and um, even leaving you know Google reviews that just have a 1 ne-star of nothing. Yeah, 1 star out of 5 with no substance. You know what do you do with that. What how do you do that? There's no defamation right? because there's been nothing actually said we approach it with courts and we'll say hey this 1 person is pretending to be 7 8 people 40 people.

Shawn

Mer.

Michael Pelagalli

Just because they aren't leaving any substantive reviews or if they are but if they aren't just the mere fact of putting a one out of 5 communicates that there's been some negative interaction with the business and if that's not true that in and of itself can qualify as defamation. So you know we'll attack these reviews in a couple different ways with the courts.

Ethan

That's correct. So probably that's I mean.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, but ultimately you know we've been very successful on Google review cases and getting identifications. Yeah, but.

Shawn

That's interesting. Have you been less successful or about the same with the first scenario where the restaurant or the business has done something objective viably.

Michael Pelagalli

Terrible.

Shawn

Negative right? And so people are reacting by saying I give this not that I've ever been to this business but they're garbage I've seen them be garbage 1 star. Do you have less success. There is there more of a defense on the on the commenter's part there to say hey you know I was just.

Michael Pelagalli

1 stop be as success goes.

Shawn

Telling it honestly.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, much less success in those types of instances. Those are the types of cases where I'll talk to a client about hey let's not throw good money after bad, let's not try to file a lawsuit and unmask a lot of these people who we know. When we know or when we suspect that this is not 1 person pretending to be multiple people and this is actual that is where I talk to my clients about you know going after the head of the snake first we identify if there's 25 people that are saying things we will do our best with our client to identify the 2.

Shawn

Are the.

Michael Pelagalli

5 depending on the case, the smaller subset of the people who are really driving these interactions we will approach them First. We will see what sort of relief we can achieve what results we can get by going to those people first and then from there seeing what happens what trickles down because a lot of times the people who are driving. Negative interactions. We've been in cases where we've convinced them that they've done something wrong and that they'll then post to stop and they'll post to delete and we've found some success there but it's difficult. It's not quite the same as one person.

Shawn

So this this is actually interesting because it reminds me and it and this might be what you're talking about, but it reminds me of there's a lot of of Tiktok accounts right now of people whose whole their whole deal.

Michael Pelagalli

So right? yeah.

Shawn

Is like exposing the racist or you know, ah exposing whatever you know, whatever bad behavior. Um, and they've never really kind of you know I Never really thought about are those people putting themselves in like a considerable amount of Legal Peril even venturing into.

Michael Pelagalli

No I.

Shawn

Doing that because what happens if they're wrong and and and I guess another question of a similar question like are are are the people doing that your clients to say hey defend me um, or or is the people who are being attacked or is it a little a little of both.

Ethan

Are.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, it's an interesting and I can think of some content creators off the top of my head that we all probably know who do this type of thing and I think when they are putting videos up where it's stitched right on Tiktok. It's a stitched video where they're reacting to some actual video that's out there.

Shawn

There.

Shawn

Right.

Michael Pelagalli

Those content creators know that they can say quite a bit while commenting on a public news story and as long as they aren't being again the minimum threshold if they're talking about a private person being negligent as long as they are either providing only their opinion or saying things that are substantially true. They they aren't going to be. Um, found Libel or really approached all that often now. If For example, you know like the one there's creators who will take a video of someone being racist in public right? and they'll comment on the video This person's a horrible racist going back to our kind of first discussion Sean if the commenter then says hey this person.

Shawn

Right.

Michael Pelagalli

You know is racist and they're affiliated with the Nazi party or they're affiliated with the Kkk and they start taking those leaps away from what they're commenting on into just straight defamation. We have seen cases like that. Um I haven't.

Shawn

Um.

Shawn

Sure.

Michael Pelagalli

Been involved in any of those personally with those types of content creators. But that's kind of my breakdown of of those.

Ethan

Yeah, and what do you say and and we'll we'll discuss a bit about the the situation that we had dealt with specifically you know you're a popular creator. You're a popular influencer. You've got hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and as a result people are now making videos about you.

Michael Pelagalli

The fifth deep number.

Ethan

And saying things that are bad. Maybe they're not harmful, but it's it's ruffling your feathers because when people search for you on Youtube or Tiktok they're going to find these other video saying bad things about you but it might not rise to a level of clear defamation. What do you have to say to those.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, people.

Michael Pelagalli

When.

Michael Pelagalli

Hope.

Ethan

Rising popular creators who now have to deal with this uncomfortable situation that other people are going to capitalize off their success.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, it's definitely on the rise as creators across Youtube just get bigger and bigger and bigger There are going to be the channels like we talked about Ethan that are dedicated to just trashing or commenting or criticizing the bigger creators those little fish feeding off the big fish and in those discussions as you know we've had. Eaten with clients is you know is the juice. Worth the squeeze here is is going after this smaller creator and it it'll be a case by case, it'll depend on how horrific the statements are or how much they are actually profiting off of either your content or what you've said and making those types of um. Assessments of it. But that's where I do think that you know you want to take sort of ah take the top of the head of the snake first try to go after those creators but in that case I think it would probably be better for the creator to consider either addressing it. Publicly saying something about it having that be their statement that lives on their page and then they move on. You know they they ignore it. They acknowledge to their followers that this is out there and that you know they take issue with it and they move on or if you are a big enough creator and that person small enough think is it really worth it. You know. Is it worth it because one of the things that we always remind clients about is something called the stry end effect I don't know if you guys have that at all. Yeah, okay, so so um, yeah.

Ethan

No, what is it.

Shawn

Um, yes, yes, there's a whole South Park episode about it. Yeah, go ahead, get.

Michael Pelagalli

Exactly I'm not a south bar guy I did learn about that episode through this work. But you know the long and short of it was bar schraisan had a mansion off the coast of California somewhere. It was very secluded very private I don't know if this was maybe late 90 s early two thousand s but the California. Government was doing some sort of conservation project. They were taking satellite aerial photos of the coastline thousands and thousands and thousands of images across the coastline and it was put on a public website and I think a handful of those images just a couple showed. An aerial view of barber streiszan secluded residents and at the time before anything happened I think the website had hundreds if not maybe a few thousand views in general now Barber Shreisand is not like this her lawyers do not like this. They start going scorched earth sending.

Shawn

Yeah.

Michael Pelagalli

Letters lawsuits everything and it becomes national worldwide news and overnight that website goes from either hundreds or thousands of views to hundreds of thousands millions of views and so it's called now the strysand effect where you have this small problem. It is causing harm or causing you damage. You do something to.

Shawn

Yeah.

Michael Pelagalli

React or to counter it or to address it and it creates a bigger problem. That's that's what I would say do one of your big creators or someone who is dealing with a little fish think about that.

Shawn

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, with.

Ethan

Create got.

Ethan

That makes complete sense. You know you hear don't feed the trolls in a way and this is probably a worst case scenario of what happens if you do like.

Shawn

Well and I mean to your first point you know they're public figures now. So there is an element of you know when you decide to cross into that threshold of of public figure that um you know you're gonna be open to it but but on that same note.

Michael Pelagalli

Great point showing.

Shawn

I pose you this. We're all public figures now to a certain degree right? Especially like the younger generation like they are. We're still old enough that it feels like a choice right? like I don't have to be forever online I can just not um.

Michael Pelagalli

The.

Shawn

But you know I understand a younger generation of of kids growing up and being like well no, this is what life is if I'm not there then I don't exist in my friend group or my school so I need to have this persona and and everyone now seems to be vying for that bump of oh I got.

Michael Pelagalli

Canna speak.

Michael Pelagalli

So. Flip more quickly.

Shawn

Ah, now um now I'm famous right? So what is that thin line though of when do you become a public figure versus you're just a person who had 1 viral video. You know.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah, a person with one viral video I think it's going to be pretty extreme circumstances where a court deems them to be a public figure courts often look at exactly what was said in the context of that. So if Ethan is making a public. Presentation or statement. You know outside of the law about anything else and and that statement comes into question. Um, like sorry I got something tickle my throat. Sorry.

Ethan

Oop. Okay.

Shawn

Now take your time. This is what the edit buttons for baby. Ah God won't you take it back a little. Yeah.

Michael Pelagalli

I was gonna say yeah I just as I was talking. Yeah so okay, yeah, so we were talking about the the line between you were saying in terms of getting to be say that again. Sean.

Ethan

Ah.

Shawn

I I was basically so what is that thin line between public figure and person terminally online who is getting you know the the.

Michael Pelagalli

That's right.

Shawn

And know a little bump but isn't a public figure where where is where do the courts draw the distinction.

Michael Pelagalli

Okay, yeah, and what I was getting to was you know if the courts will look at what is being said and if Ethan has made himself and and taken steps to let's just say the topic was american football if you're giving a presentation and that comes under issue if it. The question will be is Ethan a public figure in the space of American Football you may be a public figure Ethan with respect to social media law and all those ventures that you have but football you may not be and the court will look at what have you done in your past. What have you done to put yourself out there as a public figure courts.

Shawn

Are.

Michael Pelagalli

You know are still trying to figure this out too though because you raise a good point Sean like is a content creator with 100000 followers a public figure or do you need to pass the million threshold or what does that mean and frankly courts are still figuring it out. You know like a lot of other areas of the law.

Shawn

Right.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, you know defamation is going to be continually changing laws stay behind the curve a bit you know Ethan can attest to that too in any aspect the real practical world is going to be advancing faster than the laws can so we're we're in you know, talking with courts presently about whether someone is a public figure or not you know is the fact that they're a.

Shawn

Yeah.

Michael Pelagalli

A well-known Physician who gives presentations and who lectures and who is reputable. Are they a public figure because they're successful and because their business thrusts them into that or do they have to do more and courts. Are you know I wouldn't say. Split but they each conduct their own analysis and look at really specific case facts. Yeah.

Ethan

Yeah, it seems like there's a spectrum between like private citizen public figure and then limited purpose public figure is someone that kind of is there. But I think what the challenge is going to be and kind of what Michael highlighted is there's no black and white line.

Shawn

That's.

Michael Pelagalli

Press move.

Ethan

It's a very large gray area and I think as a creator or as a private citizen. It might be popular about something. It's kind of like copyright fair use. There's factors that you look at. But if you ask 10 different courts is somebody a public figure or not for limited purpose. You might get 10 different opinions.

Michael Pelagalli

They never will say.

Ethan

Relying up upon 10 different facts and I think that the the and the only answer is having Michael back on our show next year and see how the law has evolved and be able to give us an update on that.

Michael Pelagalli

I Love that? yeah.

Shawn

Yes, the law the law remains an amorphous cruel mistress ever changing and never happy. Um.

Ethan

Um, and with that.

Michael Pelagalli

Um, good way to put it.

Shawn

So yeah, that that that's actually a a great a great note ah you know overall to to sort of tie this conversation up and I and I would love Michael for you to come back. You know in the future and and sort of discuss as things start to move. Um, but but in the meantime you know, ah like well. Um, a guy who gets online and I angrily type out a lot of horrible things about someone um and and and now I'm that someone who's been insulted and I come to you? How do I find you for help in these situations Michael or your firm or wherever you want people to be able to reach you.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah.

Michael Pelagalli

Yeah minklaw.com, we're all over Google so if you google defamation lawyers you know internet defamation. You'll find us but mink law. Ah you'll find a lot of materials on our website we we make it a point from our firm to not hide the ball when it comes to. How you are supposed to resolve these things. We don't want people to come to us saying I have no idea what to do or I have no background in this. We direct them to our website. We tell them hey look up what you're going through. We've probably written an article about it. We've probably done a video about it and that way when when it comes time to talk to me or another attorney here. That client potential client has so much more information they can go into that meeting with really pointed questions for me as opposed to just listening to me explain their case. They can come in and and and really have some good pointed questions that will help them get the result they desire which is going to be different. Across but um, yeah, minclaw.com we are actually starting to grow. Um, our social media channels I've been showing my firm Ethan's pages and his efforts trying to say you got to do a little bit more of this so you'll be able to find us all over the place online.

Shawn

Um, awesome.

Shawn

Yeah, that's awesome. Well and you can add. You can add this episode to your repertoire of hey go go listen or read this and and learn a little bit more first before you start asking us a million questions. That's awesome. You know me I'm online as ah as everyone knows I lurk around.

Michael Pelagalli

Yes. Now I.

Shawn

Um, but I'm you know unfindable Ethan what about? ah you and the and the social media law firm get those we plugs in baby.

Ethan

Yeah, totally yeah if you want to say Ethan you're great, but Michael was better have him on the show more you can find us online by searching for the social media law firm or search for me on Linkedin as Ethan Wall are you doing that right now.

Michael Pelagalli

And.

Shawn

Ah, no, what.

Michael Pelagalli

15 with people.

Ethan

Ah, Michael it's been a blast this really was from the time that Sean and I started doing season 2 of the podcast had asked I want to talk about defamation law and I said we need to hold this until we have the right expert and immediately you were the one that came to mind and I'm so glad that you were on the show today.

Michael Pelagalli

I.

Shawn

Um I did Um, yeah.

Shawn

Agreed.

Ethan

Um, were able to answer those questions for us.

Michael Pelagalli

Hey I Sincerely thank you guys for having me on anytime you guys want me back on I'm here. Um, and as I see new developments in defamation law I'll definitely send you guys some articles and updates and we'll have a. More you know, even more robust conversation next time. So. Thank you guys Both and I'm I'm a subscriber I'm a listener I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Shawn

Ah, fantastic. Awesome! Thank you guys Ethan I'll see you next time when we do another episode of this fantastic podcast together all right buddy bye.

Michael Pelagalli

Thank you.

Ethan

I'll see you then.

Ethan

Welcome to the social media law cast I am your host social media attorney Ethan Wall and with me is my friend and co-host Shanw Depasquale.

Shawn

Hi I am ah not an attorney but I married 1

Ethan

Perfect Sean before we get started I know you want to talk about viral memes. But I've got to fill you in on something we're not alone.

Shawn

Yes, who.

Shawn

Who is that walking in I see a man a familiar face.

Ethan

That's right, we've got another guest today and it is someone who you know someone who you love someone who you secretly wish to be. We've got our friend Dave Kushner joining us today.

Shawn

Oh a.

Dave

Well, that was.

Ethan

Dave is not only a friend of ours for 20 years he is also a senior social media manager for a New York based national communications agency. It's part of Dave's work he manages creative partnerships with influencers creators. He works on creative campaigns and best of all he is in. Our dungeons and Dragons Adventure Group Dave what's up man.

Dave

What's up guys This was that was the most welcoming I've ever felt into any kind of meeting but also um, it was a bit strange. That's just how I like it great to be here guys.

Shawn

Um.

Shawn

Yeah, that's how we run things here. Welcome to the social media law cast I'm your co-host Sean Deep Pasquali What if we just kept doing the intro over and over again. We never got out of it.

Dave

Hi Sean.

Ethan

Yeah, it's the best part of our episodes are the intros and it all goes downhill from there Elin all right? So what's cook and Sean what are we talking about right.

Dave

It's like too many cooks for them.

Shawn

Ah, yes, exactly ah, okay, so we had a really fun episode a couple episodes back where we talked about the one chip challenge. Ah. Dave this was a potato chip company releases really really spicy potato chips and they were capitalizing on a meme that had already existed by by including it in their ed campaign to say hey 1 chip challenge eat our spicy chip. We dare you or whatever. Ah, and then a boy died eating the chip. And it was bad for everyone and ah so Ethan and I talked about you know what were the legalities involved with that who was liable who could get in trouble who couldn't um and and it led me to thinking about you know other types of ad campaigns. That have involved. Ah you know viral memes or or have gone viral or or been involved with challenges. Um or to a lesser extent. Ah you know started um like a r g's which is like alternative reality games where you're. Essentially asking the audience to participate in whatever product you're selling. Um and Dave works in marketing and understands this world very well and so I pulled a couple of things that that I thought were interesting that I thought we could talk about and I know Dave has also some some.

Shawn

Some things that he brought to the table. so so yeah so let's get started I mean we we can start with ah the one that that first sprung to my mind that I remembered was the ice bucket challenge that was like probably the biggest one at it of its at the time like that was the first real like. Challenge that went viral and everyone was doing the challenge. Do you guys remember like where that started what that was.

Dave

So I I do remember the ice bucket challenge. Well um I got soaked by ice you know ice water in the crisp fall air of New York city so I remember it well um I'll just kind of.

Shawn

Ah, yeah.

Dave

Back up just a little bit though I remember the first kind of one that was a truly organic viral sensation that I remember and when I say organic for people you know, not necessarily in the in the industry is that this was not. This as far as I know anyway, this was not orchestrated by the brand. This was not orchestrated by putting money in it. But do you guys remember um, being iced.

Shawn

No with that. Oh no, what? no.

Ethan

Oh yeah, Syrov iced.

Dave

Exactly it exactly smearing off ice I mean they had the luck they it just worked out well as again far as I know could be could be k-fabe that I'm buying into but um, you know it just seems like college students. Around the country just kind of decided it would be a funny prank to each other to hide a smear off ice somewhere and would cause an unbeowing victim to have to then get down on one knee and chug said. Sme off ice so you know that one really kicked off big I think that the other day someone mentioned getting iced and they weren't talking about smirnoff at all and then we were like oh wait what someone brought a cube then kind of in my office we were joking about like someone's going to open up their filing cabinet and. And find a warm ah smear off ice. So me the first truly viral one that I can remember was smeared off ice.

Shawn

Ah.

Ethan

Yeah, and what's really interesting about this one and the difference between the two which I think is going to really help guide the discussion today from a legal perspective is on the 1 hand smirov didn't seem to sponsor or endorse. Smearing off ice challenge. It. It was kind of like tide pods in a way but but less deadly where like the company itself wasn't endorsing the challenge. It's just the world thought this was cool. It was fun and they continued it where the ice bucket challenge seems to be a. A company sponsored challenge one that they began by partnering with a few influencers who did it and then it kind of picked up and they wanted people to participate in this and as a result of it. They had tremendous success in creating awareness only for their cause in the business but really rode the viral sensation.

Shawn

And then.

Shawn

Yeah.

Shawn

Um, well and it it seems like these days you're getting more of those than actually organic ones you know I mean like it feels like once once.

Ethan

And so.

Shawn

Corporations became aware that this was a viable form of marketing they jumped on it and as always happens once like a corporation does something it becomes considerably less cool. Um, and so like the consciousness shifts away you know because then now it's like oh this went from being a fun thing that we all organically did to now I'm just being shilled at you know, Um, So I think you see less of them naturally forming now.

Dave

I mean I don't know I don't know I think that a lot of them. Ah, most of them are playing out on social I mean if you see I mean we're not far removed at all. It's still ongoing is the ah the. The barbie marketing campaign that was an incredibly well orchestrated marketing campaign that happened everywhere it happened in your home. It happened on your devices. It happened outside of the home and happened with people's how they were addressing. It happened almost everywhere and. You know that was something that was sparked by by the movie studio. Um, but you know people people are still calling. People were putting up I'm a Barbie I'm this Ken I'm this graphic you know that is still ongoing. Um, you know to this day. It's ubiquitous. So I think that you know it will.

Shawn

Um, well tangentally.

Dave

Like like anything it all matters about you know, First of all, there's a lot of luck. Um, but then also there's a lot of resources that have to go into it. Um, ah Barbie the Barbie movie they famously paid more for the marketing of that movie than to actually make the movie. So you know you have to have a lot of resources you have to have a lot of luck but also there has to be a real natural alignment. Um, you know it has to really authentically align with the product and then with the audience. Ah so in the case of the smeared off ice that worked perfect because.

Ethan

Yeah.

Dave

It was targeted at college students or bros and you know ah bros of all types. Um, it aligned authentically and it was a fun thing to do. Um so you know I think that it's harder for things to get that exit trajectory and.

Shawn

Um, well.

Dave

Catch fire as Ordinaryd narrowly as they used to in the days of viral marketing campaigns but they are still very well and alive.

Ethan

I'm just waiting for Leo or Rex his hand to like appear on Dave's screen with a brown paper bag in it. Ah hum leo x das kids with the sir not ice there with.

Dave

Ah, my God now would be a proud parenting moment if I ever get when when my when I get iced by my toddlers that'll be I'm getting kind hit about it.

Shawn

Um.

Shawn

You know the the Barbie one. The Barbie one is particularly interesting because that like dovetailed the the like the Barbie Marketing was brilliant right? and it generated a ton of excitement for Barbie that still continues. But then. An interesting thing happened that I think was pretty organic which is the whole ah barnheimer conversation that then sprung out of it which is you know the movie oppenheimer was going to be released the same weekend I'm not I I don't even know where that.

Shawn

Originated other than social media. It's just started to hey which movie are you gonna go see Barbie or Oppenheimer and then it became a showdown between Barbie and Oppenheimer and then someone made the portmanteau of of barbenheimer and then that snowballed and then you had people going to the movies dressed as Barbie and Oppenheimer. So like that. For the oppenheimer side ended up being a real win because I think it elevated interest in that movie beyond what would have been normal for like a period piece about a horrific time in our world's history. You know.

Dave

Yeah, no, that's actually that's a great example of you know where where something that was put out and put out um by a marketing team then became a meme and then naturally organically combined with something else. Through social media users and then it became even bigger because of that and yeah I'm sure the oppenheimer people were thrilled to get a little bit of that marketing rub from the Barbie movie and you know that's just something that happened organically and it happened because people.

Shawn

I'm sure.

Dave

It captured people's imaginations that contrast um to your point before they tried to duplicate that. Um you know it came out organically they tried duplicating it because um, recently a new saw movie and a new Paw Patrol movie came out so they were all. At the same weekend. So Everybody was saying forget Barbenheimer What are you doing for saw Patrol which is hysterical saw Patrol but didn't really it came and went didn't really pick up didn't didn't really have the same juice as.

Shawn

Um, yeah, yeah, because neither one of those movies had the juice behind it that Barbie did and I think and I think the the other issue is the.

Dave

Barbenheimer.

Shawn

While it's a similar juxtaposition right of like saw to pawperol. There was something really, ah thematically perfect about a movie about a female lead character and a male lead character and 1 is about pink and hope and the other one is about death and destruction. And like you know you sort of had some of those similar themes with the saw paw patrol thing but the 1 to one wasn't the same and and it it didn't have the same organic feeling that the other one I think did in order to to become what it what it became? um.

Dave

Yeah, and and and neither saw or paw patrol are currently in the zeitgeist to the amount that Barbie and Oppenheimer were individually on their own at that point.

Shawn

Um, yes, exactly exactly? Um, so okay, this actually can lead us into ah another area of conversation which is let's talk about um when things.

Ethan

Break up.

Shawn

Don't go right right? So like this saw paw patrol thing like that someone tried it. It sputtered fail right? There's plenty of so many failures didn't work. Um, but there's other campaigns. So like the 1 chip challenge right? that have.

Dave

They there they I've 5 puppies got saw in half. It didn't work.

Shawn

Um, considerable backlash. So it's not just like it fails and it is not remembered but like it it fails spectacularly and then it has blowback to the company. Um, so let's talk about some of those ah one of them that I remember is the red bull. Stratus jump this is when red bull um, trying to sponsor. Ah um, ah with decided to sponsor Felix Bomb garters jump from the stratosphere right? and like it went okay, but like. Have been a disaster no like had that jump not gone. Well there would have been and this is where Ethan will come very heavily into the conversation I'd imagine there are like a lot of liability and safety regulation issues that probably went into even launching that campaign. That could have gone horribly for red bull. Um, and so I wonder if like that is something that you as a lawyer would have advised against or or maybe not maybe there's enough protections there that that it's not that big of a deal.

Ethan

Yeah, you know what lawyers are really good at the law. You know we suck at being really innovative running businesses and marketing and so you know I could just imagine the situation where like you know the.

Shawn

What What do you think on that one.

Ethan

Like skater exec from red bull like walks in the lawyer's office is's like hey man like we want to sponnger this dude jumping out of this stratosphere like do you have a waiver for that and like you know the lawyer of course is going to is going to say like this is it's just crazy from a legal perspective. What happens if he dies what happens if it doesn't go wrong. What if we produce the entire thing and just the weather conditions aren't right. He doesn't jump like you know the lawyers are never going to jump on this as being a great idea from a legal perspective but that's not what lawyers are good at I'm sure in this particular situation. There were waivers up the wazoo about. If this goes wrong red bull's not going to be responsible. What I think would have been look the guy dime would have been awful but really I think would have been worse would have been from like a Pr campaign perspective this this thing didn't go right? It was going to probably affect red bull's public relations campaign a lot worse than it might have affected them. From a legal perspective.

Dave

And and and you know just for my clarification because I don't I remember this I remember that when the red bull was doing the flute tog also thing where they were challenging people to kind of come up with their own flying devices now. It's me that one seems.

Shawn

Fitter.

Shawn

Yes.

Dave

Much more ah rife for liability. Where's this one isn't I mean it's a stunt. It's a stunt that they hope I think would go viral in terms of intention attention to it. But I don't think that they are hoping to um, try to encourage other people to jump from the Stratosphere right.

Shawn

Um.

Ethan

Right? And exactly and I think this is what separates and Dave brought up a really good example at the beginning of the episode when I look at this from a legal perspective. It's what separates the sirnoff ices from the red bull flu talkx because in the sirranoff ice perspective. The company didn't create it.

Shawn

Right.

Ethan

I Don't know if they really endorsed it meaning I don't think they put it on their website and rolled into the marketing campaign they acknowledged I'm sure that it was happening but they didn't have any responsibility you you can't enjoy what people are doing in the red Bull Flu talk situation ribble like hey go ahead and create some rickety machine and see if you can race it you know down a course.

Dave

Um, yeah.

Ethan

And so in that situation there is more of a potential for corporate responsibility more of a potential for legal issues when you have a company that's sponsoring a challenge and it goes wrong then when the general public itself just decides to rally behind something.

Shawn

Okay, so what I'm hearing is you want me to give you an example of something that went worse. So let's talk about yet. Well that was a week ago so let's talk about. Ah.

Dave

Well, we've started off with a person dying all right with potato chip we could We can agree. We can agree that's like pretty worst case scenario in terms of marketing potato chips.

Ethan

Um.

Shawn

Yes, yes, absolutely absolutely. Um.

Ethan

Yes, and look the result of that was it's pulled from the shelves whether they're responsible or not. We still don't know, but but the but the pr result like the legal liability right now is 0 until an Autopsy comes back and said your chip killed this person and the question is why didn't the millions of other people who ate the chip.

Shawn

Yes.

Ethan

Didn't die like legally wise I don't see them in ah in a really difficult position but from ah from a operations pr standpoint pay spicy chips are off the shelves. They're gone. They had to recall millions of dollars I'm sure in inventory.

Shawn

Um, die yeah.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan

So right that one really went horribly wrong from from from all different angles.

Dave

Yeah.

Shawn

So There was there was this game launched ah like 2016 Pokemon go right? and it was huge, right? and the if you if you slept through it. It was on your phone you would open up your phone to a virtual map that was. Um, ah, overlaid over the real World. You know so like you're you know you're looking at at your neighborhood essentially and it would show you where in the area there were potential pokemon to then go and catch. But this led into ah. And and this is an interesting one because this doesn't end with the with the product getting recalled right? They fought through this but this led to um trespassing concerns legal issues surrounding accidents of people walking in front of cars getting hit by cars getting run over by things falling into sewers. Falling down into construction zones. It led to data privacy issues. It led to people getting almost shot walking through someone's backyard to try to find a pokemon. So so.

Ethan

1

Shawn

This this is it a case now where everything that could go wrong. Probably did go wrong, but the company managed to persevere through it and the game. The product is still. It's still getting updates to this day. So how do you from a marketing perspective Dave. If you had a product like this that then all of these things started to unfold. But while at the same time. The product is going through the roof everyone on the planet is talking about your product but also all these horrible things are happening. How do you deal with that from a marketing standpoint. What is your What's your thoughts on that and then Ethan. From a law state a legal standpoint what happens on that end.

Dave

I Mean this is I This is a bit out of my professional expertise I would assume again this is big assumptions that you know there's a good amount of terms and conditions for when you.

Shawn

Yes.

Dave

Sign up to play this game when you go to use it in any way shape or form but then also like whatever the game is telling you whatever the games directions are don't supersede the law so you know if the game says you got to catch them all and.

Shawn

Ah, ah, ah.

Dave

There's a squirrel that's you know in a person house in a person's house that is locked up. You know, common sense which ain't so common would tell you that you're not catching that squirrel. Um, you know you're not allowed to trespass. You're not allowed to.

Ethan

What more scroll but.

Dave

You don't become invulnerable from cars you you still have to practice basic safety. Um and and to me to me the the pokemon go story from a marketing perspective. You know while all of those things are valid that those.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Dave

That negative press didn't necessarily hurt Pokemon Go um you know it like you said it's It's still popular. Maybe they had to ah plug some bugs change some things around but it's still popular. It's so in operation so to me from a marketing standpoint.

Shawn

No quite the opposite.

Shawn

The.

Dave

People are using it people are crazy about it. People are going nuts about it have fun. Don't break any laws. Be safe. You know, make sure you you're mentioning that in all of your messaging but got to catch them all.

Ethan

I want when Dave led with I can't really provide a professional opinion on this I thought it was going to be because he's in his early 40 s and we kind of missed the pokemon phase like we had pogs we like at pogs in middle school like we hit that phase.

Shawn

Um.

Shawn

Yeah, yeah.

Ethan

Professional wrestling phase and I kind of felt like while we played a ton of video games a lot growing up Pokemon like wasn't really part of our culture I think we kind of like we just collectively all in our early 40 s kind of just missed that boat a little bit. We're like.

Shawn

True.

Shawn

Yeah, absolutely. However, we were alive when pokemon go came out so for me anyway I had no that was my first introduction really to pokemon because I didn't watch the cartoons I didn't play the original video games.

Ethan

The millennial generation grew up with with pokemon. Yeah.

Shawn

But that shit was fun and I had a bunch of friends that were literally running around hollywood catching Pokemon like groups of like 20 people running around hollywood it was the most fun summer ever. Ah.

Ethan

Totally or what Dave what Dave pointed out was actually true. There were 2 class action lawsuits filed against the pokemon company for pokemon go related types of of issues and when I was kind of researching this right before the episode.

Shawn

Wow.

Ethan

Kind of googled like Pokemon go legal issues like what happened and what was crazy to me wasn't that there were lawsuits for it. It was the amount of personal injury law firms that have created blogs and created like practice area pages.

Shawn

Here.

Shawn

Interesting. Wow yeah.

Ethan

To pick up on pokemon go related injuries right? Which to me this is crazy like when I had I have a friend of mine Justin Rundle he's an attorney in Miami and for a while he was what's that run for a while he was marketing himself as kind of the uber attorney of like look.

Dave

Wow.

Shawn

The rund the rund. Yeah.

Ethan

If there's an accident that involves an uber call call him and he was kind of carving out that niche knowing that people were going to be searching for not just a car accident lawyer but an uber lawyer and the amount of personal injury law firms that came up saying have you.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

Hitten by a car because somebody was playing pokemon go did somebody get injured in your yard based upon using pokemon go call our law firm and we're going to.

Shawn

So does that mean, So does that mean that.

Dave

You are you are are you or 1 of your loved ones suffer from mesohelioma from playing Pokemon go.

Shawn

Ah, no, but so but so does that mean that there's a lot of opportunistic Attorneys or does it mean that this was happening I mean yes, but does it also mean that this was happening so frequently and we weren't even hearing about it that.

Dave

Um.

Shawn

Ah enough Attorneys were like man we better bake a whole page for this because like yeah I got people getting hit by Pokemon go cars left and right.

Ethan

Yeah I don't think it was so much of the latter scenario as much as it was something that became so popular in pop culture and they wanted to be able to grab whatever search traffic was going to be out there for these different types of cases and look vulture look where.

Shawn

Um, yeah.

Shawn

Vultures.

Ethan

We're vultures two days ago like Reese's peanut butter cups violated sweeps staks laws and I was like Sean we need to get a podcast out on this asap because people are searching for it now. They won't search for it later so like.

Shawn

Yeah, baby and we needed those sweet sweepstakeak searches by the way if you are running a sweepstakes and you're looking for a sweepstakeaks attorney. You should definitely reach out to the social media law firm and ask for a consultation free consultations by the way initially so get ah an initial free consultation call. Do it.

Ethan

Um.

Shawn

Don't hesitate. Okay, back to the show. Ethan yeah yeah, it happens.

Ethan

Is that our is that our advertising that we have on the podcast. Ah.

Dave

And ah.

Dave

Um, I Just want point out I remember ah you know we were We were told that we missed out on Pokemon First of all, we're elder millennials a and and a yeah yeah and a and.

Shawn

Yeah, elder millennials. Let's slow down with the Gen and gen x stuff.

Dave

B there was a time period when I remember when Ethan actually identified as a Pokemon Ethan wall um Ethan Wall I mean so what? But what it's funny is that pokemon go. It seems like what you're saying is.

Shawn

Yes, so do I So do I I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna blow up his spot. But also um, yeah.

Ethan

Um, eat more. Ah.

Ethan

Um, ah.

Dave

It went viral Obviously amongst ah the audience and amongst consumers but also for opportunistic lawyers. It went viral. You know.

Ethan

Yeah, this was coffee right? This is the classic case of when things go wrong, Go right? meaning bad publicity was good publicity for pokemon because they were they they were like look we we were telling people.

Shawn

Um, yeah, and yeah, um, yeah.

Ethan

In the terms and conditions as Dave says not to conduct trespassing. They said in response to people who were who are driving their cars that the app wouldn't work if you're drive at the speed is more than twenty miles per hour which of course as you know.

Shawn

But that that came after though so they they as this was all happening. They were pushing updates almost daily. So like first you got an update that was like hey watch where you're walking dumb dumb and you had to click like yes I agree to watch where I'm walking and then it then they started to throttle. Well if you're going more than. The x number miles an hour. The app won't work at all and you know.

Ethan

Right? This is the classic case of someone who followed Google maps and drove off a cliff. Okay, it really is it's it's kind of like it's it's the reason. Unfortunately I think Dave Dave like hit the nail in the head. The common sense is so common.

Shawn

Yes, yes.

Ethan

If your car has cruise control and you read the manual. There is a warning that says you must still operate the car. It's not going to drive it for you because people have followed Google Maps Apple Maps Mapquest something like that and drove off a cliff and then sued the Mapquest company saying.

Shawn

And yep.

Ethan

You should be liable for this negligence and so I think with Pokemon go was the classic case of them saying look. We're going to continuously make legal updates because we have to hedge against these worst case scenarios. But we're not pulling these things from the shelf because all this bad publicity.

Shawn

Lumb dumps.

Ethan

Is causing more and more people to learn about Pokemon go and download the app and and play for themselves.

Shawn

All right? So Ethan you found in your research. Ah a real bad 1 like 1 that did not end well for the company it. It did not go as planned I think they didn't even successfully.

Shawn

I think they didn't even successfully keep the campaign running right? and this is the burger king whopper. Ah, um that I was the sacrifice campaign it was as it was called. Why don't you walk us through what your research turned up on the burger King Sacrifice campaign

Ethan

Yes, before I jump in Dave do you know about this sacrifice but did you remember the sacrifice campaign.

Dave

You know in in the in the notes it I It reminded me of it I didn't think of yeah, didn't now that we're talking about it I recall it but but bring me up to date.

Shawn

Yeah.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

Gotcha yeah sure because we all remember the like wake up with the king we're like the creepy king is kind of like in bed handing you a breakfast sandwich. You know that I remembered but the burger King Sacrifice campaign said that.

Shawn

Yeah.

Ethan

If you unfriended 10 friends on Facebook you get a free whopper which is brilliant because it's easy. The harm isn't that bad. It's a low barrier entry any teenager in the world's going to do this for fun. So the campaign was cool and it worked but the problem was that it violated Facebook's terms and conditions because and user privacy because what happened was an order for the campaign to be effective for burger king's marketing perspective once someone unfriended someone on Facebook for the campaign.

Shawn

Um, say yes.

Ethan

The person who was unfriended got a notification from burger King saying you've been unfriended and you are worth less than one tenth of a whopper this person and and Facebook kind of reached out to burger king and they were like this is funny I get it.

Shawn

Ah, but.

Ethan

But we'll let you continue running the campaign but you can't have these messages being sent to somebody else because it violates the user privacy it violates our terms of Burger King was like you know what? it's not worth it unless we can let the people know. That they've been unfriended for one tenth of a whopper so they remove the campaign. But if you go onto a website called a wayback machine. Um, you can find old websites and you will so you will find one that says whopper sacrifice has been sacrificed. In the end your love for the whopper sandwich proved to be stronger than 233906 friendships.

Shawn

Ah.

Dave

Um, well I'm I'm just I'm so glad and my heart is warm to see that Facebook was so concerned over their user's data privacy see um you know we'd hate. We'd hate to see people's data be used for nefarious.

Shawn

Um, ah ah.

Shawn

Yeah, Seriously, you know what's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave

Me ends like you know getting a whopper or you know something as bad as that. Um, it's funny because you know I'm just thinking about this is that the last thing any social media platform wants people to do is unfollow people.

Shawn

Um, this.

Dave

They only want people to follow them to gain their user base to keep activity going. Um so I would just maybe think that maybe there was a um I don't maybe an added benefit hypothetically hypothetically of.

Shawn

Yep yep.

Shawn

The.

Dave

Rush down there. Um, hypothetically just just spitballing.

Shawn

See and the and the part of the story that warms my heart from a comedy and bits perspective is that Burger King was so committed to the bit that they were like you know what? this is not worth if we can't do the bit. Of telling people. They're worth less than one tenth of a whopper.. What's the fricking point and they walked away and that is kudos that is like so true Ma commitment to the bit. They're like if there's no joke then there's no Joke. We're not gonna just. Give whoppers away for people unfriending them. We need to get the joke in there God Bless That's an amazing.. That's an amazing thing. It's very funny and I wonder how they were able to. Ah.

Dave

Sorry I didn't I didn't hear I was just unfriending you guys on Facebook because so.

Ethan

Ah, this this brings up trauma. Do you guys? remember not to go too far off topic. But when Myspace had the top 10 friends right.

Shawn

Yeah, yes, top 8 Yeah.

Dave

Stop 8 I think it was stop 8

Ethan

Started with like 5 and then went to 8 and then people were complaining that you were dropped off and so they kept expanding it to where you no longer were relevant because it was your top 25 friends or something like that. But yeah I remember in law school. Yeah.

Shawn

Yep, yeah.

Dave

I just want to say shout out shout out to Tom shout out to Tom from Myspace dude didn't he didn't ah you know do anything evil that we know of didn't destabilize any kind of democracies or anything he just you know.

Shawn

He was a real one.

Shawn

Um, Nope Nope he got in and he got out.

Dave

Gave us a little. He gave us. He gave us a place for us to post um gifts and emo lyrics to songs and rate our friends you know and then he left he left great. It was a real one Tom.

Ethan

Gift.

Shawn

Yep.

Ethan

To Jeff Jeff but just it's Jeff it's giftf. It's jefff.

Shawn

What.

Dave

That's a gift So when you say the word graphic. How do you say? Do you say graphic or graphic.

Ethan

Like I say I say graphic and I also look to the person that created the word and the person who created the word released a press release and said hey I know there's a lot of debate I created this word and the word is pronounced gif and so I get that.

Dave

You know what.

Ethan

Pnemonically you might disagree. But that's okay because mnemonically you might be correct but you're wrong because it's Jeff.

Shawn

But isn't it also true that Society has a much stronger grasp on word usage and word definition and that words naturally change and their definitions and pronunciations change over time so much so that like. Dictionaries will update entries on things and add new words all the time. So Even though the guy who came up with it says it's one way if the larger societal understanding and acceptance is another way I think typically the way language works is is the societal. Ah, ah, a winner gets adopted basically and that just kind of becomes a de facto.

Ethan

That makes sense and look and I agree with Dave I agree pneumonically it's incorrect, but but my feelings of whether it's right or wrong fly against what this guy has said.

Shawn

Right? But you don't spit all still spell the word shop with 2 p's and an e at the end right? like ye old shoppi because with languages progressed past that and now we just say shop right? Oh god ah um, all right.

Ethan

There's a different way to spell shoppy.

Shawn

Dave Do you have any other ones that that jump out at you things that that that you want to discuss or have we tapped ourselves on this topic and now we're just going to devolve into arguing over how things are pronounced.

Dave

Um, you know I just want to know data or data.

Shawn

Don't know it's It's data because that was his name on Star Trek the next generation.

Ethan

Ah.

Ethan

Case closed.

Dave

Honestly I am a hundred percent on the same level with you on that.

Shawn

See this is why the 3 of us have been friends for almost thirty years because we always end up seeing eye to eye guys. This was the most fun I missed doing our podcast not that I'm saying we should start it again. But I do miss it and um I loved talking to the 2 of you.

Ethan

Mr. Fast

Shawn

I hope that this was interesting to people I had fun. So I don't really care one way or the other cause that's all that matters is what are you doing in your moment but before we go it was a most important part of every show which is where we plug stuff that's important to us. Dave is there anything you want to promote plugged. You have a do you want people to follow you on social media or your company's website anything like that.

Dave

Um, you could if ah you go ahead and follow me on Instagram my um, my Instagram name is Dave Dot Kush that's DAVE period k u s h um if you just are entertained by this nonsense. There's lots of nonsense there. Also if you want to.

Shawn

Um, is that.

Dave

Go ahead and find me on Linkedin is where I'll talk more about topics like this and my name is David Kushner there and I'm not difficult to find. Yeah, it's David Kushner um it's the one that says social media and influencer marketing and has this space on it.

Shawn

Nice yeah, look for.

Ethan

Yeah, Dave you have a lot of really good updates on kind of the state of influencer marketing tips trends things like that particularly on Linkedin so don't shy away from the dark course of Linkedin if you're like I just want to follow him on Instagram you're going to get a little bit of different stuff following him on both.

Shawn

Yeah, different flavors.

Dave

Ah, Linkedin Linkedin is underrated I I have grown to appreciate it I you know it's really found itself. It's really found. Um, its form. It's very interesting. It seems like a lot of the more intellectual conversations that would happen that used to happen on Twitter now happen on on Linkedin when it comes to specific topics of professionalism or.

Shawn

Yeah, business. Yeah yeah.

Dave

Industries and things like that. Yeah that that conversation has largely migrated off of off of Twitter off of x which no one's ever calling it? um and you know Linkedin is is really interesting for that. It's really a great place for conversation. So.

Shawn

No, um now.

Dave

Yeah, come find me on Linkedin where I'm sharing a lot about our clients about influencer work. Um, and then some of the causes and things like that that are important to me.

Shawn

Awesome! And then Ethan speaking of Linkedin ah, where can people find you on Linkedin and where can people reach out to the law firm.

Ethan

Yeah, if you want to earn your one tenth of a whopper by connecting with me on Linkedin and then removing that connection I won't be harmed by it because I would want the whopper to but you could find me on Linkedin by searching for Ethan Wall or you could search for the social media law firm on any channel that you like and let us know whether or not it is Gif or Gif regardless of what you do, it will help us with the algorithm. So please please please find us online join the discussion.

Shawn

Yeah, and I'm ah available to anyone at all times if you just close your eyes and picture me in your mind I will appear and give you advice or just general good tidings and on that note we bring ourselves to the end of another exciting episode of.

Dave

What.

Ethan

Um, a.

Shawn

Social media logcast we did it Dave thanks for coming Ethan thanks for hosting me I'm just here bye.

Ethan

Um, next you got.

Dave

Thanks for having me guys. Um, we didn't even talk about Burger King's latest, most other successful viral thing campaign which is the whopper song and that will now be in my head until the next time we talk.

Ethan

Play us lot with the whopper songs. John.

Shawn

Um, ah, whopper song.