I had to look up the 4Privacy app. It looks like a Kickstarter for a new app that is a combined password manager and secure messenger: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4privacyapp/4privacy-ap...

The premise of this article is that the author doesn't understand how the company will make money, but it seems fairly clear from the Kickstarter: The $25 Kickstarter price only buys users 1 year of service, after which they presumably need to pay an annual subscription fee like everyone else.

As far as I can tell, they're basically aiming to recreate something like 1Password + Signal (or any variation of password manager and encrypted messenger) as a SaaS and using this YouTuber's audience to bootstrap the popularity.

Where I get uneasy is how quickly SmarterEveryDay seems to have switched from a YouTube channel about explaining things into a YouTube channel about stoking "Big Tech" fears as a way to sell apps. The latest video is title "Is Your Privacy An Illusion? (Taking on Big Tech) - Smarter Every Day 263". They drive out with a drone and get video footage of a Facebook datacenter which quickly transitions into some scary talk, overlaid with animations, about the government can extract "your data" from these datacenters. He speaks very confidently, saying things like "this is exactly what happens" as he talks about government subpoenas as if they're happening to us all on a regular basis.

This transitions into a friendly claim that he's building an app to change all of this by using client-side encryption. The app is apparently for storing things like passwords, IDs, and other things you'd normally put in BitWarden or 1Password.

The app pitch builds heavily on "Big Tech" fears, which SmarterEveryDay is gladly amplifying and exaggerating wherever possible, in order to sell their own password manager and messenger app that doesn't exist yet. They're not shy about it, either. In fact, you can even pay an extra $75 to "send a message to big tech" as a Kickstarter reward:

> Pledge $100 or more

> APP + SEND BIG TECH A MESSAGE

> Get access to the 4Privacy app (1 year) and insider access to news and updates.

> You're also adding extra support to help our team win and sending big tech a message that you want privacy.

> INCLUDES:

> 4Privacy App - 1 Year of Access

> Insider access to news and updates

> Sends a message to Big Tech

You don't even get additional years of access for spending the extra $75. You just "send a message to big tech" by sending your money to these developers.

For a channel that has built a reputation for explaining things, I find it very distasteful to see them switching abruptly to selling fear as a way of selling their app. The type of content their app appears to hold (passwords, IDs) isn't even the type of content that people give to Facebook and other providers anyway, so it doesn't even solve the problem they're using to scare their viewers.

Worse yet, it's generally bad advice to have someone use unproven, closed-source encrypted communication tools from small developer teams when we have more proven options from more experienced cryptographers available to us.

I'm not as doubtful as this author about the company making a simple password manager app work, but I do find it distasteful for them to use a YouTuber known for explaining things to capitalize on people's fears to sell them an app like this. Supposedly they have a plan to make part of it open source later, but we'll see.