Cybersecurity, Agency & Online Consent (Part 1) | Youth Empowerment Radio S3E13

Host Carmen welcomes MJ, a cybersecurity expert and owner of Tiny Gigantic, to Youth Empowerment Radio (Season 3, Episode 13, Part 1) for a conversation about digital security, agency, and consent online. MJ shares their background—Korean adoptee, queer, early tech interests, photojournalism, and community organizing—and explains how their work supports activists by helping them communicate with appropriate privacy and confidentiality. They describe cybersecurity as an ongoing behavior and process centered on aligning tools with movement values, protecting relationships with differing risk levels, ensuring reliability and incident response, and building user agency around who we communicate with and what data trails exist. They discuss how “free” platforms monetize users via targeted advertising and profiling, how engagement-driven algorithms can amplify polarization and radicalization pathways, and raise concerns about AI tools retaining prompts even after users delete conversations, while noting Proton’s Lumo as a privacy-forward alternative.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:07 Why Cybersecurity Matters
02:05 MJ Background and Tiny Gigantic
04:32 From Photojournalism to Security
06:55 Defining Cybersecurity for Movements
12:58 Agency and Online Consent
14:55 Terms of Service and Being the Product
17:48 How Targeted Ads Really Work
22:23 Algorithms Rage and Polarization
29:01 AI Privacy and Deleting Data
33:24 AI Risks and Closing Thoughts