Why Everybody Has Something to Hide with Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva - Modern CTO Recap

Podcast: Modern CTO

Published: 2026-03-23

Duration: 2646

Guests: Guy Kawasaki

What Happened

Guy Kawasaki, known for his role as a legendary Apple evangelist and currently the Chief Evangelist at Canva, speaks about the importance of privacy in the digital age. He argues that everyone has something to hide, discussing how everyday actions like sharing Netflix passwords or sensitive messages can compromise privacy.

Kawasaki highlights the role of metadata in revealing personal activities, emphasizing that companies like Meta and Apple retain about 12 pieces of metadata, whereas Signal only retains three: phone number, account creation date, and last usage date. He advocates for using Signal to enhance privacy and security in text messaging.

Privacy concerns are illustrated with examples such as a granddaughter texting about a missed period in states with strict abortion laws, highlighting the potential risks of data exposure. Kawasaki discusses the pressure on companies like Apple to provide user data to governments, which underscores the need for minimal data retention.

Edward Snowden is mentioned as a controversial figure, with Kawasaki viewing him as a patriot for his role in highlighting privacy issues. Kawasaki stresses the principle that organizations cannot misuse data they do not possess, advocating for minimal data retention as a key privacy strategy.

Kawasaki describes his self-published book 'Everybody Has Something to Hide', which he offers for free periodically to promote privacy and democracy. He spent $20,000 on production, including translation into Spanish, to make it accessible to a wider audience.

The episode touches on Kawasaki's evangelism strategies, emphasizing the power of demos over slides and the use of relatable stories to communicate effectively. However, he warns that stories should be critically examined for missing elements, using the example of successful college dropouts to illustrate this point.

Kawasaki encourages listeners to question narratives, especially on emotionally charged topics, and provides tools like Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT to verify facts. He uses the example of a 90-year-old smoker to demonstrate how stories can be misleading if not critically evaluated.

Key Insights