Taylor Lorenz

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sex Podcast.
My guest today is Washington Post technology reporter Taylor Wrens,
the social media expert. Taylor, good to have you on
the podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me. So what's
the future of Instagram? Gosh, Instagram is kind of in trouble,

(00:30):
to be honest. I feel like they're going through an
identity crisis right now. Um. I think that TikTok kind
of came and ate their lunch a little bit, and
now they're struggling to capture back some of that like
relevancy that they used to have. It's just become a
very saturated, bloated network. It's it's basically just like a
mobile version of the Facebook Blue app. And as many

(00:54):
of us know, the Facebook Blue app, the famous original
Facebook book, is really really sort of struggling these days.
So Instagram's in trouble. Okay, let's go back to Facebook
because Facebook pre dates Instagram. Tell me your thoughts on Facebook.
I think Facebook has just become one of those kind

(01:15):
of like zombie companies. They can't innovate. Um, they basically
only innovate their acquisitions, which they can't do anymore. Because
of all the antitrust stuff. So they've kind of backed
themselves into a corner. Um, they made this hard pivot
into VR, UM, you know, renaming the company Meta. Mark Zuckerberg,
you know, spent pretty much all last year hyping the
so called Metaverse, which is literally just VR, which he's

(01:39):
you know, hyped a million times before. UM. But they're
sort of Hallmark product, which is the Horizons world, which
is the social VR experience, is pretty bad. It's I mean,
they sell it as something people can use for meetings
and remote work, but it's just it looks like something
that is from like ninety ninety eight. Like the graphics

(02:01):
are just really bad. People don't have these headsets, People
don't really want to spend time in these headsets. I
think that we are probably at least a decade away
from VR adult like sort of even go becoming slightly mainstream.
And I don't think that Facebook Horizons is going to
be the app that that brings it there. So um.
So yeah, Facebook is not in a great place, and

(02:23):
they've obviously just laid off tons of people as well. UM,
and so we'll see kind of I think they're struggling
to survive, right now, I mean they're still printing money
from the ads business. But yeah, let's slip it over
to the users. Conventional wisdoms is and it's oldsters on Facebook.
What is your assessment of who's still using Facebook? That's true. Um,

(02:48):
it's a much older user base, especially when you compare
it to something like TikTok or Snapchat or um other
social platforms, even Instagram. I mean Facebook, the core Facebook product.
The users have been aging for a while and they're
not capturing younger users. Um. There's if you ask a
teenager if they use you know, Facebook proper, I think
they'll look at you funny. Um. Instagram, you know has

(03:12):
a slightly better demographic portrait. Um, It's definitely has more
pop culture relevance. And so you do have young people
using it, but they're not necessarily creating a lot of
content or engaging with it heavily. They're kind of using
it like a phone book almost. Um, kind of like
the way that we have millennials used to use Facebook

(03:32):
back in the day. So um, that's kind of where
things are with them. Okay, but one here's that Facebook
is still the megaphone for school cancelations, uh and other
community notices. Is that your experience? Yeah, I mean I
think a lot of public officials use Facebook and Twitter

(03:55):
UM for the types of alerts like that. UM or
you know, Facebook groups is still you know, going strong.
There's tons of Facebook groups for parents and things like that.
Again goes back to that older user base, UM finding
utility in those types of things. So, yeah, those are great,
but you can't sustain a multi you know, billion users

(04:17):
social product with school closures. You need it to be
you know growing, and you need to be attracting younger users,
and you need to be you know, increasing time on
the platform, and that's just not happening right now. Okay,
Historically oldsters are a step behind their children. Are the

(04:39):
oldsters going to migrate from Facebook or are they just
going to be on Facebook and then they'll end their
usage of social media? Well that's a really good question.
I mean I think I don't know if they'll adopt
something new. It's kind of notorious, really hard to get
older people to adopt new platforms because their social network
has already established. UM. They're just generally less likely to

(05:02):
download apps and kind of want to expand their world
in that way, unless it's maybe interest base or location
based like something like next door is a good example. Um,
But I think I don't know that, you know, I
don't know that they're going to necessarily adopt something new. Um.
I think that Facebook might be with them, but I
think that they might start seeing themselves use Facebook less

(05:24):
and less. I mean, even the boomers that we're using
Facebook so much in are not necessarily using it as
much now because it's just becomes less of a utility
and you have all of these other platforms cleaving off
parts of what people use Facebook for. Next Door is
a good example of this. Right, instead of joining a
local Facebook group for your community, you might just join

(05:45):
next door. Or instead of using you know, Facebook to
kind of publish updates about your life, you might just
start a newsletter or move to email, um, things like that.
So I think there's also a lot of worries around privacy. Um.
Facebook does not have a great reputation for data privacy
or just user privacy in general, and I think that's
also scared a lot of people away. I think people

(06:06):
that were sharing tons of kidding photos on Facebook even
a few years ago, I've been more wary lately to
do that. Okay, let's switch over to their other product, Instagram.
Then Instagram was a photo sharing site and then all
of a sudden, TikTok gain traction and you have all
the people. I mean, there's a lot of issues here,

(06:26):
but let's start with the people who used uh Instagram
to both boost their base and monetize. Kardashians being a
good example, they're complaining about the change of Instagram to
try to compete with TikTok going to video. What's your
assessment there, Well, Instagram pivoted hard to video. You know,
back in when they launched a video product to compete

(06:50):
with Vine. That was their first kind of fora into video,
and that's when you saw videos performing better in the feed. Um,
there's that whole sort of pivotal video that happened in
the Mark Zuckerberg actually, as Lea said that Facebook would
become all video, I think by I think you said
that in sen and it really did end up coming true.
The same is true for Instagram. Of course, now you're
seeing their latest video product, which is Reels, which is

(07:12):
direct sort of rip off of TikTok, And I think
you see these old school Instagram people like the Kardashians
complaining about that because they can't compete in the new environment, right.
They don't want to have to suddenly create reels. They
just want to be able to post the picture like
it's and it's going to get tons of engagement. UM.
I would counter that with saying that those celebrities are

(07:35):
stagnant and um, you know, they need to adapt otherwise
they you know, users don't want that. A lot of
this stuff is delivering what users desire, and users desire
engaging video content. Um, that's just what user behavior shows.
So I think, um, you know, I think Instagram needs
to improve discovery. The problem with Instagram is that they've

(07:58):
built this follower base social on networks. So in order
you know, to UM, in order to see someone's content,
you follow them, right, and then you get this feed
of content that you've opted into. So when you see
content that you haven't opted into, for instance, Instagram putting
of reels into your feed, it's very jarring and frustrating

(08:18):
and you're like, I did knocked into this, or as
something like TikTok, you don't opt into anything necessarily, you're
getting all of your content primarily delivered through this algorithmic
feed called before you page, so you don't have to
follow a single person on TikTok. You're gonna be getting
you know, content served by the algorithm. And I think

(08:39):
those two, like the way that users approach those two networks,
that difference makes it very hard for Instagram to catch
up and insert new content into the feed and allow
smaller creators to grow because people are very like averse
to it, and because you have these big celebrities that
are like, oh no, don't you know, don't mess with
my position on the app. I still want to be
able to reach my fans, if that makes sense. Absolutely so.

(09:03):
Do we anticipate, you know, the Kardashians being the pinnacle here,
so we'll stay with them. You know, they have these
static photos that they employ stylists and all kinds of
expensive people to get a perfect, unrealistic picture then ultimately
tag advertising into it. Uh, will they pivot to video

(09:23):
or that is? Is that a transition that's just too
much for them? They've they've pivot, They've pivoted to video.
Oh pretty well, I mean they the Kardashians are just
very smart about marketing in general. I mean they post
on stories like I think that if they wanted to,
they could hire a videographer to make great video content.

(09:46):
I mean, look at someone like Jason deruloh, right, Like
I mean not that Jason Derulo was posting really posed photos,
but he kind of was like I don't know if
you remember that like iconic picture of him like getting
out of the pool. Like he was posting these like
thirst trap photos on Instagram for a while TikTok came
out and then he you know, leaned hard into TikTok
and is now a video superstar. So it can be done. Um.

(10:07):
I think the Kardashians are just maybe frustrated in general
that the platform isn't giving them more considering how much
they feel like they probably gave to the platform. Um,
but I do think that they can. You know, they're
still it's not like they're totally irrelevant in culture, right,
Like they're still relevant. They just need to up their
reels game a little bit. Well, if one assesses these

(10:31):
different networks, my viewpoint and we're all being fed different
videos on TikTok is there's a certain authenticity and credibility
and uniqueness to the individual on the street that is
a not embodied by traditional celebrities. And being not on

(10:51):
the other traditional social networks. What's your viewpoint there? That's
exactly right. I mean, that's exactly right. And I think,
um into I wrote this piece for The Atlantic called
the Instagram aathetic is Dead, and it was just about
the end of that hyper curated photoshop. Look how that
was not performing. Photos were not performing any kind of

(11:13):
hyper curated image on Instagram in nineteen, which is bombing.
And I think that was that real turning point where
we started to create more of authenticity. It's no coincidence that,
you know, TikTok also launched in and so I think
that's when we really started to see this shift towards
more raw content more Um, I don't, I don't. I

(11:35):
guess I shouldn't say authentic because a lot of it
is equally curated, but it's like a realness and uh,
you know, it's not so polished looking. Um. You know,
people at that point in that during that shift, content
that was shot on an iPhone was outperforming stuff shot
on a DSLR, which was interesting because Instagram was always

(11:56):
built on this high quality photography. So yeah, I do
think that that shift has happened, and for people that
are still sort of stuck in the old mindset. It's
hard for them to keep up, especially celebrities, because they
have these images right that they need to control and
they can't just always, you know, get on and be wild,
and so I think they have to be very strategic

(12:17):
about their presence on and sort of how to grow.
Jason Drule is a good example of this. He's managed
to grow and be relatable and collaborate with big young
creators and but a lot of celebrities struggle in that area,
traditional celebrities. Okay, theoretically YouTube could have captured this market.
Why did TikTok blow up? And YouTube means static? Yeah,

(12:42):
YouTube what a miss? I mean, I think they saw
the rise of musically, they saw the TikTok gaining traction,
and they still took a really long time to launch shorts.
Um And I think it's been interesting to see. I mean,
the thing is is that YouTube was just the the
king on top of the mountain for so long. It remains,
you know, the most stable platform in terms of monetization

(13:03):
in a lot of ways. Um And, I think that
they were just sitting pretty on their high horse. And um,
I don't think they did enough to prepare for something
like TikTok. I mean they should have seen that, they
should have seen this pivot towards short form video. Um.
I think they would argue, you know, that they do
have shorts, which is very similar to TikTok. The problem
again goes back to discovery. YouTube is a very saturated

(13:25):
platform where it's really hard to gain new subscribers. It's
notoriously like one YouTube subscriber is worth like a hundred
TikTok followers, um for fifty Instagram followers. Like, It's very
hard to get those subscribers on YouTube. So I think
that if YouTube really wants to compete with TikTok, they
need to nail discovery and they need to get better
about serving people, you know, engage in content from you

(13:47):
creators that they don't know, and helping those smaller creators grow. Okay,
not everybody is as up to speed as you are
on some of these issues. How did Musically, a youth
oriented app which was ultimately pooh pooed worth into TikTok. Well,
I think it was poo pooed by certain people. It

(14:09):
was certainly beloved and lauded, you know, by a lot
of us. UM, that covered it especially, and we're paying attention,
But I think, yeah, didn't it appeal more to a
younger demo than TikTok does? Well, yeah, definitely. I think
it appealed to a lot of teenagers. And I mean
the goal is to allow young people to make like
video selfies, and that really appealed to young people. And

(14:30):
I think you see, you know, at that point, um,
a lot of people in the tech world we're just
so anti content creator. I mean, if you look at
what a lot of these big bcs were saying about
influencers in the mid when when musically it was ascendant,
they just looked down on it because it was women,
it was young people, It was not people that they
considered serious people using it. Um. And that was obviously

(14:54):
such a huge oversight. Um. Meanwhile, you know it was
it was grow going at a crazy pace. UM. So
it was acquired by Byte Dance. Byte Dance kind of
cloned it and then acquired it by Dance of course.
Is this you know, giant Chinese tech conglomerate. Um. And
then they relaunched musically as TikTok in August, So that

(15:16):
musically app just flipped flipped over to the TikTok with app,
but it had the same functionality. I mean, if you
spend any time on musically, it was very similar to
what TikTok is today. It's the same app. I mean
the apps evolved a lot, but um, but yeah, So
what caused TikTok to blow up? Because certainly social media
networks are started, they don't necessarily gain traction. Well, so

(15:40):
a couple of things. One discovery, I mean, they just
nailed discovery. There was so much saturation in in terms
of that Instagram aesthetic, the millennial aesthetic, like it was
just it was oppressive and people wanted a space to
be fun and creative and kind of weird. Um. Short video,

(16:00):
you know, obviously is something that can become hugely culturally
relevant because it's culturally relevant because it's so share able. Um.
You know, look at something like Vine. Vine wasn't around
that long, but if you look at the impact in
the reach that Vine had, it was really punching above
its weight. Um. So people could share the TikTok's really
easily cross platforms. So you started to see a lot

(16:21):
of TikTok's all over Instagram. Um, and they did a
ton of outreach towards creators, like they really instead of
shunning creators and kind of treating them like you know,
third class citizens like Facebook and Instagram was doing, they
really leaned into you know, content creator stuff. And by
the way, you know, Bob, it doesn't hurt that they're

(16:42):
owned by this multi billion dollar Chinese tech conglomerate that
spent a billion dollars alone marketing the app to young
people in its first year and in the States, Um,
that's a huge amount of marketing and that that even
just paying for those downloads, you that's almost impossible for
any other it up to compete with. So I think
that they, you know, they definitely got a leg up

(17:04):
in terms of the page. Go into a little more
detail how they spent that billion dollars and how they
reached the potential customer base. Yeah, a lot of it
was on app download ads, so again just getting those
download numbers, and they ran tons of ads on Snapchat.
They had this ambassador program for college students. Um, they
you know, they they were like paying big content creators

(17:27):
to post on the app. They were really just doing
so much in terms of marketing to get the word
out there. And I think it ended up being really
successful because you might get a teenager to download something
and it's like whatever, you all download this app, will
take a look. But then the content on the app
ended up being really engaging, so people stuck around, and
before you know what, you're creating content on there yourself.

(17:47):
So I think it just worked out super well. Now
we hear again and again about the TikTok algorithm, and
of course when Trump was president and look like he
was going to shut down TikTok, they're gonna have to
sell to Microsoft. Why can this algorithm not be cloned
or replicated? Well, because they have the best product team

(18:10):
in the entire world, and our American social media companies
are just wildly underprepared. I mean like they have not
spent their time focus focusing on recommendations. Like you know,
you would imagine that the explore page algorithm would be
far more sophisticated than it is right now on Instagram.
It's just not. None of these platforms have focused on

(18:31):
algorithmic discovery. They've been building these follow based models, um
and so I think it's something that they didn't invest
in because they also didn't think that there would be
any competition, right, the biggest you know, we reported on this,
but but so much of the TikTok backlash is it
is funded by Facebook basically, I mean, it's Facebook lobbying,

(18:51):
it's Facebook pr I reported UM Stories earlier story earlier
this year about how Facebook was actually hired this UM
public and operative firm to plant negative stories about fake
TikTok challenges and local media across the country plant fake
op eds. So, you know, I think that these big
tech conglomerates don't like competition, and for a really long

(19:12):
time they were able to squash or acquire every little
bit of you know, competing app um and and of
course this was the first time they couldn't do that.
Does anybody in the landscape have a strategy to compete
or is it like the music business twenty years ago,
We're going to either sue lobby or do use all
our efforts to hold back the future and competitors. I

(19:37):
think right now we're seeing these big tech companies do
exactly what you just describe to lobby and do anything
to hold back the future because they want to monopolize
the future and they realize that they don't have a
monopoly on it necessarily, right now because they have not
innovated enough. They've become too bloated, They've become stagnant. They're
not thinking um in innovative ways. And and so I

(19:59):
think that they've resorted to bullying kind of to maintain
their power. Um. But I think that can only hold
for so long. We'll see. Okay, let's go to Snapchat.
You know, when I think of Snapchat, I think a
second life sort of the original VR world, and it
had just a limited audience. It never grew. What's going

(20:21):
on with Snapchat because two quarters ago everyone was bullish
on it, said well, you know, their numbers are good,
and then this last quarter the numbers were bad. Uh,
explain your viewpoint on that. Yeah. Snapchats also in a
really hard spot. Also recently did a lot of layoffs.
I mean, I think Snapchat, like you mentioned, just could
never scale. I mean, that's a famous acquisition target, right.

(20:44):
Facebook wanted to buy them um and Evans people was
like no, um. And I think that they've just really
struggled there in this weird space where I think it's
unclear whether they're a messaging app or a social platform.
They're not really a social platform. They have content Discovery,
but it's it's kind of it's it's different than TikTok, right,

(21:05):
it's sort of separated out of the app is bifurcated,
so on one half is messaging and then one half
is the discovery page where you can see stuff from
you know, the Daily Mail and other kind of news
outlets and content creators. Um. And I don't know that
that was the right decision to split those. I mean,
they had their reasons, um, But I do think that
it's been hard for that to scale. I mean, it's

(21:26):
very hard for any company to compete with Facebook. It's
really hard. Facebook has had such a monopoly on our
social media landscape. And I think that they really did
a lot of damage to Snapchat and I don't know
the Snapchat will ever recover a little deeper. How do
they do damage to Snapchat? I mean cloning Instagrams and
the way the Instagram cloned Stories, which is their kind

(21:48):
of breakout feature. I think that captured a huge amount
of audience that was previously on going to Snapchat for
to produce that type of content. And just by cloning
that feature alone, they think they cleaved off a lot
of growth. Um. And then add dollars wise, I mean
stap chat just can't compete with Facebook's ad network or
Google's ad network um. And then I think just in

(22:09):
terms of messaging, it's you know again, it just goes
back to not it's not totally clear what snap chat
is for. It is used by a lot of younger people. Still,
I don't want to discount it like it's dead or
anything like that, but I think it's kind of in
a space like Twitter, where Twitter and Snapchat are both
like relevant, but and they have similar I think they
have similar user numbers UM for monthly actives, I can't remember,

(22:31):
but it's around. You know, they're both kind of like
that second tier trying to break up into the top tier.
But I haven't really been able to do it, and
they don't have a lot of money right now. Snapchats
they're shutting down a lot of stuff. So how do
you think it plays out of Snapchat? I mean, I
think that they have to worry about being caught in
a death spiral, right Like, there's this point where you're

(22:52):
shutting down all your innovation because you have to remain
lean to compete and to just to you know, survive
as a company. But then that's also hard because you
can't invest in building things that are going to attract
future users or you know, thinking out in a five
year ten year plan, right, because you're focused on just
getting through this year. Um so we'll see. I mean,
I really love Snapchat and I can't help but root

(23:14):
for them, just because they don't want to live in
this world that's dominated by Facebook and Google. Um but
I just I don't know, you know where it's going
to go. Okay, let's move on to Twitter. Twitter people
call is called the social network primarily by people who

(23:37):
don't use it. I think Twitter is its own thing.
You know, from the time we are speaking to the
time this airs. Who knows what Ellen Musk might be doing.
But what's your assessment as if today what's going on
at Twitter? Wait, Bob, that's interesting. Why would you just
say Twitter is not a social network? This we're splitting

(24:00):
years here in terms of what we call a social network.
I you know, I find that if we talk about sharing, Okay,
people thought of Facebook and they were sharing you know
what I did today? And when Twitter first game traction
ten eleven, twelve years ago was like that, whereas the
people were getting the most traction on Twitter at this point,

(24:21):
it's based on information and people are gonna go there
because they want information as opposed to sharing where they
were that afternoon or something. It's funny because I would
say the same is true for Instagram and TikTok. Actually, um,
I think that speaks to the broader shift in how
what users view social media what these platforms for. Um.

(24:43):
A couple of years ago, I did a research study
actually on Instagram and news content, and a huge amount
of people actually go to Instagram for new the way
that you're thinking of sort of what people would go
to Twitter for, especially if you're younger. So I think
people are are so sally young people are just more
likely to get their news and information from social platforms,

(25:03):
and so they sort of turned to all of these
social platforms. But you're a hundred percent right that Twitter
is really unique. I mean, what makes Twitter unique is
is not just the fact that it's You're right, it's
more like news oriented for sure. It's also the only text,
primarily text based social network, right, Like you don't have
to attach an image or video to post on their
the way that you do on Instagram and TikTok and stuff. Um.

(25:26):
But yeah, now I've forgotten your question. Um, you brought
up you brought up another thing. Okay, one can certainly
search on TikTok because you know, one of the latest
reports is young people uh search on Let's go back
a step for a while. They're the big story was
people are doing their shopping searching on Amazon as opposed

(25:49):
to Google. Now they say young people are searching on TikTok.
And I don't find Instagram quite works that way. But
the younger generation, when you talk about getting news from
TikTok and Instagram, do you think they're just seeing it

(26:10):
in their feet? Do you think they're ultimately searching for
certain people, following certain people? How do What do you
think is going on there? Yeah? I think all of
that actually, Um, I mean certainly a huge amount of
it is just seeing it in their feet if it's TikTok, right,
Because TikTok, it doesn't really matter who you follow. Who
you follow is the sort of one signal to the algorithm. Um.

(26:30):
But when a big news event breaks, TikTok is where
you're gonna find out about it. TikTok is where you're
gonna see the discussion, especially pop culture news and um,
you know, these big kind of like cultural discussions, those
are all happening on TikTok um and then Instagram as well.
I mean, like look at in terms of the way
that people were finding out information about the Black Lives
Matter protests or a lot of the social justice issues

(26:53):
and and election related news, like that's a lot of that.
People are getting that from Instagram and TikTok um, and
sometimes they are seeking it out too. I mean, definitely,
when a big thing breaks where you see people talking
about it, people will go on TikTok and search out
those terms and try and understand what's going on, um,
and they'll usually find content creators. I mean, there's tons
of massive news content creators on both of these platforms. Um.

(27:16):
Just the way that people also go to YouTube right
to learn about things, although that's a little bit more
longer form. UM. So I think that already a lot
of what people would theoretically go to Twitter four has
already migrated off Twitter even pre elon. Okay, let's say
I'm driving on the freeway. You know, the map apps
are so good. Right now, Let's say I see something

(27:38):
in the ear, I see a fire. Used to be
you would go literally turn on the TV. Only alcers
do that now then you might go to the newspaper
in your local place at TV station, whereas if you
go on Twitter, No, you wouldn't go on Twitter for that,
though you would go on you would go on, well,

(27:59):
I'm still may be wrong. Let me finish. In the
old days, if you were looking for information that was
in your area, that something's happening, you hear a boom
or whatever. I found if I went to Twitter, I
could find information that I couldn't find elsewhere, and there
was a certain efficiency in that. Whereas, let me pull

(28:21):
the pull it back just a little bit, the oldsters
criticize the youngsters for being uninformed. My belief is today's
younger generations are more informed on the news than ever
in the history of humanity. However, just like we see
an argument in politics people's specific news feeds, there's an

(28:45):
immediacy on Twitter where you can and as they say,
if it's a big story, someone gets shot, take us
get shot. Yeah, you're gonna see it on all these platforms.
But if the story is not that big, what is
it going to take to find it on Instagram or TikTok.
That's such a good point, and you know you're right.

(29:06):
You're right that Twitter has that real time search that's
really hard to find on other platforms. Um. You know,
it's funny. If I saw a video of a fire,
I think most people's default place to upload that right
now would be TikTok if you wanted to sort of
alert people, right if you wanted to be like, WHOA,
this is crazy, I have this crazy thing that I've seen.

(29:26):
I think five years ago you would have posted on Twitter.
I think these days you post on TikTok and that.
But but in terms of searching, you're right, I mean certain.
The thing is you can search for recent stuff. I
mean you can. This TikTok search is very good. It
is very good. It's not exactly the same as Twitter, um,
because Twitter is text based. It's it's different. But I

(29:49):
do think that, um, you know, it allows people to
search out like major like events, surviral things. You're right though, Bob,
that local like that local thing is really hard to
find on TikTok. You know, Twitter advanced search is just
more robust, and it allows you to kind of segment
out the content based on location, based on time like,

(30:09):
I mean, you can do time on TikTok to. But yeah,
it's there's that that has not TikTok search needs to
improve for sure. That's something that has haunted YouTube from
its inception, the tag issue. Whereas if you have a
text based thing, it's much easier to slice and dice
the information. Where if I were to even put fire

(30:31):
Santa Monica into TikTok, someone may even have a video
of the fire, but if the tags you're not right,
I won't be able to see it. Well, the thing
is is that TikTok is smarter than that. It doesn't
matter if you tag it. It can still search based
off a lot of information, for instance, captions in the video,
location of the video. I mean, you're I don't think

(30:51):
actually concerned by location, but I think I do think
that I've tried to find a lot of niche stuff
on TikTok enough and been able to find it that
it knows a lot more about the videos um in
terms of text too. I think the captioning, I do
believe that the captions are searchable, like I do think
that that's a signal to search when you search on
TikTok um like the captions on actual video, not the

(31:15):
like the transcript of the video, I should say, rather
than the like thing that people write out about it. Right,
But let's focus on Twitter specifically. Elon Musk now own
was being a great reduction and employment. He's spouting off
news is covering it on a micro level. What's the
future of TikTok? As I say, in between when we

(31:35):
talk and when this airs, all kinds of crazy things
can happen. That's a nature of Elon musk But from
where you see it today, Yeah, future of Twitter um
very hard to predict under Elon Musk. Um. I don't know.
I mean, I I really wanted to give you on
the benefit of the doubt, but he doesn't. He doesn't

(31:56):
understand social platforms at all. Um, And in fact, he's
aims very misguided about stuff. I'm very concerned about how
anti free expression and anti free speech he is. I mean,
Twitter has notoriously been in this platform where you can
say you know so much and you can communicate so much,
and you can talk about these really hard, real world issues.

(32:17):
You cannot talk about these big issues on TikTok or Instagram.
You will immediately get community guidelines violation if you try
and talk about Nazis, for instance, on either of those platforms, um,
Whereas on Twitter you can have these open, hard political
discussions Under Ellen. I think it's worrying because he is
so anti free expression, um that you already see him,

(32:39):
you know, talking about things like banning quote unquote negative tweets.
What are negative tweets? Who knows? That's up to him
to decide. He's arbitrarily banned a lot of accounts that
are sort of leftist accounts or accounts focused on social
justice reporters, um, and then he's brought back um, you know,
far right extreme at us to have violated community guidelines before.

(33:02):
So I think that's really worrying. He really just doesn't
understand content moderation at all. Um. He has lied a lot.
I mean, he has lied so much always, but he
really has lied a lot recently. UM. For instance, he
said that he was going to have this content moderation
counsel and nothing would be done without them. That was
a complete lie. Um. You know, he's also making a

(33:25):
lot of moderation decisions based on Twitter polls, which, as
you'll you'all wroth, I hope and pronouncis day Right, the
former head of test and Safety of Twitter said, is
the number one most easy to manipulate feature on the platform.
I mean, making any decision based off a Twitter poll
that can be so easily manipulated by thoughts for an interest,
etcetera is so irresponsible. So um yeah, he's also fired

(33:49):
all the teams that have to do with any kind
of policing of child sexual abuse material for instance. You know,
so he can't even police his own platform. Um, it's
it's not looking good. Okay, let's talk about the free expression.
We have those on the right who said a that

(34:10):
Twitter was a left wing platform b uh elon muskeetians control.
He says it's about free speech, and you're talking about
it's the opposite of free speech. It's the absolute opposite. Also,
let's just be clear, Bob, Twitter as Twitter as a
political investigation is shown as Twitter's own data showed. Right,

(34:31):
They released their own data showing that over and over
agun Twitter has significantly amplified conservative voices. In fact, Twitter
is a conservative news platform because conservative voices and far
right voices received significant amplification in the feed, far more
than anybody on the left. And that's been reported so

(34:52):
many times over. So anybody that says otherwise at this
point is just lying. I mean they're just lying in
the face of all of this data. Listen, I agree
with you totally. But is that viewpoint being in the
news reporting world. Is this just a canard that the
right has come up with the wedge issue to get
results they want. Are they conscious of this? Why does

(35:14):
this story never die? Well, it never dies because these
people are lying. I mean, these people are lying. These
same people that are growing all day about free speech
are the ones kind of banned books from libraries that
they don't feel, you know, like it's just ridiculous. I mean,
as a journalist, someone that relies on the First Amendment
to do my job, so such a staunch supporter of
free speech, and you have these right wing you know,

(35:37):
politicians and far right reactionaries trying to silence I mean,
trying to silence people. What they want is to silence
people on the left, and they will lie and do
anything to do that. And it's it's very disappointing. It's
very disappointing. And I you know, obviously not saying that
every conservative is doing that, but you know, most most

(36:01):
of the loudest ones on Twitter are extremely hypocritical. I mean,
just Elon endorsing shadow banning people that he doesn't disagree with,
That's that's bad. I mean just saying like negative downraking
quote unquote negative tweets. That's so terrifying because what is
considered a negative tweet, right, that is a highly subjective
thing to say that you are going to actually prevent

(36:23):
people from seeing that content in search results. I mean,
that's just if that was flipped, it would be a
endless news cycle. But I feel like it's a similar
I mean, he's doing the Trump playbook, right, which is
just kind of um, say anything and your actions can
completely refute everything that you're saying, but it doesn't matter
because you're just People are just gonna believe what you say,

(36:43):
even though behind the scenes you are literally doing absolutely
everything against what you purport to believe. Um. And I
don't know, people don't have a lot of media literacy
these days, so I think a lot of people fall
for it. Let's talk about the news business. Trump array
of elected in sixteen, really starts amplifying his campaign eighteen

(37:04):
months before, and it is reported at infinitum There's a
lot of criticisms, especially with TV News, that this is
impacting ratings, selling ads, and there was a lot of
criticism even at the Washington Post, the Margaret Sullivan, who's
no now no longer with the paper, saying you have
to take a side. Uh NPR did a story on

(37:28):
that that you know, you just can't report this stuff.
You're playing into the hands now this time around, it seems,
you know, even led ironically by the right, the New
York Posts, they're giving him less oxygen. Okay, but I
don't want to make this about Trump. I want to
make this about Elon Musk. The press is reporting literally

(37:50):
everything this guy dies. You would think literally world peace,
you know, depends on Twitter. Okay, it's because the media
is addicted to Twitter. And look, Elon Musk is one
of the richest men in the world. Right, the juicy
story that people want to read, um and it does
have very serious business implications, and you know, Elan is
doing stuff that is endangering lives. Um So I think

(38:13):
that's why you're getting so many stories. I don't think
that the stories can continue at this pace forever. But
I think this is a really wild, you know, past
couple of weeks. Um, And so you're not around of
bandwidth is commensurate with the reality of Ellen or people
are just so fascinated by Elon in the business and

(38:34):
addicted to Twitter that they're giving him all this space. Well,
I would say people are giving him space, but I
think they're rightfully debunking a lot of what he says, right,
I mean, I think it's really important to um fact
check the stuff that he's saying, because he lies with
such abandoned that I think it's important for the media
to definitely contextualize that stuff. Um. You know, I think

(38:57):
Ellen and Trump are very different. I mean, Elan is
a business leader, right, he's not running a political campaign yet,
and I think Twitter, you know, the stuff that he's doing.
This deal even just the way that this deal happened
was notable and had you know, real money implications for people,
like market implications. So um, I think, you know, I

(39:18):
think it's a story worth covering. I think that just
the way that you need to cover it you need
to think about obviously, like the way that you're covering it.
Like I think that's the problem with a lot of
the Trump coverage to I mean, Cable news was so
incredibly irresponsible, right, Like the way that CNN and a
lot of outlets covered that election was completely irresponsible. I

(39:39):
think now a lot of lessons have been learned, and certainly,
I mean, I can tell you from working in you
know where I work, that a lot of you know people,
people really think critically about a lot of this stuff,
and um for as many stories I mean, and I
think that the Elon stories get a lot of shares.
But it's not like everyone is only writing Elon stories
right like people are still writing all the other tech stories.

(39:59):
It is just that those stories, that's what a lot
of people want to talk about right now because all
the media people are addicted to Twitter. Again, it is
their primary platform. If all the media people left Twitter,
it would not be getting the amount of oxygen that
it's getting. Well, I guess this is interesting to me
because I don't think the average person is either on
Twitter or is concerned to this degree. But before I

(40:20):
got down that pipeline whige, I may not I see
a similarity in Trump and in Elon, And then you
get to Kanye where they are a addicted to the
publicity and being in the public eye and be traditional
media doesn't understand. I mean, what you have to give

(40:41):
Trump credit on was A he was on social media.
B he was speaking English. I mean, this is why
I voted for Hillary on a big left winger. But
when she said her favorite book was the Bible, I said,
that's just complete horship. Okay, so she was complete, uh,
really untrustworthy. Whereas you have um Trump using the vernacular

(41:04):
and it appealed to people, and he gained even to
this lead date, he gained purchase on people that the
media do not. Now I feel the same thing with
Elon if for no other reason. Okay, there's two things. One,
he's a running Twitter, B is posting every day. CE
does have a CV superior to Trump and many of

(41:27):
these other people. You know, it was involved in PayPal.
We can't slice and dice that. Tesla, whether he started
or not, under his egis it became quite an enterprise SpaceX.
So you have the cult of Elon which he is feeding.
Now the other thing becomes a debate is this positive
or negative? Is it hurting or helping test actinly not

(41:48):
helping Tesla. And then you have Kanye who is addicted
to press in the same way. Kanye is literally mentally ill,
not that these others don't have flaws, and he seems
to be self immolating, he's going to go down with
the fire, etcetera. So on one hand, these people have

(42:09):
figured out the modern paradigm. On another level, they pushed
it so far, certainly Trump and Kanye, where there's been backlash.
So if you want to get your message out, have
these people tapped into something or is this one and
done well? I think all of them are really expert
at leveraging the attention economy and like you said, speaking

(42:33):
to people and kind of feeding into people's base conspiracies,
especially I mean they're telling people what they want to hear. Trump, Elon, Kanye,
they will tell people, especially you know Elon lately he's
just telling people what they want to hear, whether or
not it's true, and stuff he says it's not true, right,
He's promoting wild conspiracy theories, but he knows that those

(42:57):
will play well online and that people will believe because
he's rich and this is America and we worship money
above all else. So that is why he has the
respect that he does. Um, I don't know. In terms
of backlash, I mean, I think you're right, like Kanye,
it's a totally different situation. Um, And I think it's
very sad, um. You know, just the path that he's

(43:18):
gone down. Um. Trump, I think has alienated so many people,
so many of like political leaders in the GOP, that
it's it's gonna be hard for him. Ellen doesn't have
to work within the constraints of the political world or
the entertainment industry. He kind of can played by his
own rule book. So I think we'll see. I think, Um,
you know, you mentioned Tesla. I think that if what

(43:41):
he's doing at Twitter ends up impacting Tesla enough um,
or you know, impacting his other companies enough, and he
really starts to lose a significant amount of money, I
think that's the only way that he can be sort
of held accountable, I guess for his actions or that's
the only time that people will start to question him.
I think as long as you know, he kind of

(44:01):
has the appearance of success, people won't. I mean, he
keeps crowing about these gaining user numbers, but he stopped
policing spam. He's just allowing spam on the platform, and
you know, millions of accounts that were being deleted every
week a spam. Now former Twitter employees have said are
no longer being deleted, and then he's so it's just
a lot of smoking mirrors. Um, but that can only

(44:22):
last so long. I think, you know, we'll see he
can't do this for five years, right, So, UM, I
don't know if it's an effective strategy or not yet.
Let's talk about you specifically. Right in the Washington posted.

(44:43):
Let's just say you did not write every day in
the post one thing that would love for me to
write every day. Okay, well that's interesting, but leaving that aside,
the post is more far in advance at the time
where you work previously, and there are many more articles
that allow comments. Okay, so if you write once a week,

(45:06):
once every two weeks, usually it's more once once every
two weeks, you can see feedback that way. But you
are a very active poster on Twitter. What is your
motivation there? Oh? I post more on Instagram that I
do on Twitter, I think. But what we're talking about Twitter? Yeah,
but the sooner Twitter on a media group chat. I mean,

(45:28):
the value of Twitter is for what one reporting? I
cover Internet culture, right, so I gotta be on everything. Um,
but yeah, I post on everything. I kind of just
there's no platform that I don't post content on because
I'm constantly using it one to promote my stories, to
shape narratives. UM. You know, I talk a lot about
the media. I cover the media. I care a lot

(45:49):
about journalism and sort of under people understanding the information
ecosystem and our media environment. UM. I view Twitter mostly
as a place to talk to other journe us, but
I also find tons of sources there. I think there's
tons of people in tech on Twitter, so it's valuable
for that point to UM. But mostly I'm like trying

(46:09):
to think how I use I used every platform differently, UM,
but Twitter is definitely the one where I'm just like, hello, media,
people pay attention to this. I have a new story out.
Here's why this matters, you know, let's go at. Let's
go a little bit slower word from the outside, which
may not be accurate. Traditionally, except for the opinion calumnus

(46:30):
in the major newspapers, most of the reporters were faceless.
Their names were on the articles, but other than a couple,
most people really had no idea who those people were.
Whereas you were reporting on the bleeding edge social media
and you know, the scuttle butt was the traditional people
at the New York Times didn't like that you were

(46:52):
getting that much attention, and we're against the modern period.
I'm what was going on from that? Oh that's not true,
that's not true. Look at someone like Ben Smith. No
one loves attention like Ben Smith. Ben Smith left. Yeah,
we both left the Times for I think similar Ben
Smith thought that he was going for opportunities, and I

(47:16):
didn't feel from the Outtimes. Once again, I say, this
is perception as opposed to reality. Perception wasn't wasn't that
there was backlash against Ben Smith? Uh, but perception was
there was backlash against you. I'm constantly getting backlash from
Look at Fox News every week, Tucker Carlson is ranting
against me. I mean, I think that is constant backlash.

(47:39):
But I never received backlash from anyone at the Times
while I worked there. I mean, I they hired me
because of my stories. I don't know, and I really
disagree with you about people don't know the names. Look
at Maggie Haberman, somebody ten times more famous than me, right,
that has a cable news contract. That's an audience of
one point seven million On Twitter I mean I'm nowhere

(48:02):
near that big or you know, there's also amazing people
at the Times that I always looked up to, like
the critics. I mean, look at someone like John Kara Monica,
absolute legend in the pop you know, industry, and kind
of like coverage in New York and um, I mean,
there's just so many famous journalists at the Times. I
think the problem with The Times, or my my feelings

(48:22):
about The Times is that you can't you don't have
as much ownership, right, Like, it's a big place, and
I loved I mean, I loved working there, and I
I you know, I would work there still if if
I could have more of my own thing. Like, I
think it's a great place when you're learning stuff and
you're starting out and if you don't mind being in
service to the Times brand. But it's never you know,

(48:44):
it was never my I never aspired to work at
any of these legacy places at all. Um. And so
I think for me, I just you know, I'm not
just gonna take a paltry salary for way less money
than I could make and not own anything and not
be able to do any outside projects just to say
that I work at the New York Times. I don't

(49:05):
care about that. I don't think brands like that, um,
you know, to me matter so UM. While I love
the Times and I'm such a fan, I will remain
a subscriber for life. I love my friends there, and
I love my old editor. I would die for her. Um.
But you know, for me, it's just not where I
you know, I want wanted to kind of spend spend

(49:27):
my time, like I thought. I wanted to do work
somewhere where I could do more of my own UM
projects and have things that I kind of can manage
and control a little bit. And again that's just not
a knock at the Times, because I think that The
Times is amazing in terms of the resources that they have. UM.
And I'm you know, I still work with them on
things if I need to, you know, like I would.

(49:49):
I'm not against them at all, but but I just
think for someone like me, it's not it's like I wanted.
I wanted more basically, Okay, but you know, I don't
want to h hammer at this point because once it's
very funny because people are so obsessed with the Times.
It's like, why didn't they ask me why I left
The Atlantic? Like why wait wait, wait, wait, wait wait,

(50:10):
I'm not going there. I was going somewhere to get
people do know who Maggie Haberman is, But many many
more people know who you are than any of the
pop critics, any of the movie critics at the Times.
I think, I will tell you I don't want to

(50:32):
go if you're I'm in the music business. Pop critics
in the New York Times, other than the publicity people
who want to get stories placed they were, they're meaningless
because wait, wait, this gets into a bigger thing. I mean, uh,
and I don't know if it's relevant to what we're
going on now. But as I say, looking from outside
of the bubble, this is one of the problems I

(50:53):
have with the News Business Center. It doesn't quite get
what's going on. I mean, it used to be a
critic could make or breakup, movie record whatever. That doesn't
even happen anymore. So they're working for the Times. Okay,
This guy pop critic at the Times. He wrote a
phenomenal book about Atlanta and hip Joe Cocarell, one of

(51:18):
the best in the business. Yea the video. The last
time I checked, his book had not had a single
review on Amazon. Over a month after it came out.
I don't know about Amazon reviews, but Joe, no, no, no, no,
this is just relative to impact, and I don't want

(51:39):
to This is not the most important story. But I
guarantee you if I went on Twitter right now and
I looked at Kara Monica's Twitter count follower account compared
to yours, it would be a small fraction. Well, yeah,
I've developed a huge audience on I started as an
Internet person. Yeah, but my point was people were traditional reporters. Okay,

(52:07):
they're jealous of that, of course they are. Of course
they're jealous of me. This has been my whole career.
But I don't know what to say other than I
am an extremely inclusive person. Ask anyone that I've ever
worked with. I mean, people at the Times will tell
you how much I go out of my way to
help people. I don't care about credit. I will time out.

(52:31):
The reason I brought this up was not to criticize you,
was to talk about the other people. Okay, that they're
stuck in a past paradigm. They worked for the Gray Lady.
You don't want to step out where you're living in there.
They shouldn't buy into that. They shouldn't buy into that.
I I tell this to young journalists all the time.

(52:51):
Don't buy into that. Don't then you are in service
of some big company. And one of these big companies
I graduated into the recession, and and the two thousand
eight recession was one of the really formative events of
my life. And the biggest thing I learned from that
it was companies will never have loyalty to you. They
will literally lay you off tomorrow if it's in their

(53:13):
best interests. Serving some news company for thirty years of
your life is not gonna you know, you can be
laid off. Look, this just happens literally on a weekly
basis in the media industry. And so I think when
I started out, and as I've built my career just
coming up, I never want to I don't view working
at a big place as stability, and certainly not a

(53:35):
big place where their brand is kind of everything is
in service of this brand and you have no control
and no ownership, and you are nothing, and you basically
are there to serve a big brand. I I just
that for me, I don't trust that. I don't trust that.
I think that is not going to lead to long
term stability. That's not to say that I wouldn't love
to work certain place, and I had a wonderful time
working there, But I just think, I I don't I

(54:00):
I'd never I always want to hedge. I don't trust
companies to ever have my best interest at heart, because
no company will have your best interests at heart. They're
there to make money at the end of the day.
And so I just, you know, personally, that's just I
don't know, that's just my feeling a lot of amazing,

(54:20):
you know. I think you've made that point well, but
I want to make a point in addition to that,
if something is going on in Ukraine, okay, or there's
a national or international crisis, no one covers it as
well as the major media outlets. I'm talking about print
as opposed to cable news. So that's a layer of stories, okay.

(54:46):
But I I remember the New Yorker, which is revered
amongst the intelligentsia, did a linked the story on ticketing,
and I talked to one of the key players in
the business and they say, what do you think of
the article? Is tell me something I don't know, you know,
there's nothing in there whatever, And what I find online

(55:07):
is there is an expert, an absolute expert, in every vertical.
This person is not working for traditional media, but they're findable. Now.
One of the reasons I have you on the podcast
is from my viewpoint, you're the number one expert that
I have found on social media. You happen to work
from major news outlet at this particular point in time,

(55:30):
but all these other people don't. So therefore, if you
want to get the heartbeat of not only America but
the world, it happens on line. And therefore you have
the older generation who pooh poos TikTok. Most people are
not on Twitter because they're narcissistic. They want to make

(55:52):
it about them, and unless you are a player in
the news business or famous for some other reason, it
doesn't work and it's not as simple in their minds
to use. Okay, So assessing what's going on is an
interesting thing. But I was driving somewhere different, which is
you are participating online every day, okay, And the question

(56:20):
becomes and listen, I'll say the same thing about me.
I don't want to say you're unique. To what degree
do you need the attention? Do you need the hit
of interaction? And to what degree does that drive your activity?
Bob I have I am a user. Do you know
how irresponsible it would be to go and write authoritatively

(56:41):
about these platforms when I'm not a user. I mean,
look at the stories that I have gotten. You don't
get those stories. Guys sitting on the sidelines and never
using the products that you're writing about. That's like asking
a you know, somebody that that does reviews of laptops
to never touch a computer. You have to use these
technolog jees and you have to really understand them, and

(57:01):
you have to understand the dynamics of them. What is
it like to be docked and and you know, receive
mass amount of rassman campaign? What does it like to
say the wrong thing on TikTok and have a zillion
stitches about you? These are things that I can cover
because I understand them so innately because I used the Internet,
and I understand that to a lot of people, they

(57:21):
don't like a reporter that uses the Internet. I mean,
this has been my entire career, and by the way,
I started as an Internet personality. I didn't start as
a journalist. I started as a person that got followers.
For most of my career, I've ran social right like I.
I have been in this since the beginning. And the
reason that I'm so good at reporting on it is

(57:43):
because I'm a user. And that is how you have
to be, as they say, close to the machine. That
is how you do good tech reporting. It's very irresponsible
to not participate and to not you know, not use TikTok,
to not whatever, and then report on it. I mean,
And that's how to say. And I say that because
I report on tech from user perspective. I was just

(58:03):
a business reporter and I was just reporting on what
happens in these companies. Sure, you know you don't have
to use it as much, but I think if you
are reporting on culture and Internet culture of course, also
just basic source building. I mean, the way to build
sources is to stay and stay in people's minds. And
if you just sort of disappear into the ether, you're

(58:25):
not going to get those stories. I mean, all of
my best scoops I've gotten from posting on the internet
and said, like I mean the TikTok one, for instance,
the targeted victory one. I'll just use that as an
example of one. Earlier this year, I quote tweeted when
Blumenthal said something about a made up TikTok challenge, and
I quote tweeted it and I was like, this is crazy,
this TikTok. This is not a TikTok challenge, and this
is made up by YouTube. Why is it that we

(58:47):
see all of this stuff in local media? Suddenly guess what,
my source saw that tweet and leaked me all the documents.
I got that amazing scoop. If you don't that, that's
just the nature of internet culture reporting. Everyone else on
my beat, by the way, is hype is the same one,
the exact same way. They just don't have the big following.
And I'm the oldest on the beat, and so whatever
I get where, I get what I get. But um,

(59:07):
but I mean, this is what we're covering. This is
our beat. It's like trying to cover culture and sitting
in your house all day and never going to a
concert or never watching a TV show. How are you
supposed to be a cultural critic if you don't participate
or consume? Well, put, but let's go back to something
you said a few minutes ago. You said, how you
use these platforms, And one way you use these platforms

(59:29):
is to amplify your story. None. You know, let's not
pointing gasoline on this. Let's just look at it calmly.
Does that work. I'm a writer also, I do I
do not. I do not hype my stories. I'm a
unique thing. It's not like I'm writing every day. But
I find which is not your issue. It turns off

(59:51):
people already read it. But if there's going to be
a virality, that's in the hands of the people who
writ no, no, no, no, no no no. I worked
in audience development, Bob. My job was audience development. The
people who say, oh, I don't promote my own work,
they're relying on the institution to promote their work. You know,
you don't just publish things and have a built in

(01:00:13):
audience on the Internet. You need to reach people. And
the way to reach people is to put the content
in front of them in a way they can consume. Right.
If I do a story, I don't just tweet it out.
I make a TikTok about it, I post about it
on Instagram, I send it out, is an email alert
sometimes in my newsletter. All of these things are letting
the audience that cares about my work. No, Hey, there's

(01:00:36):
this new story out just the way that the New
York Times or the Washington Post would tweet a story
out or whatever. I just don't rely on my employer
to do any of that because I used to do
I used to have that job, right, I used to
run social media for all of these big media companies,
and I know how much work goes into promoting people's stories,
and what a difference it makes when a reporter report
promotes their own story. I mean, that's the goal. I

(01:00:57):
wish we could get reporters to kind of do that,
but they, of course don't generally feel like that's part
of their job. And that's fine for me. I think, Um,
I don't just want to either, Like I also don't
just want to promote my story, but I want to
open a conversation about it. You mentioned comments. Comments are
great for people that are subscribers or that you know,
might have an account with the Washington Post, but it's

(01:01:17):
not great to hear from the public. And I want
to hear from the public. I want my stories to
generate conversation. I want to say, hey, look, I found
this information out. I'm putting this into the world. Let's
discuss it. Do you have questions? Do you have thoughts,
what you know? What what does this mean? And how
can we kind of further the conversation. Those are things
that that are relevant and that inform future stories. I

(01:01:37):
want that kind of feedback, and I want that relationship
with my audience and the public so that I'm accountable.
A lot of journalists go off into their you know,
Ivory tower, and then they you know, they say, oh,
and here's a story from me. I've come down and
here's here's my story. No, I want to be in
the mix with everyone, with the public saying, hey, look

(01:01:58):
this is what I found out, here's my story. What
do you guys think? What questions do you have that
I can answer? What did I What could I do
better for next time? Oh? That stuff is really important
to me. Okay, I think that's well articulated. Let me
shift the gears a little bit to clubhouse two sides.
Let's say, how come the medium anybody who followed tech

(01:02:23):
history and was I knew this was a non starter
from day one? Okay, how come everybody missed it and
also talk about it? It's not quite as an inception,
But not long thereafter when it was still private, my
ear quotes you got into a people attacked you tell

(01:02:44):
us about that? Oh god, well, people attacked me all
day on the internet. Um. Clubhouse, Yeah, I mean Clubhouse
was interesting. I will give them credit, Bob, even though
you're right that the platform was very doomed I think
by intentional choices made by the VC firm that invested them. Um,
I wouldn't say that. You know what what it did

(01:03:04):
is something that Snapchat did too, which is pioneer a
new format. And I think you have to give Clubhouse
credit for that. Short form audio. Short form live audio
was not a thing, right Twitter, Twitter Spaces would never
have existed if it wasn't for Clubhouse. I know, Spotify
as green Room. There's all of these new sort of
short audio products and features now in other other products

(01:03:26):
that we wouldn't have if there was no Clubhouse. So
I think you you really do have to give Clubhouse
credit for introducing that new sort of short form audio
format just to stay with it. Short form. But what
broke Clubhouse was long form? Yeah. Well, I think what
I actually descred what what broke Clubhouse was the way

(01:03:49):
that they managed the app. I mean, I think they
scaled without any protections for harassment and abuse, and it
became very toxic and very overrun with spam. A lot
of people say, oh, we don't want you know, this
is Elon's favor thing. Oh we don't want any moderation.
You know what makes people want moderation spam, And that
is what happened with Clubhouse. It was overrun with these
like scam rooms. And then also I think UM discovery

(01:04:13):
was fundamentally broken. We're talking about discovery on TikTok right,
Like TikTok has this amazing ability to surface content that's
interesting to you and follow, you know, encourage you to follow,
an engage with people that are interesting. Clubhouse never nailed discovery.
It was way too late that they rolled out that,
like algorithmic feed, at that point people had lost I
think they've benefited hugely from the early days of pandemic
when everyone was caught in UM. But the main suggested

(01:04:37):
user list on that app had a bunch of and
recent Horwitz partners on it. I'll never forget this is
in my book, being at this TikTok house in Atlanta
with a bunch of teenage you know, TikTokers in Atlanta,
and they're talking about Clubhouse and one of them is like,
oh yeah, I love Clubhouse. You just have to follow
all these really old, weird white guy guys first to
get onto the app. And I was like, show that
to me. What are you talking about. They're talking about

(01:04:58):
being forced to follow work and recent to get onto
the app. That's very bad user experience. You should. I
think that in the case of Clubhouse, the investors, primary investors,
use that app to boost their own influence, which they
continue to try and do over and over again because
they're so desperate to be influencers these days, um to

(01:05:19):
the detriment of discovery, and I think that they that
and then the crazy number of push alerts that they
would send. I just think that they burned the user
base out. Users couldn't find interesting stuff, and then kind
of like what happened to Snapchat once Instagram Stories rolled out,
once Twitter spaces rolled out, once we had these competing products,
it just wasn't you know, people didn't need to go

(01:05:39):
to a specific app. Let's go back a step to
heat hate in general. You know, I get hate every day.
I remember, you know, I remember this was about eight
years ago. Tina Fey wanted to won some award and

(01:05:59):
she stood on stage and called out one of our haters.
You have someone that no one would know other than
so that there's an incredible number of people were afraid
to play because of the hate. How do you cope
with the hate? Well, I mean I don't. What I
experience is not just hate, right, I have for three
years now been the target of a very coordinated smear

(01:06:23):
campaign by um, you know, far right actors that are
that are politically motivated, that are very anti media. So, um,
you know, it's not just hate. I don't care about hate.
I cover YouTubers for a living, Bob, So if I
cared about hate, I wouldn't you know, be in this
in this beat different question. Lett's separate this out before you.

(01:06:43):
Let's just talk about average social media hate is supposed
to coordinate that you're talking about my hate? Okay, well
does it? No? No? Does it literally just roll off
your back? At this point? I think in most of
it does because I have the last few years have
been so crazy, so crazy, I mean, so out of

(01:07:09):
control experiences that I never thought I would have crazy,
um that I think at this point, I'm I'm very
desensitized to it. But I also it's it's I mean,
it's completely changed how I operated on the internet because
because because of the backlash that I get. So tell
tell me how you've changed. I mean, I just I'm
I'm extremely privacy oriented and like there's a reason that

(01:07:33):
you never see me post anything about my life, who
I'm friends with, I'm not. I'm not sharing any kind
of details. People don't know anything about me because I
don't want them to know anything about me, because I
am intentionally private about that. When I'm on the Internet.
I'm on the Internet for fun and to connect for sure,
But I'm not you know, I'm just a lot more

(01:07:54):
private about you know, any kind of personal aspect of
my life. Um in a that I so that works
for something, But for either the weirdos or the people
who are out to get you, we know, everybody is
findable amation Oh yes, I mean I've been docs a

(01:08:16):
million times over, as have my friends and family members.
So let's segue back to the right wing campaign and
mix it all together. Tell me more about the right
wing campaign and to what degree you are fearful. Yeah, well,
I mean I've had very credible physical interactions, so I
am very fearful of these people. I mean, these people

(01:08:38):
do not stay online. Unfortunately, they become radicalized and they
will try and physically harm you. Um. But what they
you know, what they succeed at most is reputational harm.
And I've written many, many, many stories about this to
try and help people understand. Um. But you know, a
couple of years ago, he Booth began to sort of

(01:09:00):
fixate on me as this figure and this avatar for
everything that they didn't like about you know, traditional media
or which is very ironic because I'm the least traditional
media person or the tech industry or whatever, um And
and they kind of just started using me as this
like stand in right for like the liberal media or

(01:09:21):
whatever they don't like that day. Much of it is
rooted in misogyny. I mean, if you look at the
attacks against me, it is the vast majority are just
deeply misogynistic. And I think a lot of women tech
reporters specifically get this. A lot of my friends went
through gamer Gate. UM. I don't know how familiar audiences
with gamer Gate, but it was this hate campaign against women,

(01:09:42):
um tech and gaming journalists and sort of against diversity
in games coverage in general. In the first half of
the ten UM spent almost ten years actually since gamer Gate,
and I think that the broader public still does not
understand how these things work, and so they see things
like Tucker you know, ranting at me or Fox News
doing these daily stories about me, and they think, Wow,

(01:10:03):
she's controversial. They never actually dig into it and realize that, like,
most of this is bullshit. I mean, have I like
done stupid things of the pasture. I'm trying to think
of what I've done. I don't know. I think I've
said I hate America and some stuff like that, maybe
once or twice, but like, UM, you know, most of
it's just manufactured outrage and UM putting words in my

(01:10:23):
mouth or misrepresenting me. And I think, UM, that has
been really hard to deal with, and it's really hard
to deal with. It's really the only people that get
it are celebrities. Like I've found that the only people
that I feel like I can talk to who really
understand seeing this image of themselves projected back to them
through the media that's just so off base with how

(01:10:44):
they really are, what really happened, or are famous people
that they deal with it every day. UM, And I
don't consider myself as celebrities. So I think it's hard,
you know, it's hard to kind of deal with that.
I'm not some a less movie star with a pr team.
It's it's just me. And oh it's hard, and it's
it's really hard. This stuff with my family is really hard.

(01:11:04):
I mean, having people, um, you know, chow up to
my parents house and swapped my parents and and attack
my family members and and my friends and threatened my friends.
I mean, that's been the hardest part that because I
feel like I can't protect them. So anyway, that's why
I'm more careful about, you know, even saying who I'm with.
I don't want people mapping my social circle or things

(01:11:27):
like that. I just would rather keep it all private.
So what do you think when Tucker started to mention you,
It was really I mean when it first started to
happen a couple of years ago, it was really, Um,
I was so upset. I mean it really it really.
I was getting suddenly a level of hate and attacks
and it's not just Tucker. I think Tucker is kind

(01:11:50):
of the peak of this whole ecosystem. Um, but it
was it was hard to deal with and it was overwhelming,
and suddenly I was getting you know, I changed my
phone number, like I was getting so much hate on
every platform and having people attack my relatives, and it
was hard. Now I've been able to deal with it.
Now I'm like, oh god, he's on another one. You know,
I kind of treated like a YouTuber basically in my mind,

(01:12:12):
like you know, when a YouTuber makes a video about me,
I'm like, whatever, I'm so used to this by now. Um,
And I started to feel that way a little bit
about the right wing media. But I spend a lot
of time trying to educate people, writing the stories that
I do about online harassment and being a voice in
the industry to try and help people understand what a
smear campaign looks like. You know, this is manipulating someone's

(01:12:35):
sco results, this is planting stories about them, this is
you know, last year, I dealt with a bot um
somebody you know how basically use bots to send hundreds
of thousands of messages to every single person that follows me,
and most people have follow Washington Post um messages about
me just sort of lying about me, saying that I'm
going to be fired, and I was, you know, controversial

(01:12:57):
at the times. All the stuff that's completely untrue. UM.
And you know, there's just there's a lot of that
stuff that people don't understand what a smear campaign looks like.
They think, oh, it's just some mean tweets. I don't
care about me and tweets. I don't even see mean tweets.
I have like all my filters on UM. But this
other stuff is very real, I mean very real threats.
I have to have security when I go to public
events a lot of the times now because these people

(01:13:18):
have physically, you know, tried to show up and physically army. Okay.
One other area that you're very vocal about is COVID
nineteen vaccinations. Everybody gets vaccinated. Everybody. Also it says you

(01:13:39):
have an underlying immune condition. Is that correct? Yes, I'm
severely immuto compromised. UM. So I care a lot about UM,
you know, advocating for people like myself that are you know,
not able to you know that we we can't operate
in the world UM the same way that that many
others feel that they can and UM. You know, I

(01:14:00):
think for disabled people throughout this pandemic, it's been really hard.
A lot of disabled people are still at home shielding
UM or they've been forced back into really unsafe work environments,
UM having to put their health at risk. I've lost,
you know, several people that I was very close to
to COVID. UM. It's it's ongoing. I have, you know,
somebody very close to me as the hospital right now,

(01:14:22):
UM sick. And so I think it's just really really
important for members of the media to understand and remember that.
I think the problem with a lot of people, especially
in traditional media, these really nice, cushy jobs. You know,
they're able to go to their at Hampton's house or
Upstate New York during COVID and check out and be like, oh,

(01:14:43):
you know, everything's fine, I got the vaccine, I'm done.
What they don't realize is there's thousands of people still
dying a week. I mean, I think the Washington Post
has done such great health reporting. Um Dan Diamond amazing
health reporter. We have Amanda Morris who covers disability issues
for the Post now, and both of them have just
done such great work kind of highlighting this. But I

(01:15:04):
try to always remember, always remind use my platform to
remind other people what it's like for those who don't
have the same privileges and opportunities you know, someone like me,
I don't have the same protection against COVID. I mean,
I've had as many vaccines as you can possibly get,
and I God bless them, but they do not they
are not equally protective for all of us. Um of

(01:15:26):
course I got evy shells as well, but now we
know that evy shell doesn't protecting. I have a similar situation.
So I'm just gonna go here for a second. So
what exactly is the issue that you know you're not
making antibodies because you have a treatment for b sells,
So but I can't I definitely can't get into my
personal health stuff that I take the treatment. I take

(01:15:51):
a treatment that wipes out all your B cells, and
therefore the vaccines didn't work, and I got evy shelled.
I got the one before that, which was didn't work
for a macron, and eventually my B cells came back
and I got three more vaccines. But it was I
was living, you know, off the grid for two and

(01:16:11):
a half years. But just to segue to another topic,
and you mentioned it earlier, you came to my attention
primarily you're reporting on the influencers, which I've always found interesting.
The first influencer that I really became interested in was
this one, Jena Marbles, and what I noticed, You know,

(01:16:33):
with all these influencers who are not expressing. Let me
back up a little bit. The entertainment business, like the
major media business, is always one step behind, and they
think they can always come in and clean up. This
is like TikTok Records are bourbon on TikTok and they

(01:16:54):
want to manipulate the market, which at the time they can't,
and they believe they could. Anybody blows up on TikTok
will sign with them. That's I want to go into
depth there. And switching gears. They were under the uh
they believed since these online influencers had so many followers,

(01:17:18):
they would translate to traditional media. Okay, uh, you know
there's one of them, uh, TikTok you probably remember the name,
has their own TV show just like no one is watching.
But yeah, right, I don't want to go too far,
but I want to talk about two elements. One that
since most of these people don't have it in an
eate talent, they are producing content two seven to the

(01:17:43):
point where they ultimately burn themselves out and abandoned the paradigm.
Two there is a whole house slash factory of producing content.
I know that those are not wholly related, but why
don't you start there? Yes, Um, you know, I think,
as you mentioned, Bob, it's really hard for these influencers

(01:18:04):
because they burn themselves out and these platforms reward that.
I mean, these platforms push people into seven work schedules.
You can't take a break. If you don't post, you're
not monetizing. Um. And I think that that that stunds
a lot of creativity, and I think it leads to
burn out. Um. And I think that the traditional entertainment

(01:18:25):
industry is still learning how to leverage these people. Um.
I think it did not work necessarily to put them
in traditional movies. As you said, a lot of these
people are not the most talented actors necessarily. I would
say music as an area that you know has worked out.
I mean somebody like Olivia Rodrigo or Shawn Mendez. There's
a lot of like I mean Justin Bieber, I guess

(01:18:46):
came off YouTube, Like there are there are success stories there. Um,
But I think it's just it's a lot of traditional
entertainment is still kind of like what do we do
with these people? And then these people are trying to
kind of like build their own media companies and figure
out their own strategy and do they even want to
be in traditional Hollywood? Does that even make sense? Right?

(01:19:07):
So I think it's kind of I don't know, it's
all evolving. Okay, So what about the creator houses and
the situation of groups of influencers at this point in time? Yes, um,
so creator houses have been a thing since two thousand nine.
Um we had the first content creator house called The Station,
which ended up becoming Maker Studios UM. And pretty much

(01:19:28):
ever since then, we've we've had you know, creative content
houses UM all over l A, also Atlanta at other
places to Houston. UM. And people live together because it
makes sense, right you're young. I think young creative people
always want to live together. But in this case it
sort of has a direct financial incentive because you can
collaborate and kind of grow as a group and brand

(01:19:50):
yourself that way. It really I think it really that
whole like culture really exploded into the mainstream with the
Hype House and TikTok and I think in one you
saw so many of these houses, and you had all
these management companies starting these houses and then now, I
think lately is cooled off because people realized a lot
of these management companies realize that these houses are actually

(01:20:11):
just like huge liabilities. Um. Anytime you have a house
full of young people, it's not the easiest thing to manage.
So um. You know. So you're seeing a lot of
management companies pulled back. But young people will always live
together in Hollywood. Okay, you yourself moved from the East
Coast to the West coast to be closer to this. Yes,
I'm a New Yorker for life, But I have to

(01:20:33):
say I love l A. And then and why do you?
Why do you? Why do you love l A? Well,
I have a lot of family in California. Um, and
I had spent a bunch of time in California. I
mean I was always here. I was here for like
several months in twenty nineteen and months like I've always
I was out here for like nine months at one point, uh,
probably seven years ago. I've I've almost moved here, and

(01:20:55):
I've spent a lot of time here, But it wasn't
until I lived in l A full time. I feel
like that I really appreciated the city and got to
see so many more sides of it, like when you
come in and you're staying downtown or you're just staying
in West Hollywood and you're just going to a bunch
of influencer events, Like, that's not the way to like
experience l A. So now that I live here, I'm like, oh,

(01:21:17):
this is actually great, and there's a lot of cool
people here and the weather I mean well, I mean,
you know, l A is a shitty tourist town, which
is what you're referencing there. If you come, let me
hit the highlights. And you know, New Yorker comes to
l A and says, you know, hey, you know, I
don't get it. There's not the cultural stuff, there's not

(01:21:38):
the street life. I'd rather live in New York. And
Angelino goes to New York, this greatest city in the world,
but I'd rather live in l A. I aspire to
be bi coastal. That would be really nice. Uh not
you know there yet, but I don't know. I mean,
it's it's great out here. In my California relatives are

(01:21:59):
all feeling very smug. I think about the fact that
I have become I've become such a l A booster. Okay, Now,
in hip hop there was a New York scene, l
A scene, Atlanta scene and talking to Joe Coscarelli, you
know he's talking about scenes in Sacramento, when in Idaho. Um,

(01:22:20):
when it comes to the creator economy, obviously people are everywhere,
But are Los Angeles and you said to a degree Atlanta,
are those still very much the hot beds in the
major places? Yeah? I think Um, I mean I think
l A, New York, Atlanta to a lesser extent, maybe
like Houston and Orlando, like some cities in Florida, Miami.

(01:22:43):
I mean, anywhere you have like creative people, it's it's
going to be that. That's that's where the content creator
industry is definitely like this this where the hubs are
really New York and l A for the brands, for
the managers, for the agents, but then you have lifestyle
influencers all over. I mean, this shift in media towards
personality driven media is not something that's just happening with Tiktoker's.

(01:23:05):
I mean a lot of parents, for instance, might follow
like a recipe in you know, influencers somewhere on TikTok
or Instagram. That person might live in Charlotte, North Carolina,
you know, there's a lot of people kind of all
over moving into this line of work. But I do
think that New York and l A or where it's
concentrated in Atlanta, because those are the entertainment hubs, since

(01:23:26):
you're so close to it. You know, people say that
they want to be in the music business. The first
thing is I tell them is no, you don't want
to be in the med You know, it's incredibly hard
work to get in and it's almost impossible to stay in. So,
having observed all these influencers, what would you tell to someone, Oh,

(01:23:46):
you know, because I'm sure you get the same thing
I get. Somebody says, oh, my kid, they got X
number of followers, blah blah blah. What would you tell
that person? Probably everything you tell people in the music industry.
It's ten times harder than you think. Um, it's it's
really hard. I mean people are always like, oh, Taylor,
why aren't you independent? Because I know exactly how hard
it is, um to do that. It's like you don't

(01:24:07):
have healthcare, you know, like you're everything is on you.
You're basically running a small business and most small businesses fail, right, Um,
And so I think it's just it's an incredible amount
of pressure. You have to really be able to handle it.
You have to be able to manage the business part
that the public. I mean, you're a public figure when
you become an influencer, get a following, and that's extremely

(01:24:28):
difficult to manage. Um. It's just it's hard. It's way
harder than you think. And I would say, if you
have an option to do something more stable, you know,
keep that in your back pocket always. But okay, we
always read about the people making big money. How many
people are really making big money, only the top one percent.

(01:24:48):
I mean, that's the other thing that I think is
very misconstrued is that people see it's like seeing you know,
it's classic Hollywood, right, Like you see Jennifer Aniston and
George Clooney and these actor and you think, well, that's
what it is, you know, to act and be in Hollywood,
and then you realize it's actually going, you know, to
forty seven auditions for Dorito's commercial that you probably won't

(01:25:08):
even get. So it's like, you know, it's like that.
But on the internet, it's like you see Mr Beast,
you see Charlie Demilio making you know, tens of millions
of dollars a year. But the reality is is that
you will probably make nothing close to that, and it's
very hard and it's very unstable in a lot of ways.
I mean, the traditional industry is unstable in different ways.

(01:25:29):
So I would never suggest anybody go into that either.
But um, I just think you have to be clear
eyed about that stuff. Okay, people understand the monetization on
YouTube their ads. Person who has the channel or the

(01:25:51):
influence you gets a percentage of the ads. How exactly
are people monetizing on TikTok. And an addition, of course,
one of the great things of TikTok is you can
be nobody and be boosted to a lot of people,
which doesn't happen on YouTube. Conversely, you can be somebody
and not be boosted more. Tell me more about that

(01:26:13):
in the monetization on TikTok. Well, I would say, first
of all, you know, ads are not the only way
that people make money on YouTube, actually less and less.
So people make a lot of money through merch and
through productizing themselves and that's something you see on TikTok too.
So people do make money through ads on TikTok, whether
it's through the creator. You know, their version of like
the YouTube Partner program is the UM the TikTok Creator

(01:26:35):
fund UM. It functions a little bit differently. It's just
one pot of money. But basically, you know, you can
get paid based if you get enough views on your TikTok's.
And then also you're doing ads that our native ads.
So say, you know, Clorox pays you to shout out
Clorox in the video or put it in the back
of one of your TikTok's. Um, those are sort of
lots that. There are lots of different revenue models in
terms of advertising, and then um, e commerce and products

(01:27:00):
is how a lot of people make money too. So
merch lines um, Amazon storefronts where any time and you
know somebody, for instance, Lauren Wolf, this great lifestyle creator
in New York, part of the Amazon Creator program. If
I go, you know, click, I'm like, wow, I love
that dress she's wearing. I click on her Amazon shop
in her bio, and I buy that dress from Amazon.
She'll get a percentage of that. So affiliate revenue UM

(01:27:23):
and a million other ways. I mean, people charge for shoutouts,
people charge for comments. Like, there's lots of different things
that people can do to make money, and I think
it's about developing a sustainable revenue model for yourself. Some
people also don't even make money on YouTube or TikTok
and they make it all on Patreon, right, they just
have a really dedicated audience that will pay that subscription revenue. Okay. Uh.

(01:27:45):
I grew up in a different era where credibility was
king and people said no, Hey, people don't say no
to anything. These days, the goals if you get any
traction to become a brand. But when I look at
the very site that people with longevity, it's still the
people who don't sell out and have credibility. What's your

(01:28:07):
viewpoint on that? Um, I think you're right. I mean,
you know what, somebody like Dude Perfect on YouTube, that
group and a few their sports YouTube first, Like, that's
a really good example of a group that has not
sold out like they have. They have turned down so
much stuff that they could have done and cheapened out
their brand for and they never have. Like they've never
done the gambling ads or that type of stuff. As

(01:28:27):
far as I know, they've been creating contents the two
thousand nine. They've built a massive media company that rivals
any traditional sports media company in a lot of ways. Um,
so yeah, I think, but but but Bob, that's so hard.
As we know, everybody wants easy money. You make one,
you know, you're like, oh, I'll make one, compromise here,
and then you compromise here, and then suddenly I'm less

(01:28:50):
worried about that side of it. But when I see
somebody hawking a product, if I see him, you know,
I'm immediately down them. Because this is one thing that
the entertainment business is still trying to cope with as
a result of the Internet, is that in a world
of unlimited product, consumers king and they have no loyalties.

(01:29:13):
So I find free just to finish my statement forgetting
someone who's selling clothing or other that whatever. Someone who says,
well you just follow me for me, but uh, you know,
by vote of vitamin water or whatever you ultimately you
know it says, well, I'd really rather watch somebody else. Yeah,
I mean, I think it's interesting. It depends on how

(01:29:34):
aligned that product is with the creator. So in the
second half of the tens, which were sort of the
golden age of spa Con, that's when people were just
kind of throwing money at influencers with big audiences because
they didn't have any sense of like targeted marketing. You
were getting a lot of those mismatches. That's where like
suddenly everyone was hawking the Gummy Bear hair vitamins or whatever.

(01:29:54):
That's right. That's a bad experience for the fan because
the fans like, why am I Like, yeah, why are
you hawking this? However, I'll say somebody, you know, there's
somebody like Addison easter Lane, Addison ray On TikTok right,
like she's you know, talked about her skincare journey. She
launched the skincare line. It's makeup, it's she can kind
of work it into her content in a way that

(01:30:15):
feels organic, and it's her brand. It has her name
on it. So people feel a little bit more. That
seems to be the way that a better way to
make money. I guess, Well, let me just if you're
selling something based on your identity, I get it. Yeah,
But even so, most people are not. They're saying, hey,
this this brand wants to give me money, I'll take

(01:30:37):
the money. I'll do what they want. Well, I will
say most most influencers will not take the money unless
it aligns with their audience, and most brands don't want
to pay that money because brands want an r o I,
so they want to know do you have the demographic
that we are trying to reach and and are you
going to actually be able to convert? And if you're
not going to convert those people, then the brand doesn't

(01:30:58):
want to do the deal, and influencer doesn't want to
do the deal because obvious a lot of times you too,
you get like bonuses based on your conversions and stuff
in your sales. So I think you're I think that
was more of a problem a few years ago, and
I think the industry is getting more and more sophisticated,
just the way that when when remember Bob, when like
banner ads started out, you still be getting these like

(01:31:20):
randomit and now you get super targeted stuff. I think
the same is happening. If you don't have a bad blocker, right,
there's no a yet. Let's flip the story over to
the advertiser themselves. There's a lot going on here. You
have apples, Uh, change in the OS such that the
users can't be tracked, uh Facebook there well, people the

(01:31:42):
advertisers obviously want targeted ads what's the advertiser view point? Now?
On one end we have Twitter, where the advertisers many
have pulled back because they're worried about being associated with
the bad actors the platform in general. On the other treme,
we have TikTok. What's going on in the average tis
in community these days? Oh gosh, yeah, I mean, I

(01:32:03):
think advertisers are just The Twitter stuff is definitely thrown
a lot of people for a loop, and a lot
of people have just pulled their ads bed from Twitter.
I think more and more a lot of advertisers too,
are not fully pulling their money because they don't want
to do it with the backlash from elon, so they've
just cut it down to basically the minimum so that
they can kind of like fade out and not you know,

(01:32:23):
be caught in this press cycle. Um. I you know,
I think that advertisers are just they're you know, Google
and Facebook are still king for that type of stuff.
And I think in terms of the influencer marketing world,
they're still trying to figure out what's the most effective
way to to market a product and a lot of
that depends on the specific campaign. Um, but there's more.

(01:32:44):
I mean, there's more options at these people's fingertips than
than ever before. UM, I don't know, we're going into
kind of like I think a recession or like a
weird downturn. So I feel like a lot of people
have pulled back on a lot of experimental type stuff
they were doing even last year. Let's say I'm on
TikTok and I have a notable number of followers. Am

(01:33:06):
I just going to hear from the brands individually or
to Most of these people have managers or agents, maybe
even looking for brand opportunities. What's the landscape? Yeah, definitely.
I think once you get a certain follower, a count
or audience size, or you're getting in a decent amount
of attention online, you're gonna start getting hit up by

(01:33:27):
managers and agents. UM. Now, it's just like the music industry.
It depends. There's a lot of dubious people out there
that purport to be managers UM, that will sign you
into really restrictive contracts and exploit you. And so I
think that UM talent in any form needs to be
very careful of that. UM. It's a huge problem on

(01:33:48):
TikTok actually, UM. But there's also a lot of traditional
industry players in the space right like U T A,
wm ME, all all the big agencies, Brostein, all the
big talent agencies also have you know, TikTok manage and
so in those cases, those people will go out and
solicit deals, and they're gonna solicit the bigger deals, and
they're going to try and negotiate partnerships, bigger, you know,

(01:34:09):
deeper kind of working relationships instead of just like hey,
I send you product, you post for it, but you
are I was talking to someone who says, well, you
know they they heard from one advertiser and she got
five thousand for this, and you know they talked another one.
Can you make a living? Or those really few and

(01:34:32):
far between where they're you know, brands just reaching out
to individuals. Yeah, I mean, brands do reach out to
individuals and exactly like you said, there's no like, there's
no standard rate for anything. Everything is negotiable. Um. Analytics
are not great on a lot of stuff like That's
why people do focus on things like sales and affiliate
revenue stuff. Um. But you, I mean, you certainly can

(01:34:53):
make a living. It just depends on the audience that
you've cultivated, the vertical that you've cultivated it in and
you know, are you making family friendly content? Are you
not making family friendly content that affects the advertisers that
you can get the deals that you do. How loyal
is your fan base? You can have millions of followers,
but they're not that loyal versus having a hundred thousand
true dedicated fans where they're paying you twenty dollars a

(01:35:15):
month in subscription revenue. Right, So it just it really depends,
and it's there's so many factors that play for each person. Okay,
let's just go back to Twitter for a second. The
amazing thing about the Internet, which most people were oldsters
still don't understand, is it's is not a replica of
the physical world. Physical world. You know, you might be

(01:35:37):
able to drive ten miles and get a cheaper price,
but your time is worth something, gas, etcetera. So we
tend to have these behemoths in this world, Amazon, Google,
So there's always backlash against the Amazon, and there's always
people saying I'm deleting my account, deleting my account, and
it makes no difference. Okay, so when we look at Twitter,

(01:36:01):
I hear the same people and you hear about mastadon
whatever blah blah. Is Twitter too big to fail? Let
me kind of throw some other stuff in here. So
Steve Jobs dies, Okay, the power of one individual when
you can look at Trump and give that example how
they can influence you know so many people. Steve Jobs
was very much about Houston look ui interface, and since

(01:36:26):
his death, we've moved backwards. They're more buttons. It's harder
to use. That's one person. Okay, So Twitter, yes, if
you want to be on the up to date news, certainly, uh,
stuff that the major media reports that's there. Could Twitter

(01:36:46):
ever be clips by another site because people leave or
b but okay, it could be. Theoretically, you think it
would happen. I think it's already happening with TikTok. I
think that he huge part of what people would have
gone to Twitter for. They're going to TikTok for now,
just just slowly, because certainly there are a lot of politicals,

(01:37:09):
a lot of major reporters on Twitter. Would they have
a home on TikTok. There are a lot of reporters
on on on TikTok too. It's just that it's it's
like the shifts to digital. I don't know if you remember,
but a big, a big controversy early in my career
when I was a blogger was people saying our bloggers journalists,

(01:37:32):
right do you remember that whole discussion so um and
and people always were saying, oh, you know Taylor the rends,
she's she's just a blogger. Um. And now I think
we're seeing that with social platforms right where you see
these journalists coming up on platforms native right, there's news
content creators, journalists just working on YouTube or TikTok, and
people are are sort of like, oh, you know, are

(01:37:52):
they doing real journalism? Are they real journalists? Yes, they
many of them are, and some of them are affiliated
with mainstream media. Is um, will every quarter that succeeds
on Twitter transfer over to TikTok or somethink? No, But
I think a lot of them will move and and
sort of discipate to other platforms. I don't. I'm not
convinced that Twitter is going to die, by the way.
I don't. I wouldn't like make that bet at all,

(01:38:14):
But I do think that, like what people used Twitter
for previously, they're using other platforms for more and more
just to stay with Twitter for a second. When Twitter
started you just had your regular flow. Then they have
their algorithm where you can have your you know what

(01:38:34):
they think you want to watch. Then they have their news,
their trends, their lists. I don't Maybe I'm old school,
but I don't find that stuff useful. I just find
a traditional time based flow to be not that I
don't check the other stuff, but the time based flow
to be the most rewarding for me. What do you find? Yeah,
I like the time being. I mean I actually prefer

(01:38:57):
the algorithmic feed to the to the time based feed
only because I wollow so many people. I follow eight
thousand people because I restrict my replies. So I used
Twitter a little bit in a weird way. But certainly,
I mean, certainly, the feed is the core experience. Um,
I love Twitter. Spaces Trending needs to die. I mean,
I hate that the only time I go on there

(01:39:18):
is to make sure that my name isn't trending again. Honestly,
I think it's a I don't know who clicks on
those trending things that I think it's sort of a
bad distraction. Um. They bought Nuzzle, which was an amazing
app that surfaced most shared links and could really tell
you what people were saying and sort of collected conversation
around different stories and then they just shut it down.

(01:39:39):
And it's really too bad they didn't incorporate that into
their product in my opinion, So if you could snap
your fingers forgetting Elon and his personality, because this has
been been a debate from long in the Jack Dorsey years,
and in the investors wanted to change get rid of
them long before Elon. What would you do to in

(01:40:00):
improve the site? Well, Number one something I've advocated as
somebody that deals with a lot of for assement and
doxing is um is allowing users to define their experience
better on Twitter. A lot of things that people don't
like about Twitter is that it's like this open, broadcast
based social platform where you're sort of trying to reach everyone,

(01:40:20):
and it's hard when you're new. You have to build
up a following for it, you know, otherwise you're just
posting to the void. I think discovery I would improve,
and I would improve UM. I hate to say user safety,
but more allowing users control. Right, sometimes you want to
just post to your mutuals. It's crazy that you can't
do that on Twitter, right, like you have to either
post to everyone or post on a private account, but

(01:40:42):
then you can't post mutuals only like and now they
have this close friends thing, but it's very limited to
only a few people. That's just the whole thing is
a mess. I think that they need ability to segment
your audience. You need to be able to set expiration
dates on tweets, like the fact that tweets live forever
is crazy to me, especially when we're moving more and
more towards cephemeral media. So um. But yeah, the two

(01:41:05):
things that I would really focus on our discovery because
I think that's key to growing any kind of social platform.
And um and customization in terms of privacy protections. And
you know he's bad at about you know, the name
Twitter blue and your verification charging for verification? Do you
mean that actual thing right? And you believe it's dumb?
Why I wrote a lot. I wrote a long piece

(01:41:28):
for The Atlantic years ago about the problems with Twitter's
verification system. So I'm not defending the current system, but
his allowing anybody taking this thing that has become the
Twitter check mark has authority and value because it was
limited to a few amount of people. If you just

(01:41:49):
go and then allow anybody to buy it. It immediately
devalues your work, right, I think of it kind of
like look at what like Huffington posted right with their
contributor network or four. You're taking this valuable media brand
and suddenly you're letting anybody post on it, and that
ultimately devalues the brand. What he's doing is it sort
of doing that to the check mark. So it's like

(01:42:09):
it's it's also dangerous, as we saw, because people don't
know who they can trust anymore. Like the average people
are not super with it. So they see a blue checkmark,
they still think, oh, that's trustworthy. So I think his
whole stupid color code of verification thing is dumb. I
think he just has an ax to grind with journalists.
That's seriously what his skill is and what he doesn't

(01:42:30):
realize because he's so inept at understanding these things. But
it's like, you verifying a journalist is a service to
the user. It's not some crown that you're bestowing on
a journalist. You're letting average users know, wow, this is
who I who I think it is, and I can
trust this person that is. That is a valuable service.

(01:42:55):
And so to take that away is ultimately degrading. These
are experience. So pulling back the lens a little bit,
let's talk about TikTok in China. Okay, most most people
going on about this or not on TikTok a. To
what degree do you believe it's a problem and be

(01:43:15):
do you think we'll just continue to have a talk
or there will be a change here? Well, I mean,
I'll say that it's in Facebook's interest to just focus
on TikTok um and I think, I mean, look, China,
you know there there are there are reasons to be
concerned about China owning a popular social app. Right, although
I will say that the data is not kept in China, etcetera, etcetera.

(01:43:38):
There's no proof that they've you know, violated the stuff
that they've said. Um, but I my feeling is that
it's you know, making TikTok a scapegoat is really easy,
and that is absolutely what Facebook and Google and these
American tech companies would love. But I think we need
to take a hard look at user privacy and data
privacy specifically, because the truth is is that they basically

(01:43:59):
have no data privacy. People can buy our information anywhere
we have no control of our data. We don't have
anything like GDPR or even so I think the bigger
and also, there's so much money China, you know, money
from from China in Silicon Valley. I mean, look at
the gaming industry. It's just like it's so it's so um,
it's it's such bs to hear these people like crow

(01:44:21):
about China with TikTok and then turn around and you know,
not have anything to say about the fact that, you know,
there's tons of Chinese money in Silicon Valley and gaming
companies and all that. So I think, um, I think
that we need to kind of look at all of
those economic relationships and in general just allow for more
better data privacy protections that people can't just buy our

(01:44:45):
data and and you know, do whatever they want. We
have like no protections in this country. So hopefully we
have comprehensive reform. Realistically we are ever going to have
any reasonable privacy protection. I don't know, because you know,
the lawmakers in this country don't know how to use
the internet. They don't even understand stuff. Yeah, this is

(01:45:06):
why amazing. It just blows my mind. They don't understand
the business. They have hearings too late. They're you know, mesmerize,
don't understand it. It's just just a waste of time.
But staying with a similar concept that um oldsters believe
something is forever. If we talk about social media, we
saw friends, or we saw my Space, we saw Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

(01:45:32):
In reality, the users have no loyalty to the platform.
They have a loyalty to their friends and what's new
and exciting. So what's next? Good question. Um yeah, I
do think that Facebook and Instagram are in trouble. I
think TikTok is clearly ascendant. I think also platforms to
watch or use live streaming platforms like Twitch, which is

(01:45:54):
I think under under respected for the role that it
plays in culture and not just gaming, but the rise
of just chatting streamers, the way that it's upending media.
Um I yeah, I just I basically I think Facebook
is in trouble. That's like the main one that if
you were to like look around and see like who's

(01:46:16):
first to struggle, it's them. Because as you mentioned, Bob,
like you know, these companies, especially tech companies, they really
they have somewhat of a shelf shelf life. It's hard
for a software company like a social platform to stay
relevant for that long because of the network effects and
all the other stuff. And I think Facebook is in trouble,
and TikTok and all of those types of apps are

(01:46:36):
more on the come up. Well, I'm more interested in
the bleeding edge, pushing the envelope in the rear. Look
at if we look at music okay, and we look
at Spotify, So what's that next after Spotify? Well, that's
hard for me to conceive because Spotify is an on
demand platform, so it's all in the history of music.
You get it what you want. The interface can look different,

(01:46:59):
but that since we've hit the wall, which is different
because essentially it's a marketplace and statistically for all the
pipe Bold playlists, they are not what dominates listening. So
when we look at the landscape, what comes after TikTok? Well? Yeah,

(01:47:19):
So one one big conversation that's been happening in the
creator world especially that just becomes more and more and
more of a discussion point is this idea of ownership.
And this goes back to what I was talking about,
is why I left The New York Times. Um, if
you are creating content on the Internet and you have
developed a audience on the Internet. You, Um, it's a

(01:47:42):
big point of tension like that that you don't have
direct access to them or you don't own that audience, right,
That audience is still mediated through these platforms, and that's
something that creators are less and less comfortable with and
okay with, especially as these platforms proved really volatile, right
their algorithms change, or they launched a new fee sure,
and suddenly their prioritizing that. So the big thing now,

(01:48:04):
I think is direct connection with an audience and ownership.
So you see people moving towards things like subscription based
revenue UM and stuff like sub stack, even not to
say that sub stack is gonna be around forever, but
something where you actually have a you have the contact
information for your fans and followers UM, and you can
reach them directly without an algorithm. That is very appealing

(01:48:27):
for creators. And if you look at a lot of
creators that are successful these days that are coming up,
there are people that have built that direct relationship with
their audience and then own a lot of their content
UM and so I think that's just going to be
a bigger I think whatever platforms comes next, ownership is
going to be a big part of that, allowing people
to own that relationship with their audience control you know,

(01:48:48):
who sees their stuff and how they reach people. I
just think whatever comes next will be more about that. Okay.
I don't wanna have a discussion about substecs business model.
That's going in the wrong. But on better it now
says on your handles, subscribe to my sub stack. Oh
I can't change. I can't change that because I changed it.

(01:49:08):
I made it that for one day and then Ellen
made that change where you can't change if you're verified,
you can't change your name anymore. Okay. I was wondering
because you don't post that off and on something. But
I'm trying to get everyone's emails. So subscribe to myself
stack and give me your email address. I do send
it sometimes I send it to promote articles usually, Okay,

(01:49:30):
Just so I understand In terms of substack, do you
own your data a hundred percent or do they have
any access to your the emails, you collect, etcetera. You
own your you own your email list, and you can
take it wherever you want. You could leave stuff back
to but they don't get it. Hm. Okay, Okay, So
just for the naysayers, and this tends to be the

(01:49:55):
older audience, people over the age of thirty five, who
poo poo TikTok, etcetera. Explain, tell them what is good
about TikTok, why they should be on the platform, and
how to use the platform to their advantage. And definitely, uh, well,

(01:50:16):
I'll never say someone has to be on social media.
I'm very jealous of people that can live their life
and never set foot on on these apps. So you know,
it's if you don't want to do it, you don't
have to. But I will say that if you want
to reach people at scales, TikTok is the place to go. Um.
It can seem a little bit overwhelming because it's a
it's a creative tool. You know, they have a lot
of creative tools. I should say, uh, but it's pretty

(01:50:39):
simple to post. I mean it's you hold down the
middle button and record a video, just the way that
you went on Instagram stories. Um. I think it's valuable
because that's just where a lot of the cultural conversation
is happening. As you mentioned earlier, that's where people are
going to search for content and to shop. So if
you are promoting anything, or you want to be in
the cultural discussion, and that is where people are going. Okay, wait,

(01:51:03):
let's start one on one because most people, especially as
you get older, lurkers, So forget about creating content. Start
from downloading the app. Well, if you download the app,
I mean, the good thing about TikTok, I'll say, is
that you don't have to follow anyone. You can just
download the app and watch a bunch of videos and

(01:51:24):
the algorithm will learn what you like and it will
start to deliver you a very engaging feed. I mean,
one of my friends, she was extremely into cooking and
she just downloaded too. She still I don't think she
still has an account even but she you know, she'll
just you can just swipe through and watch a lot
of engage videos. It's like going on YouTube, right, I mean,
we all go on YouTube to watch and cooking videos.

(01:51:45):
I would say TikTok is great for learning, you know,
for skills. I tried to pay a little bit slower
because a little bit slower because for most people, the
initial hurdle is difficult. Download the app and then you say, oh,
just watch videos. You download the app and tell them
what happens to get them through their anxiety. Okay, oh god,

(01:52:08):
I have to. It's been a while. I don't know
the exact user flow in terms of UM, in terms
of what like what that pathway is when you download,
I don't know the screens UM. Basically, you download the app.
I will say, you download the app, and you are
very quickly funneled into the fore you page. That is
what they want you too. So you might have to

(01:52:29):
set up an account. You might not UM. I think
you might. You know, you might have to register for
some that will give you an automatic user name or whatever.
But then it will just feed you. It will see
you will be on a full screen video and it
will be up to you to watch that video or
swipe up and see the next video. And with every
swipe and every like, the algorithm will learn more about

(01:52:53):
you and it will deliver you, you know, the content
that you want to see. So it's it's really not
hard to download TikTok like it's it's a that's the
reason that they've scaled so much, right Like parents, I
mean there's so many there's more parents on TikTok and Facebook.
Sometimes I feel like I know that's not true, but
it feels like that sometimes, Okay, and pulling back the

(01:53:14):
lens all the way we're social media in the landscape,
as you say, the government, certainly in America you use
a little bit better or at least is bringing up
the issues in terms of what is the effect of
social media on the world at large, terms of everything

(01:53:36):
from consumerisism, politics to uh, how it affects buying influences.
Because many people have social media in a bubble as
large as it is, they see, well, it doesn't impact
the rest of the world. To what degree does it?
And to what degree is it shaping our culture? I
mean it's completely shaping our culture. I think our pop

(01:53:57):
culture is Internet culture at this point. There is no distinction.
If you think about like the music, the entertainment we consume,
our political ecosystem is completely worked by the attention economy. Um.
I mean I think we were seeing that even preach Trump. Um.
It's affecting everything. I think connecting people at scale has

(01:54:17):
massive implications, um and literally everything. That's the core of
my beat. That's what I got into covering this whole
world for is that it's not just a bunch of
teenagers making videos on the internet. This these types of
technologies and communication technology in general. UM is it can
affect everything, business life, you know, literally anything you can

(01:54:40):
you can think of. Um, there's a great talk from
this UM. I can't remember who it was who gave it,
but it was. It was at XO x O and
he was talking which is a tech festival that doesn't
happen anymore. But UM, this guy was talking about the
Internet as a people connector and how the goal of
Internet has always been to sort of connected people. And
I think social media is the first time we're seeing
stuff happen at scale and seeing those connections happen at scale.

(01:55:03):
Obviously there's been a lot of downsize, but there's so
many upsides too, and it's not going anywhere. I think
things are changing in the social landscape. Not everyone wants
to reach every person on earth at scale at at
all times. I think we're realizing that that's generally not
always a good idea. But but it's you know, the
core of the Internet is still as a people connector

(01:55:26):
and what's your personal dream? And I mean, you know,
as you go down the pike, you're in your thirties
now one can easily do the math when you graduated
from college and you just want to do this to
the end of time or is there some you know,
something on the horizon that you right now say well
I'd love to be or do that. Yeah. I mean,

(01:55:47):
I my whole goal with my career, and I've had
a million different jobs and stuff, is just to help
people understand and the Internet and to take creative work
on the Internet seriously, Like I really really really want
that as somebody that does creative work on the Internet,
I just want people to understand that that that online

(01:56:08):
life is kind of our default reality now and people
shouldn't dismiss that. So I guess my my dream is
to impact the media and to build a better media
ecosystem and do whatever I have to do to get there.
I mean, I want in ten years there to be
a mediate ecosystem where one we're not condescending, you know,
to reporters, not saying that you're doing this, but it

(01:56:28):
happens a lot on time, like where it's not where
it's laughable to suggest that, oh, because a reporter uses
Twitter a lot, that they're you know, self promotional or whatever.
I think that we should just take all of that
stuff as a given and think, well, what does that
mean for media? I want a media landscape that's more
diverse that Pete, that that journalists are more secure in
their jobs, and that they have ownership over their work

(01:56:50):
and can see the upsides of their success, you know,
as much as these media companies have seen. So um yeah,
those are all the things. And I don't know that
I'll always be a writer. I've definitely not always been
a writer. At My background is in strategy, um and
and theis dev and audience development. So maybe I'll go
back to doing that or something, but just something to
make the media, you know, you know, build a version

(01:57:14):
of media that that I want to see. Okay, Taylor,
this has been great. You know. The problem is is
there's well to your advantage. On one level, there's only
one of you. I can't say, well, follow and pay
attention to the articles of Taylor the Rands and then
this person in that person, I don't know who those
other people were were. And for those who don't realize
you were history or your CV, you're really the authority.

(01:57:38):
So I want to thank you so much for taking
the time talk to my audience. Well, this is so
fun because you're such an icon and I'm very honored
to be included, and to be on this podcast is
so fun to chat. Wow. And I'll leave it at
that till next time. This is Bob Leftson,

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Bob Lefsetz

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Taylor Lorenz