#5Things: This Week in Social

Joey Scarillo: Welcome to the #5Things: This Week in Social. This is the Webby award-winning podcast that looks at five stories from social data, content, and tech to give you something to listen to while you're raking the leaves. If you're a marketer, an advertiser, a creator, or anyone that uses social media for a living. Then you are listening to the right podcast.
Today on the show, we welcome back Ankit Vahia. Hello, Ankit.

Ankit Vahia: Hey everybody. Excited to be back.

Joey Scarillo: Ankit, question for you. Are you a soccer fan? And if so, who's your team?

Ankit Vahia: I would say only when the World Cup is on or major tournaments are going on. Fun fact, the Brazilian national soccer team is very popular in India. So, Brazil all the way, I guess.

Joey Scarillo: Wow. Okay. I don't know that I would have guessed that. That is interesting.
And back on the show, it is our friend, Kendall Pennington. Hello, Kendall.

Kendall Pennington: Hey, what's up? Glad to be back.

Joey Scarillo: Kendall, are you a soccer fan or an American football fan?

Kendall Pennington: I am an American football fan. I can't say I know much about the world of soccer.

Joey Scarillo: Who is your NFL team?

Kendall Pennington: My NFL team is Cincinnati Bengals. I was raised in the northern Kentucky area, so that's kind of the vibe. We're big Joe Burrow people.

Joey Scarillo: I see, I see. Well, I'm Joey Scarillo and I will admit that I am a Steelers fan, so Kendall we will have something to argue about it after the show.
And as far as it goes with. Soccer. I just got into Ted Lasso and Welcome to Wrexham and all these soccer documentaries. So soccer was top of mind for me this week.

All right. Top of mind for you this week. Here are the five things.
• First up, Kendall breaks down how SCOTUS is hearing a set of cases on if public officials can block other social media users.
• Then Ankit poses the question, what do doctors think of the use of AI in medicine.
• Next, Kendall is checking in on Elon's first year with X.
• Ankit tells us about TikTok's new Parents of TikTok campaign.
• And finally, Kendall will bring us home and get into the latest influencers on TikTok, who are actually blue-collar workers.

All right, so much to dive in here. Kendall, kick us off with SCOTUS hearing this case about if public officials can block other users on social media.

Kendall Pennington: For sure. So it's super crazy. I was trying to think if there was one story that really felt like it captured the essence of just 2023 and basically what all of our, all kind of discourse boils down to, it really felt like this accurately depicted that.

So there's a couple cases right now and they're kind of at the local level, but it's basically constituents. Suing public officials and their communities for blocking them on their social media pages. And it's just this really interesting conversation between like, what the lines are between like, free speech and what you're entitled to as far as privacy if you're a public official and kind of what that looks like.

So yeah, it's really, I don't think they're expected to have a ruling on this case until the summer, but... A lot of this kind of started in the Trump era with like, is the leader of the free world allowed to block people from his public pages? And can you be banned if you're a public official, even if you're quite controversial and that sort of stuff? So it's a really interesting conversation.

Joey Scarillo: Nina Totenberg reported on this. She's a legend of the NPR world and really had a great article and write up. Ankit, I'm curious, from your point of view, if you were a Supreme Court Justice, how do you think you might rule on this? Should the public officials be allowed to block other users?

Ankit Vahia: I think it depends in what capacity. Now, I'm sure these officials are probably going to have accounts that are their personal accounts, their official accounts. I think the official accounts have to stay open, because it's almost like an open forum at this point. Now, if they have a personal account, like, you know, they can have a, you know, work account that's Senator XYZ, whatever it is. But if they have a personal account, that's like, you know, basketball lover or something, whatever it is, that's their personal space where they can be allowed, allowed to, you know, block whoever they want, but they shouldn't be allowed to have work related discourse on that platform as well.

Now, if it's their work account, technically, social media is a platform where you reach the people you serve. So you should not be allowed to block people there. It's like having an open forum in town hall and having someone escorted out because they asked you a question you don't want to hear. So in that case, I think church and state is going to become even more critical down the line.
I mean, it's a tricky one.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah. Kendall, why is it so important that these public accounts stay open to all social media users?

Kendall Pennington: Right. So, like Ankit just weighed in, in the current state of things, this is a primary way that a lot of people, Americans, receive their information. I think that was kind of the case being made by one of the people suing their leader.

It was like, he claimed that this was a major way that he speaks to his constituents, and he's like, it's not fair. Like, there's some information here that this is the only way I can access it. And it's so weird. It's like, I think kind of what when I get said, it's like, obviously, if it's purely a political page, it should obviously be open all the time.

I think the blurring of the lines is weird, because it's like a lot of these people have historically had these accounts be personal, and they kind of just dip their toe into the other side of it. And so it's like, what does that mean? And how do we rule on that? And I think even for a lot of just consumers and employees, just in the last couple years, like post COVID era, we saw a lot of blurring between like personal and professional in terms of like what you display publicly or to your coworkers or that sort of thing.

So just kind of about like defining what those lines are and it's kind of a hard conversation.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, I'm not confident in the Supreme Court to really get into that nuance, but I think your division there, Ankit, that you laid out between the public account and the personal accounts is a smart one.

Kendall, you might be able to weigh in on this a little bit more. But on platforms like X, accounts like @POTUS and @Speaker, they transfer from person to person, but @JoeBiden will always be Joe Biden's account. Yes, for sure. Joey Joey Scarillo: Interesting, interesting. Well, we usually get a handful of these Supreme Court decisions in June, so I'm sure this one will certainly come back next year.
Okay, let's move on to our second thing, Ankit. Tell us about how doctors are feeling about the use of AI in medicine.

Ankit Vahia: So first of all, I think when it comes to AI in medicine, the Wild West has come a lot quicker than I think many of us were ready or thought it would come. And I think this is going to be a serious, serious I don't know if it's an issue, but it's a serious situation for us.
Because the speed at which, you know, what has AI done? It's created a platform, and it's one developers dip into and build out different apps on. And so there's this really interesting article in the New York Times that talks about how doctors are sort of wrestling a little bit with how AI is going to play a role in patient care.

But what they're really worried about is there is no real oversight. You know, Biden earlier, earlier, I think last week, earlier this week, issued the first federal order saying we need regulation on oversight. Fun fact though, There is no single government body that is regulating AI, which means it's spread out, whether it's the FDA does their bid, or you have the SEC doing their bid, or whoever it is overseeing AI in their specific domain, so to speak.

And so just coming back to health, there are a ton of different, you know, success stories that have come out. Detecting breast cancer a year early, detecting initial lung cancer screens, being able to predict if a wound is gonna generate sepsis down the line. But I think The key takeaway of this article, which, you know, it's a long read, but perhaps worth it if anyone's curious, is the potential is tremendous.
But it could become dangerous if the next generation of doctors or healthcare givers learn to rely on it a bit too much because there's no oversight. The FDA doesn't know where to go. You know, the way FDA operates is they tackle one problem at a time, whereas AI tends to tackle multiple problems, right?
You're going from a single focus to a multifocal platform. For example, radiologists have been using AI for a long time in their scans and things like that. It's been pretty guarded. It's been an incremental evolution and it's, it's getting sort of more and more intense, there's more variety. There's more softwares coming out.

And an example that they cite here is really fright where I'm sure we ordered about the 737 max aircrafts that kept crashing, right? They had issues and things like that. Turns out the pilots were not trained on how to override the autopilot because they were trained to use A. I. as a primary focus.
Whereas if they had been trained to override safety measures of what it was doing, they could have actually taken control of the aircraft and the crashes wouldn't have happened. Now therein lies the inherent issue with healthcare. If you start, or if we start, or if doctors start relying heavily on AI to diagnose things, you're either going to misdiagnose, under diagnose, or over diagnose.
None of which is good. So as AI comes into being, oversight is going to be key. I think we need to take a few steps back. Perhaps a new agency that comes in has the ability to do it. But yeah, it's, you know, Google has developed their new platform for healthcare providers that they're saying is going to be regulated.

It's going to be interesting. I think we're soon going to have to start asking our doctors, did you diagnose that or did the software? I want to compare the two. I mean, I'm, I'm only half joking that I may or may not do that the next time because hell, I don't know.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, no, it is definitely an interesting question. And the article that you're referring to is from the New York Times. So we'll make sure that we have it linked. Kendall, I'm curious. So when we talk about AI, the question I always ask is, is this a tool or is this something that can potentially go wrong? So I'm curious, from your point of view, are you optimistic or are you pessimistic about how this technology can be used in medicine?

Kendall Pennington: Yeah, so I think I definitely just as a whole mean like super like techno-optimist. I think basically everything cool that's ever happened is super scary at the beginning. And I think... It's all about, yeah, like this being treated as like, treated as like a supplementary tool to people that are already expertise in whatever field.

That's why I feel like we should be talking about even like self driving, all of these things, especially initially in early development type years where it kind of feels we're at that like paradigm shift. I think it's really important that it's understood to be this kind of like assistive type thing as opposed to like being the thing.

But I do think it's funny, it's like with all of this technology type of stuff, it's like, I think the scary part is that at least government or FDA or those type bodies always feel like so... not like the right people that should be discussing this sort of regulation. It's like when you watch even those like social media tech hearings and Congress is asking like what WiFi is and that sort of thing and you're like oh this doesn't bode super well and why why is this the institution that's figuring out where this goes.
So I think it'll be a lot about hoping that people in tech kind of pushing this forward are the ones considering like the ethics and that sort of side.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, people who know what they're talking about. Alright, let's move on to our third thing today. If we've said Elon Musk on this show one time, we've said it a million times, but it's been a full year since Elon's started with Twitter. So let's check in. Kendall, how's the past year been over at the bird app or the former bird app?

Kendall Pennington: Former bird app. Yeah. So I believe it was this past week. I saw all over the platform. There was kind of acknowledgement of this one-year anniversary. I believe like at, at. Those who were still employed there, there was kind of a celebration and called and that sort of thing.
So in this past year, there's been like a crazy amount that has happened for better or for worse. The way that Elon and kind of the company has branded itself for kind of the turbulence of this past year because you see things about like user numbers being quite down and friends still being afraid to kind of interact from like a paid or advertising sort of standpoint.

I feel like the narrative has shifted to how they're talking about it whether it's like retroactive to kind of explain away some of those kinds of decisions or what but I feel like the way it's being discussed now is like, oh, this wasn't about the economics or finances of this platform. It was about maintaining this public forum and kind of taking this in a new direction and saving public discourse and freedom of speech and that sort of thing.

So there's been a ton. I know that, like, past criticism of Twitter was that they were very slow to, like, roll out new product features or, like, ship things or that sort of thing. So in this past year, the engineering and product side has really taken that sort of, like, move fast and break things kind of approach.
If something didn't work, I feel like they pulled it really quick. There's been a lot of, like, glitches in the platform or days where it's been down for minutes and that sort of thing that feel like a big deal. But I think it's because they've, they've been shipping so many things. And I think, yeah, I think some specific interesting advancements has been kind of the community notes feature, which I think has been so big and just, we've been seeing a lot in light of like recent events in like Palestine, that sort of situation.
It's been nice to see at least that feature. Attempt to kind of bring accuracy to public discourse and when like news is coming in in real time and that sort of thing. But then also like in the past week I've been seeing, it sounds like there's this move to make X just this like everything platform and the next year they said they're holding out a dating app that's part of X.

And they want to include more like banking type of things. And also they've started the building out of what they want to do like their LinkedIn competitor employment via X. So whether this all is successful or not, um, I'm not sure, but I do think it's exciting like the prospects of some of the stuff that's happening there.

And I just feel like people. Like, talking about it in the frame of, like, what was Twitter is really the right way to discuss it at this point. It's about whether it'll succeed in being, like, this, its own thing.
Joey Scarillo: Yeah, so it's not about the “what was”, it's about “what will.” And, uh, yeah, I mean, as all those features or all those new sections of, of X come out, I'm sure we'll be discussing it. Ankit, I'm curious from your point of view, over the past year, what do you think Elon's best decision was? And what do you think his worst decision was?

Ankit Vahia: Oh, man. If he just thought broadly, I think his best decision is he said he was going to do something and he did it. Love him or hate him. You can't disagree that he's been well, as far as we know.
He says things that he wants to do, doesn't necessarily worry about backlash, and he wants to evolve Twitter, as he said he was going to. Maybe it started as, uh, as a joke. Maybe it started as something he didn't want to do, but he's, you know, backing what he said he wanted to be is he's gonna change Twitter.

He wants to make it a bigger platform. It should be more, you know, when it comes to bad decisions, I guess. I'm not sure I understand the move to X. You know, maybe it's to beat the equity of Twitter and, you know, because Twitter association is very specifically with the tweets and he wants it to be bigger, so he called it X.

I don't understand it. I don't get it. It doesn't, it seems maybe the anonymous nature or the ambiguous nature is by design. It was a decision, doesn't mean I necessarily agree to it, but I think the bad decision, net net is, it seems like he's taken his eye off Tesla. And to me, his innovation in Tesla or his vision, and I'm sure that's, we will be like, well, lead and find Tesla.

He just paid, you know what? Sure. Sure. Not going to go there. But where the trajectory of Tesla pre and post Twitter, uh, is it's, it's, it's a little unfortunate because he's had to focus on Twitter because he put all this money behind it. So I don't know what the hell do I know from the outset looking in, it seems like Tesla should be doing a lot more than they are.

They really have what is tremendous, like personally, we've run earlier doctor buying the Model 3 when it came out. So we've had one for a long time. So we believe, you know, personally, I'm like, yeah. This man's up to something. Would have been nice to see it go on. So maybe it changes in next year. Who knows?

But that's where I see the most negative. As far as X goes, let's see where it lands. You know, it's, it's, it's disruptive. You know, let's go along for the ride.

Joey Scarillo: One year in, let's see where it ends up two years in. Kendall, what do you think marketers can learn from the last year at X?

Kendall Pennington: I know I've been having this conversation with a lot of my brands here at Grey and stuff over this past year.

I think it's all about what the ROI is for you when being on Twitter. There's been a certain amount of, I know brands who are. Wanting to be risk averse due to a lot of the content moderation type things that have happened on X the past year. I think there's still a really unique place to, for the right brands, I think there is an important role that X plays.

In terms of kind of being in that, in that discourse, it's really the only platform that has kind of that two way dialogue type feel. And for brands that really have a lot of the bread and butter in terms of being reactive or a part of kind of culture commentary, I think it's still a place that I encourage brands to be.
But yeah, as far, it's just kind of about keeping an open mind and keeping this on the table as an option. But I do understand hesitancy around being on the platform right now.

Joey Scarillo: It's definitely an interesting one, and I'm sure we will not stop talking about it anytime something new happens. Alright, let's move on to number four, Ankit. This is exciting. I kind of like this one. TikTok drops a new Parents of TikTok campaign. Is this one near and dear to your heart? Tell us
Ankit Vahia: about it. I love this one. I gotta say, I never got TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. hmm, maybe that's all bad. I don't know. But, you know, over time, just from a healthcare perspective, and fun, you know, we spoke about it last time, TikTok is the one of the most influential portals for pharma marketing and healthcare marketing.

But this one, just like, I just love everything about it. It's, it's I think a stroke of brilliance in some ways. They're opening this new portal or website called Parents of TikTok. Based on a really... Cool insight is the TikTok users that started are now growing up and are becoming parents themselves.

They're pretty savvy or they want to be savvy. So from October to January this year, they're, you know, working with parent influencers, you know, hosting community workshops and guides for parents looking to discover the TikTok community and sort of becoming this live support group for young parents with young kids and They could have parent related content.

And if you, you know, if you go to parents. TikTok, what you'll see is, you know, there's expert tips and there's, you know, pregnancies and IVF journeys and new parents and all these really important and at times really sensitive topic that parents want to talk about and don't know where to go to. Hey, TikTok, everyone's on TikTok, build a community out of it.

But what's interesting is they're also Educating new parents on how they can make TikTok safe for their little ones or young kids who may be getting on TikTok. So it's like a duality is help you become a parent, but also, you know, a parent of TikTok, but a parent of someone who's already on TikTok because you're anyways, you need to make sure they're safe and how they're going.

And, you know, what they're sharing and, you know, things like that. It's just, it's fantastic. Like family meals and things like that. And I'm like, what a wonderful community building effort that is just going to get, you know, if I was a new parent and I wasn't on TikTok, I would go on TikTok. 100%. I would sign up to just see what are the parents going for.

And, you know, it's, I don't remember back in the day when we had our little ones, like 10 years, you know, eight and 10 years ago, there used to be meetups, parent meetups, where you sign up for a meetup and you meet other parents. This is the next iteration of it. You don't need to go meet someone. There's somewhere, someone online who's already sort of making you feel, you know, like you belong and bringing people together.

I don't know. It's just, you know, every once in a while, I see your initiative. I mean, like, oh, that's cool. I wish I thought of that. This is one of those.

Joey Scarillo: Kendall, I'm curious, how do you feel about parents of TikTok versus back when all of our parents joined Facebook? How is this different?

Kendall Pennington: That's a good question. I feel like fundamentally the communities and just kind of layout of like TikTok versus Facebook will make this feel less because I've even heard people describe TikTok not as a social media platform. It's like a content entertainment platform first. So I think it's less likely that there's that like kind of overreaching cringe thing that like teenagers feel when their parents are like up and what's going on.

So I feel like that. Should be fine. I know in the last, like, year or two as TikTok has evolved, like Ankit said, I think in the early days it was just like kids dancing around. And I feel like the way most people and consumers even use TikTok now is almost like as a search engine first. That's something that I think has been an interesting takeaway.

So, like, now it's like, oh, and I want a recipe for something, or I want to know how to design something, or whatever. Like, you can, you just use the search bar and it gives you an immediate visual example that I think is really compelling. And I think that's how I'd like to think that like new parents would probably use that and find that community.

I also think there's just kind of that like hyper relatable thing about TikTok that's different than Instagram or Facebook and I think a lot of specifically like new parents can find community there. Actually before this job I was working for like a large baby brand and I helped launch their TikTok and we were surprised by how much specifically new mom found us in terms of advice.
They found the best product for what they were looking for and I think that was just a really a really cool thing so I think this is great.

Joey Scarillo: Okay. Should marketers be paying close attention to groups like this?
Ankit Vahia: Yeah, a hundred percent, especially as wellness becomes more and more important, you know, appealing to a community is, is huge.

It's huge. It's huge. You know, even something from, you know, something like vaccination, pediatric vaccination. Parenting, sure, is a huge world and I think TikTok in general and healthcare is becoming bigger. But as marketers, like, if there is an opportunity to build community or join a community, I mean, it's amazing.

And Kendall, I love what you said. There's something inherently safer and more appealing about TikTok because of their... Guidelines and how tightly you can regulate comments and things like that. It just feels more warm and fuzzy and feels like a safe place. Unlike, you know, Facebook or Instagram, which can get vicious in a heartbeat.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah. Well, at least on TikTok, I don't have to worry about. Any of my parents or my parents’ friends commenting, “it was so nice seeing you last week” on my profile picture or anything. Alright, let's move on to our fifth and final thing of the day. Speaking of TikTok, Kendall, tell us about the latest influencers on TikTok. Who are they?

Kendall Pennington: Yeah, so there's been a major trend, I think, in the last year or two. Once again, I think it was kind of part of like a post COVID disillusionment type thing of blue-collar workers really blowing up, just showing kind of, I think, what a lot of people might consider like monotonous parts of their day or that kind of thing.

It's so anti the classic like influencer aesthetic and that kind of thing. It's just people showing very normal parts of their life and day, specifically people like fishermen and people that like mixed paint at Home Depot. I don't know if these are serving for consumers. It's just kind of an escapism, relaxing, almost kind of like an ASMR type thing.

I think a lot of that is part of this. And I also just think in general, I know a lot of discourse on other platforms this past week or two that I've seen has been in regard to like Gen Z’s aversion to just like the classic nine-to-five like white collar type job. So I think there's a bit of a romantization of like people just literally out that have these jobs that do things with their hands that I think is interesting to a lot of people that haven't been exposed to that sort of content otherwise.

But I think it's really interesting and I'm excited for these people that are making it happen. So a lot of them seem really unsuspecting their success. They were like, yeah, I just started filming my day and people found it really interesting and they're getting really good brand deals. And make money off of it.
So I think it's really cool.

Joey Scarillo: I love that. I absolutely love that. Ankit, I don't know if this is the kind of thing you watch on TV, but could you draw a line between shows like the ones that are about ice truckers and pawn shop owners and fishermen and the crews of yachts and, and this kind of content on TikTok?
Does this popularity surprise you?

Ankit Vahia: When these shows first came out on, you know, on Bravo or whatever it is, was, you know, the advent of reality TV. This is the new reality TV. It's a peek into people's lives and, you know, jobs that don't typically come our way. And TikTok is the new avenue, right? No one, no one wants to watch a one-hour episode every week anymore.

It's like, oh, I get four-minute clip or whatever, a few minute clip. that, that I can get into. It doesn't surprise me at all. It's good. It's opening. It's actually monetizing things for them in a manner that actually gets to them. So if, if a lobster fisherman is going to get sponsorship, the money is going to him as opposed to reality TV and big conglomerates.

I think it's great. I think it's a new form of content. Content is also constantly evolving, right? So right now it's all about authenticity and what's really going on. There'll be something new next year and there'll be a whole new set of content. Creators that will come out. This didn't surprise me at all.
I think it's, it's new right now. It's fresh. We'll see where it goes.

Joey Scarillo: Kendall, is this what makes TikTok great?

Kendall Pennington: Yes. I think it's the major distinguishing factor for TikTok versus other platforms that I think is what really has people flashed onto.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, I think it's great, and I think, like you mentioned, Kendall, drawing attention to blue collar work and really putting that at the center.

Alright, well friends, that does it for us this week. If you don't already, be sure to share us, follow us, like us, review us, write to us with your questions, comments, concerns, points of interest, or complaints, or just send us a thing you want us to discuss. You can do all of that by emailing us at podcasts@grey.com.

Connect with us on Spotify by sharing your thoughts on the show. Just look for the Q&A field.

The topics discussed on this show are written and researched by the Social and Connections team at Grey, New York, with help this week from om our panel, Kendall Pennington, and Ankit Vahia.
This podcast is produced by me, Joey Scarillo and Samantha Geller, with post production by Amanda Fuentes, Guy Rosmarin, and Ned Martin at Gramercy Park Studios.

Marketing and communication support from Adrian Hopkins, Christina Hyde, And Jayda Hinds.
Listen to Grey Matter: A Podcast about Ideas, where we speak to founders, artists, and innovators about bringing their ideas to life. You can find Grey Matter: A Podcast about Ideas, wherever you find this podcast.

That does it for us. Thank you, listener. And please, as always be social.

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