#5Things: This Week in Social

2024_02_05_5Things_183
Joey Scarillo: Welcome to the five things this week in social. This is the Webby award winning podcast that looks at five stories from social data, content, AI, and tech to give you something smart to say to your colleagues, clients, or kids. If you're a marketer, an advertiser, or a creator, or anyone who makes a living using social platforms, then you are listening to the right podcast.
We have a great show for you today. First up on the panel today, it's Jayda Hines. Hello, Jayda. Hi, Joey. Jade, I've got a question for you. Which Muppet do you share an energy or a vibe with? Like, which one really connects to you? Or Sesame Street characters?
Jayda Hinds: Who's the guy in the trash can?
Joey Scarillo: Well, that's Oscar the Grouch, of course.
Jayda Hinds: Oscar. I'm feeling like Oscar this winter, for sure.
Joey Scarillo: Amazing. I love that. And back again, it's Daniel Avon. Hello, Daniel.
Daniel Avon: Hello, Joey. So lovely to hear and see you in the new year.
Joey Scarillo: Yes, yes. It's great to have you here. Same question for you, my friend. Which Muppet do you share an energy or a vibe with?
Daniel Avon: Okay, so I just ferociously Googled this before I could answer. It's Statler and Waldorf. The two guys that curmudgeonly sit in the opera box, like that is me.
Joey Scarillo: I love it. So we've got Statler and Waldorf and Oscar the grouch. This is just going to be a curmudgeonly episode. Well, I'm Joey Scarillo and somehow, I am equal parts Kermit and Fozzie the Bear. I feel like if you know me, you know me.
So let's get into the five things. First up, Jayda kicks things off with the Florida house passing a bill to ban social media for teens. Next, Daniel tells us about Meta, who launched Llama, an AI programming tool. Then Jayda explains Meta's announcement of a new program to share data with academics. Daniel tells us how in December, Threads reached the top 10 in iOS downloads.
And finally, Jayda gets into BeReal, who, as we predicted, adds celebs and brands. And then after all of that, we will wrap things up with one more thing, but more on that later. So let's get into the first thing today, Jayda, tell us about the Florida House passing a bill to put a ban on social media for teens.
Jayda Hinds: Yes, though, Florida House passed a bill that bans children under 16 for popular media apps, regardless if they have parent approval or not. The bill doesn't specify which platforms are exactly included, but it does affect any platform that tracks user activity, so it's safe to say that META is out of the question.
The House voted 106 13 for the bill, and several Democrats and Republicans joined together for this. And then proponents on the bill argued that social media exposes children to harmful people like bullies or sexual predators, and they also point out that these apps can lead to things like depression, suicide, or an addictive obsession.
Meta urged the House to seek out another solution, like mandating parent approval to download apps instead, or addressing the issue federally instead of state by state. And in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Meta Representative Caulder Harvill-Childs argued that teens today leverage the internet and apps to gather information and learn about opportunities and part time jobs and higher education and church gatherings.
But learning about this was quite paradoxical to me. Teenagers have always been synonymous with social for many years and so much media is crafted socials. The most prominent example that comes to mind to me is a recent Mean Girls the musical. Which included the Gen Z camera shake and iPhone POVs throughout the film.
And for advertisers, I feel like this is a really good wake up call to think about the younger demographic outside of social. And asking yourself, you know, if it wasn't for Instagram, how else would a 15-year-old come across this content organically? Or something like, social themes aside, how could this resonate with someone who's 13, 14, 15?
Joey Scarillo: So many implications here, you know, especially if It happens in Florida, it might move on to other states, who knows. Daniel, I'm curious, you know, do you think a ban is the right way forward? And what do you think it could mean for teens on the other end?
Daniel Avon: I was looking to this story as well and just hearing Jayda talk about it again.
It made me think of the Wild West that was social when I was coming up and Messenger, AOL. com. MySpace and all of these sort of areas where the same things were happening, but it was less brands, and it was more just people to people, the bullying notion and other things that may impact mental health, not just necessarily like brand advertising.
And I think regardless of whether or not you ban this for younger folks, it's gonna happen anyways, whether it happens in the school hallways. Or it happens with TV and other places where people get content. It's gonna happen. As well, how many kids are gonna just figure out ways around the system? Like, how can you really enforce people downloading 16 years old and so forth?
That requires some setup on the child's phone or the computer that they're using to indicate that they are of a certain age and so forth. You can always lie, as we did when I was growing up, about how old you are to enter and access content in a certain place. So, I think the intention is good, but there's so much contained within it.
Like, inhibiting teens and kids to do this type of thing means that they're missing out on a lot of community that they could form with people that don't exist in their immediate premises. It's also a debate whether brands should advertise to those younger folks or not. Just banning it outright kind of takes the responsibility and onus off the platforms, which feels like it should be there to monitor and make sure that the content and so forth that is showing up for them is safe and not as addictive as it could be.
It's an interesting approach. I just don't know if it's the right burden of responsibility and if, in effect, what it's seeking to do is actually going to come to be, be enforceable.
Joey Scarillo: Right. And of course, you know, it goes without saying, but we absolutely do not condone anybody lying about their age on these applications.
However, it does feel like you could enter into a Wild West situation where actually apps then could become less safe. I just want to make sure that these politicians really think this through before they push something like this. Alright, let's move on to Meta, who launched Llama, an AI programming tool to compete with GitHub CoPilot.
Daniel Avon: I promise this is not AI tech Dr. Seuss story. There is some meat to this. So this week, Meta launched its latest update of its AI code generation model, Code Llama 70b, which competes with OpenAI's GitHub Copilot and Amazon's Code Whisperer. This sounds like a lot of word soup, but effectively, this is Meta's largest and best performing model yet of its free to the public, both for researchers and professional use, code assisting tool.
If it's between these three, and it's a game of who has the best name, for me, it's Meta's llama even though it literally doesn't say what it does, it's just funny. Essentially, what these Tools do, as I briefly said before, it helps programmers and developers write code based on prompts. Think about the way that you engage with ChatGPT.
You ask it, I'm trying to do this thing, how do I do that thing? And it helps coders to work through their own issues, problems, and errors that they may be facing into. I actually just read an article about this in the New Yorker about OpenAI and their GitHub Copilot. And they talked about how it helps, but it doesn't solve all of the issues of coders.
So, you have to still have some coding knowledge in order to leverage these tools, but it does help advance and move through problems a lot quicker. Apparently, there exists this thing called human eval, which is an accuracy benchmark, as it sounds, how close to human it is. Meta's model scored 53% OpenAI's GPT 4 scored 67%.
It's interesting because this is the tool itself and what it's offering folks, but it has sparked or reignited a lot of the conversation that is core to copyright and AI. Namely, what happens to all of the copyrighted material used to train generative AI tools? Meta and the other companies are arguing that because they wouldn't be able to build these models otherwise, everything's available on the internet, so it should fall under fair use.
And the AI programs don't technically output copyrighted results, which, as we've seen with a lot of the image-based AI tools, is kind of not entirely true. The copyrights don't need to be respected, so, of the source material, meaning that permission and payment are not needed. However, conversely, Meta and other companies are arguing that their tools should be protected by copyright.
So not that anything conclusive is happening, but it's interesting to see how this is all spelling out who is being viewed as entitled to copyright protections and so forth. It's interesting because they're looking to protect copyright on these tools, but they're still offering them mostly free or as plus ups to existing properties.
For an example, OpenAI is going to be leveraging GPT within Word, PowerPoint, and Excel in some future term. There are still cases where money is changing hands, so a copyright might be important to protect down the line, if not immediately. For brand legal departments, this is a little bit of a signal that it's going to continue to be a bit of a risk that they're going to have to weigh when they leverage AI tools and have anything that faces the public.
From that perspective, copyrights being respected and so forth. But it does feel like The force is coming from the companies developing the tools themselves. Lastly, just kind of a button on this that this is about Llama and other tools. If you're an experienced or new coder, there are now three kinds of good tools at your disposal to help you with that.
Joey Scarillo: So, Jayda, the AI conversation is obviously a huge one and, you know, one that is very vast. I'm just curious when it comes to the copyright, which piece of the puzzle do you think, uh, is the most important and is most copyrightable for these?
Jayda Hinds: When it comes to copyright, I feel like the code is most important because that's what helps process the AI.
When I think about Llama as a whole, what I appreciate about it is its accessibility. It's free and when it comes to the conversations around tech and who has access to it, I'm very happy that most of the features that Llama has are accessible to anyone from any income bracket and I think that's very important as Tech becomes more and more integrated in our daily life.
Joey Scarillo: Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's of course a big watch out whenever you think about this new technology, but speaking of meta, I feel like this is a very meta forward episode, meta announced a new program to share data with academics. I mean, we know they have no shortage of it. So Jayda, tell us about it.
Jayda Hinds: Yes, META is partnering with the Center of Open Science, or COS, on a pilot program to share select privacy preserving social media data with a closed group of academic researchers.
The researchers will study the impacts of social media connection on behavioral trends related to well being. Each research project will be vetted with peer review and researchers are required to submit a proposed research question, including the methodology. which will then be assessed for viability before it enters the data collection stage.
I don't know if you guys remember this, but back in 2018, Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data that was intended for academic research at the University of Cambridge to sell to political groups. It was repackaged as a sort of influence project that was intended to sway election outcomes. Because of this, Meta was fined 5 billion from the FTC as a result of the data breach.
So this incident Of course, it affects how Meta approaches data privacy, and they are definitely cautious about working with a group of researchers again. However, close to half of the world's population uses Meta, so the results from this data is very accurate, probably more than an 1, 000 person survey would be, 000, the numbers are just way too big with Meta.
And as we spoke about earlier, this research comes at a time where META is under extreme scrutiny for its impact on children's mental health or well being. The study with COS, the company wants to understand this consequence deeper, long term consequences and short term or use concrete data to create a narrative and sort of argue against it.
But whatever the case is, they're seeking to understand META's ties to well being very completely and very fully. Daniel.
Joey Scarillo: Daniel. You know that anytime there's a story about data, I want to ask you a question about it as our data expert. What does this amount of data for research mean for the academic community?
Is this, is this a big get?
Daniel Avon: I mean, it is. Usually, to what Jayda was saying, they're dealing with smaller studies of hundreds of people or thousands of people. This is quite literally, potentially millions, if not billions of people and data points. So there is. a lot more potential for conclusiveness in the results, statistical significance, and so forth.
This scale of information is kind of unheard of whenever you're thinking of on a person-to-person basis. I'm curious to see how it's all managed, though, because meta is the gatekeeper. This information and the academics are going to have to propose research questions and so forth, and As we were talking with the first story, they could just accept proposals for things that are in their best interest singularly.
Hopefully, it means good things for both the academic and meta worlds, but just that we as the half of the world that use their platforms also benefit from it, and it's not just something that's waged in legal proceedings. Do you think there are any ethical concerns about the use of this data?
Potentially, because They're controlling what questions get answered. They're also potentially controlling the narrative around it. I'm not entirely certain how much influence or input they're going to have in these independent researchers, their findings and what can be reported out. But I'm hopeful that because of what happened with Cambridge Analytica, they will be a lot more careful and that they will not be using these findings to better target people and so forth, that this is really more of a holistic understanding of what's happening on their platforms.
Jayda Hinds: They do have a hand in the research question, but they also have a hand in the researchers themselves. It's a closed group of selected researchers, so who knows? If there is a sort of vetting process to determine what type of researcher would be good for this role, it reminds me of jury duty a little bit.
Joey Scarillo: Let’s go back in time to December a bit and let's move on to thing number four. Threads reached the top 10 downloads, but X only reached number 36.
Daniel Avon: So what does that say, Daniel? Continuing with this meta theme, though it may feel like the world had already pronounced Threads dead, based on these new efforts for meta, after the declines that I think we spoke about on the podcast that happened around September after that 100 million downloads and all of that excitement, Threads is actually once again trending.
According to an app intelligence firm called AppFigures, in December of 2023, Threads was in the number six spot on the download charts, being number four on Apple and number eight on Google Play, with a total of 28 million downloads across both stores. This momentum did not come out of nowhere, so we have this.
Huge peak. X is kind of on a downward spiral when threads launched. After realizing in September of the downturn, Meta has made some changes. Namely, they put ads on Facebook. So, you may remember they were publicizing this on Instagram. Now it's kind of moved to Facebook as well. And it's slowly moving to what is being called the Fediverse.
Not sure if we've spoken about this on the podcast, but it's like a federation of social networking apps like the Mastodon. After X and Twitter were going down, other text based social networks were on the upswing. And one of the benefits of it is this connected ability to post and share where it's not just An application itself is a closed loop.
There's some sharing and it kind of doesn't lean into the primacy of one app over another, which may be appealing to the people that are leaving X and the Twitter environments. Threads has also become more shareable via third party apps and websites, so easier to engage with from a brand perspective.
The article that I read also talked about what's happening with X formerly Twitter, which could be an amazing drag name, just putting it out there, and it is how I'm going to be referring to X formerly Twitter going forward. Starting with TikTok, it is beginning to see slowed growth. One thing that was cited is that TikTok shop is making the app experience a little worse.
And obviously there's a lot of legal stuff that's going on with TikTok and other things that may be bringing into question if new folks want to download the app. Instagram has moved into the number one spot, so something that is seen as a very mature app is actually continuing to grow, and X is number 36.
For me, this demonstrates sort of the ebb and flow of social platforms, like the three or four that we're talking about. Threads is still very nascent, whereas the other three, X, TikTok, and Instagram, from a year's perspective are very old, but TikTok and Instagram obviously being The bigger forces there and TikTok still continues to be this massive force to be reckoned with in a place where brands should likely continue to consider efforts.
But this sort of underscores the power of the meta suite of apps, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads, and how they are continuing to be a strong, trending, and reliable place for brands to play and grow. I'm still not personally convinced on Threads, but if there's like A app agnostic distribution of content.
Sure, include threads within there. Um, maybe it doesn't require bespoke efforts so much, but it is a place that we should continue to have an eye on. And it's definitely an interesting change of events from where we were only a few months ago.
Joey Scarillo: I love the idea of a drag queen name X formerly Twitter. I think that's, uh, absolutely perfect.
And, and also really does say a lot about where the brand is going. I mean, if you have to constantly give that caveat that, Oh, I'm not talking about the letter X or X Men. I'm talking about Elon Musk's app that used to be Twitter. Jayda, I'm curious about threads. So I feel like this story actually does make sense.
Like, this feels right. Do you feel like there's more recognition, appreciation, users on Threads?
Jayda Hinds: This story feels right to me too. Also, because. X former lead twitter isn't the best when it comes to user experience. I'm not surprised that other apps look shining in comparison and the data proves it. I personally am not convinced by threads or on threads.
However, Instagram is doing a new feature where if you're scrolling in feed, you see previews of what other people have posted on threads. And that preview in itself makes me curious about what's happening. On that other app, I'm just not there yet because maybe part of me is still longing to what X used to be for me to be fully all in with
Joey Scarillo: threads.
Yeah, good for Meta using Instagram to get people to threads because I never tap on the icon for threads, but anytime I view a thread, it's because I was driven there from Instagram. So in that regard, it's working. And so if that's what's driving people there and getting people on it, then again, like kudos to Meta.
I was a little bit surprised about X, formerly Twitter, being number 36. That actually felt. Surprisingly lower than I would have expected. Okay. Let's jump into our fifth thing. Be real. Like we predicted ads, celebs and brands. Jayda, tell us all about that.
Jayda Hinds: A few months ago, the five things team predicted that B Roll may find itself losing momentum because of its basic offerings, which are in the moment photos.
Of course, I don't think we were necessarily happy to make this prediction about a new app. And ideally, we want to see an app that's centered itself on realness thrive. But it was lacking diverse NF features that would cause the user to stay on the app for a longer period of time. So to combat user loss, which is down 50 million users from its peak, Be Real is adding features for celebrities and brands to have a spot on the app called Real People and Real Brands.
These will be official brand accounts that showcase promotions and offers. And in response to this new offering, Be Real says, Real People is an opportunity for notable people to keep it real and share behind the scenes moments to give you, the community, a glimpse of their lives when they aren't on the world stage.
The app is also offering a feature called Real Fans, where fans can tag a celebrity or brand in a post. And that celebrity or brand has the option to re share their B Roll. And as far as the app's value and mission statement, I do believe that BeReal is kind of losing sight of it. It originally positioned itself as a platform that was so far away from Instagram that only had everyday people without the influence of extremely curated content.
Celebrities as a whole can even be described as curated content, I'd argue. With a team behind their makeup, hair, outfits, and skin, background, authentic photos still have an unattainability about them. It reminds me of how Emma Chamberlain has positioned herself, the 22 year old influencer turned celebrity, gained fame from how relatable she was.
She was an eccentric, funny teenage girl making videos from her bedroom, but was not in LA or NYC at the time, might I add. But now fans of her are understanding, probably also due to their growing age as well, that her relatability diminishes once the mansion tour was filmed, or her seeing her front row during their fashion week, or announcing that she doesn't check her bank account.
But back to BeReal, from a brand standpoint, I think that it would be useful to establish yourself as an early adopter there. BeReal is centered around content showing up as simple. So branded content would not need super elaborate photo shoots or design work to work as a paid post on the app. And the Endeavor could be humble.
And if real people and real brand is the thing that repopularizes Be Real, then the reward would be
Joey Scarillo: huge. Well, well, well, Daniel. So, Be Real is now being just
Daniel Avon: like everybody else. What do you think? I think it's an interesting ploy to attract people back to the app. Like, as Jayda was mentioning, with the types of celebrities that might be interested in this, like, Beyonce would never do this.
But, like, maybe Charli XCX or somebody who's a little bit more down to earth. And, less curated. But even still, I don't know if the fact that celebrities are on the platform is going to attract more users to be there, especially not brands, because brands show up in fun ways and new environments, like on X formerly Twitter and Instagram and so forth.
We expect it, it's native to it, but if you're disrupting an experience that just was, and is now this like complicated level thing, just feels like it's not being true to the purpose of the app, and the people that you're going to attract in, I'm not sure if that's also going to attract new folks into the app itself.
So it'll be interesting to see what happens here, but I'm Very, very skeptical. This might
Joey Scarillo: be B Real trying to get bought by a, another company or who knows? All right, friends, we haven't done this for such a long time, and I think it's fun to bring back one more thing, a segment where we just talk about one more thing that we want to talk about.
Daniel, tell us about Elmo. Asking the internet, how is everybody doing?
Daniel Avon: What was the response? So if you're still on X formerly Twitter, this past week you'll likely have seen an intentionally innocuous tweet from Elmo, Sesame Street's lovable red monster, in which he asked his almost half a million followers, Elmo is just checking in, how is everybody doing?
Obviously, with the amount of bad things going on in the world and in our country, 140 million people saw this, and about 10,000 people responded, how they're doing, and the answer was, not feeling so great. The Times quoted a post in its story about this topic from a poet and contributor to the paper, Hanif Abdurraqib, that really captured the flavor and essence of the responses that Elmo received from a poet, so obviously it's going to be a bit poetic.
Elmo, each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror, one that was previously unfathomable in nature. Our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years or months Now accelerates in hours, even minutes. However, I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking. You see the sort of genuine, sincere response as well as something that's a bit more humorous and sardonic that goes with it.
This post in Phenomenon, though, demonstrates how a brand or property like an Elmo, which has a unique voice and point of view, can really, and maybe unintentionally, strike a chord in the zeitgeist. Just simply by being true to itself. And it's interesting because reading about this, the representatives from Sesame Workshop said that the response that Elmo received underlined the need for access to mental health resources, which is a very real thing.
And as a show that's about education and children and wellness and so forth, it's also a really aligned thing for Elmo to be talking about. And after all of this response, Elmo followed the post by saying, in a very Elmo fashion, Wow, Elmo is glad he asked. Elmo learned it's important to ask a friend how they are doing.
Joey Scarillo: That is absolutely adorable from somebody who, if Elmo lived in Florida, probably wouldn't be allowed to use social media because I believe Elmo is three years old. Jayda, what do you think this whole thing says about The state of the internet and just sort of the state of the world.
Jayda Hinds: State of the world, we're not doing too hot.
The state of the internet, however, I think people have to find humor in it to cope with the things that are going on outside of our screens. So, it makes sense that people responded in that way to Elmo. I often feel like when it comes to people on the internet, they really do take a lighthearted approach to really big issues.
I feel like it's almost inappropriate how playful people can be when it comes to topics like climate or personhood or abuse, anything. I feel like people are very quick to become playful and joke about it on the internet, which I'm not saying I condone, but I'm saying that this type of nature on something like Experimentally Twitter, it didn't come as a surprise that 10, 000 people responded.
I saw so many of them. I also saw a picture of Big Bird shrunken, and I think from the Sesame Street account, and they said something like, how Big Bird is little now, what can we do? And then someone responded. And they said, oh, this is the effects of climate change, everyone.
Joey Scarillo: Yes, the world is, it's big and it can be scary, but you know, sometimes You gotta find the humor out there, right?
Well friends, that does it for us this week. If you don't already, be sure to follow us, share us, review us, like us, or write to us with your questions, comments, concerns, points of interest, or complaints. Or just send us the thing you want us to discuss. Or just tell us how you're doing. You can do all of that by emailing us at podcasts at Grey dot 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 primarily written and researched by the Strategy, Data, and Social and Connections team at Grey New York, led this week by our panel Jayda Hines and Daniel Avon.
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 Christina Hyde and Jayda Hines.
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's it for us.
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