The Daily Grind of a Tech Journalist w/ Amanda Silberling (TechCrunch)

0:00super chats and other like user and contributions. like they're all vtubers the people making the most money doing that something that's really interesting about that is that by not having to put yourself on camera it makes more people able to be influencers hey amanda welcome to the show how are you i'm good how are you doing all good as i was telling you now earlier i cannot tell myself there is fall already i don't want to think about it, but it's all good. We're here. We're going to talk about, you know, very interesting things. So thank you for joining me today. And what we usually do, right, with our guests, it is that in order to, you know, like learn a bit more, we go through this thing called the NAP.

0:44Basically, it's divided in three main sections. There is the mission. So basically, what do you aim to achieve with your work? The achievements, anything that you're like, you know, proud, any notable miles on your career or life. And the last one is the purpose. So in what do you aim to achieve? The purpose is about what, why you do what you do. So I would say my mission is to explain the internet and tech as it relates to social media in a way that is informative, sometimes entertaining, and generally just gets the message across. I think a notable achievement is just having a job in journalism right now.

1:26I mean, And it's kind of a bloodbath out there. So I'm just feeling very lucky to get to do what I do. And my purpose, I would say, is I think I've just always been drawn to writing. I think maybe it's just because I'm very opinionated. But I think that it's such an important way of communicating the news to people. And I think we're in a time right now where trust in journalism is not necessarily the highest it's ever been. But I think that doing good journalism and communicating the news to people in a way that is truthful and effective and interesting is very important. And media literacy is important.

2:13And hopefully journalists regain the public's trust. Absolutely. And we're going to get more into that. you know even with the you know something that we're going to talk about later about you know deep fakes and fake news and you know ai and everything we're gonna get into that but uh tell me a bit more about you know your typical day right so as a role at the crunch i would like to know a bit more about you already said you know a few topics that you cover but if you can go a bit more about like you know what are the things that makes you really excited what are the topics that are currently working on and what is your typical day slash week right so for people that might not be in like you know that much like or either you know journalist reporters or maybe people that just you know are passive right users are reading news would be interesting also to know how our story comes to life right and then what is the behind the scenes i would say my typical day is i usually work like a vague nine to five give or take and i start by just sort of catching up on any news that might have broken overnight or news that i missed the day before and i usually have several stories going at a time.

3:18I have a little notepad on my desk next to me with notes that would be incomprehensible to other people. A good note that I have, this is a good visual aid. Where do emojis come from?

3:34It's only in big letters and at the bottom because it was on the other side of my desk and I didn't feel like writing about it. I didn't feel like grabbing and pulling it over. It's a very loose system. But one day I was just like, wait a minute. It's kind of wild that there's like a very in-depth system with Unicone about how an emoji becomes an emoji. And it's like a many years long, very rigorous process to make an emoji. And I feel like we don't talk about that. So that was just a silly thing I scribbled down. But yeah, I usually am working on like various different stories at once, whether it's something silly like me being like, I'm going to find out about the Unicode process of creating an emoji.

4:18Or today, for example, I had a call with a startup founder a couple hours ago. Their company is getting acquired. It's probably already news by the time this comes out. So I don't need to be vague. But yeah, I mean, I usually just have like a mix of looking for the news, taking calls about various stories I'm writing, catching up with people if it's not necessarily a story I'm writing, but just kind of hearing from sources about what they're doing and what's happening. And then there's some somehow the writing part has to fit in there in the middle. of course and i'm just curious like you know i guess you get like a lot of uh company pitching or you know you get maybe things that you so is is there like a way for you to recognize what is valuable for you because i don't know how many hundreds of them but i'm pretty sure that you get a lot of them and you have to go through the noise right have you identified a way for your for yourself just to say okay this this is worth it this is a waste of time for me this is like i i need to get more information for me to understand if like again valuable or not Yeah, I think there's not an exact science to pitching journalists because so much of it just depends on like things that are completely out of a company or a PR person's control.

5:37Like, for example, today, I'm just coming back after being sick. So I thankfully got sick at a time when I wasn't like in the middle of a ton of stuff. but now that I'm back I'm like okay well I have room to take on some stories what's going on and then maybe in those situations I'm more amenable to like seeing a founder in my inbox talking about an interesting company and I'm like oh yeah that does sound cool let me look into that whereas there's other times when I'm just so swamped with whatever else I'm working on that I'm like that sounds cool but um email me in a month so sometimes maybe it's not about the topic itself could be also just bad timing, right?

6:17And they reach out to you again in two months, maybe. Yeah. And I mean, I definitely relate to the struggle of pitching into the void. Before I worked at TechCrunch, I was a freelance writer for a while. And pitching editors as a freelancer is different than pitching as a comms person. But there is still that element of at a certain point, you might send an amazing pitch to the right person and maybe that person is on vacation or maybe that person got sick and you just happened to email them when they were like I'm sick and got 500 emails while I was gone so I'm not going to look at it but I can get more in depth about like what makes a good pitch beyond just right place right time yeah no that would be interesting you know like especially because now you know I want to ask you a bit more about you know development in AI, it's one of those really big things.

7:10I'm pretty sure that you got plenty of write-on messages with the AI somewhere in the subject, in the copy. So before we get into what do you think that is interesting, right? Any network developments in AI, especially for content creators, right? Brands and influencers. Tell me a bit more like, you know, how would you like to be, you know, receive a pitch in your inbox? I think that it can be a lot more simple than people think. Like, I think I like tweeted about this at the time, but one time I just got an email that was just a founder saying like, hey, I saw you wrote about this company that is somewhat similar to our company, but not exactly the same.

7:46Let me like tell you about what we're doing and why we're interesting. And I was like, yeah, that was a great pitch. But yeah, the company in that case was working on sort of like an HR platform that companies can use to like offer to their employees for resources about like if someone in your family dies like what are the things that you need to do like how do you close someone's bank account when they die or like all of those sorts of administrative tasks that are like the last thing that anybody wants to deal with when they're going through something like that and I just thought that was a really interesting company and I had written about a couple this is actually what they call it deaf tech startups and so it's just kind of like a space I'm interested in because like I've unfortunately experienced some things in that regard in my life and I'm like yeah it actually is like very necessary that like there's a lot that could be made easier and tech people love to make things more efficient with tech so like why not make the process of like closing out somebody's affair is more efficient.

9:00But so like I thought that was like a good example of just, it was literally just a founder like, hey, I have this product that's similar to something else you wrote about, but is different. And here's why I think it's interesting. And I was like, yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. So without overthinking it, human to human, this is the information, you know, easy, easy message, very clear, straight to the point. I love it. And, you know, since already like, you know, I mentioned that before, right? And you were just talking now about, you know, tech and efficiencies. We all know, right? One of the things about efficiency is now these days, even more than ever, it's AI, right?

9:32So I know there has been such a buzzword everyone is talking about it. So I would like to know your opinion on anything that may be, again, not worth in terms of AI, specifically maybe to content creators and influencer marketing as a whole. Both could be for content creators, right? So how they are using them, is there anything there that is helping them? And also for brands, right? Are they using it properly? Are they replacing the people? Are they actually helping people to make things more efficient? So I would like to know what you've encountered in the past months. So, you know, if there is anything that got you quite excited.

10:06Yeah, I think this is such a fast changing space that even like right now we are recording this on Riverside. And Riverside has features where it automatically transcribes what we're saying. you can like make clips from what we're recording right now pretty easily and even like when I started podcasting like four years ago that wasn't a thing oh yeah and like especially the automated transcriptions like I used to get paid to transcribe stuff when I was in college there were like older journalists I knew that would be like here's 50 bucks go transcribe this and I was like cool I'm in college and I need that 50 bucks but I think that there are certain things like that where having a transcript on a podcast episode that helps you with accessibility that helps you with seo if you put that on your website that's really useful and something like making those clips is really useful i do worry more about ways of using ai that get a bit more into the realm of like i'm gonna use ai to create a voiceover for a video that i made which i feel a bit apprehensive about like AI that is trying to replicate actual people and their humanity.

11:24But at the same time, I mean, as I'm talking to you now, like I'm getting over a cold. I'm a little stuffy. If I were a big influencer and needed to make a video or else lose the brand deal today, maybe it would be helpful to be able to have AI Amanda talk in a bit less stuffy of a voice. And again, you know, in the case, it's like, you know, because it can like help your writer somehow but then as you said it doesn't necessarily have to replace you right there is also one of the like you know there is always this question right is it actually helping content creators it is replacing them or not necessarily them but all the people that are behind you know like the camera right because majority people see a video and all if see the person in front of the camera but these days we have video editor or you know audio engineers people that write the scripts right People that take care of logistics for videos.

12:17In the podcasting also, there is people working and everything. And as you said before, there was a person, word by word, listening, stopping the recording, playback many, many times. And you get some money. And these days, you can literally just put it there. You upload the audio. The transcription is ready in a few minutes. And then you give it to JudgeUPT and say, write me a blog post or a LinkedIn post about this. And so because of this, again, is there any other things that you think could potentially hurt creators and also their authenticity towards their audience when using AI? I think that we're already seeing with some particularly big creators already that deep fakes are happening, particularly in advertising.

13:03Like I will see ads that are anyone from like Mr. Beast to one of the people from Shark Tank promoting a product that they have nothing to do with. And because the technology is getting so good, people that are very tech savvy don't always realize when it's fake. And that can be really damaging to an influencer if like maybe they have a really strong brand for like someone who is making content about doing fitness without resorting to unhealthy measures of changing what your body looks like. And then you have them advertising like an untested weight loss pill that is like maybe not good for people and is completely like not regulated at all.

13:52And people think that that's them really doing it. When in reality, that's something that totally contradicts like what they've built their whole business around. Is your brand ready to amplify its reach while the influencer marketing factory is here for you? We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements, to managing shipping and logistics, we got you all covered. We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals, from Fortune 500 companies to direct-to-consumer brands.

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15:03right and give an output that is basically an avatar right and these days especially as you said it's very difficult sometimes even for tech savvy people to see right myself like sometimes i'm on instagram and i see more and more like you know not necessarily deep fakes right but also virtual influencers that we're going to talk also in a minute and it took me a second sometimes to be like oh wow this is actually not a real person then you go in the comments and there is a bunch of people thinking there is a real person and they do not realize so i even can just imagine about like also the scams right happening there and so because of that is there a way I don't know have you talked with any entrepreneur any company else there that is trying to maybe fix this problem to protect creators from having like you know these you know evil people creating deep fakes and try to monetize on their image interestingly enough I had a conversation with the youtuber Matt Pat about this where he kind of like was in the news recently because after being on youtube for a really long time he decided it was time to move on he like sold his channel which is something that not a lot of youtubers have been able to figure out how to do but now that he isn't like running a bunch of youtube channels full-time one of the things he's been doing is trying to like advocate more for creators like within the government and like meet with legislators just to be like, hey, this is what a creator's job is.

16:29Here are the very specific random little tax codes that would be helpful for us that nobody thinks about, but make a big difference in terms of like safely running a business. And something that he mentioned to me was that it really sucks when you're constantly getting deep faked. And as someone that had been making videos on YouTube for like over a decade, there is so much footage of him that you can train an AI on. And I think that's why that's even more of an issue with creators because everybody posts videos pretty much. Like there's videos of everybody online unless if you're really good at locking down your persona.

17:10But I mean, it's different when you're a YouTuber that's been posting like 30 minute explainer videos routinely for 10 years. So that's something that he's also been trying to like bring to lawmakers attention. And that's also like picking up steam in a way that I think is really interesting to see like the intersection of celebrity and deep fakes and how I think without a doubt there would not be as much conversation about limiting the deep fakes both in culture and in the government, if not for the deep fakes of Taylor Swift that have been circulating over the last year. and I find it really fascinating how like Taylor Swift as a cultural icon is against her will now sort of like driving discussions around deep fakes which is wild to me yeah I mean like you know because again she's she's so famous she's like you know that's the thing right like you cannot do too much about it the only thing that you can do it is that if that happened to you you try maybe like you know to again to move you know certain like you know politics and laws to try to fix it right i know that's certain social media do have messages these days right that says like hey this could be either like either it's say ai i don't think there is too much about the fake yet i think that you know social media could do better for sure about that so because social media and you know laws and and and it seems that you know again politicians are they don't see this as a priority what can the typical user do in the meantime just to see because again you know we know text people can more or less recognize but there are some deep fakes are so good that it's difficult to understand have you identified again is there like any platforms out there to help you out with that or just like common sense and try to say you know okay i have to watch this many times i have to listen to the voice i have to read the comments i have to look on the on google on the internet just to say is this actually this person endorsing this product have you found any good way or just like more about the more you learn the better it is i mean i think the best resolution to this is in a perfect world everybody would be very media literate and would be very good at remaining skeptical and verifying where information comes from but that's a very lofty goal and I think in the meantime I think just like knowing to go to the source like if you see that there's a video of a big influencer saying something that seems out of character like maybe go to their page and see if have they been posting videos about like partnering with the unregulated diet pill brand or whatever and if they have then that's something that you know and if not then you know that maybe that video you saw of them was fake you know also when you say about mr beast it also happened to me to to see sometimes this totally like you know scammy ads because you know what is difficult there it is that it was something about oh i'm giving away these tickets right whatever click here and you go to this very fishy website and again if you don't look at the url right it could be like oh maybe it's legit the problem is that people know that mr beast gives away free yeah free so it's like okay yeah of course right it's different than again you're like maybe tell us with me like i'm giving away a tesla right uh like that's that's a bit like a bit weird for me right but if mr b says i'm gonna give you a tesla take these quits online you know to see if you qualify then you get redirected the 10 times right to a different website and so on so again there are a few things that that can help but again as you said before also like there are certain famous people out there right that maybe already do something that could be more or less their character type of thing so it's very difficult too so i don't know like again you know if there is any other way to you know to fix this problem if social media should do something more i don't know i'm also a bit lost to be honest and yeah what could happen to make is better you know yeah i think another element of why this is so hard is that ai itself has not gotten very good at identifying what is and isn't ai so this is an issue even if like anyone listening has like kids in school whose work is being checked by ai content checkers that try to see if a student was cheating or not like that doesn't necessarily mean that a student is cheating if it gets flagged by an AI detector because there's a lot of false positives and there's also a lot of false negatives.

21:33So these tools can be used maybe just as like a tool, but they're not the end all be all. And I think that right now this information is especially bad because we don't have like an easy plugin on Instagram that'll say actually that Mr. Beast ad is not real. and Instagram did try adding like content labels to suggest like this is made with AI but then it ended up being a bit too at the ready to put that label on things so then you ended up with like my friend got engaged posted engagement photos and then Instagram was like your engagement photos are fake and he was like no they're not I really got engaged I promise and and no you're you're right especially when it comes to false positive right i myself like sometimes like wrote something and then i just want to check right the english and everything and yes like certain models like oh this is you know plagiarized or whatever i'm like no i wrote it myself right how can you say this like you know chat gpt so absolutely and also with pictures right could be the same like all these false negative false positive events so i also wanted to ask you in addition to again you know deep fakes that are made on purpose many times to either scam people or to move certain political movements towards certain things because you want to create a bit of disinformation and so on.

22:55In addition to that, there is also something a bit different, but similar at the same time, there is virtual influencers. And a few years ago, you could easily see that there were 3D characters. You can easily see. It's basically like a video game persona. I get it. But these days are getting so good that, as I said before, Sometimes it's very difficult to recognize while scrolling, right? Is that a real person or not? And we ran a report several months ago about virtual influencers. We found a few interesting things, but I'm very curious to know your thoughts about this. So first of all, what is the status whenever you write about things, if you ever encountered anything interesting about the virtual influencers?

23:37And then on top of it, I would like to know also, So how are you seeing virtual influencers also engaging with communities? Because usually people told us, I want to follow other people because they are human beings. And some of them are like, yeah, I might follow virtual influencers just because I'm curious, but I'm not very, you know, either attached emotionally or I don't care that much about, you know, like a virtual influencer. So I'm curious to know if, you know, if something that you covered in the past and if so, if anything got your attention. Yeah, I think that virtual influencers fall into a few different categories.

24:08On one hand, there's sort of like the 3D influencers that you were alluding to. Maybe like Lil Mikaela was a really big one. I mean, she still exists, but she's a fully CGI, not a real person, but posts on Instagram as though she is a real person. And it's kind of it's conceptually very interesting, but she has like appeared in advertisements for like big companies. and I think with Lil Mikaela part of why she was so successful might just be because she was one of the first of her kind and that novelty really helps but at the same time then in like especially in eastern cultures like in Japan and Korea vtubers are really really big which is like you have like an anime character on the screen and then somebody is streaming but they're streaming from behind the image of the anime character and that's something that like it's it's crossing over more in western culture but some of the youtubers that make the most money on the platform from like super chats and other like user and contributions like they're all vtubers the people making the most money doing that but i think something that's really interesting about that is that by not having to put yourself on camera, it makes more people able to be influencers.

25:39So one of the biggest VTubers is Iron Mouse, who the actual person behind Iron Mouse, who we don't know who she is, but we do know that she has an immune deficiency disorder. And so that has prevented her from like, being able to do more traditional like content creation, like if she were to go out and like make vlogs like that's just not something that she really can do but as a vtuber she's become one of the biggest vtubers and that wouldn't have been possible for her if not for the format of like you're able to be inside you're able to not be on camera and so i think that's really interesting and then even like we've seen brands do this frosted flakes made a tony the tiger vtuber a few years ago yeah and i thought that was really funny and i don't know i mean i don't know if it worked or not like i don't know if anyone really was like i'm gonna buy frosted flakes now because there's a tony the tiger vtuber but i do think it's really interesting and i think that the frosted flakes marketing people saw that there was a trend in the market and tried to see what happens if we play around with it and i wouldn't be surprised if in the future whatever tech they invested into making the Tony the Tiger VTubers useful.

26:59And do you think there is still future for virtual influence? Because as you said, you know, little Michela, when he started seven years ago now, it was totally new. And many brands, I'm pretty sure they invested without looking at ROI. It was just like, we have to be there, right? To show that, you know, to our shareholders and stakeholders and everyone of our customers that we are innovating in this space and we want to be one of the first out there. What do you think about now? and in the future? Like, do you see people engaging still with the virtual influencers or maybe these sort of trends kind of started declining because it's so easy these days to create?

27:33Many of them that kind of became a commodity somehow. I could be wrong, but if I had to make a prediction, I would say that I think models like VTubers are going to be around longer because even though it is like this is something that is not the real person's face they are like sometimes using like mocap suits to like mimic their facial expressions and stuff even if it's not an actual person you're seeing you still get a sense for their personality like they're very personality driven like content that they're making where if you have someone who you're gonna watch stream for two hours they have to be entertaining but I think that people have a bit more to like grasp onto that and like form a connection to whereas with like a literal digital influencer who was created by marketing executives sitting around a table I think consumers can kind of understand that like this is a product that is being sold to them and once you get past the novelty of the little Michaela of it all then it loses its luster a bit but also like I do think there still is room for brands to experiment with that like the Tony the Tiger thing it's pretty weird but it got my attention and I thought it was interesting oh that's for sure I mean I like the idea of innovating but I do agree with you 100 % I think that, you know, if you have still a person behind that with their, you know, feelings and emotions and way of thinking, right, you can still get attached somehow.

29:14While if it's just CGI, we know that it was built by someone else in the, you know, like behind the scene with values of someone else, right? Because at the end of the day, it could be AI, it could be CGI, but right, the body shape, the words that they use, the value that they put like in their videos, Because again, it's not the CGI, right? Even AI is not thinking as of now. Maybe in a few years, we start the revolution. I don't want to think about it yet. But, you know, so I'm pretty interested to see also the future of this. But Amanda, thank you so much for being with us today to share your knowledge about this industry.

29:50And I'm very curious to continue reading your articles and see what the future holds for every risk, creative economy, influencer marketing. I'm pretty sure there is much more to talk about, you know, so. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, we could do this podcast a year from now when the conversation would sound completely different. But that's part of what makes it an interesting space to be involved in because it's really hard to predict that it's constantly changing. And we're always surprised. It's never boring. That's for sure. Thank you so much, Amanda, for joining me today. This was The Influence Factor by the Influencer Marketing Factory.

30:26and I'll see you next week.