Businessweek Extra- Filmmaker Nick Bilton

It's been described as a yearlong social experiment to turn three individuals into Instagram influencers behind the camera, in front of the camera, and creating the influencers. Is a veteran technology journalist Nick Bilton. He's written for Vanity Fair, the New York Times. He's also the author of the book Hatching Twitter, A true story of money, power, friendship and betrayal. By the Way, it's a good book. He wrote, produced and directed the documentary, and we began with just kind

of asking how it all came about. I've been a technology reporter for almost twenty years now, and um I was a Fanity Fair about five years ago, and Graydon Carter was my editor chief, and you know, we were kicking around a few documentary ideas over the years, and a couple of years back, he said, oh, we should do a documentary on influencers, uh. And I said, oh, well, the whole industry is a bit of a joke. And he said what do you mean. I said, well, I

could make an influencer in ten minutes. And he said, well, that's our documentary and um, and that was essentially how this all began. And I had been at the New York Times. Uh, I had written about box. You know, these these uh fake accounts that exist on social media that can be created by writing code and so on, and I had written about the rise of them and

how advanced they were getting over the years. I had then written about them when I was a bandy fair talking about the election, how Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both had millions and millions of fake accounts following them, and of course influencers employed these same tactics. And that was essentially what we wanted to show in the film.

And Nicky say that influence our culture is is a bit of a joke, but hey, there's there's real money behind this, and and there's real money behind it's still even though it seems like a lot of people and companies are in on the joke. Well, I think it's interesting because there is real money behind it, um, But

it's at the same time it's not. It's it is so inauthentic in in the way that the money, you know, changes hands, in the way that influences essentially purport to be kind of these these new bearers of ideas and culture and consumerism and so on. It's you know, when we really kind of show this in the film, I mean, one of the things that we talk about is is how influencers the entire concept of it, uh is it is.

It is very similar to advertising, but even more extreme in that the whole goal is to make you feel worse about yourself, so that you want to experience what an influencer experiences in their wonderful life of their free vacations and their fancy Lamborghinis and this, that and the other, and and really they're getting all this stuff for free, but they're not necessarily being honest about whether they actually

like it or not. And so sorry, well, this is this is like kind of social media at its core, though, right, it's not just influencers who we are posting the highlight reel. Right, this is like how how normal people use Instagram. Right, They show off the best parts of their lives. It's like a holiday letter, you know, the trips to Africa and the kids are all getting straight a's on steroids. Well, it's it's completely true. I think that you know, Instagram,

I personally believe is the worst at this. They're the guiltiest of it because Instagram was founded on this idea of being deceptive to the viewer and the uh the whole point of filters that were there was a highlight of Instagram, which can make your really bad photo look really good by just pressing a single button. And the founders of Instagram, they wanted it to feel like like

a Vogue magazine or a Vanity Fair. They wanted people to post the beautiful shot images and make it appear as if you know, that was the life that you wouldn't living. And I think that the end result of that was that you now have a system in place where I think it's just the most inauthentic platform on the Internet. Every every platform has the problems. You have Twitter where it's and everyone's just angry at everyone else, and you know, they all have their things, but Instagram,

I think is the absolute most deceptive of them all. Well, and talk about deception. I mean it's like when you find out reality show, what do you mean that that's not real? Um? And you're finding it out with Instagram and I love where you know you showed and you guys use like a toilet seat to be a plane window, like who to thunk? Like it's just amazing a new toilets. But what's interesting is you know, and Tim had you know, Tim and I were talking before we got going. You know,

kids want to do this. They want to be influencers, they want to be famous, which is something you ask a group of of twenties some things right when you kind of line up a couple of people to work with.

So the one of the other aspects of the giving of this film that we did a lot of research into and I had read about before, was, um, when you look at the studies that have been done, there's all these longitudinal studies who have been done Lais done them other other universities to where over the years they ask kids every single year, what do you want to be when you grow up and back in the sixties and seventies, kids used to be wanted to be a

teacher or a lawyer, doctor. Back in the eighties, they started to kind of get a little bit interested in fame, but it was famed for something that they had done, like they wanted to be a basketball player or an actor or something. Fast forward to today and kids just want to be famous and they want to be famous influencers because they think that is the fast track to get there. And so now eight seven percent of children say in America say they want to be famous influences

when they grow up. And you know, that's interesting that you say, because you do highlight three three people, Chris, Dominique and Wiley, And that's kind of without giving too much away, that's that's kind of the conclusion that that Chris comes to, right, he talked about how he wants to be famous for being him. Yeah, so we you know, the film started off with this idea of like, let's go and get three people who have a very small following online. Let me go and buy them fake followers. Um,

you know, fake box that exists on social media. Let's do a bunch of fake photo shoots. As you said, where we you know, we we took an aeroplane seat. You hold it up against the screen that looks like it's out of an airplane window. You take a photo and it actually looks like you're in a private Yeah, it's really amazing. We're all going to be like buying

toilet seats now Rember on a fake private jet. And then we took we took three people in this regard, did all this stuff and then wants to see which direction they would go. And we we genuinely had no idea how it was going to work out. I didn't know if if they were all become superstars or there would or it would just sailed dismally. And we were really lucky that it took three different routes. We had one of the guys who was just like, I am not interested in this. This is ridiculous. Uh, this is

all fake. I want real fame. I want I'd rather not be famous than have fake fame. We had another guy who essentially panicked in the middle of all this and was bullied online and shut his account down, and his story was pretty fascinating to watch and and sad.

And then we had our third person who essentially went all the way and became a want of a better description, a famous influencer and um, and she got so much reached stuff, all because we had bought her fake followers and it looked like she had hundreds of thousands of real followers. I mean, it was a It was a life changer in some ways for her. Right, she was an actress, you know, and she talked about kind of going out beforehand, and you know, it wasn't so easy.

But once she built up are you built up in Instagram following? For her, she was getting callbacks and people would note that when she went back, you know, to those auditions. Well, I think that this is I think one of the status aspect of our culture today, especially business and and people's young people's pursuits of what they want to do when they grow up, you know and

get out of school and so on. When you go to an audition in Los Angeles as an actor and actress, the first thing they're looking at is how many follows you have on Instagram, which is just such a stupid metric. Quite frankly, it just doesn't mean anything exactly. Could you imagine if Meryl Street had to say, show how many followers you had on social media before she got a gig. But it but it's not just that industry, every industry.

It's writing, it's radio, it's just a creative industry. And it's and I think it is such a uh, just the wrong metric to be looking at, and I completely fault the people who run these industries for doing it. And I think it's just so shortsighted. But what was so evident in the in the filming of the doc was that the Dominique who we got to follows her

life change as a result. She got called back, she got you know, there was one moment that we didn't put in the film where she her mom was in town visiting her in l A. And she was they were trying to get into the stancy restaurant. They couldn't get in. Her mom showed her dominique Instagram account and and showed how many falls they had and they let her right in. Well, I can't believe that made that. I can't believe that we didn't film it something that

happened on the side. But but it's just just even that was just so ludicrous. And I think that it's like a currency almost it's a currency. That's exactly what it is. So is this the way that you see things continuing nick even though there is more scrutiny, especially with this documentary around the industry, because you do make the point that hey, this isn't the best interest of sort of everyone involved, that this thing doesn't come tumbling down.

This influencer culture, I mean, I think that I think influence the culture has already burned itself quite frankly. I mean, I think that the most influencers lived in the bubble and think that people believe that they're you know, that their lives and their lives, and I think most people

realize that they're not. Um. I think that, you know, one thing, it's we have this expert on the in the film, just In Bateman, who of course as a child star and has gone on to written an amazing book about fame and what it means for society, and she says that these people are not famous. Their incommercial hosts, you know, they're hawking a product. And that really stuck with me because I think, at the end of the day,

that's really what influencer culture is. It's just you're just a fancy infomercial host and and one thing that was evident to us is we we filmed some influencers doing certain things, and and behind the scenes, they you know, they hated the trip they were on, they hated the hotel they were at, they thought the food was awful, but they still posted it lying saying that they loved it, because if they were honest, they wouldn't get invited back,

or they wouldn't get invited to the next thing. And I think that that's what people really have to realize. When you're scrolling through your phone and you're seeing these people live the so called wonderful life, the reality is they're only showing you the peak peak highlights, and even that is fake and exaggerated. But from a marketing perspective, this must work because it is working for brands and companies to send these influencers these things, and there is

a return on investment, else they wouldn't be doing it right. No, Well, that's the thing, it's not. The thing is that they're they're throwing. It works sometimes for these American companies and these brands, but it doesn't work most times, and the marketing companies don't know which ones are going to work and which ones are not, so they just throw all the spaghetti against the wall and hope and the best and really for them. You know, you could buy a a TV spot on the Super Bowl, you know, and

I don't know what it costs. You gave millions and millions of dollars, or you can you can say, oh, we're going to work with fifty influencers or a hundred influences for the same amount of money. One of them may may get that reach, and so I think that they don't. But it does not work in the respect of the way most people think it does. Nick. You did talk with our own Bloomberg News reporter, Sarah Fryar.

She's our tech reporter, one of our tech reporters. She's written a book, No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram, And I talked with her too before our interview, and she, you know, she'd never having a conversation. She brought up a good point. She goes, why has nobody done something, you know, or who should do something about all of

this fakery on Instagram. You know, the fact that you, Nick, were able to buy all these followers and all this engagement for these regular people and make them look famous, get them brand deals. Is this on the companies? Is it on the FTC? I mean, what do we do well? I think that the you know, when it comes down to it, the people that are most of fault here

beyond far and away are the technology companies. Um, it is not in their interests in Saraces is in the film and um this is said the buss Sarah and I have reported in the past, it's not in their interest to to make sure that they they fix this.

You know, Instagram supposedly has a billion users, right and based on the experts we spoke to and bought dealers and things like that, you could you know, it's it's feasible that there are around half of the of the accounts on Instagram are fake or debt accounts or whatever. But Instagram has no incentive to get rid of those fake accounts because if they did, they wouldn't have a billion users. And if they didn't have a billion users,

Facebook stock isn't worth what Facebook stock is. Advertisers don't think that they're the value for what they're paying is worth what it is, and so they don't do anything to get rid of it. And I think the other aspect of it is that Instagram makes sure that the likes and the comments and the number of follows you have and all those little metrics that give people so much anxiety that they are so high up on the

scale of things that you see. And I think that that is one aspect of the film that we really talk about. Two is it's how it's leading to anxiety for kids and depression and so on and so forth. And Instagram does care one iota. All they care about is the metrics. It's like a constant like popularity, race, um and right, and like we talked about it here, you know news like you know our followers and are

you mentioned? And it's it's it's crazy and you think about on a younger but you think about on a younger population, right, Like what this does to these kids? So I just want to go follow up on what you just said. I think I know the answer. So the valuations of these companies, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram. Within Facebook, you know their user numbers, the metrics they are giving advertisers, is it all based on totally fake data? And does it even matter if they are because does

the ecosystem kind of work? I mean, the eCos it's funny the ecosystem, the system works. It really truly does. I mean it's funny. Like on Instagram, I get get ads that are sent to me that I'm like, oh, actually I would click on that. I mean, I won't out of principle because I don't want to give them the money. But but you know, the targeting works. There's a reason that Google and Facebook are value to what their value that simply based on advertising. So it does work.

But I think that the reality is is that there is an incredible amount of deception going on at the same time from these companies. And I think that and they're fully aware of it. You know. It's like you think about the advertising. You know, you can say I want to advertise a pink bicycle to people who like pink and live in in this town. Uh, and the you know, wake up at six am and drink green juices,

and you can do that. You can literally target that person and they'll probably click on your bike and buy it. But so if they if they have the technology and the and the smarts to be able to pull out off, they also have the technology and the smarts to be able to kill the box. But they don't because it's not in their best interests because if they had to be honest, they would probably have half the number of users that they really have. And what's that going to

do for the stock price? Right? Nick? You, you, by your own admission, have have been covering these companies for about fifteen years. Facebook just had its its seventeenth birthday. Um. You open up the film with this sort of montage of of you appearing on different television programs, saying that you used to be the one who would go on

TV and defend these social platforms. It does seem like though, in recent years, with fake news proliferating on Facebook and you know, fake news and bad things happening on Twitter, and then of course the rise of the influencer and the mental health issues that are associated with Instagram, it does seem like the conversation around social media has really shifted.

It from it being a tool that, you know, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, right, is about connecting and sharing two more that that's one about, you know, the effect that these platforms are having on our lives and in not a good way. When did that shift happen for you? When did you start to see that happening.

So I think it's it's a great question. And I think you know, one thing I've noticed is, you know, the technology people, both reporters and people who work in tech and so on, who I know, on a personal level, we were kind of old the nerds, if you will, that got on these platforms first. You know, we were the first ones on Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter, and and I think in those early days, what was so intriguing about them was that they were what they said

they were going to be. They were a place for you to connect and share things and and and take pretty photos and just have have a you know, and people could comment on them. And I think what happened is over time they started to become the worst versions of themselves. And you know, Twitter, I think is just I mean, I used to be on their twelve hours a day, would be in the background in the news

room when I was working. I was constantly tweeting links and articles and comments and thoughts and this, that and the other. I barely look at it now because it's so the triolic. It's got so much hatred and anger on there, and and you can be you can see your career destroyed by for one tweet because someone doesn't

like it. And I think that, um, you know, all across the board, these platforms have grown so quickly and so so big that the and the companies haven't put the effort forth to try to control them and try to make them, you know, work in the same way they did in the beginning. That um, that they are now in the place that they are. And and and for me and all those early people to bring this back to what I say earlier, all those early nerves that start signed up, none of them use them anymore.

None of them people who used to work on Twitter, I know who built the platform do not use it. And I think that that the reason for that is because it has become it's become such a bad thing in society. It has become so negative and and I think that people are fed up. Well, I should say, you did write the book Hatching Twitter. You wrote the book on Twitter, so you do know a thing or two of them the early days of Twitter. Yes, well, And I would say, though, social influencers can also be good.

And you point this out, whether it's Black Lives Matter, whether it's me Too, whether it's climate change, whether it's the Arab Spring right, it can be a force for good. It can be. But I think that here and there's no question if it was you know, if it wasn't for I mean, look, I can't say this definitively, but I guess the question is, would me to have happened if it wasn't for social media? Would Black Lives Matter

have happened if it wasn't for social media? There are certain people who say, well, black lives matter, for example, you know, in the nineties sixties we had the civil rights movement that was no social media then, right, so that you know that, that's one argument some people make. I don't know if the answer is true or if it's not. I don't necessarily think me too would have happened if it wasn't for it. And I think that you know, there are and the climate change stuff that's happening,

and and and so on. I think that the reality is though that you know that Kevin Kelly, who started Wired, he's a technology philosopher, if you will, and he said to at one point he said, look, when you look at technology, it makes there are always bad sides to it. In his opinion, technology makes society fifty one better and for worse, So they're there are bad things that happens.

My opinion about social media today is that it makes things worse and better, and I think when technology starts to do that, it's time for us to question if we should be still using it or fixing it or how to fix it. Speaking of that, there is this scene in the movie where you're on your hands and knees cleaning up after your kids. I think you're picking up magnetiles. It's something that's very familiar in my household

as well. I spent a lot of time cleaning up magnetiles. UM. What are your thoughts about your kids and social media? Nick and your family and social media? Well, it's really interesting. I think the thing that I came away from in this film was, you know, when I've written about tech in the past and and um and different technologies and how they've changed and so on, I have been UM.

One of the things that that has been interesting is I always thought that you had to teach kids when they were teenagers not to use you know, to be more aware of social media and technology. And so when I thought it was like it was a thing that you taught them when they was twelve or thirteen. And the thing that I've realized during this making this film was that you need to be teaching them when they're three and four and five years old. Um. You know.

Barton day Thurston is one of the commenters in the movie, and he has this great line where he says, you know, when it comes to most things in society, we we protect our kids from them. We we don't let them go near a gun until there's twenty one years old or eighteen years old. We don't let them drive a car or drink and all these different things until they

are that age. And when it comes to technology, we've left into the Wolves, and the Wolves of course being those big bad companies that all they care about their metrics and and I think that for me, I'm now teaching my kids, you know when they look at YouTube and things like that and go online, that some of the things they say are not real and some of them are bad. So I just want to know, have you ever done a selfie in front of the pink Wall?

You know, I have not done a selfie in from the Pink Pink Wall, but we we did when we shot the film. Were the opening of the film, there was a good three days we were there, and we definitely had some fun with our phones messing around in front of it. Well, it's a lot of fun to watch. And it's interesting what you say about kids, because you finished off the documentary showing all these pictures of kids

on Instagram, obviously disturbing in my opinion. We we yeah the end of the film, which doesn't give anything away for listeners, but at the end of the film, we we wanted to bring it back to the beginning of the film where we talked about that study of what kids want to be when they grew up and and I remember saying that to the one of the bruces, like, oh, we should see we can get some pictures of like kid influencers. And I've never really looked at kid influencers before.

And when we looked and I and we saw these photos, it was completely shocking to see these kids that are their influencers. And we were so lucky. We had worked with Michael Abels, who did the music and the score for the film, and he's done a lot of horror movies and when he did the music for the end, he said, I see, he's like, I've got this and he completely did that was veteran technology journalist Nic Built

and the documentary is fake famous on HBO. One of the things I think you and I both agree on what was so disturbing is just the little kids who want to be influencers. Yeah, I mean I had this feeling, Carol. I don't know if it's okay to say, but as I was watching the documentary, I was like, Okay, we really live in how Oh my god, No, I think it's safe to say. And you see how kind of tortured people were about the process. Um, I really love

this film. You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra, be sure of listen to our Bloomberg Business Week Daily radio show, airing live Monday through Friday at two pm Well Street time on Bloomberg Radio. Are we influencers? I don't think so. I'm definitely not. But watch us on our daily broadcast on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News and you can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake, available on Bloomberg dot Com, slash qt, and st mean platforms

like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. I'm Tim Stentovick and I'm Carol Mancer. This is Booker m