LIVE Updates: This Month In Social (June 2023)
This could get messy Meta is threatening to ban news content in California due to proposed ‘Journalism Preservation Act’, an act that aims to address imbalances in the digital advertising sector. It forces Meta to share a cut of its revenue with local publishers because “Facebook benefits from increased engagement as a result of news content – and thus gains ad revenue as FB users share/discuss news content via links.
Meta actually sought to cut political content from user feeds entirely over the past year, but has since eased back on that push, after user feedback showed that despite political posts causing angst and argument, people do still want some political discussion in the app.
So, if Meta is already planning on phasing out news content, why is this ban so controversial? Well, it is a direct infringement on the right to information.
AI Chatbot on IG There’s never been a tech trend that Meta didn’t like, and generative AI is no exception, with the company currently developing various new generative AI tools for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Instagram’s developing a new AI chat option, which looks similar to Snapchat’s My AI tool:
App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi shows that Instagram is currently developing a new AI chat option that would enable you to ask questions of an AI system within any chat thread.
Twitter The countdown is on Twitter Blue subscribers now have more time to edit their tweets, with Twitter quietly rolling out an expansion of its Tweet Edit window from 30 minutes to one hour. This will give users more time to catch any errors, or respond to feedback from people who read your tweet.
This could be handy, but Twitter Blue subscribers make up only 0.3% of the total user base… jeesh, plus! It’s not even available to all Blue users, with the slow roll-out only updating for subscribers, double jeesh.
It’s going down, we’re yelling timber! The New York Times has reported that Twitter’s US ad sales are down 59% year-over-year, reflecting worsening ad sales at the company over time, despite Musk’s assurances that advertisers had been steadily coming back to the platform. This is a lot worse than the 50% decline that Musk confirmed back in March, are the days of Twitter numbered?
LinkedIn AI (again) Similarly to Instagram (and other social platforms), LinkedIn is experimenting with generative AI – LinkedIn, of course, are doing it somewhat differently, via an AI assistant in your LinkedIn inbox that’ll be able to provide quick answers to questions as you engage in your DMs.
Other BeReal BeReal dropped a new feature to help users better connect with their friends by using RealMoji reactions or RealChat. The addition seems similar to Instagram, as BeReal seems to compete with the platform to stay in the social media limelight.