SOCIAL MEDIA
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Reddit Cuts Off Search Engine Scrapers, Including Bing
This is interesting. This week, Reddit mas moved to block search engines not named Google from crawling its site, via an update to its robot.txt file which blocks their crawlers. Microsoft’s Bing has now stopped crawling Reddit, after an update to the platform’s robots.txt file on July 1st, which essentially refuses access to all non-approved search engines, meaning that Reddit…
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Reddit Launches Lead Generation Ads
Reddit has launched its own version of Lead Gen Ads, which will enable marketers to gather prospective customer info direct from their promotions in the app. As you can see in this example, Reddit’s Lead Gen Ads function pretty much as you would expect. The ads include a “Sign Up” CTA (or similar), which, when clicked, takes the user through…
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X is Testing an Option to Block Links in Your Post Replies
X really doesn’t want its users to click on referral links, and head away from its site, which is why it’s already downgraded the reach of posts with links, changed the way that link previews are displayed in stream, and added native long-form posting options as a replacement. And now, it’s testing out another way to disincentivize links, though this…
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Google Abandons Plan to Phase Out Tracking Cookies
Well, after all that, after years of telling us that cookie tracking is going away, and that marketers need to brace themselves for the next big shift, Google has now announced that it won’t actually be retiring cookies after all. The years-long back and forth, which has seen Google delay the cookie phase out several times, due to various challenges…
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Meta Suspends AI Development in EU and Brazil Over Data Usage Concerns
Meta’s evolving generative AI push appears to have hit a snag, with the company forced to scale back its AI efforts in both the EU and Brazil due to regulatory scrutiny over how it’s utilizing user data in its process. First off, in the EU, where Meta has announced that it will withhold its multimodal models, a key element of…
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X Will Allow Users To Request a Community Note on Posts
X is expanding its Community Notes option once again, this time by adding the capacity for users to request a note on posts that they believe may include questionable claims. As you can see in this example, there’s now a new option within the post menu on desktop to “Request Community Note”, which will then flag that for checking by…
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Threads is Testing a Media Re-Share Option That Credits Creators
Meta’s looking to tackle content theft on Threads by experimenting with a new feature that would make it easy for users to re-share media in the app, while still giving credit to the original poster. As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Threads is internally testing a new “Use media” option, in addition to…
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Instagram’s Experimenting With Super Likes for Stories
Just as Instagram adds an interesting, and original music sharing option for Threads, it’s also seemingly experimenting with another feature that’s been copied from another app. According to a finding in the back-end code of the latest IG app, the platform is working on a “Super Like” option for Stories. As you can see in this example, posted by app…
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X Moves to the Next Stage of Testing for Comment Downvotes
X is moving to the next stage of its test of downvotes on post replies, with a new variation of its downvote option appearing in the back-end code of the app this week. As you can see in this example, posted by user @P4mui, X now has a new downvote button in production, which hasn’t been released for public testing…
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Instagram’s Looking to Enable Retrospective Tags for Collaborative Posts
Here’s a small but important update from IG regarding a coming functional improvement. Right now, if you want to add a collaborator to your IG posts, you need to do so in the initial creation flow, it’s not possible to add a collaborator in retrospect. Well, you can on Reels, as of recently (check out this how-to guide from influencer…
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