State of Social 06: Everything that happened in June

June 2024. It was cold. In fact, it was the coldest start to any summer on record.

If the chill in the air deterred you from venturing outside then maybe you spent a little more time scrolling social than usual. Maybe you spotted that viral AI disclaimer? Well, turns out it was fake but its sparked an interesting conversation about Meta's use of our data when it comes to training their AI.

This way for more information, and even more updates from the hectic world of social.

Fake news 🚨

Meta are going to use your social posts for AI training. Boo.

You may have seen an ‘Add Yours’ style Instagram story doing the rounds stating something along the lines of: ‘I do not give permission for Meta to use my content for AI training purposes’. It gained a lot of traction; even celebrities (Nadal, looking at you) were posting it thinking it would stop Meta taking content as training data.

Sadly, that viral moment turned out to be completely useless.

So, what can you do?

EU users can rely on European privacy laws and have the option of opting-out. Although Meta doesn’t make it easy.

Head to the Settings > Privacy Centre > ‘How Meta uses information’. This section requires an authentication code sent via email (not ideal if you still use your teenage email address and long-forgotten password). We think it raises a question about Meta’s future popularity. This doesn’t seem like a path its users will easily be led down. What do you think?

Instagram Stories are sticking around…

Instagram is going to test ‘Stories Highlights’ on user profiles.

Despite social media platforms drifting away from the ‘social elements’ and more towards straight-up entertainment (cheers, TikTok) – this brand-new engagement tactic doubles down where the platform is still seeing strong user activity i.e. Reels and Stories.

Instagram’s big boss, Adam Mosseri, has said that this update is in response to a change in user behaviour. IG feed activity has seen a steady decline in recent years, with users posting less to their main profile than ever before, mainly posting to Stories, and interacting privately in DMs.

‘Lately’, is a feature just for Stories. An automatically generated 'highlight feed' can be added to your profile showcasing your most recent activity. This will extend the shelf life of Stories, from 24 hours to anything up to 7 days. Hell yeah!

TikTok gets collaborative

Hot off the press! TikTok is finally launching its very own collaboration feature.  

Creators will be able to tag up to 5 collaborators in a post and profile links will be displayed in post details. Collaborators will have the option to decline, and brands will need to ‘approve’ this content (sound familiar?).

This step is very similar to the Instagram collaboration process but makes us ask the question; how did this update take so long to be released?!

On TikTok, users will be capped at collaborating up to a maximum of four times a month. This is a small change from Instagram, where six collaborators can be added to a single post and there's no limit to how many collaborator posts you can create each month.

Original, it is not. But this move is long-awaited by content creators and enables more options to monetise content, as well as increase reach.

Is this just another monthly update that pits TikTok higher than its Meta counterparts?

What do you think? 🤔

YouTube launches live test of AI Ideas Generator

Creative block. We all get it (lord knows it’s taken a good few hours to write this blog 😜) so what about a bit of help from our old friend AI?

YouTube has launched a new AI idea generator to provide a little 'creative encouragement' when it comes to content creation inspiration.

The latest generative AI feature will be available to a select group of YouTube Studio users. YouTube say that it’s been designed to ‘…make it easier for creators to decide what to dream up and share next...  If you’re a creator in the experiment and you navigate to Studio > Analytics > Research on desktop, you’ll see ideas for content you could create to share on YouTube.’

YouTube also says that the tool is designed to help creators tap into what topics their audience are resonating with, plus providing fresh concepts for truly unique video content.  

Would you welcome this AI-driven change? We predict the insights could be useful – but also, intrigued to see what kind of new concepts AI can cook up for our creators!

Watch this space.

That’s all folks!

Join us again, same time same place as we delve deeper into the crazy world that is social media. Adios!