Good Afternoon,

Welcome to the weekly digital roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in digital marketing and tech.

This week, we explore how Instagram ranks content so that you can optimise your posts. We also discuss how Google Ads policies have become more transparent, and the improvements Microsoft implemented into Bing Chat.

Let’s learn some more about each story.

Instagram Content Ranking in 2023

Instagram recently updated its public resource which explains how its ranking algorithms and signals work. The aim behind the resource is to help brands and creators generate interactions and engagement, and also to grow their followings on the app.

In this section of the roundup, we’ll explain the changes made to the post, but also explain how Instagram ranks all its content, from the Feed to Reels. If you know how Instagram ranks content, then you can improve your content, to get the best out of Instagram.

But first, let’s go over the changes made to the post. The post is from 2021, so changes are to be expected. Here’s what changed:

• Separate sections for Feed and Stories
• Recommendations and Community Guidelines have more of a push
• A new section called Personalise your Feed and Stories
• More discussion on Shadowbanning

The Instagram Algorithm

The post makes it clear that Instagram doesn’t use just one algorithm to rank content. There are different algorithms, called Classifers and Processes.

Additionally, Instagram ranks different pieces of content in a separate way. For example, Feed is ranked in a different way to Search.

Ranking Instagram Feed

The Feed is the homepage of Instagram, there, users can see a range of content from accounts they follow. Users may also see recommended content, and of course, ads. The feed uses a mix of videos, images, and carousels.

In the post, Instagram explains that there are thousands of ranking signals for Feed. But they all fall into 3 groups, the User, the Creator, and the Post.

User Signals:

• Engagements- such as likes, comments, and shares
• Recent account follows
• Format preferences
• Accounts a user has recently engaged with
• Account preferences

Creator Signals:

• Recent engagement with the creator
• What information is available about the creator
• If the guidelines for Content Lowered in Feed have been followed

Post Signals:

• Popularity
  • Number of likes
  • How quickly people like it
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Saves
• The time it was posted
• Location

Instagram also tries to avoid showing too many suggested posts, or posts from the same account.

Ranking Instagram Stories

Instagram’s Input signals rank Stories with:

• Shared by accounts you follow
• The viewing history
• Engagement history
• Closeness (relationship with the creator)

Ranking Instagram Explore

The Explore page is the page you’re presented with before doing a search. It shows users recommended videos and images from accounts they don’t follow. Instagram ranks Explore similarly to Feed and Stories.

Instagram looks at:

• The user’s past Instagram activity
• Reel information
• Creator information

Instagram ranks Reels lower if they’re:

• Low resolution
• Watermarked
• Muted
• Mostly text
• Unoriginal
• Focused on politics

Ranking Instagram Search

While the post doesn’t mention how Search is ranked, Instagram explained it in a 2021 post.

What matters in Search is:

• The query- Instagram will try to match it to relevant usernames, bios, captions, hashtags, or places.
• User activity- Accounts the user follows and posts they view and engage with.
• Popularity signals- Clicks, likes, shares, and followers.

Instagram also has some SEO advice, which includes:

• Have a relevant handle or profile name
• Include keywords and locations in your bio and captions

Hopefully, with all this advice, you’ll be able to assess the quality of your content and improve where necessary.

Google Ads Enhance Policy Transparency

Google updated its Shopping Ads Policy Centre and free listings Policy Centre this week. The updates were to improve the transparency within the policies for advertisers and retailers.

So what’s changed?

The YouTube Shopping Ads requirements and also the Discovery Product Ads format requirements both got updated. The updates help explain why ads may not be performing as well to retailers and advertisers.

Anyone can review the Google Ads Policy Centre or the Free Listings Policies to see how the policies are enforced.

New Bing Chat Features

Microsoft added new Bing Chat features this week. Android users now have a widget for it, and the company improved sports scores on the tool.

Here is some more information about each.

Android widget

If you have a recent Android device, you can add a Bing Chat widget to your home screen. Once added, it will appear in your search bar at the top of the home screen.

Typically, to add a widget, you’ll need to:

• Unlock your phone
• Hold your finger down on any free space
• Select Widgets
• Search for the Bing Chat widget
• Click and confirm on the widget

Here’s what the Widget looks like:

Enhanced sports scores

Next, Bing stated that its ‘Sports Grounding’ feature had been improved. You can now ask it questions such as statistics, scores, schedules, or league rankings across a variety of sports.

Here’s how it looks when you ask it “what football games are coming up”

Miscellaneous changes

Lastly, Bing said that Swiftkey received some changes such as new tones, translators, and also the ability to compose messages depending on selected parameters.

It’s nice being able to use Bing chat for more than just work, and no doubt it will have more improvements going forward. We also wrote a roundup talking about how Microsoft is changing Bing going forward.

As always, thanks for reading the digital roundup, see you this time next week.

Good Afternoon,

Welcome to Intelligency Weekly Roundup! Let’s dive into the exciting world of digital tech and social media.

First, we’re looking at Meta, previously known as Facebook. The European Union handed them a whopping $1.3 billion fine for breaching data transfer laws. This ruling could force Meta to overhaul its IT systems and halt data transfers between the EU and the US​.

Next on our radar is Bluesky Social, a new player aiming to take on Twitter. Under the leadership of CEO Jay Graber and Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky plans to transform social networks to function more like email, tackling the issues of centralized control

Finally, we turn to TikTok’s latest innovation: an AI chatbot named Tako. Tako’s mission is to enhance user experience in content discovery and search. With a growing number of young people choosing TikTok or Instagram over Google for searches, Google has identified TikTok as a potential threat. Tako could potentially revolutionize the way users search, shifting from typing to chatting

Stay tuned as we dive deep into these intriguing stories.

Meta receives $1.3 billion fine from EU

Facebook’s umbrella company, Meta, has been given a $1.3 billion fine for breaching data transfer laws from the EU. This is the largest fine that the EU has penalised a company with.

The fine was issued because Meta transferred EU user data to the U.S., which is a GDPR breach. A ruling also came with the fine, Meta has five months to stop any future transfers of personal data to the U.S. As well as this, Meta has six months to stop any unlawful EU data transfers.

This is pretty huge because Facebook may have to delete huge chunks of data, as well as restructure its IT infrastructure. A precedent would also be set for any company transferring data between the U.S. and the EU.

More on the EU’s fines

The 25th of May marked the 5th anniversary of the GDPR ruling coming into effect, and 1,701 fines breaching fines have been issued in total. $4 billion has been fined in total.

Funnily enough, Meta has amassed $2.5 billion in 7 fines. Companies such as Amazon or Google only have $800 million in fines.

Interestingly, the ruling only applies to Facebook for this fine, and not Instagram.

Meta’s response

Nick Clegg, who’s the president of global affairs at Meta, stated:

“This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and U.S.”

Stick with Intelligency to find out if there’s a new data transfer treaty for the EU and US from this ruling!

What is Bluesky Social?

Bluesky is a new, decentralised social network aiming to compete with Twitter. It’s been created by Jay Graber and Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey is on the board of directors.

Bluesky’s history and aim

Jack Dorsey tweeted multiple times in December 2019, talking about how Twitter would fund a small dev team (5 people) to work on an open and decentralised social media standard.

Dorsey wanted Twitter to be a client of said standard one day.

Within the tweets, Dorsey highlighted what was prompting this move:

• Centralised control can be challenging, and it can be difficult to address abuse and misinformation in global policies.
• How social media is shifting towards content recommendation algorithms.
• Outrage content drawing more clicks than valuable content.
• Recent advances in technology such as blockchain making decentralisation possible.

Bluesky aims to make a social network which is similar in function to emails or blogs, where content will facilitate meaningful online interactions.

The developers behind Bluesky created the AT Protocol. This protocol’s goal is to make modern social media and blogging similar to how it used to be in the early internet. Which is where anyone could make a blog.

What problems will Bluesky solve?

Most social media networks are centralised, which means that they’re controlled by a central authority which dictates user and dev permissions.

If a user then leaves the social network, they lose connections and content. When developers create new apps, they need to overcome network effects.

Additionally, content creators can lose content when a platform changes its terms and conditions.

The AT Protocol will hopefully change this, offering a more open experience for everyone.

Bluesky isn’t available for the public just yet, but you can sign up for a waitlist for a beta code.

TikTok testing AI chatbot

TikTok is currently testing an AI chatbot in certain markets. The ai-powered tool is called Tako and is meant to aid users search and discover content they’ll be interested in.

Google recently acknowledged that TikTok is a threat to them, so it’s interesting to see TikTok test search ads and aim to improve searching.

According to TechCrunch, this is how it will appear:

“It will appear on the right-hand side of the TikTok interface, above the user’s profile and other buttons for likes, comments and bookmarks. When tapped, users can ask Tako various questions about the video using natural language queries or discover new content by asking for recommendations.”

TikTok has confirmed that right now, users in the Philippines are able to test it.

“We’re in the early stages of exploring chatbot tools with a limited test of Tako with select users in the Philippines. Tako is an AI-powered tool to help with search and discovery on TikTok. Tako is powered by a third-party chat assistant and is designed to help make it easier to discover entertaining and inspiring content on TikTok. No current plans for this beyond these early tests, but we’re excited to hear your feedback!”

Why is TikTok a threat to Google?

Last year, Google released a surprising stat. In the U.S., 40% of people aged 18-24 will use TikTok to search for somewhere to eat lunch. While not a search engine like Google, users still use it as an internal search engine, similar to YouTube.

As always, thanks for reading May’s last roundup! See you this time next week.

Good Afternoon, thanks for stopping by for the Intelligency Weekly Roundup.

This week we delve into some of the most exciting developments happening in the tech world. Our first story explores the beta version of the new chatGPT features that are revolutionising web browsing. We’ll unpack how this artificial intelligence model is changing the way we interact with digital content.

We’ll also talk about how the state of Montana is banning TikTok and the responses it’s been getting from the public and businesses alike.

Our final story pivots to Google, where the tech giant recently announced its new policy to remove inactive accounts, which could impact millions of users.

So, buckle up, stay tuned and get ready to dive into the world of digital innovations and changes in our ever-evolving tech landscape!

ChatGPT adds two new beta features for paid users

This week, OpenAI hyped up the latest version of their AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. The latest version includes beta versions for web browsing and plugins for paid ChatGPT Plus users.

GPT-4’s new features will help users and businesses use this versatile tool even more within their day-to-day duties.

Let’s learn some more about the new beta features and how to opt into them.

Enabling beta ChatGPT features

If you pay for a ChatGPT Plus membership, enabling the new beta features is fairly straightforward.

1. First, click the three dots next to your account details in the bottom right corner.
2. Next, click settings
3. Navigate to Beta Features
4. Enable Web Browsing and Plugins.

Here’s what the screen should look like once they’re enabled:

And your GPT-4 selection screen should look like this:

Web browsing

The first new beta feature that GPT-4 has is selective web browsing. Web browsing allows ChatGPT to actively use the internet to give you a better answer to a prompt.

In the past, GPT has been limited to information up until September 2021, but now you’d be able to ask it “Give me trending news stories about the UK”. It would then be able to show you trending news with different citations.

Third-party plugins

There’s also support for third-party plugins now which can be accessed via the plugin store. You’ll be able to shop, market, trade, or play games using GPT-4 plugins for the chat.

However, it’s important to note that a lot of them are still being tested, so they may not fully work. Also, you can only use three plugins at a time.

However, with further testing, the plug-ins could change the way we do a lot of things online.

Alphas and betas

In the release notes, OpenAI were transparent about how they’ll do key stages for new GPT features and releases.

The first stage, which is the alpha stage, allows a smaller group of users to try out the new features. This is then followed by a larger sample size, which is the beta group. Typically consisting of ChatGPT Plus users.

These releases allow feedback from users so OpenAI can improve features before everyone can access them.

Montana Bans TikTok

This week, in a surprising move, Monta’s governor Greg Gianforte, signed a bill to ban TikTok from the state. This is the first law like this in the US, and has drawn worldwide attention.

But what was Gianforte’s motivation?

He signed the bill and put it into law, and also plans to try and extend the ban to more social media apps going forward after addressing “technical and legal concerns” for the bill.

Unfortunately, the motivations behind the ban aren’t truly clear. But at a guess, it’s potentially because the state wants to control what’s posted on social media.

What’s included in the TikTok ban?

The bill is labelled “SB 419”, and prohibits app stores on mobiles from offering TikTok to Montana users. It will come into effect on the 1st of January 2024.

If the ban is violated, companies offering the app will face serious fines.

Implications of SB 419

The responses to the ban so far have been mixed. Some users think it’s good, because it will protect data privacy, others think it takes away from free speech and individual liberties.

Users also think it sets a dangerous precedent, wondering where the line is drawn for app bans, and have been left wondering what’s next.

TikTok’s response

TikTok haven’t officially responded to the news of the ban yet, it’s likely that they are still preparing a statement.

It’s important to note that TikTok are still facing data privacy investigations in the US, and the outcome could affect the platform’s future in the country.

We’ll have to see how this one plays out going forward, but if you’re a business in Montana using TikTok for paid social, it’s time to look at alternatives.

Google removing inactive accounts

In the last bit of news from this week, Google updated it’s inactive account policy.

The policy deems accounts that haven;t been active for two years to be “inactive accounts”.

This is important for you to know, and the world as a whole, because Google can delete any content from an inactive account on the following platforms:

• Gmail
• Docs
• Drive
• Meet
• Calendar
• YouTube
• Google Photos

Please note: this only applies to personal accounts, business accounts are exempt. The inactive account deletetion won;t begin until December 2023.

This means that we could see a lot of great content deleted from YouTube. The change is being introduced because inactive accounts with old passwords are more likely to get hacked according to Google.

I disagree with the change, and hope that Google will figure out a compromise. It hinders the user experience.

Good Afternoon, welcome to the weekly digital roundup. Where Intelligency analyses and reports on the latest digital marketing news and trends.

This week, Meta introduced 3 new Facebook Reels features, Google showed off some new search features, and Microsoft revealed Bing’s future.

Let’s dive in and learn some more about each.

New Facebook Reels Features

Meta added 3 new features to Facebook Reels this week. Users will be able to easily find short-form videos most relevant to them and have an easier time customising their video experiences on the platform.

Facebook Watch navigation

The goal is to make finding and watching reels easier in-app through Facebook Watch, by adding a Reels section in the nav menu. This will provide a user with quick access to short-form videos from their favourite creators, or let them discover new content that they’ll enjoy. You can also scroll between reels and longer videos with ease.

Reels personalisation

Users also have better control over the types of Reels which appear in their main feed, very similar to other personalisation tools.

You can show more, show less now. If you like a reel you’ve just watched, you can tap the options button and click show more. You’ll then start to see similar videos recommended by the algorithm.

Alternatively, if you didn’t like what you just watched, you can click show less. The algorithm will stop recommending videos which are similar to the one you didn’t like.

Additionally, there are now contextual labels for Reels. For example, if you’re seeing a Reel because your friend liked it, a label will say.

These 3 changes were announced on Meta’s blog, the changes show that the company still wants to pursue short-form video, and are taking advantage of its intelligent ranking signals. Reel integration onto the Facebook app will generate meaningful content interactions, and provide a great user experience.

New Google features shown off at I/O

This week, Google hosted its annual I/O conference and showed off several new advancements to Search.

The most significant updates which were shown off were generative AI-enhanced search results, and “Perspectives” for topics.

The aim of these changes is to enhance the search experience for users and to reshape how they discover information.

Transformative generative AI

This feature is also referred to as the Search Generative Experience or SGE. It’s a new method of delivering search results.

SGE simplifies complex search tasks and provides users with information snapshots, with a link to learn more about what they’ve searched for.

You can use SGE to compare two different parks and how suitable they would be for dogs and children. It would provide you with comparisons, suggestions, and also links for further information.

Here’s an image of what it looks like:

Shopping experiences for users will also be improved, it can deliver real-time product information, reviews, and prices without taking you off of the search engine result page. Google built this feature using Google Shopping Graph, which contains the product information for 35 billion products.

There are also safeguards in place for SGE, such as the AI not appearing for every type of search query, in order to keep a consistent quality.

If you use Chrome, you can try SGE out in Search Labs on desktop, or the Google App for Android or IOS. Please note: SGE is currently US only.

Perspectives

Google is also introducing a new Search feature called ‘Perspectives’. It can highlight videos, blog posts, images, or forum discussions in search results. The highlights are designed to help a user understand a topic through different perspectives and experiences.

An example of this is a user who searches “how do I make friends in a new city?” would get personal stories or tips through multiple sources and mediums.

See how it looks below:

The perspectives filter should improve the search results for review content according to Google.

This feature will more than likely launch in the UK at the same time as the generative AI.

The next generation of Bing and Edge

Microsoft, the creators of Bing and Edge, is launching the next generation of both platforms to transform search engine software.

Key characteristics for Bing and Edge’s future include:

• Bing becoming Open Preview
• Enhanced searches
• Multi-session productivity experiences
• Allowing developers and third parties to build on top of Bing

Here’s some more info about each change.

Open Preview Bing

As a response to the high traffic level and positive reception Bing is receiving, Microsoft announced Bing will be in open preview. This means that users won’t have to join a waitlist to try new features, they’ll just need a Microsoft account.

Enhanced searches

Bing will now provide users with easier to digest, visual information such as charts, graphs, and clearer answers for certain search topics.

The image generator for Bing now supports over 100 languages too, so images can be created in a user’s native language.

Productive searches

Users are now able to access their chat history with Bing’s AI chatbot, and can now export it and share it to different platforms.

Also, Edge is also getting a better summarisation capability for long documents and articles for websites. Edge will also allow a user to complete a task with fewer steps than normal, such as tailoring drafts, or watching specific films.

Bing’s transition from product to platform

Finally, Microsoft plans to build and integrate third-party plugins into Bing chat. This will enable developers to add new functionality to the experience.

In the future, users will be able to book table reservations, or get the answer to complex science problems using Wolfram Alpha without ever leaving Bing Chat.

Going forward, Microsoft wants everyone to try out Bing and chat to see if they like, and have promised to make weekly changes to the open preview builds.

Good Afternoon, welcome back to our weekly roundup of the latest digital news and trends at Intelligency.

This week, Google finished the produce review update, Auto-GPT took the news by storm, and TikTok launched its shop.

Let’s dive right in and learn some more about each.

Google’s April Product Review Update Finishes Roll Out

This week, Google’s April 2023 Product Review update finished rolling out. Due to the scope of this update, many publishers were affected for better or worse.

Google announced the end of the rollout on the Search Status Dashboard.

“Incident affecting Ranking
Released the April 2023 reviews update.

Incident began at 2023-04-12 09:00 and ended at 2023-04-25 11:24 (all times are US/Pacific).

DATE TIME DESCRIPTION
25 Apr 2023 11:24 PDT

The rollout was complete as of April 25, 2023.”

What changed in the update?

The main change is that product review updates will affect more than just products in the future.

The algorithm that’s improved in these updates is called the “reviews system”. It scans review-based content such as recommendations for physical products, services, films, and more.

Google’s guidance on the reviews system can be read below:

“The reviews system is designed to evaluate articles, blog posts, pages or similar first-party standalone content written with the purpose of providing a recommendation, giving an opinion, or providing analysis.

It does not evaluate third-party reviews, such as those posted by users in the reviews section of a product or services page.”

Google’s review system examines content on a page-by-page basis, however, if the primary content of a site is reviews, it can carry out a whole-site examination.

If you want your review content to be rewarded by Google and to rank higher, then it’s worth reading Write high-quality reviews.

Update reception

The reception to the update was less than positive, one WebWasterWorld forum member posted this about the update

“Umpteenth review update is finished:

Nothing positive to say, so I won’t for now.”

And another member talked about how the recent updates have affected them

“Seeing big drops again. We recovered to the same levels as before the March core update now taking big swings again.

Our mobile traffic is up a bit and desktop traffic is way down.

Conversions seem to be steady but much less impressions and clicks shown in GSC.

Not sure what’s going on but I could really use some stability for a while.

Our company is going through a lot at the moment and this is certainly not helping.”

One other member responded

“Seeing big drops again. We recovered to the same levels as before the March core update now taking big swings again.

Our mobile traffic is up a bit and desktop traffic is way down.

Conversions seem to be steady but much less impressions and clicks shown in GSC.

Not sure what’s going on but I could really use some stability for a while.

Our company is going through a lot at the moment and this is certainly not helping.”

Remember: always follow Google’s guidance and webmaster guidelines!

What is Auto-GPT?

In the midst of all of the AI craze dominating SEO and marketing news, it only makes sense that we have more in store.

Auto-GPT is a pretty groundbreaking AI technology. It adds new abilities to Chat-GPT, which allows it to complete tasks by itself by giving itself prompts.

Auto-GPT’s buzz has been causing it to trend on Twitter for the last few days.

But what is it?

Well, Auto-GPT is an experimental open-source interface, similar in nature to GPT-4. The technology included in the interface allows it to complete tasks.

All users have to do is provide the interface with a list of tasks, and it will complete them.

This is different from Chat-GPT, which requires multiple, detailed prompts because Auto-GPT can generate its own prompts to complete the tasks you’ve provided.

It can even access websites, use search engines, and can self-evaluate its own accuracy. If it finds information to be incorrect, it will discard it and try and find more, accurate information

Due to the self-generating prompts, Auto-GPT is referred to as an autonomous AI agent.

Github’s Auto-GPT describes the tool as such:

Auto-GPT is an experimental open-source application showcasing the capabilities of the GPT-4 language model.. This program, driven by GPT-4, chains together LLM “thoughts”, to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set.. As one of the first examples of GPT-4 running fully autonomously, Auto-GPT pushes the boundaries of what is possible with AI.

How do I access Auto-GPT?

Accessing Auto-GPT is fairly straightforward.

First, you’ll sign up for a paid open AI account. You can do this by signing up to or logging into OpenAI.

After you’ve got a paid subscription, you’ll need to acquire an OpenAI API. Once acquired, it will connect Auto-GPT to your account, and charge you for whatever amounts you use.

The API (Application Programming Interface) allows Auto-GPT to talk to GPT-4 and ChatGPT.

“The OpenAI API can be applied to virtually any task that involves understanding or generating natural language, code, or images.

We offer a spectrum of models with different levels of power suitable for different tasks, as well as the ability to fine-tune your own custom models.

These models can be used for everything from content generation to semantic search and classification.

…The API is powered by a set of models with different capabilities and price points.

GPT-4 is our latest and most powerful model.

GPT-3.5-Turbo is the model that powers ChatGPT and is optimized for conversational formats.”

How does Auto-GPT pricing work?

You can set hard limits on how much OpenAI will charge you, what your word limit is, and when it will stop working for you.

You can set soft limits, which trigger an email warning, and a hard limit, which is when it will stop.

Pricing is based on a token-per-charge. A token is:

“For English text, 1 token is approximately 4 characters or 0.75 words.”

One hundred tokens cost a fraction of 1 penny.

What can you do with Auto-GPT?

OpenAI users have been experimenting with Auto-GPT to carry out a variety of tasks, such as:

Here’s what happened next:

“First: It went straight to google to find the top 5 waterproof shoes reviews. Once it found links, it created questions for itself like:

“What are the pros and cons of each shoe”

“What are the pros and cons of each top 5 waterproof shoe”

“Top 5 waterproof shoes for men””

and

“It continued to analyze the various sites, with a combination of googling, updating its queries, until it was happy with the results.

Here’s an example of when it thought “critically”.

It knew that some reviews could be biased to fake, so it had to validate the reviewer.”

The entire process took 8 minutes and 10p

The power of AI is truly astonishing, and it will only continue to get more powerful as funding and research increase.

TikTok Shop Beta Launches

Sellers on Tiktok received an invite to try out the TikTok shop this week.

Here’s what the email looked like:

What is TikTok Shop?

It’s an e-commerce section of TikTok designed to boost brand growth and sales on the platform. Users can discover products and purchase from their favourite creators and brands in a smooth experience.

If you join as a seller, then you can use the platform to sell, provide feedback, and use 0% referral fees for 90 days,

To signup, use this signup link.

Here’s what it looks like on the platform:

This beta provides creators on the platform a new way to generate revenue, and for users to support their favourite creators.

We’ll have to see how it plays out to see if it’s worth signing up, creating videos, and selling on Tiktok once the beta is in full swing.

Good Afternoon, welcome back to our weekly roundup of the latest digital news and trends at Intelligency.

This week, Microsoft announced it would no longer use Twitter’s API, Apple updated Safari to be more restrictive for third-party data collection, and Google announced it would be optimising the current crawler’s performance.

Let’s dive right in and learn some more about each.

Microsoft Will No Longer Use Twitter’s API For Ads

In a surprise announcement, marketers using Microsoft Advertising received emails this week from Microsoft. The emails stated that as of the 25th of April 2023, Digital Marketing Center (DMC) would no longer support Twitter.

Due to this, DMC’s social media management tool will no longer allow users to manage a Twitter account. This means that scheduling or creating tweets will no longer be available.

Funnily enough, Microsoft announced this change just a day after Musk appeared at an advertising conference to attract new advertisers. Due to controversies associated with the platform after Musk took over, Twitter lost half of its biggest advertisers.

I suspect that Microsoft is stopping using Twitter due to the fact that the company recently changed its stance on the free API it offered. Intelligency wrote about the API change back in February.

What does DMC do?

The advertising features from Microsoft Advertising allow a user to manage various social media accounts, similar to Hootsuite (another platform affected by the API change). You’re able to respond to tweets (although not after the 25th), direct messages, or messages from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

The social media management is free to use for Microsoft Advertising users and is prominently displayed on the DMC dashboard. You will still be able to create and manage content for other platforms, just not Twitter.

Last year, Microsoft Advertising generated the company $12 billion in digital advertising revenue. So the platform is very profitable for users and Microsoft alike.

If you’re currently using DMC’s social media feature to run Twitter campaigns or manage accounts, you’ll need to reassess your strategy from next week.

It’s important to stay up to date with the latest Twitter news, as the platform seems to shift focus a lot with Elon Musk at the helm. Luckily, Intelligency is keeping track of it!

Safari Third-Party Data Collection Is Reduced

Apple’s Safari browser is renowned industry-wide due to its focus on user privacy. This week, Apple updated it to restrict more data collection methods, much to the ire of digital marketers. This is because Apple didn’t announce it was making the change.

What’s the change then?

Apple has closed a loophole present in Safari allowing websites to pass off third-party partners as third-party cookies. A first-party cookie allows a website to remember a user, saving their settings or not forcing them to log in again.

A substantial amount of websites use third parties in order to improve website functionalities. The typical third parties include Adobe and Google Analytiics. The sites using third parties want said third parties to track its audiences, but since 2017, Safari deprecated them.

Now, websites try to disguise the third-party cookies as first-party cookies, but Apple has attempted to combat this over the years.

Interestingly, in October last year, a GitHub user posted Apple’s intention to try and limit the cloaking technique. Apple would combat it by comparing the incoming response IP address with the main resource response. If the IP address is is significantly different, the cookies would only last for 7 days.

The 7 day cookie limit was designed to hamstring data usage and inferences that can be drawn from them.

A lack of announcement

The reason why marketers aren’t happy with the change is due to the fact that Apple didn’t tell anyone about it in a blog post, nor did they specify when it would be implemented.

The president of Delve, Anton Lipkanou, stated that the change is already live and is creating anomalies in website data.

Apple web developer for Safari Jen Simmons contradicted this however, she stated that the change wasn’t live.

If your businesses’ website uses multiple third-parties in this manner, you may need to reassess the website operations. It’s possible that you could lose a lot of functionality if you rely on a lot of traffic from Apple devices.

Unfortunately, if Apple do make it harder for websites and third-parties, it’s possible that campaigns could be hindered, audience targeting could be less effective, and you may see a lower ROI and diminished marketing efforts.

Google Introduce New Website Crawler

Google introduced a new website crawler called “GoogleOther” this week. The purpose of the new crawler is to optimise the company’s current crawler “Googlebot”.

Web crawlers, robots, or spiders, automatically discover and scan websites online. Once scanned, Googlebot will build the index for Google Search. It’s a fundamental step in how organic search works.

GoogleOther is more of a generic crawler, it will be used by internal teams to fetch content from websites.

Gary Illyes, a Google Search analyst, shared further details on LinkedIn

Googlebot and GoogleOther’s divided responsibilities

GoogleOther will take over generic duties which Googlebot is currently carrying out. This will in turn allow Googlebot to focus on crawling and building the index for Google Search.

GoogleOther will do the other jobs such as R&D crawls.

Illyes put in his post:

“We added a new crawler, GoogleOther to our list of crawlers that ultimately will take some strain off of Googlebot. This is a no-op change for you, but it’s interesting nonetheless I reckon.

As we optimize how and what Googlebot crawls, one thing we wanted to ensure is that Googlebot’s crawl jobs are only used internally for building the index that’s used by Search. For this we added a new crawler, GoogleOther, that will replace some of Googlebot’s other jobs like R&D crawls to free up some crawl capacity for Googlebot.”

What are the implications for site owners?

The good news is that you don’t really have to worry about GoogleOther affecting your site. While still a new crawler, GoogleOther uses the same limitations as Googlebot.

But if you are concerned, here’s some quick fixes or techniques you can do:

• Regularly review server logs to see how often GoogleOther crawls your site.
• Keep your robots.txt file updated with rules for GoogleOther.
• Use Google Search Console to monitor crawl statistics.
• Keep tracking and optimising website performance.

As always, thank you for reading the latest Intelligency Digital Roundup, see you this time next week!

Good afternoon, thanks for stopping by the latest digital roundup.

This week, Google rolled out a new product reviews update, Meta promised to unveil its new generative AI, and TikTok scrubbed 10-minute videos from the platform.

Let’s dive in and learn some more about each.

Google Begin Rolling Out April 2023 Product Reviews Update

Google has begun to roll out its latest Product Reviews update this week. Unlike previous Product Review updates, this one targets reviews of any reviewable topic, such as:

• Services
• Businesses
• Destinations
• Films
• Games
• Music

Another big change is that the product reviews system (what Google updates in these updates) has had its name shortened to ‘reviews system’. The language that was used in multiple parts of the guidance has been updated to reflect this change too.

We know about this update because Google Search Central released an announcement on Twitter:

Updated language and guidance

The updated guidance is the article ‘How to write high-quality reviews‘ it’s been rewritten in multiple places with more generic language. For instance, any mention of “product reviews” now reads “reviews”.

Dr Maria Haynes, an expert in Google Search, tweeted more about the revisions as you can see below:

Google also changed around “shoppers” to “people” in order to reflect that these updates apply to all reviews, not just product reviews.

The new guidance that got added reads:

The reviews system is designed to evaluate articles, blog posts, pages or similar first-party standalone content written with the purpose of providing a recommendation, giving an opinion, or providing analysis. It does not evaluate third-party reviews, such as those posted by users in the reviews section of a product or services page.

Reviews can be about a single thing, or head-to-head comparisons, or ranked-lists of recommendations. Reviews can be about any topic. There can be reviews of products such as laptops or winter jackets, pieces of media such as movies or video games, or services and businesses such as restaurants or fashion brands.

This update has some quite significant changes, and if your website has any form of review content on it, then this update could positively or negatively affect you.

Best practice

As always with product reviews, or now just with reviews in general, you should aim to follow Google’s 14 best practice tips:

1. Evaluate from a user’s perspective.
2. Demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about what you are reviewing—show you are an expert.
3. Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with what you are reviewing, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
4. Share quantitative measurements about how something measures up in various categories of performance.
5. Explain what sets something apart from its competitors.
6. Cover comparable things to consider, or explain which might be best for certain uses or circumstances.
7. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research.
8. Describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision.
9. Focus on the most important decision-making factors, based on your experience or expertise (for example, a car review might determine that fuel economy and safety are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas).
10. Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says.
11. Include links to other useful resources (your own or from other sites) to help a reader make a decision.
12. Consider including links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
13. When recommending something as the best overall or the best for a certain purpose, include why you consider it the best, with first-hand supporting evidence.
14. Ensure there is enough useful content in your ranked lists for them to stand on their own, even if you choose to write separate in-depth single reviews.

If you follow these tips, then you’re more likely to be rewarded with higher page rankings from Google during the review updates.

Meta To Debut New Generative AI This Year

The social media company Meta has unveiled that it plans to monetise its generative AI tech by the end of the year. Similarly to Google, the company is trying to explore more practical applications for its AI.

Meta began investing in AI a decade ago, but recently the company created a commercialised generative AI team.

Chat GPT is probably the most popular and relevant example of commercialised generative AI. The technology allows a user to input a prompt to create sentences and graphics. Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of Meta, has insisted that Meta’s AI is cutting-edge.

Meta’s AI goal

The company’s goal with AI is to increase the effectiveness of ads on the platforms they own and to implement AI across all its products. Meta also plans to integrate AI into Metaverse development, making content creation more accessible for Metaverse developers.

Meta’s AI research started in 2013, and has the second most published studies, with Google taking the top spot.

Responses to AI

Unfortunately for Meta, not everyone is as positive as they are for generative AI. Some are concerned about the impact it could have on not only human culture but civilisation itself.

A US-based non-profit organisation called the Future of Life Institute launched a petition in March. The petition’s aim is to halt further AI development for six months. Surprisingly, it garnered attention from Elon Musk, who signed the petition.

Bosworth’s response to the petition was a simple “no”.

Bosworth believes that AI should continue to develop but in a responsible way. Further, he believes that stopping progress would be challenging and that the technology’s evolution should be understood before protective measures should be put in place.

Whilst Google, OpenAI, and Midjourney are all in the public spotlight for generative AI, Meta is no slouch, it’s still a prominent player. We’ll have to wait and see if paid social advertising is improved by Meta’s focus on commercialised generative AI.

If you’d like to learn more about the Metaverse and what it could look like in the future, the BBC released a good video explaining the concept:

TikTok Scrap Ten-Minute Video Capture

Last year, TikTok gave creators the option of capturing videos that were ten minutes long. This week, however, users noticed that the option has been removed.

To clarify, you can still upload ten-minute videos, but you cannot capture or record a ten-minute video.

Whilst this may seem to have a small impact, it can still create the idea that TikTok is inconsistent. This could drive advertisers off of the platform, so if your company is posting videos on the platform, you should always try to be aware of changes like these.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s digital roundup. See you next week!

Good afternoon, and happy easter!

Before I get into the roundup stories, I’d like to say that I hope everyone has an excellent easter bank holiday and enjoys the (hopefully) good weather.

Let’s get into this week’s digital marketing and SEO news.

Google’s CEO On The Future Of Search and Bard

This week, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, talked about AI innovation and the impact of Bard on Search. He spoke about it on a podcast called “Hard Fork” from the New York Times.

The conversation with the hosts primarily discussed AI safety, the future of search, and advanced AI tech.

Bard’s launch

Pichai spoke about Google Bard‘s launch. Bard is Google’s rival to Chat GPT and is powered by Google’s AI, LaMDA.

He stated that even though the reception to the test build has been somewhat quiet, a more capable version would release soon.

Assistive and generative AI tools such as Bard have been envisioned to be a part of people’s daily lives.

Bard and Gmail integration

At the moment, Google is testing Bard integration with Gmail with a limited number of users.

“You can go crazy thinking about all the possibilities, because these are very, very powerful technologies. I think, in fact, as we are speaking now, I think today some of those features in Gmail is actually rolling out now externally to trusted testers — a limited number of trusted testers.”

-Sundar Pichai

The advanced AI race

Pichai stated that he was surprised by the positive user reception of ChatGPT so far, and commended OpenAI for making good progress with advancing the tool.

AI incorporation into search

Microsoft’s CEO recently made some comments about how they’d challenge Google with AI tech in search Pichai responded to the comments by stating that the company has incorporated AI into Google for years.

“I would say we’ve been incorporating AI in search for a long, long time.

When we built transformers here, one of the first use cases of Transformer was birthed, and later, MUM. So we literally took transformer models to help improve language understanding and search deeply. And it’s been one of our biggest quality events for many, many years.

And so I think we’ve been incorporating AI in search for a long time. With LLMs, there is an opportunity to more natively bring them into search in a deeper way, which we will. But search is where people come because they trust it to get information right.”

-Sundar Pichai

Responsibility

Pichai stressed that for all the innovation Google wants to do with AI, they will continue to be responsible.

Bard was used as an example, it was explained that Bard has deliberately not been connected to the most capable LaMDA models.

A balance between innovation and responsibility needs to be achieved for any big-tech company.

Google Search’s future

Pichai discussed what the future of Google Search could look like. He offered the idea that the search bar where you type in search queries could be transformed into something resembling a command-line interface.

A user would type commands to perform various tasks, rather than just using the bar for searching. Google wants to assist users in a way that makes sense, but without becoming the solution for every interaction.

“I think I want to be careful where Google has always been about helping you the way that makes sense to you. We have never thought of ourselves as the be-all and end-all of how we want people to interact.

So while I think the possibility space is large, for me, it’s important to do it in a way in which users use a lot of things, and we want to help them do things in a way that makes sense to them.”

-Sundar Pichai

Stick with the Intelligency weekly roundup to learn more about how Google transforms search for the future!

What is Dolly- the ChatGPT clone?

On the topic of AI, Bard, and ChatGPT. Last week saw the announcement of a new open-source AI chatbot called Dolly, a clone of ChatGPT.

Databricks enterprise software announced a new AI language model called Dolly Large Language Model, or DLL for short. The name Dolly is a reference to the first animal that was ever cloned successfully, a sheep called Dolly.

Open-source language models

DLL is one of the latest iterations of the currently growing movement of open-source AI. It aims to offer users and developers a greater level of access to AI technology in an anti-monopolisation effort. Open-source AI ensures that powerful AI technology isn’t just controlled by large corporations.

An open-source basis

Dolly was actually created from an open-source language model called the Alpaca model. Alpaca was created by Stanford University and is also based on an open-source language model called LLaMA from Meta.

LlaMA was trained on publicly available data and can outperform most of the top language models such as GPT-3.

An improved dataset

Databricks has shown that if you use a smaller but high-quality dataset, you can still make a very powerful language model.

“Dolly works by taking an existing open source 6 billion parameter model from EleutherAI and modifying it ever so slightly to elicit instruction following capabilities such as brainstorming and text generation not present in the original model, using data from Alpaca.

…We show that anyone can take a dated off-the-shelf open source large language model (LLM) and give it magical ChatGPT-like instruction following ability by training it in 30 minutes on one machine, using high-quality training data.

Surprisingly, instruction-following does not seem to require the latest or largest models: our model is only 6 billion parameters, compared to 175 billion for GPT-3.”

Once Dolly is open to public testing, we’ll be able to cover more stories about it!

The new features for live streams on YouTube

YouTube announced that it will be adding new features for live streams held on the platform, such as live reactions. As well as this, creators will be able to see the types of content their viewers watch on other channels.

Let’s learn some more about each.

Live reactions

YouTube plans to roll out live reactions to live streams, which will allow a viewer to react and see how other people have reacted during specific moments. The company stated that this helps foster a community for a creator on the platform.

On iOS devices, you’ll be able to choose from a set of reactions in real time during a stream. Creators and viewers will be able to see the reaction, but not the user behind it.

If you’re a channel eligible to live stream, this feature will be turned on by default. However, you can opt out of live reactions if you so choose.

Improved live stream management

Two new features will help creators manage their live streams better.

• Ads automation– This feature allows YouTube to insert an ad into the stream at the time it feels it’s most appropriate.
• Live control panel– Creators will be able to see stream stats as well as ad-serving capabilities.

To access the panel, a creator will need to paste the panel URL into their third-party encoder such as OBS.

Audience interests

YouTube aims to assist creators by helping them come to informed decisions about the formats that they publish on the platform.

To do this, the platform is trialling a new card which shows a creator the top formats their audience watches on other channels.

It will break it down by showing the percentage of videos watched vs shorts or live streams.

While Intelligency doesn’t stream on YouTube, it sounds like a great time to start if you’re a creator looking to get into streaming.

Good afternoon, thanks for stopping by for this week’s roundup.

This week, in terms of digital marketing news you can learn about how Bing’s new chat AI is set to include ads. Intelligency has also written a guide to help you understand the features, benefits, and drawbacks of paying for Meta or Twitter verification.

Let’s begin!

Microsoft To Implement Ads In Bing AI

This week, Microsoft announced that it is currently planning to implement ads in the currently ad-free Bing Chat. Bing Chat is Microsoft’s AI-powered powered by Chat GPT, currently found on the Bing search engine.

This move could be controversial to users of the chat experience, as up until now the platform has been ad-free.

However, in an effort to create transparency, Microsoft has explained its decision.

Ads = revenue for publishers?

Ever since Microsoft launched the revamed Bing experience, and Microsoft Edge, it has aimed to provide a great user experience. The platforms now combine search queries, with a chatbot, and additionally answers as well as content creation.

Microsoft’s strategy is seeing good results, Bing has seen 100 million daily active users, plus 100 million chats with it’s AI.

One third of this number is entirely new to Bing, so it’s not just returning users.

Microsoft has outlined its goals for an AI-inclusive search landscape, which include:

• A focus on driving traffic to content publishers.
• Generate increased revenue for publishers by using new features in combination with advertising.
• Create a healthy ecosystem by working with the industry.

The datathat’s available from the preview has shown that these goals are on their way to be achieved.

Unique implementations have aided in driving this success.

New or additional publisher opportunities

Microsoft is exploring further content distribution methods to impact traffic and revenue. It has released some early ideas, including:

• Chat-based ads- Ads could be placed in the Bing Chat experience. If an ad was generated, the revenue would be shared with partners whose content contributed to the chat response.
• Expanded hover experience- The idea behind this feature is that when a user hovers over a publisher link, it will sho the user more historical content from the publisher.
• Rich captions for Microsoft Start partners- A rich caption would be placed beside chat answers for anything coming from a Microsoft Start licensed partner. Increasing user engagement and revenue sharing.

While these ideas are still in the early stages, the feedback has been positive.

Collaboration will be continued between Microsoft and publishers in order to help shape Bing and searches’ future.

If you wish to learn more about Bing AI, the below video is quite helpful:

A Guide To Investing In Paid Verification For Meta Or Twitter

As some of you may be aware, Twitter is planning to sunset its legacy verified program from the 1st of Apri. In order for companies or people to have the famous blue checkmark, you have to be a Twitter Blue subscriber.

If you tap or click a blue checkmark on Twitter, it will now show you if the checkmark has come from the legacy verification program, or if the account is a Twitter Blue subscriber.

What are the benefits of Twitter Blue, and what’s the criteria?

You may be thinking to yourself “What are the benefits of subscribing to Twitter Blue?” or “How do I know if I’m eligible?”. If you are thinking that, Intelligency is here to help!

To be eligible, your account needs to be or have:

• Have a confirmed phone number
• Older than 90 days
• No changes to the following in the last 30 days:
  • Name
  • Username
  • Profile photo

Once verified, you must not engage in deceptive tactics, such as using a fake identity, or else the verification will be revoked.

The benefits of Twitter Blue include:

• The verified checkmark next to your handle.
• Longer tweet or video publishing.
• Undo a tweet.
• Tweet editing in the first 30 minutes.
• A personalised feed
• Two-factor authentication.
• Increased platform visibility.

The price of Twitter Blue varies per country, in the UK it’s £9.60 to £11.

Meta Verified, it’s benefits, and the eligibility criteria

Additionally, Meta is currently rolling out its own form of paid verification called Meta Verified. This package includes verification for Facebook and Instagram.

The eligibility requirements are:

• Having an active profile
• The real name and photo from your profile must match ID.
• Two-factor authentication must be set up.

Furthermore, your account must comply with the Meta terms of service.

The benefits for Meta Verified include:

• A verified checkmark
• Exclusive Facebook and Instagram stickers
• 100 stars per month
• Help from a real person (rather than an automated system) when you have account issues

Right now, Meta Verified is only available to select users.

What are the drawbacks of paid verification?

While paid verification may sound good on paper, there are unfortunately some downsides to paying for a checkmark.

For starters, Twitter Blue subscribers have been vocal about a lack of increased engagement from the “increased visibility” benefit advertised by the platform. Some users have stated “we feel like we’re paying to be ignored”.

Another major concern is that it’s not immediately obvious if someone is a notable public figure, or if they’ve just paid for Twitter Blue. When the legacy verification system was in place, you had to be a prominently recognised individual or brand.

But now? Those same accounts have to pay, just like anyone else. This allows bad actors to spread misinformation or scam users. Whilst this violates the terms of service of Twitter, the accounts wouldn’t stop posting misinformation until Twitter had received reports and investigated.

This lengthy process could allow a lot of damage to be done in the mean time.

Certain Twitter users are also in strong opposition of Twitter Blue, and a campaign has been launched to block ever Twitter Blue user. See the below tweet for more info:

So just remember, before diving into paid verification, weight up the implications of paying for notability on social media.

As always, thanks for reading this week’s digital roundup!

Good Afternoon, welcome to the last digital roundup for March!

This week has been quite interesting for digital marketing news. TikTok’s CEO testified to congress, Mozilla (creators of firefox) announced it will be creating its own AI to rival ChatGPt and Google Bard, and the community guidelines were updated for TikTok to include AI content.

Let’s learn more about each one.

TikTok CEO Testifies To Congress

This week, Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, faced an intense five-hour congressional hearing. Chew was asked questions from various US lawmakers, primarily in regard to the platform’s connection to ByteDance.

ByteDance is the Chinese parent company of TikTok. The lawmakers were in search of a clear answer of whether or not TikTok spies for the Chinese government.

Recently, TikTok’s future in the US has been uncertain due to the government pushing for divestiture of the platform. The app has also been threatened with a ban in the states as well.

Chew was in a tough position, as they tried to argue that TikTok is independent of China’s influence. Unfortunately for Chew, the lawmakers were sceptical. China’s opposition to the sale of TikTok was cited as evidence of the country’s influence on the platform and company.

Unlike most congressional hearings for social media executives in America, this hearing had a rare display of unity, most of the tone was harsh throughout it.

So what’s the future of TikTok in the US?

Right now, both China and the US are at odds over the sale of TikTok. There are two possible outcomes for TikTok in the states.

Either TikTok is banned from the country, or the platform’s security concerns are fixed.

Lindsay Gorman, who’s the head of tech and geopolitics for German Marshall Fund, stated “The future of TikTok in the U.S. is definitely dimmer and more uncertain today than it was yesterday.”

As of now, TikTok has proposed a measure to protect US user data, but there hasn’t been a security agreement just yet.

Once there’s an update on TikTok’s position, digital roundup readers will be the first to know!

The full hearing can be watched below:

Mozilla Announce New Open-Source AI

Mozilla, the company that created Firefox, has announced it is founding a new, open-source initiative for AI. Transparency, trustworthiness, and accountability are at the forefront of Mozilla’s open-source AI products.

The AI products will be built to challenge the likes of OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft’s AI products.

Currently, a vast amount of the important programs or software products which make modern life possible are already open source. Examples include WordPress, PHP, Apache, Android, and Nginx.

Assuming Mozilla are successful, the company may shape what the future of AI is like for the public.

It’s smart to create a company which actively creates open-source products and AI, as it allows a more active role in challenging big tech companies along the likes of Google.

Mozilla pledged $30 million, or £24,582,450 million, to develop an alternative AI.

The company is famous for taking a human-first approach to anything they build:

“Mozilla has long championed a world where AI is more trustworthy, investing in startups, advocating for laws, and mobilizing the public to focus on human agency and accountability in AI.

Now we’re taking the next step: creating a company — and gathering a community — to build a trustworthy open source AI ecosystem.”

– Mozilla.ai

The goals for Mozilla’s open-source AI

Mozilla is a non-profit company, that prioritises that its products are free, open-source, and have strong privacy features.

The company’s mission statement states that they’re “focused on creating an internet that is people-first, open, free, and accessible”.

It also has the following principles which it adheres to:

• “The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible
• Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
• Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it.
• Free and open-source software promotes the development of the internet as a public resource.
• Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.
• Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.”

The first project from the Mozilla AI team will be a focused effort to create a free generative AI, like Google’s Bard or ChatGPT.

Mozilla’s site contains further information.

TikTok’s Community Guidelines Set To Include AI Content

TikTok has recently made a change to its Community Guidelines, set to go into effect on the 21st of April 2023.

Now, the guidelines have a section called Community Principles, which serves as a guide to content moderation for upholding human rights.

The company worked with over 100 different organisations around the world in order to strengthen its current rules to protect users from harm.

Key changes to the guidelines apply to AI content, as well as protected attributes and election integrity.

AI content

TikTok uses the term ‘Synthetic media’ which is defined as content either created or modified using AI. Whilst there are some positives to creators using AI, it can lead to users being unable to tell where the line between fact and fiction is.

If you use synthetic media on TikTok, from the 21st of April, you must label your media as such. This will help to mitigate the risks of disinformation spreading.

In terms of potential harm reduction, synthetic media using real, private individuals is not allowed. A private individual is defined as anyone below the age of 18, plus adults who aren’t public figures.

You’re allowed to use public figures over the age of 18 such as celebrities, but with restrictions.

A creator must not use synthetic content in order to violate policies put in place for hate speech or harassment. And public figures are not able to be used for political or commercial endorsements that mislead users about financial or political issues.

You can, however, use synthetic content for educational or artistic purposes.

Will the new changes lead to bans?

The guideline changes are a positive step in promoting transparency, and also promoting a safer space for TikTok users.

The company will continue to invest in additional safety and security measures, however, cynically, you could argue this is all in an effort to stop the platform from being banned in the US.

As always, thank you for reading the latest Intelligency Digital Roundup, see you this time next week!