In social media news this week, Germany begins the war on hate speech online, Instagram adds a new feature that recommends posts on a user’s news feed, Facebook expands its Live users on New Year’s Eve and WhatsApp gets an Instagram Stories makeover.
Germany V Hate Speech
Germany has enforced a law that means a social media site can be fined £60 million if a post is flagged as inappropriate and not removed from the site within a twenty-four hour period.
The new law will affect sites that have more than two million users, so Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr are all subject to the potential fine. The sites are under oath to monitor any posts that could be considered offensive to others or reported as ‘fake news’. Facebook itself has been working on combating spam posts, fake news and abuse. It looks like 2018 is the year for a clean-up of social media sites.
Instagram Recommends…
Instagram has added a new feature that shows a user an image from an account that they aren’t following, but might be interested in. The ‘Recommended for You’ feature identifies pictures that it thinks you’ll like, from all your previous searches and interests. The algorithm carefully chooses posts that will push a user to follow the profile the photo has been posted on. Instagram began testing the feature last year and is finally rolling it out to all users. It seems the social media site is adopting a style that promotes engagement and reach, in a move that benefits business accounts.
Facebook Goes Live…10 Million Times
More than 10 million people went live on Facebook in the lead up to midnight on New Year’s Eve! It seems Facebook’s determination to push its new feature throughout the year worked as the number of users of the Live tool increased by forty-seven percent from last December. Las Vegas was the top city for live-streaming the transition into the New Year.
Insta Cross-Posting
Facebook is trying to expand its consistency and unity between its networks and social media sites. Instagram confirmed that it was working on a feature that allows users to cross post stories as a WhatsApp status. The tool will make uploading content to all three platforms easier.
WhatsApp statuses have similar aspects to Facebook and Instagram stories as they disappear after twenty-four hours too. Facebook has been adding more and more features that mean users are less likely to leave the social media site and network from the one platform.
