Friday Digital Digest 31/05/2024 - Instagram experiments with memes, more calls for social media ban for U-16s, & ICQ announces its closing its doors
It’s that time of the week again! The #digital #socialmedia digest covers meme experiments from Instagram, more calls for banning social media for U-16s, and sad news as ICQ announces its closure.
We also take a second look at social media algorithms and how they’ve been applied to comments.
NEWS
Instagram are looking to increase engagement on their Reels by allowing creators to add in trending memes into their Reels. It would drive IG closer to competing with TikTok with its formatting and catching anyone who may be preemptively jumping as the TikTok ban discussion rumbles on.
The blogging site is launching a ‘communities’ feature on open beta. These communities are semi-private meaning that they have their own moderators, rules, and privacy settings. The feature is somewhat similar to subreddits on Reddit and Communities on X (formerly Twitter), both of which are now training grounds for AI.
I imagine most of you may be too young to remember ICQ (a play on ‘I Seek You’) but for those of us at the dawn of the internet this news will probably make you feel a little sad. It was the first instant messenger of its kind, growing to over 100 million users by 2001, by 2022 it was down to just 18 million users. It powers down for good on June 26th.
The conversations around the effects of social media on young minds has been building since the start of the year with the UK government announcing intentions to ban social media for U-16 back in December, and in the US DeSantis signing law restricting it for U-16 in Florida. There has been some considerable pushback on the government proposal with several opinion pieces popping up in quick succession in The Guardian as pre-election discourse gains momentum.
领英推荐
53.1% of Gen Z are watching long-form content across social media. Long-form in this instance means 90 seconds or more, and comes in ahead of watching live streaming and below direct messaging, giving some good insight in how to target this generation as its youngest members enter high school.
DIGITAL DIGEST
??Algorithms Part Two??
Back in March we covered what algorithms were, how each platform weights things differently and how this is starting to cause some polarisation.
Well, there have been some interesting observations on how far these algorithms actually extend.
Many assume that it just categorised videos/posts in your feed, but there are many discussions appearing online (Reddit to LinkedIn) about how algorithms are affecting the comments on these posts - with many assuming the top comments were those who had the most engagement.
It turns out that these comments are also based on an algorithm with many pointing out how different (and how divisive) the comments are. This is worrying as it does seem to be showing how these algorithms are sculpting opinions and ideas of those who spend time on these platforms.?
Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to go and touch some grass.
WORTH A WATCH ??
With this edition of the Digital Digest talking heavily around the proposed social media ban and algorithms we thought the new 2024 documentary ‘The Antisocial Network’ would tie in nicely.
The documentary explores the intersection of internet culture and real-world politics, and you can find it on Netflix.