The Weekly PR and Social Scoop 26.07

Gaming for good: how one campaign has enlightened us to the tech waste problem?

?

Currys has become a force for promoting responsible waste recently, with the tech retail giant fronting a campaign that has utilised the power and reach of online gaming to promote e-waste recycling.??

?

Trash Tycoon, an interactive game created in the globally renowned platformer, Fortnite, has been launched to enlighten gamers to the shocking e-waste issues in the UK. 60,000 tonnes of tech trash comes from the UK every fortnight, with two in three young people admitting to binning their e-waste over recycling. Designed to engage Gen Z, Currys has been a key player in developing a free game on one of the world’s largest gaming platforms to help encourage more responsible e-waste recycling habits.?

?

Within the campaign period, almost 20,000 people played Trash Tycoon, with an average gameplay time of 38 minutes (which is well above the Fortnite platform average of 20-30 minutes), demonstrating just how well campaigns with a socially responsible message can resonate with their audiences.?

?

Find out more here.??

?

?

All’s not well between journalists and growing AI influence?

?

The New York Times warns of the "chilling effect" on reporting if OpenAI forces disclosure of journalistic materials.?

The?New York Times?has described an attempt by OpenAI to see its journalists’ confidential notes as “harassment and retaliation” for its decision to sue the tech company. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has asked a New York judge to force the NYT to hand over “underlying reporter’s notes, interview memos, records of materials cited, or other ‘files’” to prove its work can be classed as original works of authorship under US copyright law.?

?

The NYT claims that millions of its articles were crawled by OpenAI and for the case it filed pages and pages of documents linking to thousands of stories dating back to the 1950s.?

?

It said the tech company has not addressed “the chilling effect that such massive discovery requests would have on a news organisation’s reporting—and its ability to bring lawsuits to defend its copyrighted works.”?

?

Is this the start of the end for AI assisted reporting? Find out more here?

?

? SOCIAL MEDIA? ?

TikTok Adds Custom Thumbnail Option for Clips?

Big news for TikTok creators, with the social media?adding the capacity to?upload custom thumbnail images?for your clips.?Previously, you could only use a still from your video.?

Within the upload flow in the app, you can now tap on the “Upload” option to add your own custom visual for your hero image.

So, you can create your own still image thumbnails in other apps, like CapCut, then upload them to be your cover image, or simply add an image from your camera roll to show the video is part of a series, or even try to entice more views with a clip-bait image.? TikTok is effectively following the lead of Reels in this respect, which already has?custom thumbnail editing, while YouTube is?developing a variation of the same for Shorts.? It could be a big addition, but then again, as most people are going to come across your TikTok clips within the main feed, it might not have as big of an impact as thumbnails can have on YouTube.

?

?

YouTube Adds Option to Save Music from Shorts when you cant get that tune outta your head.

YouTube will now enable?its audience?to?save music from the Shorts feed, so that you can reuse?popular?audio?tracks?in different applications.? Up till now, creators have had to use a workaround to save Shorts music, but now, YouTube’s looking to make it easier for users to engage with music clips sourced from Shorts content.? Music has been a key element of TikTok’ success, and as such, it makes sense for YouTube to also lean into this. YouTube also added?music remix options for Shorts?earlier this year.? On another front, YouTube will also now display its recommendations in the “Inspiration” tab in YouTube Studio in three new languages.? YouTube’s also rolling out a new?desktop extension for creators in the YouTube shopping affiliate program which will enable creators to save products and compare commission rates while browsing on Chrome, providing another way to facilitate product listings in YouTube clips.?