Google’s AI search numbers are growing

Google started testing AI-summarised results in Google Search two years ago and continues to expand the feature to new regions and languages.

By the company’s estimation, it has been a big success. AI Overviews are now used by more than 1.5 billion users monthly across more than 100 countries.

While the feature has dampened traffic to some publishers, because there is no need to click any further for an answer, Google sees it and other AI-powered search capabilities as potentially meaningful revenue drivers and ways to boost engagement on search.

X provides explanations of reach restrictions amid accusations of ‘shadowbans’

Amid ongoing concerns about alleged ‘shadowbans’ (where users are blocked without their knowledge) and limiting certain posts, X has provided a range of tips on how to ensure that hashtags and symbols are used correctly in posts

This suggests that X itself isn’t looking to limit certain posts or topics, or users who post on these themes, though given the various algorithmic weights at play, it’s impossible for anyone outside of the company to definitively say one way or another.

For years, X owner Elon Musk claimed that Twitter was shadowbanning certain users and restricting the reach of certain discussion points, in favour of views from different political viewpoints.

However, there was no evidence to suggest that Twitter was doing anything untoward in this respect, and while it did take action to limit certain comments, like COVID vaccine criticisms at one stage, it did so based on advice from official sources.

Facebook announces new measures to combat spam posts and comments

Meta is taking some steps to crack down on spam content on Facebook, in order to combat the rise of inauthentic profiles seeking to trick its algorithms for engagement.

What Facebook is cracking down on is overt engagement bait, including irrelevant post captions and repeated posts from co-ordinated networks of accounts.

As explained by Meta:

“Some accounts post content with long, distracting captions, often with an inordinate amount of hashtags. While others include captions that are completely unrelated to the content.”

Instagram Edits topped 7 million downloads in first week

Instagram Edits, Meta’s newly released video creation app, had a bigger debut than its direct competitor, ByteDance’s CapCut, once did.

The new app, which helps users craft videos for Instagram Reels, Stories and other social posts, was downloaded an estimated 702,900 times on iOS devices during its first two days on the market.

After three days, Edits had grown to 1.2 million iOS downloads and 5.9 million Android downloads, for a total of 7.1 million.

By comparison, CapCut was downloaded only 83,500 times in its first three days on iOS and Android.

Edits’ fast adoption also led to the app achieving a high ranking during its debut, which could help boost its downloads even further.

Threads is prompting users to cross-post to Instagram

Meta is looking to get more people cross-posting via a new prompt on Threads, which suggests that users share their Threads posts to Instagram Stories.

You can already cross-post from Facebook to IG with every relative update, while Meta also continues to add more functionality to WhatsApp Status to enable full cross-posting to that platform as well.

Meta’s Twitter clone app is still seeing strong download numbers, and at last check, had exceeded 320million active users. Which is still a long way off X (which recently reported 600million MAU).

Google’s AI search numbers are growing and Facebook announces new measures to combat spam posts and comments