Is TikTok safe for teens?
Disturbing research from Youth Endowment Fund, a charity preventing children from becoming involved in violence, has revealed a dark side to TikTok. A survey of 7,500 found that teenagers are more likely to see content of real-life violence on the platform than any other social media.
A third of 13-17 year olds had seen footage of real-life violence, with 42% of the teens stating that social media was a major factor in violence in their area.
The content is most commonly young people engaging in physical fights, followed by posts and messages threatening to harm others, and people promoting and using weapons. Analysis has shown that children who are more vulnerable to violence offline are more prone to experiencing it online too. Teenage children are seeing violence more often due to advancements in algorithms over the past decade.
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How to Sky Rocket ‘Threads’ Engagement
In the latest developments, Threads marketing director, Jacki Pimentel, shared key insights this week highlighting the effectiveness of conversation starters to drive engagement by prompting responses.
Despite ongoing back-end development at Meta to scale up the platform, Pimentel emphasised the importance of avoiding the emotional triggers that typically drive engagement on social media. The algorithm’s current focus on positive interactions is evident through its weightings, prioritising comments and likes over reposts.
It was also reported that Threads is leveraging Instagram engagement data as an indicator to personalise user feeds, aiming for a more tailored experience. The ultimate goal, as revealed in the latest information, is for Threads’ activity alone to dictate algorithmic content, with ongoing developments such as topic tags currently in testing in Australia.
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‘X’ suffers a major blow after Elon’s antics
Elon Musk’s support for antisemitic posts led big-spending advertisers like Apple, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and IBM to withdraw from the platform this week. Media Matters highlighted Musk’s statements made yesterday, as well as advertisements from corporations that X placed next to pro-Nazi and pro-Hitler content.
Musk and his team have launched legal action against Media Matters, hoping to demonstrate that the research was biased. Meanwhile, another report from NewsGuard has reinforced Media Matters’ findings, causing another wave of advertisers to withdraw their spending.
Advertisers continued to withdraw ad spending from the platform over the crucial period of Thanksgiving weekend. A report by the New York Times suggests that the advertising boycott is set to cost X approximately $75 million in ad revenue this year. This is likely to prevent the platform from meeting its goal to return to profitability by early 2024.
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YouTube steps up the fight back against ad blockers
YouTube has continued its fight against ad blockers by slowing the website loading time for users who are detected using an ad blocker. The platform has been expanding its pushback against the use of ad-blocking tools, sometimes cutting users off entirely.
YouTube provided a statement, saying ‘to support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favourite content on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience’.
YouTube ads are one of the most common reasons for consumers installing ad blockers, and YouTube has had enough. Advertising is YouTube’s core revenue generator, and it seems they will go far to protect it.
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