Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ashleigh.
1.Is Twitter’s algorithm racist?
It has been discovered that Twitter’s picture-cropping algorithm tends to bias white faces over black ones, so when there are two photos within one post; a photo of a white person and one of a black person, Twitter often only shows the picture of the white face on a mobile.
These images in particular, comparing low contrast to high contrast Obama, are much more telling. The algorithm seems to prefer a lighter Obama over a darker one:https://t.co/8EAYnYcRs3
— Tony "Abolish ICE" Arcieri ?? (@bascule) September 21, 2020
This is what Twitter had to say:
This follows on from the problems found on Zoom, where black faces have been known to be removed as Zoom “sees” them as part of the background.
2. Wondering what the orange dot means on your Apple device?
Apple released its latest update last week, iOS 14, which includes a nifty feature, a simple orange dot that lets the iPhone user know that their microphone is being used by an app. Similarly, if the forward facing camera is being accessed a green dot will appear.
If you spot the dot you can easily check in to your phone’s control centre and see which app has been watching/listening to you.
Apple said: “Privacy is a fundamental human right and at the core of everything we do. That’s why with iOS 14, we’re giving you more control over the data you share and more transparency into how it’s used.
“An indicator appears at the top of your screen whenever an app is using your microphone or camera. And in Control Center, you can see if an app has used them recently.”
3. The 20% text limit on Facebook ad images is no more
This week Facebook completely abandoned its 20% text limit in Facebook ad images.
It is still advising that advertisers stick to the less than 20% rule, as Facebook says that it has found that those images perform better, but ads will no longer be disapproved for containing more than 20% text.
BIG news for Facebook advertisers:
Facebook is killing its '<20% text in image' rule for ads
Source: Facebook pic.twitter.com/nP18BSLP7L
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) September 22, 2020
4. Google’s Web Stories WordPress plugin has been released
Google’s Web Stories is a new form of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) – fast loading content that is meant to be consumed on a mobile in “snackable chunks”.
That content can then help publishers obtain more traffic as they can rank highly in Google search, Google images, Discover, and Google App.
This week Google officially launched its WordPress plugin, after being in beta testing for a while, which makes it easier for users to create Google Web Stories content and hopefully get more traffic to their sites: https://wp.stories.google/
5. David Attenborough is on Instagram!
This week also saw our beloved David Attenborough post his first video on Instagram and he’s already got millions of followers, obviously!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFg3LHIHGug/
I can’t wait to see what he posts next.
Happy Friday, everyone!
