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 Vic.
1. Twitter tests an easier way to flag false information
In the past few years, social media companies have been accused of not doing enough when it comes to acting on disinformation being shared far and wide on their platforms.
Twitter began flagging posts by then US President, Donald Trump all the way back in May 2020, but since he was removed from the platform, not much by way of policing appears to have been done. Additionally, the way that users can report disinformation is not clear under the current options Twitter provides:
For this reason, Twitter is testing a way to report posts as “misleading”.
The announcement stated that “some people” in Australia, South Korea, and the United States will now see an option for “it’s misleading” when trying to report a tweet.”
Find out more here.
2. Chirp font makes Twitter users feel less than chirpy
After rolling out a design update just last week, with the goal of making the platform ‘more accessible, unique, and focused on you and what you’re talking about’, Twitter had to rethink its new look after users complained of headaches and eye strain.
Can’t imagine that will be a ‘cheep’ fix.
3. TikTok creators cashing in
After finding out how much a TikTok creator with 1 million followers can make, I can totally understand why so many young people aspire to become social media influencers.
Vi Luong gave up her job as a social media manager to become a full-time creator and is now raking in between $8,000 and $10,000 per sponsored post on TikTok. She has amassed more than a million followers since the end of 2019, and started out on the platform sharing tips and advice for people starting a career in social media.
Creators are able to demand big bucks when working with brands, and over time more and more marketing budget is being funnelled into working with influencers. But brands don’t have to fork out a fortune, as our Will explains in this blog post.
4. New ways to make YouTube videos stand out
YouTube has made a couple of changes to its platform this week; the first is auto-translated captions in different languages, which will help remove language barriers, and the second is a mobile rollout of timestamp previews and autoplay snippets, so users can easily navigate to the section they are most interested in more quickly.
It’s always worthwhile adding transcriptions to YouTube videos, as not all users will be able to watch with sound. Although YouTube will auto caption, it’s not always perfect, but there is an easy way to create and edit an SRT file, which allows you to provide your own subtitles.
It’s also pretty simple to add timestamps to videos, which is a great idea for explainer videos, or interviews where lots of topics are being discussed.
5. Black cats have a lot of purr-sonality
On Tuesday, it was Black Cat Appreciation Day, and as someone who saw off their foster cat, Colin, to his forever home this week, it left me feline kinda sad that black cats get hated on for no apparent reason. In fact, black cats are most likely to be overlooked in animal shelters.
Some people don’t like the way they look (apparently they do not ‘show well’ in selfies), some people think they bring bad luck (which is a load of old tripe and onions), and some people think they are associated with witches and the occult (actually pretty cool). Poor mogs.
Anyway, I think black cats are sassy, goofy, and wonderful. I mean, just look at them.
