Here’s the news you may have missed:
General
- Following on from last week, twitter suspended Alex Jones for a week. twitter cited a breach of the rules, but it also happened to coincide with a move by Shannon Coulter, an online activist, who encouraged users to block Fortune 500 companies on twitter via a shared blacklist (50,000 people signed up).
- Amazon wants to build a YouTube competitor using twitch. Reported by Bloomberg, influencers and celebrities are apparently being offered upfront guarantees if they stream live a minimum number of hours and days per week.
- The UK’s Competition and Marketings Authority (CMA) are investigating influencer and celebrity social media disclosures around commercial relationships. It’s a good reminder that in the US, back in May 2017, the FCC published disclosure guidelines (#ThankYou #Partner are insufficient disclosures as they are too ambiguous).
- Facebook acquired Vidpresso a company specializing in integrating live video in social (NBC, Buzzfeed, and Turner are clients). Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but between Amazon’s twitch rumours and this announcement live social video is an emerging battleground.
Trust and Safety
- Crimson Hexagon has regained access to Facebook data. Crimson Hexagon had access to Facebook suspended a month ago over allegations of government contracts and data misuse
- Google, as part of their transparency report, has made available details on political US ads including spend and ad content. The archive is also fully searchable.
- The NY Times published a detailed investigative piece on fake views on YouTube. The report is of particular concern given that one of YouTube’s brand safety protections is requiring view-thresholds before videos are eligible for ads.
- An Associated Press Investigative piece reports that on Android devices, Google tracks user location even when a user has opted-out. Some of the times Google uses location data seems reasonable e.g. weather, but others like tracking location in Web Activity are not as clearly disclosed. Google has responded to the article and updated their support page describing location history use and settings. However, there is speculation that this could expose Google to fines in the EU given GDPR implications.
- There’s an article on the NY Times that serves as a moment for self-reflection and introspection for the data and adtech industry, calling out “weaponized adtech“. The story tracks Russian election interference and how micro-targeting is being used to exploit societal divisions. This is all highly relevant to marketers, as platforms move to introduce transparency and disclosure rules across all advertising, as well as minimum thresholds for ad targeting (the latter may eventually impact highly targeted dynamic creative).
The fun distraction of the week is this MIT study which is intended to help teach AI about emotion by analyzing your last 3 tweets. The study is called #DeepMoji. It takes about 5 minutes to complete.
Have a great week.
Joshua