Social media is a fluid technology — nearly every day, the major networks are announcing a big change, coming under fire for the latest controversy or moving forward in smaller ways. Social Feed is a collection of those smaller changes that you may have missed with this week’s biggest news — like Facebook’s long list of F8 announcements, Twitter’s news update, Snapchat’s slowed growth, group video calls for What’s App and Instagram, and Instagram’s payments test. Find Social Feed every weekend for the latest social news tidbits.
Just how long did Facebook users watch that video? New metrics rolling out for creators
Creatives on Facebook are gaining enhanced tools to see just how long their video held viewer’s attention. On Thursday, May 3, Facebook shared additional metrics added to the existing video retention data inside Pages. The enhanced tool now includes a comparison between users that follow the Page and users that don’t, along with adding gender demographics. The update will also allow for a more detailed look at the charts with a zoom option. Facebook also said they fixed a bug that caused some inaccurate data for videos past two minutes.
YouTuber gets a month in prison for fake news
Malaysia has a new law against fake news — and now the first person prosecuted under that law is incarcerated, according to The Guardian. YouTuber Salah Salem Saleh Sulaiman pled guilty after posting a video misrepresenting police response time to a death in Malaysia’s capital — claiming 50 minutes rather than the eight police reported. The YouTuber apologized during the hearing. The judge ordered him to pay a fine of 10,000 ringgit (about $2,537), but the Guardian said he opted for a month in jail “because he could not pay.”
Facebook test asks users for help spotting hate speech
i mean this is hilarious pic.twitter.com/GDtUsrrlzU
— Gene Park (@GenePark) May 1, 2018
Facebook is continually looking for ways to spot posts that are against community guidelines, and a test that users spotted this week suggest the social media giant is expanding tools to spot hate speech. Users tweeted screenshots of a question for “Does this post contain hate speech” under every post, which Facebook has confirmed is a test. As just a test, it’s unclear if Facebook is trying to use those responses to train an artificial intelligence system for spotting hate speech, one of the categories more tough to teach an A.I., or if the network is simply creating an easier way for users to report hate speech.
Facebook is getting audited for biases
After facing claims of political bias and lawsuits for discrimination, Facebook is addressing those claims by welcoming third-party audits on those allegations. The company will undergo both a civil rights audit and a search for political bias run by a former Republican senator. There is no word yet on when those audits will be completed. The audit follows continued claims of conservatives accusing the platform of unfairly limiting post reach. Facebook is also facing a lawsuit for including audience metrics such as race in housing ads.
