📲 Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control#News#Insta🔹 On Threads, the trending topic of "Threads Moderation Failures" has sparked significant user discontent, with many reporting that their accounts are being deleted or restricted for sharing articles on controversial topics. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram and Threads, has acknowledged these complaints and stated he is "looking into it." Users have expressed frustration, including one individual who had their account deleted for allegedly being underage, despite being an adult. This situation highlights the ongoing challenges of moderation on social media, with reports indicating that Meta is enforcing its rules with increasing strictness.

🔹 Moderation issues extend beyond individual accounts, as users like Jorge Caballero have noted that the automated system is erroneously applying fact checks to political content and throttling posts with accurate information about significant events, like hurricanes. Some users have even dubbed their experiences “crackergate,” where posts mentioning seemingly innocuous terms, like "saltines," have been swiftly removed. Social media consultant Matt Navarra also received a notification that his Threads account was being downranked after posting about a Meta AI hoax, and he, too, has drawn attention to these moderation inconsistencies.

🔹 The impact of these moderation practices is not limited to Threads; it extends to Instagram as well. A user reported that their Instagram account was disabled due to an alleged violation of age requirements, despite providing a state ID for verification. Meta's response indicated a strict adherence to its policies, resulting in the loss of years of posts and connections. Although Meta has instituted measures to protect underage users—requiring birthday information since 2021—the effectiveness and fairness of these age-related bans remain questionable.

🔹 Overall, the moderation practices employed by Meta are causing frustration and limiting the utility of its platforms. Users like Wario64 have experienced their posts flagged as spam, prompting them to reconsider their engagement with Threads. The growing trend of account restrictions and deletions may discourage users from sharing content, ultimately diminishing the social media experience and raising concerns about how these platforms manage community interaction and information sharing.

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📲 Meta Announces Image Animation and Video Expansion Tools at Advertising Week#News#Insta🔹 At Advertising Week, Meta unveiled a series of new advertising updates, including AI-driven video animation tools and enhanced collaboration features for creators. One of the standout offerings is "Image Animation," which allows advertisers to animate static images using text prompts. This innovation enables users to generate engaging video content from single images without needing existing video assets, thus enhancing the promotional lifespan of ads. Initial feedback from advertisers has been positive, indicating that this tool can help overcome resource limitations and encourage more dynamic advertising strategies.

🔹 In addition to Image Animation, Meta is expanding its AI-based "Video Expansion" capabilities, which allow advertisers to transform their video assets into various formats through predictive technology. This feature has been in development for over a year and will soon be more accessible to brands, enabling them to utilize full video creation capabilities effectively. Furthermore, Meta is enhancing its Collections ads, allowing brands to incorporate creator content as "hero" assets, which can strengthen audience engagement by leveraging the authenticity of influencer partnerships.

🔹 Meta is also testing new options for adding creator testimonials to partnership ads and consolidating all partnership advertising tools into a single interface known as the "Partnership Ads Hub." This centralized platform will simplify the management of promotional collaborations, ensuring advertisers can easily track campaign details. Additionally, the upcoming video tab, part of Meta’s app refresh, aims to provide advertisers with more opportunities to reach users through various ad formats, similar to TikTok's model, which could enhance ad relevance and exposure.

🔹 With video content accounting for 60% of user engagement on Facebook and Instagram, Meta's focus on video at Advertising Week is strategically aligned with user behavior. The introduction of AI tools to facilitate animated content creation presents new opportunities for brands to engage with their audiences, even when traditional filming is not feasible. While the technology may not always yield perfect results, these updates position advertisers to capitalize on the growing trend of video consumption within Meta's platforms.

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📲 Meta Shares New Reels Ad Tips#News#Insta🔹 Meta's released a heap of ad tips ahead of the holiday push, which explore its evolving Advantage+ campaigns, Reels ads, working with creators, Al creative, and more.
Meta's published a new range of guides and tips as part of its Agency Partners Summit, which it held last week.

🔹 It's now made all of the sessions and guides available online, and there's a heap to get through, including this helpful guide on Reels ads. Meta's 19-page Reels ads guide covers off on all the key considerations, and includes practical tips for maximizing Reels ad performance. First off, the guide looks at Reels usage and engagement, underlining why it should be an ad consideration.

🔹 Half of all time spent on IG is now spent watching Reels, which suggests that if you want to maximize your promotional impact, you should probably be there too. The guide also includes some of the usual Reels tips, which are fairly generic. Like, no doubt these tips are correct, but saying "make it entertaining" is much easier said than done. But the guide does also include some more practical notes.

🔹 There are also tips for Reels ad production, and how to incorporate Reels into your creative pipeline. As well as guides on how exactly to activate Reels ads in your campaign setup. It's a handy overview, with a range of practical notes to help improve your Reels ads approach. And as noted, this is just one of several new resources Meta has made available after its Agency Summit.

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📲 A revolutionary innovation is at the door for Instagram: Here are the details!
#News#Insta🔹 Meta is trying to deliver more AI-generated images and content to Facebook and Instagram users’ social media feeds. In its statement at Meta Connect, the annual developer conference held last week, the company announced that some users will be able to see their own images created by Meta AI in their Facebook and Instagram feeds.

🔹 This step is seen as an important opportunity to test how open users are to content created by artificial intelligence. How might users’ exposure to content that is not created by themselves, but that includes their faces, affect their social media usage habits? This move by Meta gives the first clues about what role artificial intelligence may play in social media platforms in the future.

🔹 This expansion builds on the ‘Imagine Me’ feature that was released in beta in July. The feature allowed users to take AI-generated selfies in direct messages with Meta AI or in their feed, stories, and profile pictures. However, Meta states that new artificial intelligence content can only be created based on users’ interests or current trends. In some cases, these contents will be created using images uploaded by users.

🔹 Meta spokesperson, “This feature will only be available to users who sign up for the Imagine Me feature and add photos for the feature. “The content will be shown only to the users themselves and they will be able to share it with their friends if they wish.” he said. If users do not want to see these images, they can block similar posts with the ‘Hide’ option by clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner of the posts.

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📲 Instagram Chief Says ‘Following’ Feed Option Won’t Work#News#Insta〰 Instagram and Facebook users hoping for a "following only" feed that displays posts solely from accounts they follow will likely be disappointed, as Meta's leadership has indicated that such a feature is not on the horizon. In a recent Q&A session, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri explained that although they have tested this option, the results showed a decline in user engagement and satisfaction. Users in the "following only" setting reported feeling less happy with the app over time, leading to decreased activity and interactions with friends.

〰 Mosseri noted that the data suggests users engage with Instagram less when they have access only to the content from their chosen accounts. Instead, about 50% of the content users now see comes from algorithmic recommendations, which enhance overall user experience and encourage longer app usage. While some users may find it frustrating to see posts from accounts they do not follow, the metrics indicate that this approach benefits Instagram by keeping users more engaged.

〰 The shift towards algorithm-driven feeds is influenced by platforms like TikTok, which prioritize entertaining content over user-followed accounts. TikTok’s success has prompted Meta and other social media platforms to adopt similar strategies, maximizing user time spent on their apps and promoting content based on viewing habits rather than social connections. This change reflects a fundamental shift in how content is curated and displayed, moving away from traditional social graphs.

〰 While Instagram is still exploring ways to cater to users who prefer to see content from their connections, such as introducing features like "Favorites" and allowing users to "Snooze" recommendations, Mosseri acknowledged the challenge. Given the financial incentives for social apps to keep users engaged longer—allowing for more advertising opportunities—it seems unlikely that a strict following-only feed will become a reality anytime soon. The current trajectory favors monetization over a return to more traditional social media experiences.

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📲 Instagram’s ‘best practices’ tell creators how they should post#News#Insta🔹 Instagram is more explicitly telling content creators, businesses, and other users how they should be posting to the platform via a new feature called "best practices."
The best practices hub is available for professional accounts on Instagram and is accessible through the professional dashboard. The feature is marketed as an educational tool to help creators make engaging content, and the hub includes tips for making, sharing, and monetizing their videos and photos.

🔹 Some of the tips are fairly generic social media strategies, like "track long-term follower growth" and "consistently post more." Others are more specific and could signal Instagram's corporate priorities: a tip on my account, for example, tells me that Reels that are longer than 90 seconds won't be recommended to new users, thus stifling discovery. This emphasis on truly short shortform content is consistent with what Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said in the past.

🔹 On the one hand, it's perhaps helpful for creators to hear directly from platforms about how they should engage to maximize reach - content creators have lived through more than a decade of trying to crack the code for engagement and outsmart social media algorithms. But it also feels like more access to tips or recommendations creates a carrot-and-stick situation, where creators feel increased pressure to post exactly how a platform wants them to or risk having their content not be seen by audiences.

🔹 It's also not exactly a secret that Instagram wants people posting more shortform videos as it continues to compete with TikTok. This summer, Instagram told creators that "views" are now the main metric across the platform, saying it was one of the most important signals for creators to understand how well their content is performing. Another key number that feeds into ranking: how often audiences send your content to someone else. "Don't force it," Mosseri warns creators trying to make grabby, shareable content. Just something to keep in mind.

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📲 Meta’s AI Bots Run Counter to the Value of Social Media#News#Insta🔹 The recent enthusiasm surrounding AI in social media seems to be faltering as companies struggle to find genuinely valuable applications. Meta's experiments with celebrity-styled AI chatbots, designed to mimic famous personalities, have not resonated with users, leading to the shutdown of the initial text-based project. The allure of interacting with a chatbot impersonating a celebrity quickly diminishes, as users realize they are merely engaging with a programmed response system rather than a real person. This lack of real human interaction raises questions about the effectiveness and appeal of such technologies.

🔹 Moreover, these AI interactions do not foster genuine social connections, which are fundamental to the essence of social media. The concept of social media is rooted in human interaction, yet these AI systems invite engagement with a non-human entity, potentially leading to unhealthy relationships with technology. Meta's plans to develop video versions of AI characters, allowing users to "chat" with digital renditions of celebrities, further blur the line between reality and artificial engagement, resembling a video game rather than a social platform.

🔹 Traditionally, social media has enabled users to connect with real people, including celebrities, in ways that were previously impossible. This authentic connection has driven fan engagement and audience building. However, the introduction of AI-generated personas risks eroding this experience. Users might find it challenging to distinguish between genuine interactions with celebrities and those with AI bots, diminishing the value of social media as a platform for authentic engagement.

🔹 While there is some demand for AI-generated avatars, particularly in live shopping scenarios in China, this trend has not gained traction in Western markets. Meta appears to be experimenting with various AI ideas to see what resonates, yet shifting away from the social aspects that define its products may not be a sustainable strategy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that AI will increasingly influence the content users encounter, but whether this will enhance engagement or create a less meaningful social media environment remains uncertain. The prospect of forming virtual relationships with AI raises concerns about the nature of engagement and connection in the digital age.

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📲 Instagram Launches Signature Sound of the App#News#Insta🔹 Instagram has created a new "signature sound" for Reels, which will be appended to the end of every Reel that's downloaded from the app. It sounds like you're jutting into a curb on your skateboard in Tony Hawk Pro Skater, or you've clicked the mouse one too many times on an error message. But this, according to IG, captures the essence of Instagram, in one simple audio hit.

🔹 What's a "signature sound" you ask? Well, it's not really anything, while it's also whatever you want it to be. It doesn't do anything or mean anything, as such, but it adds a branding element to IG content, which, ideally, becomes recognizable as the sound of the app. And again, the above is what IG's going with. So why this sound specifically?

🔹 Instagram says that this is part of its new "sonic identity": "From mild to wild, our Creative Audio and Brand teams designed, iterated and tested a variety of different sounds to land the right vibe: a simple and iconic sound that's designed to fit with every Reel." Apparently, the IG team went through many tests of different sounds and assigned emotional value to them.

🔹 "We brought a vibe where we intentionally wanted it to be punctuated, but imperfect. A metaphor for everyday creativity that doesn't have to be perfect to be shared." "Brought a vibe", as a professional statement, immediately puts your credibility in jeopardy, but for some reason, this audio represents an amalgamation of Reels sounds and feelings. So when you download a Reel and you hear it, this is what it is. It's not as cool as the TikTok bass drop then uplift, but it'll certainly grab attention. I mean, mostly because you'll think your phone has freaked out, but attention nonetheless.

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