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The ‘Sift’ strategy: A four-step method for spotting misinformation

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By Amanda Ruggeri

Pioneered by digital literacy experts, the “Sift” strategy is a technique for spotting fake news and misleading social media posts, says Amanda Ruggeri.

It’s no secret that misinformation is rampant on social media. And it’s even more so in some subjects than others. Research has found, for example, that around two-thirds of the most popular YouTube videos on vaccines contain misinformation. The fall-out can be dire: an uptick in inaccurate anti-vaccination content online correlates with a decline in vaccination coverage, especially among children. That has led to larger outbreaks of potentially deadly diseases, like measles, than have been seen in recent years.

“Misinformation is worse than an epidemic,” Marcia McNutt, president of the US National Academy of Sciences, put it in 2021, implicitly referring to the Covid-19 pandemic. “It spreads at the speed of light throughout the globe and can prove deadly when it reinforces misplaced personal bias against all trustworthy evidence.”

HOW NOT TO BE MANIPULATED

In today’s onslaught of overwhelming information (and misinformation), it can be difficult to know who to trust. In this column, Amanda Ruggeri explores smart, thoughtful ways to navigate the noise. Drawing on insights from psychology, social science and media literacy, it offers practical advice, new ideas and evidence-based solutions for how to be a wiser, more discerning critical thinker.

There are many reasons why misinformation travels so quickly – according to some research, even faster than accurate information. One reason is that people are far more likely to share a claim when it confirms their pre-existing beliefs, regardless of its accuracy. This cognitive bias may help explain why even more misinformation seems to be shared by individuals than by bots. One study, for example, found that just 15% of news sharers spread up to 40% of fake news.

That’s a sobering statistic, but there’s an upside. As long as individuals are the ones responsible for sharing so much misinformation, we’re also the ones who – by being more mindful of what we “like”, share, and amplify – can help make the greatest change.

When it comes to not falling for misinformation, being aware of our human fallibilities, such as our quickness to believe what we want to believe, is a good first step. Research shows that even being more reflective in general can “inoculate” us against believing fake news.

But it’s not the only thing that we can do. In particular, researchers have found there are several simple, concrete strategies that we all can (and should) use, especially before we’re tempted to share or repeat a claim, to verify its accuracy first.

One of my favourites comes with a nifty acronym: the Sift method. Pioneered by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield, it breaks down into four easy-to-remember steps.

Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images STOP: Take a moment before you hit 'share' (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images
STOP: Take a moment before you hit ‘share’ (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)

1. S is for… Stop

Perhaps one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern era is its urgency. Thanks to everything from our continual phone use to nonstop work demands, far too many of us seem to be navigating the world at a dizzying speed.

Being online, where both news cycles and content are especially fast-paced and often emotive, can put us in a particularly “urgent” mindset. But when it comes to identifying misinformation, immediacy is not our friend. Research has found that relying on our immediate “gut” reactions is more likely to lead us astray than if we take a moment to stop and reflect.

The first step of the Sift method interrupts this tendency. Stop. Don’t share the post. Don’t comment on it. And move on to the next step.

Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images INVESTIGATE: Look deeper into the source (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images
INVESTIGATE: Look deeper into the source (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)

2. I is for… Investigate the source

Posts show up in our social media feeds all the time without us having a clear sense of who created them. Maybe they were shared by a friend. Maybe they were pushed to us by the algorithm. Maybe we followed the creator intentionally, but never looked into their background.

Now’s the time to find this out. Who created this post? Get off-platform and do a web search. And because search results can be misleading, make sure you’re looking at a reputable website. One that fact-checkers often use as a first port of call might surprise you: Wikipedia. While it’s not perfect, it has the benefit of being crowd-sourced, which means that its articles about specific well-known people or organisations often cover aspects like controversies and political biases.

While you’re investigating, ask:

  • If the creator is a media outlet, are they reputable and respected, with a recognised commitment to verified, independent journalism?
  • If it’s an individual, what expertise do they have in the subject at hand (if any)? What financial ties, political leanings or personal biases may be at play?
  • If it’s an organisation or a business, what is their purpose? What do they advocate for, or sell? Where does their funding come from? What political leanings have they shown?

And finally, once you’ve run your analysis (which can take just a couple of minutes), the most telling question of all: Would you still trust this creator’s expertise in this subject if they were saying something you disagreed with?

Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images FIND: Seek out better coverage (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images
FIND: Seek out better coverage (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)

 

3. F is for… Find better coverage

If, from the previous step, you find that you still have questions about the source’s credibility, now’s the time to dig a little further. What you’re looking for is whether a more trustworthy source, like a reputable news outlet or fact-checking service, has reported and verified the same claim.

No surprise, but I find Google has some of the best tools for doing this. Obviously, there’s Google itself, and if you’re specifically looking to see if news outlets have covered something, Google News.

But I sometimes prefer to use the Google Fact Check search engine, which searches just fact-checking sites, specifically. Just keep in mind that Google says it doesn’t vet the fact-checking sites it includes, so to make sure your results are reputable, you’ll need to do a little further sleuthing – I like to see if an outlet has signed up to Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network, which you can check here.

If it’s a photo you’re investigating, use a reverse image search tool to see where else the image comes up online. Google has one, but I also like TinEye and Yandex. (You can also use these for video: take a screenshot from the video and put that in for your image search).

Your goal? To see whether there are any credible sources reporting the same information as what you’re seeing, and saying that it’s verified.

Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images TRACE: Find the original context (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images
TRACE: Find the original context (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)

4. T is for… Trace the claim to its original context

Often, you’ll wind up doing this at the same time that you’re trying to find better coverage, at least if you’re using the tools mentioned above. But the idea here is a little different. You’re trying to find out where the claim came from originally.

Even if you see that a claim has been reported on by a credible media outlet, for example, it may not be original reporting; they may have gotten that claim from another outlet. Ideally, the original story should be linked – so always go there – but if it’s not, you may need to search for it separately.

Crucially, you want to figure out not just whether something like this really is true, but whether anything was taken out of context. If you’re looking at an image, does how it was described in the social media post you saw line up with what its original caption, context, and location? If it’s a quotation from a speaker, was anything edited out or taken out of context or, when you see their full interview or speech, does it seem like perhaps they misspoke in that moment?

Taking these steps before deciding whether to simply share a claim might feel onerous. But the time investment of just a few minutes may save you not only embarrassment – but help ensure you’re not spreading misinformation that, at its most dramatic, can even lead to illness and death.

Today, anyone can make a claim on social media. And anyone can be the person whose re-sharing of that claim is the one who makes it go viral. That means it’s the responsibility of each one of us to make sure that what we are posting, liking, and sharing is, first and foremost, actually true.

Feature Image Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images

By Amanda Ruggeri

Amanda Ruggeri is an award-winning science and features journalist. She posts about expertise, media literacy and more on Instagram at @mandyruggeri.

Sourced from BBC

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How These 2 Social Media Growth Opportunities Will Transform Business in 2024

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BY ASHLEY HUBKA.

Social media platforms are great tools for “listening” to ongoing conversations to understand what is important in your community.

As we move into 2024, two trends are reshaping how businesses engage with their customers. The first is the shrinking gap between awareness and purchasing, which is evident in the skyrocketing popularity of social commerce, which merges social media discovery with e-commerce. The second is the growing consensus nationwide that businesses should contribute to the well-being of their local communities. This expectation transcends traditional notions of corporate responsibility and asks companies to take the lead in building strong local economies and more resilient communities.

Both trends present opportunities for businesses to generate competitive advantages and growth opportunities, and why an organization’s social platforms should be a strategic priority in the year ahead.

Bridging the discovery-purchase gap

With a growing demand for convenience and immediacy, consumers are moving through the consideration phase of the traditional awareness-consideration-purchase journey online and at lightning speed. This shift requires businesses to focus on converting customers in real time. Social media is quickly becoming the first option for consumers to engage with their favourite brands, shop for the products they love and discover new ones. Because digital discovery often leads directly to purchase, integrating shopping experiences into consumers’ social media feeds is essential to satisfying their desire for convenience and immediacy. This approach caters to the shift in consumer behaviour by emphasizing seamless and personalized interactions with brands in familiar online spaces.

Social media platforms regularly roll out new features and functionalities. For example, last year, TikTok launched its TikTok Shop, and Instagram replaced its “Live Shopping” section with the “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” buttons to make it easy for users to purchase products as they scroll through their Feed and Reels interfaces.

Retailers are realizing that social commerce platforms like TikTok Shopping, Instagram and YouTube Shopping have become vibrant marketplaces. This is not a fad; Statista projects social commerce will generate $3.37 trillion by 2028 at an annual growth rate of nearly 30%!

Walmart tapped into the power of social commerce last December with our innovative “Add to Heart” shoppable series that combined the holiday season traditions of shopping and watching holiday movies. This first-of-its-kind shoppable commercial series featured over 330 products featured in the series available for real-time purchase, including furniture, holiday décor and clothing items the cast members wore. Customers could watch “Add to Heart” on TikTok, Roku, YouTube and Walmart’s social media channels, and TikTok’s Video Shopping Ads and Roku’s “Ok to Text” feature enabled them to shop whether they were at home or on the go.

The applications and benefits of social commerce are not limited to consumer retail. LinkedIn’s native lead generation is a short hop to something like in-video actions to bridge the gap between discovery and B2B sales. Social commerce is also a viable sales platform for service providers. An insurance company may not offer products its customers can add to a virtual shopping cart, but it can distribute engaging content via social commerce to generate leads and sales.

For now, capitalizing on this trend requires businesses to create interactive, entertaining content that engages audiences who may never set foot in their physical locations. But with the ever-changing social platforms and the tools they provide, what works today might not work tomorrow. That’s why it’s essential to regularly review customer engagement and social media strategies and adapt to and take advantage of them.

Make community building a business priority

While social commerce platforms are transforming traditional sales models, an equally important shift is occurring in how businesses interact with their communities and the role social media platforms play in those interactions.

Organizations of all sizes should make fostering the well-being of their local communities a top priority in 2024. Companies can achieve higher visibility and create positive change by gaining an understanding of what matters most to their community. Demonstrating a commitment to communities, employees and customers is a strategic choice and a key driver for long-term success.

At Walmart, we know that applies to us too. Walmart is a big company, but we are also a collection of businesses in more than 4,600 communities committed to being good stewards of the places our associates and customers call home. We aim to:

  • Create value for communities by providing convenient access to affordable, quality goods and services through our omnichannel business model and everyday low prices.
  • Contribute to economic vitality by providing quality jobs, training and career paths, investing in local suppliers, and contributing to local economies.
  • Strengthen community resilience by supporting local organizations and causes that matter to our customers and associates, increasing food access, and preparing for and responding to disasters.
  • Build more inclusive and engaged communities by advancing equity, supporting caring and connected communities, and deepening engagement between our stores and clubs and their surrounding communities.

Consider how your social media strategy can help you optimize your approach. Social media platforms are great tools for “listening” to ongoing conversations to understand what is important in your community. They also identify opportunities to get involved and make meaningful contributions to the things that matter to your community. Humbly sharing a business’s involvement on social media will help increase awareness and favourability, strengthening its reputation.

BY ASHLEY HUBKA.

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR

Senior Vice President & General Manager, Walmart Business, Ashley Hubka, oversees the retailer’s eCommerce experience built to empower SMBs and non-profits. She oversees strategy, operations and growth drivers. Prior, she served as SVP, Enterprise Strategy, Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships for Walmart.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media

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Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier.

Social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade holds a lot of lessons that apply directly to AI companies and technologies.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022 survey, Americans blamed social media for the coarsening of our political discourse, the spread of misinformation, and the increase in partisan polarization.

Today, tech’s darling is artificial intelligence. Like social media, it has the potential to change the world in many ways, some favourable to democracy. But at the same time, it has the potential to do incredible damage to society.

There is a lot we can learn about social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade that directly applies to AI companies and technologies. These lessons can help us avoid making the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media.

In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung. This has been true for social media, and it will similarly hold true for AI. In both cases, the solution lies in limits on the technology’s use.

#1: Advertising

The role advertising plays in the internet arose more by accident than anything else. When commercialization first came to the internet, there was no easy way for users to make micropayments to do things like viewing a web page. Moreover, users were accustomed to free access and wouldn’t accept subscription models for services. Advertising was the obvious business model, if never the best one. And it’s the model that social media also relies on, which leads it to prioritize engagement over anything else.

Both Google and Facebook believe that AI will help them keep their stranglehold on an 11-figure online ad market (yep, 11 figures), and the tech giants that are traditionally less dependent on advertising, like Microsoft and Amazon, believe that AI will help them seize a bigger piece of that market.

Big Tech needs something to persuade advertisers to keep spending on their platforms. Despite bombastic claims about the effectiveness of targeted marketing, researchers have long struggled to demonstrate where and when online ads really have an impact. When major brands like Uber and Procter & Gamble recently slashed their digital ad spending by the hundreds of millions, they proclaimed that it made no dent at all in their sales.

AI-powered ads, industry leaders say, will be much better. Google assures you that AI can tweak your ad copy in response to what users search for, and that its AI algorithms will configure your campaigns to maximize success. Amazon wants you to use its image generation AI to make your toaster product pages look cooler. And IBM is confident its Watson AI will make your ads better.

These techniques border on the manipulative, but the biggest risk to users comes from advertising within AI chatbots. Just as Google and Meta embed ads in your search results and feeds, AI companies will be pressured to embed ads in conversations. And because those conversations will be relational and human-like, they could be more damaging. While many of us have gotten pretty good at scrolling past the ads in Amazon and Google results pages, it will be much harder to determine whether an AI chatbot is mentioning a product because it’s a good answer to your question or because the AI developer got a kickback from the manufacturer.

#2: Surveillance

Social media’s reliance on advertising as the primary way to monetize websites led to personalization, which led to ever-increasing surveillance. To convince advertisers that social platforms can tweak ads to be maximally appealing to individual people, the platforms must demonstrate that they can collect as much information about those people as possible.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much spying is going on. A recent analysis by Consumer Reports about Facebook—just Facebook—showed that every user has more than 2,200 different companies spying on their web activities on its behalf.

AI-powered platforms that are supported by advertisers will face all the same perverse and powerful market incentives that social platforms do. It’s easy to imagine that a chatbot operator could charge a premium if it were able to claim that its chatbot could target users on the basis of their location, preference data, or past chat history and persuade them to buy products.

The possibility of manipulation is only going to get greater as we rely on AI for personal services. One of the promises of generative AI is the prospect of creating a personal digital assistant advanced enough to act as your advocate with others and as a butler to you. This requires more intimacy than you have with your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system, or phone. You’re going to want it with you constantly, and to most effectively work on your behalf, it will need to know everything about you. It will act as a friend, and you are likely to treat it as such, mistakenly trusting its discretion.

Even if you choose not to willingly acquaint an AI assistant with your lifestyle and preferences, AI technology may make it easier for companies to learn about you. Early demonstrations illustrate how chatbots can be used to surreptitiously extract personal data by asking you mundane questions. And with chatbots increasingly being integrated with everything from customer service systems to basic search interfaces on websites, exposure to this kind of inferential data harvesting may become unavoidable.

#3: Virality

Social media allows any user to express any idea with the potential for instantaneous global reach. A great public speaker standing on a soapbox can spread ideas to maybe a few hundred people on a good night. A kid with the right amount of snark on Facebook can reach a few hundred million people within a few minutes.

A decade ago, technologists hoped this sort of virality would bring people together and guarantee access to suppressed truths. But as a structural matter, it is in a social network’s interest to show you the things you are most likely to click on and share, and the things that will keep you on the platform.

As it happens, this often means outrageous, lurid, and triggering content. Researchers have found that content expressing maximal animosity toward political opponents gets the most engagement on Facebook and Twitter. And this incentive for outrage drives and rewards misinformation.

As Jonathan Swift once wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Academics seem to have proved this in the case of social media; people are more likely to share false information—perhaps because it seems more novel and surprising. And unfortunately, this kind of viral misinformation has been pervasive.

AI has the potential to supercharge the problem because it makes content production and propagation easier, faster, and more automatic. Generative AI tools can fabricate unending numbers of falsehoods about any individual or theme, some of which go viral. And those lies could be propelled by social accounts controlled by AI bots, which can share and launder the original misinformation at any scale.

Remarkably powerful AI text generators and autonomous agents are already starting to make their presence felt in social media. In July, researchers at Indiana University revealed a botnet of more than 1,100 Twitter accounts that appeared to be operated using ChatGPT.

AI will help reinforce viral content that emerges from social media. It will be able to create websites and web content, user reviews, and smartphone apps. It will be able to simulate thousands, or even millions, of fake personas to give the mistaken impression that an idea, or a political position, or use of a product, is more common than it really is. What we might perceive to be vibrant political debate could be bots talking to bots. And these capabilities won’t be available just to those with money and power; the AI tools necessary for all of this will be easily available to us all.

#4: Lock-in

Social media companies spend a lot of effort making it hard for you to leave their platforms. It’s not just that you’ll miss out on conversations with your friends. They make it hard for you to take your saved data—connections, posts, photos—and port it to another platform. Every moment you invest in sharing a memory, reaching out to an acquaintance, or curating your follows on a social platform adds a brick to the wall you’d have to climb over to go to another platform.

This concept of lock-in isn’t unique to social media. Microsoft cultivated proprietary document formats for years to keep you using its flagship Office product. Your music service or e-book reader makes it hard for you to take the content you purchased to a rival service or reader. And if you switch from an iPhone to an Android device, your friends might mock you for sending text messages in green bubbles. But social media takes this to a new level. No matter how bad it is, it’s very hard to leave Facebook if all your friends are there. Coordinating everyone to leave for a new platform is impossibly hard, so no one does.

Similarly, companies creating AI-powered personal digital assistants will make it hard for users to transfer that personalization to another AI. If AI personal assistants succeed in becoming massively useful time-savers, it will be because they know the ins and outs of your life as well as a good human assistant; would you want to give that up to make a fresh start on another company’s service? In extreme examples, some people have formed close, perhaps even familial, bonds with AI chatbots. If you think of your AI as a friend or therapist, that can be a powerful form of lock-in.

Lock-in is an important concern because it results in products and services that are less responsive to customer demand. The harder it is for you to switch to a competitor, the more poorly a company can treat you. Absent any way to force interoperability, AI companies have less incentive to innovate in features or compete on price, and fewer qualms about engaging in surveillance or other bad behaviours.

#5: Monopolization

Social platforms often start off as great products, truly useful and revelatory for their consumers, before they eventually start monetizing and exploiting those users for the benefit of their business customers. Then the platforms claw back the value for themselves, turning their products into truly miserable experiences for everyone. This is a cycle that Cory Doctorow has powerfully written about and traced through the history of Facebook, Twitter, and more recently TikTok.

The reason for these outcomes is structural. The network effects of tech platforms push a few firms to become dominant, and lock-in ensures their continued dominance. The incentives in the tech sector are so spectacularly, blindingly powerful that they have enabled six megacorporations (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia) to command a trillion dollars each of market value—or more. These firms use their wealth to block any meaningful legislation that would curtail their power. And they sometimes collude with each other to grow yet fatter.

This cycle is clearly starting to repeat itself in AI. Look no further than the industry poster child OpenAI, whose leading offering, ChatGPT, continues to set marks for uptake and usage. Within a year of the product’s launch, OpenAI’s valuation had skyrocketed to about $90 billion.

OpenAI once seemed like an “open” alternative to the megacorps—a common carrier for AI services with a socially oriented nonprofit mission. But the Sam Altman firing-and-rehiring debacle at the end of 2023, and Microsoft’s central role in restoring Altman to the CEO seat, simply illustrated how venture funding from the familiar ranks of the tech elite pervades and controls corporate AI. In January 2024, OpenAI took a big step toward monetization of this user base by introducing its GPT Store, wherein one OpenAI customer can charge another for the use of its custom versions of OpenAI software; OpenAI, of course, collects revenue from both parties. This sets in motion the very cycle Doctorow warns about.

In the middle of this spiral of exploitation, little or no regard is paid to externalities visited upon the greater public—people who aren’t even using the platforms. Even after society has wrestled with their ill effects for years, the monopolistic social networks have virtually no incentive to control their products’ environmental impact, tendency to spread misinformation, or pernicious effects on mental health. And the government has applied virtually no regulation toward those ends.

Likewise, few or no guardrails are in place to limit the potential negative impact of AI. Facial recognition software that amounts to racial profiling, simulated public opinions supercharged by chatbots, fake videos in political ads—all of it persists in a legal grey area. Even clear violators of campaign advertising law might, some think, be let off the hook if they simply do it with AI.

Mitigating the risks

The risks that AI poses to society are strikingly familiar, but there is one big difference: it’s not too late. This time, we know it’s all coming. Fresh off our experience with the harms wrought by social media, we have all the warning we should need to avoid the same mistakes.

The biggest mistake we made with social media was leaving it as an unregulated space. Even now—after all the studies and revelations of social media’s negative effects on kids and mental health, after Cambridge Analytica, after the exposure of Russian intervention in our politics, after everything else—social media in the US remains largely an unregulated “weapon of mass destruction.” Congress will take millions of dollars in contributions from Big Tech, and legislators will even invest millions of their own dollars with those firms, but passing laws that limit or penalize their behaviour seems to be a bridge too far.

We can’t afford to do the same thing with AI, because the stakes are even higher. The harm social media can do stems from how it affects our communication. AI will affect us in the same ways and many more besides. If Big Tech’s trajectory is any signal, AI tools will increasingly be involved in how we learn and how we express our thoughts. But these tools will also influence how we schedule our daily activities, how we design products, how we write laws, and even how we diagnose diseases. The expansive role of these technologies in our daily lives gives for-profit corporations opportunities to exert control over more aspects of society, and that exposes us to the risks arising from their incentives and decisions.

The good news is that we have a whole category of tools to modulate the risk that corporate actions pose for our lives, starting with regulation. Regulations can come in the form of restrictions on activity, such as limitations on what kinds of businesses and products are allowed to incorporate AI tools. They can come in the form of transparency rules, requiring disclosure of what data sets are used to train AI models or what new preproduction-phase models are being trained. And they can come in the form of oversight and accountability requirements, allowing for civil penalties in cases where companies disregard the rules.

The single biggest point of leverage governments have when it comes to tech companies is antitrust law. Despite what many lobbyists want you to think, one of the primary roles of regulation is to preserve competition—not to make life harder for businesses. It is not inevitable for OpenAI to become another Meta, an 800-pound gorilla whose user base and reach are several times those of its competitors. In addition to strengthening and enforcing antitrust law, we can introduce regulation that supports competition-enabling standards specific to the technology sector, such as data portability and device interoperability. This is another core strategy for resisting monopoly and corporate control.

Additionally, governments can enforce existing regulations on advertising. Just as the US regulates what media can and cannot host advertisements for sensitive products like cigarettes, and just as many other jurisdictions exercise strict control over the time and manner of politically sensitive advertising, so too could the US limit the engagement between AI providers and advertisers.

Lastly, we should recognize that developing and providing AI tools does not have to be the sovereign domain of corporations. We, the people and our government, can do this too. The proliferation of open-source AI development in 2023, successful to an extent that startled corporate players, is proof of this. And we can go further, calling on our government to build public-option AI tools developed with political oversight and accountability under our democratic system, where the dictatorship of the profit motive does not apply.

Which of these solutions is most practical, most important, or most urgently needed is up for debate. We should have a vibrant societal dialogue about whether and how to use each of these tools. There are lots of paths to a good outcome.

The problem is that this isn’t happening now, particularly in the US. And with a looming presidential election, conflict spreading alarmingly across Asia and Europe, and a global climate crisis, it’s easy to imagine that we won’t get our arms around AI any faster than we have (not) with social media. But it’s not too late. These are still the early years for practical consumer AI applications. We must and can do better.

Feature Image Credit: STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | GETTY, ENVATO

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sourced from MIT Technology Review

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What TikTok’s new Shopify integration means for sellers

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By Stephanie Lennox.

Want to leverage the power of TikTok to skyrocket your sales? Look no further: selling just got easier with Shopify’s new UK integration.

The social media giant, known for its trendsetting power, has finally launched their integration with Shopify in the UK, allowing merchants to showcase and sell products directly through the TikTok app.

This integration, facilitated by the new “TikTok for Shopify” app, opens doors for small businesses, Tiktok dropshippers and side hustlers to tap into a highly engaged audience and potentially skyrocket their sales.

What’s all the fuss about?

Hashtags like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, #Squishmallows and Love and Pebble #Beautypops perfectly illustrate the platform’s influence on consumer behaviour, and just a few examples of brands are gaining massive popularity solely through user-generated content. It’s a breeding ground for new customers and trends!

TikTok Shop capitalises on this by offering businesses the ability to:

  • Create shoppable videos: showcase products directly within engaging video content.
  • Host live streams: interact with potential customers in real-time, answer questions, and promote products.
  • Sell directly through the app: eliminate the need for external website visits, creating a frictionless shopping experience.

This translates to a powerful combination of community, creativity, and commerce.

Brits: the prime audience for your TikTok shop

The UK presents a fertile ground for this integration. Now as a seller, the integration can provide you with a highly engaged audience and mobile-first commerce.

Brits happen to spend an exceptional amount of time on TikTok – a staggering 49 hours and 29 minutes per month on the Android app alone, according to Digital 2024: The United Kingdom report.

In addition to that, Brits hold the highest average monthly usage of TikTok globally, spending nearly 50 hours on the app. This translates to a massive potential customer base actively engaged with the platform.

TikTok also ranks first in mobile app spending in the UK, surpassing giants like Tinder and Disney+. Since consumers are increasingly comfortable shopping directly from their mobile devices, this integration allows businesses to tap into this trend and meet their audience where they already are.

How to make this work for you:

  • Identify your niche: the key to success lies in understanding your target audience and the type of content that resonates with them.
  • Embrace creativity: leverage the power of short-form video to showcase your products in an engaging and entertaining way. Tutorials, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and user-generated content are all effective strategies.
  • Focus on high-quality visuals: product demonstrations, unboxing videos, and lifestyle content are all effective ways to grab attention.
  • Utilise trending sounds and hashtags: ride the wave of popular trends whenever you can to increase your discoverability.
  • Run contests and giveaways: surprise and delight your fans by incentivising engagement, which also encourages user-generated content.
  • Offer exclusive deals and promotions: motivate viewers to take action and convert them into paying customers.
  • Partner with influencers: collaborate with relevant Tiktok creators to reach a wider audience and leverage their established communities.
  • Run targeted ads: utilise Tiktok’s advertising platform to target users based on demographics, interests, and behaviours.
  • Prioritise customer relationships: respond to comments, answer questions, and actively participate in the conversation to build trust and brand loyalty.
  • Use data & analytics: capitalize on insights provided by both Shopify and Tiktok to understand your audience’s preferences and optimize your business strategy accordingly.

Conclusion

The Shopify integration with TikTok Shop presents a unique opportunity for small businesses and side hustlers in the UK to streamline and simplify the user journey. By embracing creative content, and building an engaged community, you can leverage the power of TikTok to reach a wider audience and achieve significant sales growth.

By Stephanie Lennox

Stephanie Lennox is the resident funding & finance expert at Startups: A successful startup founder in her own right, 2x bestselling author and business strategist, she covers everything from business grants and loans to venture capital and angel investing. With over 14 years of hands-on experience in the startup industry, Stephanie is passionate about how business owners can not only survive but thrive in the face of turbulent financial times and economic crises. With a background in media, publishing, finance and sales psychology, and an education at Oxford University, Stephanie has been featured on all things ‘entrepreneur’ in such prominent media outlets as The Bookseller, The Guardian, TimeOut, The Southbank Centre and ITV News, as well as several other national publications.

Sourced from Startups.

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Social SEO Examples: 3 Ways Brands Rank in Social Search

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By Kristen Wiley.

What does social SEO actually look like? This post digs into examples of social search engine optimization and how brands are ranking in social search right now.

Social SEO means applying search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to social media:

  • Thinking of social platforms like search engines (and not solely distribution channels)
  • Identifying consumer search trends to inform your organic and paid social content
  • Creating content to satisfy search intent and rank for relevant social media keywords

Meanwhile, recent research confirms that platforms like TikTok and Instagram are peeling product searches away from Google and Amazon among younger consumers.

That’s why brands are scrambling to figure out how to improve social media SEO rankings ASAP.

Below we dig into real examples of social SEO to highlight how brands rank in social search.

3 Examples of Social Media SEO in Action

Good news for brands: there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to tackling social SEO.

Much like ranking in Google search, your social media SEO strategy should involve a variety of tactics. From uncovering keywords to creating search-friendly content, here are three real-life examples of social SEO to inspire brands.

1. Brands Targeting Social Media Keywords

Keywords are at the heart of traditional search optimization and social SEO is no different.

For CPG brands, it’s no coincidence that many of the most popular and frequently searched social SEO keywords are similar to what you’d see on Google. For example:

  • How-to keywords (ex: “how to remove stains from white clothes”)
  • Superlative keywords (ex: “best pregnancy pillow”)
  • Tips and advice-related keywords (ex: “ways to fall asleep”)

You can see the value of ranking for these respective keywords on TikTok or Instagram if you were a brand in the cleaning, parenthood or sleep supplement spaces, right?

Look no further than how brands promote products on TikTok to see how product and pain-point social media keywords can be incorporated into short-form videos. The same applies to IG Reels and photos. The social SEO example below highlights why being above the fold is valuable for brands.

social SEO keyword example

Brands that rank for keywords related to their products or industries make it happen through a combination of word-of-mouth and social media keywords.

That’s why UGC and influencer collabs are becoming more important as social SEO grows.

Social media keyword research is kind of an art and a science. You need a pulse on your audience, their challenges and how to speak their language. Coupled with social SEO software, you can confirm what your target audience is actually searching and build your social keyword strategy from there.

What do you do with these social SEO keywords, though?

Consider how you might sprinkle keywords in the title, headers and meta descriptions of a blog post.

With social SEO, you have options to include target terms in your content via:

  • Video descriptions
  • Captions
  • Spoken audio
  • Comments and replies

Much like you’re expected to naturally weave keywords into your content, the same rings true for social SEO. Keyword-stuffing social content is a recipe for tanking your engagement and potentially being seen as a spammer.

The takeaway? Think “less is more” when it comes to social SEO keywords.

Be strategic but subtle. Prioritize long-tail phrases and terms that could seamlessly be spoken or written in a video description by a creator organically.  On the flip side, avoid rigid keyword phrases that feel robotic or unnatural.

2. Brands Ranking Within Social Media Hashtags

The role of hashtags in social SEO is crucial but often misunderstood.

Most consumers aren’t finding products in general hashtag searches. However, that doesn’t mean that hashtags are “dead.” Not by a long shot.

Below are some examples of how hashtags help your social SEO:

  • Hashtags help social algorithms understand “what” your content is. This goes hand in hand with greater discoverability and visibility, especially when it comes to TikTok SEO. When TikTok sees a video or account earning consistent engagement within a hashtag, it’s like candy to the algorithm. This results in higher rankings.
  • Hashtags help your content get served to a relevant audience versus random users. Food for thought: the #dryskin hashtag has over 4.7 billion views on TikTok. Hashtags related to specific customer problems or pain points or subsets of your audience are tags worth targeting.
  • Hashtags can signal purchase intent. Branded hashtags are especially important here. Someone searching a specific brand (#Dove) or review-related hashtag (#DoveReview) is much more likely to make a purchase than someone browsing a general #skincare tag.

brand hashtag search example   glowrecipe hashtag example

Again, the value of hashtags can’t be overstated for social SEO. Especially for beauty and skincare brands. Fact: beauty brands that consistently use TikTok hashtags rack up 3.5x more than the median industry engagement rate.

And since engagement impacts your social SEO rankings, a hashtag strategy does matter.

But just like with social SEO keywords, don’t overdo it!

TikTok and Instagram recommend between three and five as the “sweet spot.” Remember: you don’t want to distract viewers. A handful of tags is fair game for the sake of helping algorithms understand what your post is all about.

3. Brands Ranking with Search-Friendly Social Content

No surprises here. You can’t rank for social keywords and hashtags without content.

If you want examples of social SEO, look no further than content that’s already ranking for keywords. Here’s how you can mine for social SEO content ideas:

  • Check TikTok and Instagram’s autocomplete results for inspiration. These are real-life social media keywords that people are using already.
  • Look at what’s ranking for “best [product]” or “how-to [task]” keywords. These are prime keywords to tie to your future content.
  • Focus on pain points. What are the problems your target audience is hoping to solve? Think about struggles, challenges and common complaints. Anticipating customer questions and concerns is a goldmine for content ideas and social SEO keywords.

example of product search in tiktok  example of product search ok tiktok

From here, you can brainstorm and start testing your content ideas for social SEO. In most cases, this involves a combination of education and entertainment (AKA“edutainment”).

Some common content formats that rank in social search include:

  • “Storytime” videos showing off products in action
  • How-tos and tutorials featuring products based on pain point keywords
  • Before-and-after videos that highlight a product’s positive results

Just like with traditional SEO, be ready to test and experiment to see what ranks and what doesn’t.

Whereas one blog post can grab the lion’s share of Google traffic with multiple keywords, social SEO is much more of a numbers game in terms of volume.

We’ve seen first hand how a high volume of influencer content can help brands rank for keywords faster. This makes sense given how social algorithms on both TikTok and Instagram favour UGC and influencer content over brand-generated content.

example of social SEOAs a result, creators have more of a chance to “hit” with the algorithm and cement your brand’s social SEO rankings when they post on your behalf. Especially if you’re consistently partnering with a high volume of creators at once. This approach to influencer partnerships is becoming the norm for UGC advertising.

Creators can integrate both general and brand-specific keywords and hashtags while publishing relevant content ideas to help your brand rank even faster. These details can likewise feature in your brand’s creative brief so influencers hit the right beats.

How to Put These Social Media SEO Ranking Ideas into Action

Ranking in social search doesn’t happen by accident.

And so many brands are already cementing their rankings through consistent influencer collabs.

The good news? The best time to start growing your social SEO presence is now.

Making it happen is possible with a high volume of ongoing influencer partnerships and creators posting about your brand. The sooner you scale, the faster you can start ranking.

That’s where Statusphere’s micro-influencer marketing platform can help.

Our software matches brands with creators from our vetted network for collaborations at scale. With automated matchmaking, streamlined fulfilment and in-depth reporting, brands can generate more UGC and build their social SEO presence without waiting.

We’ve already powered 75,000 influencer posts on behalf of 400+ CPG brands.

Want to learn more about how our platform works? Get in touch with one of our experts to see how we can help you get more influencer content in a fraction of the time.

By Kristen Wiley.

Sourced from STATUSPHERE

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From Novice to Influencer: Secrets of Successful Social Media Content

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Sourced from jeffbullas.com

Social media content has become the lifeblood of online marketing and personal branding, serving as a crucial bridge between brands and their audiences.

This content encompasses everything from captivating Instagram posts and insightful LinkedIn articles to engaging TikTok videos and informative tweets, each tailored to captivate and engage a target audience.

However, to navigate the ever-changing social media terrain effectively, you must embrace the concepts of a content calendar, strategic content creation, and meticulous planning.

These elements work in harmony to ensure that every post, tweet, or story is not just a drop in the digital ocean but a strategic step towards achieving overarching marketing and branding goals.

Through this lens, we’ll explore how social media content can transform your digital footprint, enhance your brand’s visibility, and ultimately drive business success.

The Importance of a Social Media Content Calendar

A social media content calendar is an indispensable tool for any brand or content creator serious about their online presence. This calendar serves as a strategic blueprint for what, when, and where to post across various social media platforms.

It’s essentially a detailed schedule that outlines upcoming content, including posts, videos, stories, and any other social media activities planned for the future. By organizing posts in advance, the calendar aids in maintaining a consistent and cohesive brand voice across all channels.

Benefits of Using a Content Calendar Template

  • Consistency: A content calendar helps maintain a regular posting schedule, which is key to building a loyal audience.
  • Strategic Planning: It enables you to plan around key dates, holidays, and events, making your content more relevant and engaging.
  • Efficiency: By planning content in advance, you can batch-create posts, saving time and resources.
  • Collaboration: It facilitates better teamwork, allowing multiple team members to contribute, review, and approve content seamlessly.
  • Analysis and Improvement: Tracking the performance of scheduled content can provide insights that help refine future content strategies.

For those looking to dive deeper into the nuts and bolts of creating and utilizing a social media content calendar, check out our dedicated article.

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The Process of Social Media Content Creation

Creating engaging and relevant content for social media platforms is both an art and a science. It requires a strategic approach, creativity, and a deep understanding of your audience’s preferences and behaviors.

Follow this step-by-step guide to streamline your social media content creation process:

Step 1: Define Your Goals and Audience

Start by clarifying what you want to achieve with your social media content. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or engaging with your community, having clear goals will guide your content strategy. Next, understand your audience: their interests, pain points, and what they value in social media content.

Step 2: Use a Content Planner

A content planner is crucial for organizing your content creation process. It helps you visualize your strategy over time and ensures you cover a variety of content types and themes. Your planner should include key dates, themes, and the platforms where each piece will be published.

Step 3: Brainstorm Content Ideas

With your goals and audience in mind, brainstorm content ideas that align with your brand’s message and your audience’s interests. Consider using tools like social media listening platforms, competitor analysis, and trend research to generate fresh, relevant ideas. Encourage team brainstorming sessions for diverse perspectives.

Step 4: Create a Content Mix

Plan for a balanced mix of content types, such as educational posts, entertaining videos, inspiring stories, and interactive polls or quizzes. This diversity keeps your social media feeds dynamic and engaging for your audience. Ensure your content mix aligns with the platforms’ strengths and audience preferences.

Step 5: Develop and Schedule Your Content

With your ideas in place, start creating your content. Focus on quality and consistency, ensuring each piece reflects your brand’s voice and values. Use visuals, compelling captions, and strong calls-to-action to enhance engagement. Once your content is ready, schedule it according to your content calendar to maintain a consistent online presence.

Step 6: Monitor and Adapt

After publishing your content, monitor its performance closely. Analyze metrics such as engagement rates, shares, and comments to understand what resonates with your audience. Use these insights to adapt your future content, focusing on what works best and exploring new ideas to keep your audience engaged.

How to Create Content for Social Media

Here are practical tips and techniques for crafting visual content, written posts, and interactive media that can elevate your social media presence.

Creating Visual Content

  • Use High-Quality Images: Clear, high-resolution images are more likely to catch the eye of your audience. Use professional photography or high-quality stock images when original photos aren’t available.
  • Embrace Brand Consistency: Apply your brand’s color scheme, logos, and aesthetic to your visuals to enhance brand recognition.
  • Leverage Design Tools: Tools like Canva or Adobe Spark make it easy to create engaging graphics, even if you’re not a professional designer. Use templates and customize them to fit your brand.
  • Experiment with Video: Video content has a higher engagement rate. Create short, engaging clips that convey your message within the first few seconds. Tools like InShot or Adobe Premiere Rush can help you edit videos for social media.
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Crafting Written Posts

  • Be Concise and Clear: Social media users tend to scroll quickly. Make your point clearly and succinctly to grab attention.
  • Use a Conversational Tone: Write as if you’re speaking directly to your audience. A friendly, relatable tone can make your brand feel more approachable.
  • Incorporate Storytelling: People love stories. Share behind-the-scenes glimpses, customer testimonials, or the inspiration behind your products to create an emotional connection.
  • Utilize Hashtags and Emojis: Use relevant hashtags to increase the visibility of your posts and emojis to add personality and emotion, making your content more relatable.

Creating Interactive Media

  • Polls and Quizzes: Use polls and quizzes to engage your audience directly and gather valuable feedback. These can be fun, related to your industry, or used to understand your audience’s preferences.
  • Live Streaming: Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch offer live streaming capabilities. Use these to host Q&A sessions, product demonstrations, or simply to chat with your followers in real-time.
  • User-Generated Content: Encourage your followers to share their own content related to your brand, using a specific hashtag. This not only boosts engagement but also provides you with a wealth of authentic content to share.
  • Interactive Stories: Take advantage of the interactive features available in Instagram and Facebook stories, such as swipe-up links, question stickers, and polls, to engage with your audience dynamically.
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General Tips for Content Creation

  • Understand Your Audience: Tailor your content to the interests and needs of your audience. Use analytics to track which types of content perform best and refine your strategy accordingly.
  • Stay Updated on Trends: Keep an eye on current trends and adapt your content to stay relevant. However, ensure that any trend you follow aligns with your brand identity and values.
  • Engage with Your Followers: Make it a habit to respond to comments and messages. Engagement builds community and loyalty, encouraging more interaction with your content.

Creating content for social media is an ongoing process of learning, experimenting, and adapting. By employing these tips and remaining attuned to your audience’s preferences, you can produce content that not only resonates but also drives engagement and growth for your brand on social media platforms.

Crafting a Social Media Content Strategy

A well-crafted social media content strategy is the backbone of successful digital marketing efforts. It’s a comprehensive plan that guides the creation, delivery, and management of your online content, tailored to engage your target audience and achieve your business objectives.

Here are the critical components of a successful content strategy, along with insights on adapting strategies across different platforms.

Goal Setting

The first step in crafting your strategy is to define clear, measurable goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, drive website traffic, or boost sales? Setting specific objectives will help you tailor your content to meet these goals and measure your success.

Audience Targeting

Understanding your audience is crucial. Develop detailed audience personas that include demographic information, interests, pain points, and social media habits. This knowledge allows you to create content that resonates with your audience, making it more likely to engage and convert.

Content Planning and Creation

Based on your goals and audience insights, plan the types of content that will best resonate with your followers. Your content plan should include a mix of formats (e.g., posts, videos, stories) and themes (e.g., educational, inspirational, promotional) tailored to each platform’s unique environment and audience preferences.

Platform Strategy

Each social media platform has its characteristics and user base, requiring a tailored approach:

  • Instagram: Focus on high-quality visuals and stories for a younger, visually-oriented audience.
  • LinkedIn: Share professional, industry-related content for B2B audiences.
  • Facebook: Leverage a mix of content types, including videos and curated content, to engage a broad demographic.
  • Twitter: Utilize timely, conversation-driven posts for real-time engagement.
  • TikTok: Embrace creative, trend-driven content to capture the attention of a younger audience.

Examples of Successful Social Media Content

Now let’s explore a few examples of successful social media content and dissect the elements that contributed to its success. By understanding these principles, you can apply similar strategies to elevate your social media content.

Example 1: User-Generated Content Campaign

  • Case: A lifestyle brand launches a hashtag campaign encouraging users to share their own photos using the brand’s products in their daily lives.
  • Success Factors: Authenticity, community engagement, and brand visibility.
  • Lesson: User-generated content not only provides authentic material for your brand but also fosters a sense of community and belonging among your audience. Encourage your followers to share their experiences with your brand, and feature their content on your platforms to boost engagement and trust.
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Example 2: Behind-the-Scenes Stories

  • Case: A tech company shares behind-the-scenes stories on Instagram, showcasing its team’s daily activities, product development processes, and office culture.
  • Success Factors: Transparency, humanization of the brand, and insider look.
  • Lesson: Giving your audience a peek behind the curtain humanizes your brand and builds a deeper connection with your audience. Share stories that showcase the people and processes behind your products or services to create relatable and engaging content.

Example 3: Interactive Polls and Quizzes

  • Case: A beauty brand uses Instagram Stories to run polls and quizzes about skincare routines and preferences.
  • Success Factors: Interactivity, personalized engagement, and valuable insights.
  • Lesson: Interactive content like polls and quizzes engages your audience and encourages them to participate actively in your content. Use these tools to gather insights about your audience’s preferences and tailor your offerings accordingly.
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Example 4: Educational Video Series

  • Case: A financial services company creates a series of short, educational videos explaining complex financial concepts in simple terms.
  • Success Factors: Value-driven content, simplicity, and shareability.
  • Lesson: Educational content that provides real value to your audience is more likely to be shared and remembered. Break down complex topics into digestible pieces to position your brand as a helpful resource in your industry.

Example 5: Influencer Collaborations

  • Case: A fashion retailer partners with influencers to create “day in the life” content featuring their clothing line.
  • Success Factors: Credibility, wider reach, and aspirational content.
  • Lesson: Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand values and aesthetics can introduce your products to a broader audience in a credible and aspirational manner. Choose partners who resonate with your target audience for maximum impact.
social media content example
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Example 6: Real-time Engagement Posts

  • Case: A snack brand uses Twitter to engage with current events and trends, creating humorous and timely content related to their products.
  • Success Factors: Timeliness, humor, and brand personality.
  • Lesson: Leveraging current events and trends can make your brand feel relevant and engaged with the wider cultural conversation. Use humor and personality to make your content stand out and encourage sharing.

These examples illustrate the power of creativity, authenticity, and strategic thinking in social media content creation.

By applying these lessons—focusing on genuine engagement, providing value, and leveraging the unique features of each platform—you can craft content that resonates with your audience and drives meaningful engagement.

Becoming a Social Media Content Creator

Think you have what it takes to become a social media content creator?

At the heart of effective content creation lies the ability to tell compelling stories, engage with your audience, and adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape. Here’s a look at the essential skills, tools, and attitudes needed to succeed in this dynamic field.

Essential Skills for Content Creators

  • Creativity and Innovation: The ability to generate fresh, engaging content ideas that stand out in a crowded social media space is crucial. Creativity isn’t just about what you create but also how you present familiar concepts in new and exciting ways.
  • Strategic Planning: Understanding the big picture, setting achievable goals, and planning content that aligns with these objectives are vital skills for any content creator.
  • Technical Proficiency: Familiarity with social media platforms, basic graphic design, video editing, and analytics tools is essential to create, publish, and analyze content effectively.
  • Adaptability: Social media trends and algorithms change rapidly. Being adaptable and willing to learn and experiment with new content formats and platforms can set you apart.
  • Communication and Engagement: The ability to authentically engage with your audience, respond to feedback, and build a community around your brand is key to long-term success.

Final thoughts

When it comes to creating social media content, the keys to captivating and retaining an engaged audience lie in strategic planning, creativity, and consistency.

By embracing the strategies and tools outlined, content creators and business owners alike can elevate their social media marketing, turning casual followers into loyal advocates.

Whether you’re crafting your next viral post or planning a comprehensive campaign, remember that success on social media is a blend of artful expression and meticulous strategy. So, take these insights, apply them to your content creation efforts, and watch as your social media presence flourishes.

Sourced from jeffbullas.com

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Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media

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Nathan E. Sanders archive page& Bruce Schneier

Social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade holds a lot of lessons that apply directly to AI companies and technologies.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022 survey, Americans blamed social media for the coarsening of our political discourse, the spread of misinformation, and the increase in partisan polarization.

Today, tech’s darling is artificial intelligence. Like social media, it has the potential to change the world in many ways, some favourable to democracy. But at the same time, it has the potential to do incredible damage to society.

There is a lot we can learn about social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade that directly applies to AI companies and technologies. These lessons can help us avoid making the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media.

In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung. This has been true for social media, and it will similarly hold true for AI. In both cases, the solution lies in limits on the technology’s use.

#1: Advertising

The role advertising plays in the internet arose more by accident than anything else. When commercialization first came to the internet, there was no easy way for users to make micropayments to do things like viewing a web page. Moreover, users were accustomed to free access and wouldn’t accept subscription models for services. Advertising was the obvious business model, if never the best one. And it’s the model that social media also relies on, which leads it to prioritize engagement over anything else.

Both Google and Facebook believe that AI will help them keep their stranglehold on an 11-figure online ad market (yep, 11 figures), and the tech giants that are traditionally less dependent on advertising, like Microsoft and Amazon, believe that AI will help them seize a bigger piece of that market.

Big Tech needs something to persuade advertisers to keep spending on their platforms. Despite bombastic claims about the effectiveness of targeted marketing, researchers have long struggled to demonstrate where and when online ads really have an impact. When major brands like Uber and Procter & Gamble recently slashed their digital ad spending by the hundreds of millions, they proclaimed that it made no dent at all in their sales.

AI-powered ads, industry leaders say, will be much better. Google assures you that AI can tweak your ad copy in response to what users search for, and that its AI algorithms will configure your campaigns to maximize success. Amazon wants you to use its image generation AI to make your toaster product pages look cooler. And IBM is confident its Watson AI will make your ads better.

These techniques border on the manipulative, but the biggest risk to users comes from advertising within AI chatbots. Just as Google and Meta embed ads in your search results and feeds, AI companies will be pressured to embed ads in conversations. And because those conversations will be relational and human-like, they could be more damaging. While many of us have gotten pretty good at scrolling past the ads in Amazon and Google results pages, it will be much harder to determine whether an AI chatbot is mentioning a product because it’s a good answer to your question or because the AI developer got a kickback from the manufacturer.

#2: Surveillance

Social media’s reliance on advertising as the primary way to monetize websites led to personalization, which led to ever-increasing surveillance. To convince advertisers that social platforms can tweak ads to be maximally appealing to individual people, the platforms must demonstrate that they can collect as much information about those people as possible.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much spying is going on. A recent analysis by Consumer Reports about Facebook—just Facebook—showed that every user has more than 2,200 different companies spying on their web activities on its behalf.

AI-powered platforms that are supported by advertisers will face all the same perverse and powerful market incentives that social platforms do. It’s easy to imagine that a chatbot operator could charge a premium if it were able to claim that its chatbot could target users on the basis of their location, preference data, or past chat history and persuade them to buy products.

The possibility of manipulation is only going to get greater as we rely on AI for personal services. One of the promises of generative AI is the prospect of creating a personal digital assistant advanced enough to act as your advocate with others and as a butler to you. This requires more intimacy than you have with your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system, or phone. You’re going to want it with you constantly, and to most effectively work on your behalf, it will need to know everything about you. It will act as a friend, and you are likely to treat it as such, mistakenly trusting its discretion.

Even if you choose not to willingly acquaint an AI assistant with your lifestyle and preferences, AI technology may make it easier for companies to learn about you. Early demonstrations illustrate how chatbots can be used to surreptitiously extract personal data by asking you mundane questions. And with chatbots increasingly being integrated with everything from customer service systems to basic search interfaces on websites, exposure to this kind of inferential data harvesting may become unavoidable.

#3: Virality

Social media allows any user to express any idea with the potential for instantaneous global reach. A great public speaker standing on a soapbox can spread ideas to maybe a few hundred people on a good night. A kid with the right amount of snark on Facebook can reach a few hundred million people within a few minutes.

A decade ago, technologists hoped this sort of virality would bring people together and guarantee access to suppressed truths. But as a structural matter, it is in a social network’s interest to show you the things you are most likely to click on and share, and the things that will keep you on the platform.

As it happens, this often means outrageous, lurid, and triggering content. Researchers have found that content expressing maximal animosity toward political opponents gets the most engagement on Facebook and Twitter. And this incentive for outrage drives and rewards misinformation.

As Jonathan Swift once wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Academics seem to have proved this in the case of social media; people are more likely to share false information—perhaps because it seems more novel and surprising. And unfortunately, this kind of viral misinformation has been pervasive.

AI has the potential to supercharge the problem because it makes content production and propagation easier, faster, and more automatic. Generative AI tools can fabricate unending numbers of falsehoods about any individual or theme, some of which go viral. And those lies could be propelled by social accounts controlled by AI bots, which can share and launder the original misinformation at any scale.

Remarkably powerful AI text generators and autonomous agents are already starting to make their presence felt in social media. In July, researchers at Indiana University revealed a botnet of more than 1,100 Twitter accounts that appeared to be operated using ChatGPT.

AI will help reinforce viral content that emerges from social media. It will be able to create websites and web content, user reviews, and smartphone apps. It will be able to simulate thousands, or even millions, of fake personas to give the mistaken impression that an idea, or a political position, or use of a product, is more common than it really is. What we might perceive to be vibrant political debate could be bots talking to bots. And these capabilities won’t be available just to those with money and power; the AI tools necessary for all of this will be easily available to us all.

#4: Lock-in

Social media companies spend a lot of effort making it hard for you to leave their platforms. It’s not just that you’ll miss out on conversations with your friends. They make it hard for you to take your saved data—connections, posts, photos—and port it to another platform. Every moment you invest in sharing a memory, reaching out to an acquaintance, or curating your follows on a social platform adds a brick to the wall you’d have to climb over to go to another platform.

This concept of lock-in isn’t unique to social media. Microsoft cultivated proprietary document formats for years to keep you using its flagship Office product. Your music service or e-book reader makes it hard for you to take the content you purchased to a rival service or reader. And if you switch from an iPhone to an Android device, your friends might mock you for sending text messages in green bubbles. But social media takes this to a new level. No matter how bad it is, it’s very hard to leave Facebook if all your friends are there. Coordinating everyone to leave for a new platform is impossibly hard, so no one does.

Similarly, companies creating AI-powered personal digital assistants will make it hard for users to transfer that personalization to another AI. If AI personal assistants succeed in becoming massively useful time-savers, it will be because they know the ins and outs of your life as well as a good human assistant; would you want to give that up to make a fresh start on another company’s service? In extreme examples, some people have formed close, perhaps even familial, bonds with AI chatbots. If you think of your AI as a friend or therapist, that can be a powerful form of lock-in.

Lock-in is an important concern because it results in products and services that are less responsive to customer demand. The harder it is for you to switch to a competitor, the more poorly a company can treat you. Absent any way to force interoperability, AI companies have less incentive to innovate in features or compete on price, and fewer qualms about engaging in surveillance or other bad behaviours.

#5: Monopolization

Social platforms often start off as great products, truly useful and revelatory for their consumers, before they eventually start monetizing and exploiting those users for the benefit of their business customers. Then the platforms claw back the value for themselves, turning their products into truly miserable experiences for everyone. This is a cycle that Cory Doctorow has powerfully written about and traced through the history of Facebook, Twitter, and more recently TikTok.

The reason for these outcomes is structural. The network effects of tech platforms push a few firms to become dominant, and lock-in ensures their continued dominance. The incentives in the tech sector are so spectacularly, blindingly powerful that they have enabled six megacorporation’s (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia) to command a trillion dollars each of market value—or more. These firms use their wealth to block any meaningful legislation that would curtail their power. And they sometimes collude with each other to grow yet fatter.

This cycle is clearly starting to repeat itself in AI. Look no further than the industry poster child OpenAI, whose leading offering, ChatGPT, continues to set marks for uptake and usage. Within a year of the product’s launch, OpenAI’s valuation had skyrocketed to about $90 billion.

OpenAI once seemed like an “open” alternative to the megacorps—a common carrier for AI services with a socially oriented nonprofit mission. But the Sam Altman firing-and-rehiring debacle at the end of 2023, and Microsoft’s central role in restoring Altman to the CEO seat, simply illustrated how venture funding from the familiar ranks of the tech elite pervades and controls corporate AI. In January 2024, OpenAI took a big step toward monetization of this user base by introducing its GPT Store, wherein one OpenAI customer can charge another for the use of its custom versions of OpenAI software; OpenAI, of course, collects revenue from both parties. This sets in motion the very cycle Doctorow warns about.

In the middle of this spiral of exploitation, little or no regard is paid to externalities visited upon the greater public—people who aren’t even using the platforms. Even after society has wrestled with their ill effects for years, the monopolistic social networks have virtually no incentive to control their products’ environmental impact, tendency to spread misinformation, or pernicious effects on mental health. And the government has applied virtually no regulation toward those ends.

Likewise, few or no guardrails are in place to limit the potential negative impact of AI. Facial recognition software that amounts to racial profiling, simulated public opinions supercharged by chatbots, fake videos in political ads—all of it persists in a legal grey area. Even clear violators of campaign advertising law might, some think, be let off the hook if they simply do it with AI.

Mitigating the risks

The risks that AI poses to society are strikingly familiar, but there is one big difference: it’s not too late. This time, we know it’s all coming. Fresh off our experience with the harms wrought by social media, we have all the warning we should need to avoid the same mistakes.

The biggest mistake we made with social media was leaving it as an unregulated space. Even now—after all the studies and revelations of social media’s negative effects on kids and mental health, after Cambridge Analytica, after the exposure of Russian intervention in our politics, after everything else—social media in the US remains largely an unregulated “weapon of mass destruction.” Congress will take millions of dollars in contributions from Big Tech, and legislators will even invest millions of their own dollars with those firms, but passing laws that limit or penalize their behaviour seems to be a bridge too far.

We can’t afford to do the same thing with AI, because the stakes are even higher. The harm social media can do stems from how it affects our communication. AI will affect us in the same ways and many more besides. If Big Tech’s trajectory is any signal, AI tools will increasingly be involved in how we learn and how we express our thoughts. But these tools will also influence how we schedule our daily activities, how we design products, how we write laws, and even how we diagnose diseases. The expansive role of these technologies in our daily lives gives for-profit corporations opportunities to exert control over more aspects of society, and that exposes us to the risks arising from their incentives and decisions.

The good news is that we have a whole category of tools to modulate the risk that corporate actions pose for our lives, starting with regulation. Regulations can come in the form of restrictions on activity, such as limitations on what kinds of businesses and products are allowed to incorporate AI tools. They can come in the form of transparency rules, requiring disclosure of what data sets are used to train AI models or what new preproduction-phase models are being trained. And they can come in the form of oversight and accountability requirements, allowing for civil penalties in cases where companies disregard the rules.

The single biggest point of leverage governments have when it comes to tech companies is antitrust law. Despite what many lobbyists want you to think, one of the primary roles of regulation is to preserve competition—not to make life harder for businesses. It is not inevitable for OpenAI to become another Meta, an 800-pound gorilla whose user base and reach are several times those of its competitors. In addition to strengthening and enforcing antitrust law, we can introduce regulation that supports competition-enabling standards specific to the technology sector, such as data portability and device interoperability. This is another core strategy for resisting monopoly and corporate control.

Additionally, governments can enforce existing regulations on advertising. Just as the US regulates what media can and cannot host advertisements for sensitive products like cigarettes, and just as many other jurisdictions exercise strict control over the time and manner of politically sensitive advertising, so too could the US limit the engagement between AI providers and advertisers.

Lastly, we should recognize that developing and providing AI tools does not have to be the sovereign domain of corporations. We, the people and our government, can do this too. The proliferation of open-source AI development in 2023, successful to an extent that startled corporate players, is proof of this. And we can go further, calling on our government to build public-option AI tools developed with political oversight and accountability under our democratic system, where the dictatorship of the profit motive does not apply.

Which of these solutions is most practical, most important, or most urgently needed is up for debate. We should have a vibrant societal dialogue about whether and how to use each of these tools. There are lots of paths to a good outcome.

The problem is that this isn’t happening now, particularly in the US. And with a looming presidential election, conflict spreading alarmingly across Asia and Europe, and a global climate crisis, it’s easy to imagine that we won’t get our arms around AI any faster than we have (not) with social media. But it’s not too late. These are still the early years for practical consumer AI applications. We must and can do better.

Feature Image Credit: STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | GETTY, ENVATO

Nathan E. Sanders archive page& Bruce Schneier

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sourced from MIT Technology Review

 

 

Nathan E. Sanders archive page& Bruce Schneierarchive page

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7 Innovative Marketing Approaches to Boost Your Sales in 2024

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By JESSICA WONG

The year 2024 looks promising for marketers who are willing to embrace technology without sacrificing community.

Within less than two decades, marketing as we know it has changed almost beyond recognition. At the beginning of the century, business owners and marketers had a limited choice of channels through which they could reach potential customers. For small businesses, some of those channels were cost-prohibitive.

The state of marketing in 2024

Over the past two decades, digital marketing has transformed how companies find customers. Type ‘the state of marketing 2024’ into any search engine, and the results will most likely include some of the following key elements: personalization, use of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), creating community, and a degree of uncertainty.

As economic challenges and wars continue to wreak havoc on economies worldwide, forecasts for business performance remain volatile. Still, a handful of trends have been slowly emerging in marketing and are set to become key elements of winning marketing strategies in 2024. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, some of those revolve around the use of technology. At the same time, there is a distinct trend toward human connection. Marketers can make use of both to benefit their brands.

1. Personalized marketing strategies

Gone are the days when entire families gathered in front of radios and TVs to watch a certain program and the advertising content delivered during breaks. For several years now, marketers have emphasized targeting specific audiences rather than using a broad approach.

Experts predict that leading brands will take things one step further in 2024 and introduce true personalization, basing the information consumers see on their needs immediately. Imagine a weather change, for example. As soon as the rain starts, you see adverts for rain gear, umbrellas, and articles discussing weather patterns. The goal is to make content more relevant than ever before.

2. Interactive content and experiences

Interactive marketing communications are also gathering pace. To take advantage of them, marketers can use elements like polls and quizzes to create stronger connections with their target audiences. The goal is to transform the passive connection between the brand and the consumer into active, memorable communication.

Product images and basic videos may no longer be enough to help a product stand out. Instead, leading brands will utilize augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to allow their customers to experience new products and innovations.

3. Innovative use of social media

Social media marketing and advertising have become a core element of the marketing strategies of businesses of all sizes. Social media platforms offer targeted access to audiences, activities can be tailored to fit most marketing budgets, and the platforms lend themselves to community-building.

Over the past few years, ephemeral content that is available briefly and then disappears has been growing in importance. As consumers’ attention spans grow ever shorter, content like Facebook or Instagram stories becomes more easily digestible than longer-form offerings.

Aside from this type of disappearing content, live videos, social commerce offerings, and interactive storytelling that allows the audience to decide the outcome of a story will continue to grow.

4. Embracing new technologies

Most of the key developments in marketing in 2024 will be driven or supported by emerging or developing technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI) has already made its mark on 21st-century marketing, with nearly two-thirds of marketers telling Hubspot that they are utilizing AI for market research, content creation, and improving the user experience their brands are delivering.

Chatbots have become common on many brands’ websites, improving the user experience by allowing customers to access support 24/7. Combined with AI, chatbots are becoming increasingly more capable. Voice search and other voice-driven technologies are another element of leading marketing strategies in 2024.

5. Community building and user-generated content

The continuing rise of technology has led to something that could be seen as a counter-trend – the demand to create community among audiences. Early examples of these communities include Facebook’s community chat feature in groups or Instagram’s broadcast channels. Both give brands and creators another option to open conversations with multiple users.

In addition, brand communications are no longer a one-way street from the company to the consumer. Some of TikTok’s most popular videos show consumers using products and sharing their experiences authentically and in a highly relatable manner.

6. Sustainability and purpose-driven marketing

Today’s consumers expect more than profit-making from their favorite brands. More and more, discerning consumers are choosing businesses with a greater purpose, such as environmental or social commitments. Two key elements of purpose-driven marketing are searching for sustainable solutions and giving back to the local community.

Highlighting a company’s work in that area will appeal to conscious consumers, but brands must demonstrate a real commitment. Superficial commitments and activities may grab consumers’ attention in the short term, but they are unlikely to deliver long-term benefits.

7. Cross-channel integration

A cohesive and integrated approach to marketing has always been considered best practice. Even though brands can use different channels to reach different audiences, marketing messages must align across those touchpoints. Most audience members will see a brand’s content in different places. Inconsistent messages will be confusing and may drive potential customers away.

2024 is looking promising for marketers willing to embrace technology without letting go of the need for community. While not without its challenges, this year has the potential to transform the way marketers use emerging technologies like AI to create the strongest brand-consumer connections yet.

By JESSICA WONG

Founder and CEO of Valux Digital and uPro Digital.

Jessica is the Founder and CEO of nationally recognized marketing and PR firms, Valux Digital and uPro Digital. She is a digital marketing and PR expert with more than 20 years of success driving bottom-line results for clients through innovative marketing programs aligned with emerging strategies.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor

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The Kate Middleton Mess Should Terrify Brands on Social Media

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You can’t just be “authentic” and “accessible” when times are good.

A big powerful organization with a carefully manufactured image gets embroiled in a conspiracy theory about one of its most beloved and valuable brand ambassadors. To try to quell the uproar, said organization takes to its social feeds. But when those posts turn out not to be the full story, the conspiracy mushrooms, sparking even more intense scrutiny and mass intrigue.

We are, of course, talking about Kensington Palace’s Kate Middleton crisis (because who isn’t). But the British monarchy is essentially a massive global brand — there’s a reason it’s known as The Firm — and the mess it finds itself in right now should be a warning to any business that thinks it can control its own messaging.

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What turned the most casual royal watchers into crazed professional internet sleuths is the now-infamous photo that was posted by the Prince and Princess of Wales’s handle on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. The image of Middleton with her three children was meant to quell questions over the health of the princess, who hadn’t been seen in public since December. Instead, the obviously doctored photo only set off more alarm bells. The explanation that Middleton had been the one to alter the image was about as likely as a C-suite executive claiming they had just logged on to the company’s corporate Instagram account to casually touch up a post.

Much of the analysis of the photo and the ensuing uproar focused on how this episode is an early taste of what’s to come as AI and deepfakes feed into our post-truth world. But the erosion of society’s faith in its biggest institutions (including the British crown) started long before such technologies existed. And conspiracy theories, like the ones that have been swirling around the princess’s disappearance, are more likely to take hold when people are looking for some sense of control and certainty when the world’s long-established norms and power structures are in flux.

Recognizing that they can seem out of reach and out of touch, brands have taken to social media to meet their consumers where they are. The younger generation of the royal family has done the same, attempting to show a side of itself that has long been hidden behind all the pomp and circumstance. But when you attempt to regularly engage with an audience in order to come across as accessible, it only amplifies the decision to go silent when things take a turn.

We do not know what’s going on with Middleton, and she has a right to her privacy. But the family has put itself in the uncomfortable position of straddling a space between new and old media, laying out the expectation that it will talk to its followers directly and candidly through X and Instagram. But in this moment of crisis, it has fallen back on the old way of doing business — official releases and explanations that make vague references to “personal matters” and “ private appointments.”

The royal family has learned the hard way what every big company brand should already know: If you’re going to play on social media and court an engaged and active audience, you better know what you’re doing. A sophisticated following will parse your every move and pull apart your every post. It’s dynamic and fun when times are good, but not so much during a crisis. Your audience, however, will expect to hear from you on both occasions. If you stay quiet, they will fill the vacuum with their own TikToks and tweets and Instagram posts. And if you dare lie to them, they will sniff it out immediately, further degrading whatever trust and goodwill you have managed to build.

This episode made me think of my past coverage of the vegan food delivery service Daily Harvest, which is a useful case study of the “live by social media, die by social media” phenomenon. It’s a small company that managed to build an impressive following during the direct-to-consumer boom of the 2010s. But when one of its products sickened hundreds of people, the startup was criticized for taking too long to send out any sort of clear update on Instagram and other platforms, where it was in regular conversation with its customers. Just as social media amplified its brand on the way up, it also amplified its failings and acted as a forum for its very online customer base to share theories (some of them of the conspiratorial variety) of what had made them ill.

In this case, it’s a key brand ambassador who is having the health problems — we just don’t know of what variety or how severe. The “Where’s Kate” crisis has been felt more acutely in large part because of the unusual level of transparency King Charles III has provided into his own health. Why has The Firm been relatively open about the king’s condition while remaining so vague about Middleton’s? It’s likely a function of the way the royals run their press operations, with each couple having their own team. This is akin to every member of the C-Suite running their own communications apparatus — which they often do. But this is a reminder that in times of crisis, a failure to have one overarching strategy will reveal an organization’s internal conflicts and dysfunction to the public.

Social media can be a powerful tool for institutions trying to restore and build trust. But it can just as quickly destroy it. With the photo debacle, the royals have been caught peddling mistruths online in an attempt to quiet the ones spreading about Middleton. The best thing for any brand to do when faced with this kind of crisis of confidence is to tell the truth and own up to its mistakes; the problem is, it will now be that much harder to believe them.

Feature Image Credit: Photographer: Mark Cuthbert/UK Press

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Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America. She was previously a senior writer and editor at Fortune Magazine.

Sourced from Bloomberg

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Evan Spiegel Proclaims ‘Social Media Is Dead,’ and Predicts Snap Is About to ‘Transcend’ the Smartphone, While Lashing Out at Rivals

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BY KALI HAYS 

“Social Media is Dead. Long Live Snapchat!” Snap’s CEO wrote in the title of a leaked memo.

This article originally appeared on Business Insider.

Evan Spiegel told Snap employees this week they work for a rare social-media platform that “makes people happy.”

In an internal note sent Monday, the co-founder and CEO seemed intent on rallying the Snapchat operator behind a sense of “urgency” after seeing several quarters of stalled revenue growth, layoffs, and struggles with its advertising business.

“Social Media is Dead. Long Live Snapchat!” he wrote in the title of the memo.

Spiegel said the company has “reached a real turning point,” while lashing out at rivals that he vaguely alluded to as Meta‘s Facebook and Instagram, along with the X platform formerly known as Twitter.

“This year is a chance to build on all the momentum we’ve developed and deliver on our full potential,” he wrote in the memo, a copy of which was seen by Business Insider.

Spiegel highlighted specific work done by Snap‘s data science, content, augmented reality, and monetization teams to improve the company’s performance for users and advertisers.

Early 2024 priorities

For at least the first half of 2024, he said Snap will focus on “bringing together several critical projects we believe are essential for our long term success.” Those include:

  • Shifting to focus on more user growth in developed markets like North America and Europe
  • Requiring a more “more iOS-centric approach”
  • Further efforts to improve ad targeting and performance
  • And the unification of “content and ad interactions” across Spotlight and Stories, Snapchat’s main features, with a vertical swipe navigation

Success in these objectives is required for Snap to be in the financial position Spiegel wants in order to push further into AR products.

“Timing matters, hence the urgency, because consumer augmented reality glasses will gain momentum before the end of the decade, and this is our chance to transcend the limitations of the smartphone and provide a computing experience that is more sensational and shareable,” Spiegel said. “We need our business to be strong enough and profitable enough to deliver the future of computing in augmented reality.”

Lashing out at rivals

Toward the end of the note, Spiegel took aim at rivals in the social media space. He harkened back to the founding of Snapchat over a decade ago, saying he and Bobby Murphy wanted to build “an antidote to the online popularity contest that started with MySpace, evolved into Facebook, and eventually became Instagram.”

A Snap spokesman declined to comment, noting only that during a Tuesday appearance at CES in Las Vegas, Spiegel mentioned his early ambition to differentiate the platform. “Bobby and I grew up with social media, MySpace, Facebook, then Instagram, and felt this constant pressure to be pretty perfect online to get likes and comments, to grow followers, and we just wanted something that we could use to have fun with our friends and our family,” Spiegel said during the event.

He went further in his Monday note to staff, however. Spiegel positioned Snapchat as a platform offering “happiness,” to teens specifically, through its messaging features and focus on close relationships. Meta on Tuesday announced new features on Instagram and Facebook aimed at making the user experience for people under 18 better as scrutiny has increased on teen mental health issues being exacerbated by content on Instagram, in particular. The company is facing dozens of lawsuits over the issue.

Spiegel seemed to refer to other issues on Meta’s platforms, like child exploitation material, as well as on X, and platforms’ issues with content moderation around the Israel-Hamas war.

“We’re certainly far from perfect, but while our competitors are connecting pedophiles, fuelling insurrection, and recommending terrorist propaganda, we know that Snapchat makes people happy,” Spiegel wrote.

In an employee-only chat posted to Blind, where users’ workplaces are verified, employees expressed frustration with the way Spiegel seemed to speak about competitors, specifically Meta. “You can clearly tell Evan’s hatred for Meta in most of the letters he sends out,” one employee said.

For the full note, see below:

Social Media is Dead. Long Live Snapchat! 8 Jan

Dear Team,

Happy New Year! I hope you all have had the opportunity to rest and recharge over the holidays. We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us in 2024. After years of fighting through many challenges like the pandemic, platform policy changes, and economic upheaval – all while taking on tough competitors and changing regulations – I feel we’ve reached a real turning point. This year is a chance to build on all the momentum we’ve developed and deliver on our full potential.

So much of the progress we’ve made lately has been the result of focusing intently on who we are and the role we play in people’s lives – empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. Snapchat enhances our relationships with friends, family, and the world.

When we help people enhance their relationships, our business grows. For example, our product, growth, and data science teams developed a new methodology for determining close friends on Snapchat and use that to build features that are more likely to support close friendships. People who have close friends on Snapchat are more likely to retain over longer periods of time, so when we help people find and connect with their close friends we support the happiness and wellbeing of our community while also growing our business.

Relationships are the heart of everything we do. Our content team has used insights around relationships to recommend content in Spotlight that people want to share with their close friends. Our monetization teams are intently focused on helping advertisers form relationships with the right customers. Our augmented reality teams have created a new framework for ranking Lenses that promotes Lenses that people want to send to their friends.

The first half of this year brings together several critical projects that we believe are essential for our long term success:

First, we are continuing to evolve our machine learning models to better differentiate amongst ad interactions across our platform. Our efforts last year showed that evolving our models to drive more down-funnel, post-click engagement reduces waste and improves performance for advertisers. This year we are expanding those learnings across all of our advertising objectives.

Second, we are unifying content and ad interactions across Spotlight and Stories to reduce confusion. This means that Stories and Spotlight will both feature vertical swipe navigation, with a consistent call-to-action for linking to long-form content or engaging with ads. These unified interactions will also allow us to combine content inventory and ranking across Spotlight and Stories which will improve the likelihood that we can recommend the right personalized content for each Snapchatter.

Lastly, we are shifting more of our focus towards user growth in our developed markets like North America and Europe. Over the past several years, we’ve driven enormous growth in daily active users by focusing on Android performance in large countries like India. We will continue to build on our momentum in large opportunity countries in the APAC region while increasing our investment in improving the product experience for our community in North America and Europe. Doing so requires a more iOS-centric approach in these regions and a continued focus on helping our community connect with their close friends, especially for people who use our service monthly but not daily.

We believe that focusing on these three projects will help us to improve performance for advertisers, deepen content engagement, and increase daily active use of Snapchat – ultimately accelerating our revenue growth and increasing free cash flow. Timing matters, hence the urgency, because consumer augmented reality glasses will gain momentum before the end of the decade, and this is our chance to transcend the limitations of the smartphone and provide a computing experience that is more sensational and shareable. We need our business to be strong enough and profitable enough to deliver the future of computing in augmented reality.

Thirteen years ago Bobby and I set out to build something different. We wanted a way to communicate that was fast, fun, and expressive. An antidote to the online popularity contest that started with MySpace, evolved into Facebook, and eventually became Instagram.

In 2012, we declared that we were building something different to capture the full range of human emotion, not just what is pretty or perfect. Then, in 2017, we separated social from media to strengthen relationships with friends. In 2024, we’re on the precipice of another revolution in personal computing that began with the desktop, evolved into the smartphone, and is becoming wearable with Spectacles, our augmented reality glasses.

We’re certainly far from perfect, but while our competitors are connecting pedophiles, fueling insurrection, and recommending terrorist propaganda, we know that Snapchat makes people happy. New research published today from the University. of Chicago’s NORC shows how our core use case of messaging is a key source of happiness for young people

Messaging is the only feature on online platforms that makes a majority of both teens and young adults happy, as 2 in 3 say messaging with family and close friends makes them extremely or very happy. On the other hand, a majority of teens and young adults feel overwhelmed at the way social media makes them feel pressured to post content that will get lots of likes and comments, or will make them look good to others. Perhaps most importantly, according to the NORC data, respondents who use Snapchat report higher satisfaction with the quality of friendships and relationships with family than non-Snapchatters.

At a time when more people are feeling lonely, suffering from constant judgment online, and exposed to harmful content, snapchat offers something different: a way to enhance relationships with your real friends. And soon, we will offer a new way to use computers that brings the benefits of the Internet and computing into three dimensions, grounded in the real world, and shareable with friends – unlike any experience that exists today.

Technology isn’t going away. It’s our responsibility to make it more human, more natural, and more seamlessly integrated into our lives, so that we can benefit from its positive potential while avoiding the pitfalls. It isn’t just an exciting opportunity – it’s existential.

Your leadership and the work you are doing everyday matters deeply to our future. Let’s not waste a minute.

 

Feature Image Credit: Joe Scarnici | Getty Images via Business Insider

BY KALI HAYS 

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