The lowdown: as of Thursday December 10, under-16s in Australia have been unable to officially access a range of the main social networking apps, from Instagram, Facebook and Threads, to TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Twitch. If you’re under-16 in Australia, you will have had your account disabled, suspended or restricted.

Early signals show that the social media ban has, as anticipated, pushed teen users elsewhere online. A number of existing and lesser-known apps have emerged due to them being marked either safe for younger users, or just not on the list of banned social networks. As the policymakers focus on enforcement and platforms scramble to comply, young social media users are doing what they have always done best and adapting at speed.

Taking a look through reviews and rankings of the apps of note that Australian teens are using, and I can see some familiar names alongside new ones too.

According to Sensor Tower’s app rankings, the most downloaded social networking app in the iOS App Store on December 9 2025 was Coverstar, with Discord at #4, Bump at #10, BeReal at #11, Messenger Kids at #13, Rednote at #14, Yubo at #17 and Line at 18.

As of December 15, WhatsApp and Telegram have risen to #2 and #3 respectively in Sensor Tower’s social networking chart, with only Rednote dropping out of the top 20 chart from the apps I listed above. This suggests that, while new social media apps have proven to be worth a try, critical mass is as important than features which is why messaging apps tend to fill the void when social media is restricted.

What I think is interesting about how teen social media users are adapting to the ban is not just that new apps are emerging, or that old ones are making a comeback. It’s that the apps are so different in how they look and how they work. While Coverstar feels just like a TikTok for kids, Bump has gamified location, Yubo has made a social network out of swiping, and Rednote’s essentially an Instagram / Pinterest mashup.

For anyone not familiar with the some of the newer apps rising up from Australia’s teen ban, here’s a selection of the most interesting to me anyway.

Coverstar

Coverstar has the look and feel of TikTok, focusing on moderated, music-themed video for lip syncing and dances. If focuses on short clips and challenges, uses licensed music, and has no DMs. The app claims to have strong content and behaviour moderation. So essentially, this is an alternative to TikTok for kids too young for TikTok.

Bump

The Bump app focuses on location, and has made a social network out of it, gamifying the location features of your phone, like what they’re doing on their phone, how long they’ve been somewhere and music they’re listening to. Zooming into someone pings them, and there’s DMs. I’ve used this app for some time and it’s popular with organising events with large numbers of people, like music festivals.

Yubo

With a focus on the dating app UI of swiping to match with friends, Yubo has the features of social media but with the swipe to match functionality replacing doom scrolling. It also includes live streaming and DMs of course. Reddit reviews from users paint quite a traumatic picture of this app, with one user saying to avoid this app if you care about your mental health.

Rednote

Last time there was a social media ban in a major western country, Rednote benefitted the most. The Chinese-owned app surged in popularity when TikTok was taken offline earlier this year in the US. Also known as Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, Rednote is a mix of Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok, with a focus on lifestyle content like fashion, beauty, and travel, and has over 300m users, mostly it feels are in China based on the app’s content.

What’s next?

I don’t think anyone truly believed that banning social media would stop kids socialising online. What I think is fascinating is how many emerging technologies and interfaces are arriving to engage new online audiences. From the swipe to the double column scroll, and from location as a social network to simply improved safety, innovation is happening fast and teen users are voting with their fingers.

Will regulators now cast their nets wider and ban more apps in this new game of digital whack-a-mole, only time will tell. And if you’re seeing any new apps emerging that you’d like me to look into, drop me a note in the comments.

December 10th is the big day in Australia then if you’re a 15 year old. You’re about to have a huge part of your life taken away - your entertainment, your social circle, and now, your ability to endlessly watch others playing video games. And yesterday the eSafety Commissioner enlarged the list of social networks due to be banned for under-16s by adding the Amazon-owned live streaming service, Twitch.

The full list of social networks about to be banned for under-16s in Australia:

1. Instagram

2. TikTok

3. Facebook

4. Snapchat

5. X

6. Reddit

7. Roblox

8. Threads

9. Kick

10. Twitch

11. And YouTube will be limited to viewing only for under-16s.

So how will this ban work, and will it work? When will it be enforced and how will users respond?

Meta starts its teen freeze

Well, teens woke up this week to a shock as Meta began sending early warnings that Instagram, Facebook and Threads accounts belonging to under sixteen year olds will disappear.

The move has arrived ahead of schedule, and there’s nothing quite like an early deadline to cue panic in a teen social media user. As Australia becomes the first nation to enforce such sweeping age limits on major social platforms, and with many other countries including the EU regulators considering similar policies, the world is watching closely to see not only how Australia’s regulators and Meta handle this transition, and how teens respond in the crucial days ahead.

I have actually spent a fair chunk of my time this year, as part of my work for nonprofit, Raise, working closely with under-16s to understand how they use social media and what a ban would mean to them. I took part in focus groups, visited schools, carried out surveys, and I heard some surprising things, even to me as a social media researcher and as a parent.

This insight matters now more than ever, as it helps anticipate how young users might react when some of their social media suddenly disappears, and it shows what could genuinely keep them safe online beyond simple age limits. There are important questions still unanswered as this major shift unfolds under the intense gaze of governments, parents, educators and platforms around the world.

Timings of the teen bans will vary: In the latest addition to the list, Twitch said it will deactivate the accounts of under-16s on January 9th. Meta was last week already telling users that their accounts will be frozen if they are under-16 and that this could happen ahead of the December 10 deadline.

But so many services will still be at an under-16s disposal. Users have been told in messages from Meta that they are able to download their data, use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in the meantime, and also curiously confirm if they actually might be over 16 and thus continue using social media.

(How) will kids still use social media anyway?

Which brings me on to what kids say they will do if and when social media is limited for them. In my focus group work and surveys we ran at Raise, respondents told us the ways they would continue to use social media if they wanted to.

Firstly, they said they would just mark their age as over-16, as choosing one’s age is a common method of starting off using a smartphone for a child. Other ways included using a VPN to bypass Australian age limits by accessing from another country, using an adult’s phone as a burner phone, gaining parental permission, or simply using other social networks and apps that aren’t going to be banned, which includes messaging apps, which are used essentially like social media, and AI apps and systems from ChatGPT to Meta AI.

Kids are digital escape artists

What will be interesting to see here also is how inventive teen social media users may get with their online communities. Will they replicate their communities and social content sharing in Messenger, WhatsApp or Discord? Might Meta or another app platform innovate and create new safe spaces for teens online? Or might we find that this becomes a game of whack-a-mole and users spend more time on other types of apps altogether: we found in our research that the use of AI amongst under-16s could be considered even more prolific, time consuming and influential than social media.

A potentially problematic area for the implementation of a teen social media ban is its enforcement, with the responsibility being passed on to the social networks themselves. With the Australian government not having passed a standard practice, some social networks may escape sanctions by paying lip service, and undermining the point of the change altogether. Monitoring, feedback and communicating what’s next will be important not only for Australia but for the many other countries considering a similar move.

It will be vital to see, in the playing out of all teen online protection plans, whether the absence of social media even does anything positive in protecting users when there are so many digital options available to a teenager. One could argue that the time and attention would be better spent actually making social media safer, through functionality, algorithm changes, content bans and education.

Rerouting of digital habits, or more time offline?

What comes next will be the real measure of progress. Australia has taken a bold step, but the outcome depends entirely on how young people adapt. If teens simply reroute their habits, and just find a way to do what they like to do, or perhaps just migrate to private channels or unregulated apps, then the protective intent of the ban may be lost.

If instead this moment sparks a wider effort to build safer, smarter digital spaces, then something meaningful can emerge from the disruption.

I believe that genuine protection cannot come from removal alone. It comes from understanding how teens live online, supporting them with the right tools and education, and ensuring the platforms they use are designed with their wellbeing in mind. Australia has opened a global conversation, and now it is up to all of us to shape what happens next.

We launched our latest annual report, with five chapters that are our five forces for how we predict the year ahead in social will pan out. These were presented by six Battenhall speakers joined by two special guests. Here’s a review of what we covered, what we launched and how it was received.

How it started

Looking at the changes in how we use technology in our day-to-day lives, the new platforms, new habits, behaviours and so on, and how this might shape the near future, has always fascinated me. This is why, when Battenhall was just a startup, we put on our first Year Ahead briefing. It was an opportunity for myself and my colleagues to share some of what we’re seeing, in the hope that others might find it interesting.

Back then, in 2013, we planned on hosting our maiden event in the large meeting room of our co-working space, which could seat 12 people. I felt like this would provide good bang for buck. We sent out invites and published our event online, and 800 people registered to attend.

After a moment to think about it, we decided to hire the biggest venue we could in London, going for the Royal Institution’s Faraday Theatre, and we started a conference. There were queues around the block to hear us talk about what we thought about the future.

Battenhall’s Year Ahead in Social 2026: reviews

Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who came to our event in London this week. Over 400 registered to attend in person, and some of those who came have shared their views:

• Paul Wiseman: “I would highly recommend downloading a copy of the report if you want to understand where digital culture is heading next.”

• Kristy Collingbourne: “Honestly one of the most insightful discussions I’ve had the pleasure of joining first thing on a Wednesday morning. I’ll be back Battenhall.”

• Alison Battisby: “I’ve been going to this for over 10 years now (how is that possible?!) and it never disappoints. They are brilliant at using research and observations to accurately predict where social is heading, and this year’s insights were particularly thought-provoking.”

• Bettina Weber: “5 trends that will shape storytelling on social / digital channels in 2026.”

• Vicki Davis: “a thought-provoking and illuminating session at The British Library this morning.”

• Tom Glover: “Every brand has “player characters” - these are the people and storytellers who bring its story to life.”

• Georgie Freeman: “Today was a real ‘pinch me’ moment.”

• Bryn Foweather: “Trip down to Superbia this morning to check out Battenhall and their ‘Year Ahead in Social in 26’”

• Elise Pearce: “Career highlight alert.”

Recap of the main talks

The event was in five parts: four talks and a panel, each of which were based on a chapter from our newly-launched report - The Year Ahead in Social 2026. From the emergence of Gen Alpha whose elders are turning 16, to the double-edged sword of online virality, to the rise of AI influencers, and the decline of trend-chasing, there’s something that everyone can take away and plan for in 2026.

Talk 1: Gen Alpha coming of age

Speaker: me

As the oldest of the next generation of social media users, Gen Alpha, turn 16 next year, how will their social media habits shape the mainstream, and what are their views on their relationships with social media and AI? After a year spent working with some of this demographic, and learning a lot in the process, we take a look at what the future holds with Gen Alpha at the helm.

Talk 2: Crowd control

Speaker: Battenhall’s associate director, Georgie Freeman

Virality is a double-edged sword with brands operating in a climate of heightened sensitivity; one wrong step can trigger a major campaign backlash. This loss of control is the new normal, meaning brands should anticipate reinterpretation and be ready to respond quickly.

Talk 3: AI influencers

Speaker, Battenhall’s account manager and AI creator, Akilah Harper

A deep dive into how synthetic creators are redefining influencer marketing. These digital accounts can provide 24/7 availability, message consistency and brand control, but at what cost? We look at how brands can tap into the AI influencer surge, while blending human and AI voices to enrich storytelling while preserving genuine connection.

Talk 4: The 20-year social cycle

Speaker: Battenhall’s Director and Insights lead, Jonny Atter

As social media enters its 20th anniversary year, we’re seeing old features, formats, and trends re-emerge. From the nostalgic to long-form content, we look into Reddit, Substack, YouTube, Facebook and more. How can brands and marketers stand out from the crowd in 2026 and be an authentic voice for their target audiences?

Panel talk: The end of the trend

Panel chair: Battenhall’s Director, Elise Pearce. Panelists: Battenhall’s clients Tom Glover of Niantic Spatial, and Lois Saxton of The O2, along with Battenhall managing director, Rhian Robinson.

Audiences are growing bored of cringe brand participation in short-lived viral moments. Success in 2026 will shift from chasing trends to creating stories that matter. The pendulum is swinging back to long-form, serialised content across platforms in a way that keeps audiences returning, boosts algorithm metrics, and enables brands to build depth, loyalty and values-driven narratives.

Our findings all have a common red thread: the need for brands to accept they can no longer control the narrative. Those who embrace authenticity, community, and richer long-form content on social media stand to build more meaningful, longer-lasting connections with audiences old and new.

Thanks for having us, British Library. Really hope to do this again in the same spot next year.

Scrolling through new Sora is in some ways kind of like looking at a stock image library, but there’s no getting away from how lifelike Gen AI video from Sora is now. The direction it is going, soon AI video will just be indistinguishable from ‘real’ video. But what does it mean for brands? Have a search around and you’ll see quite quickly.

If you’re yet to get into Sora 2, aka new Sora, here’s a step by step walk through for the newbie. And if you need an invite, let me know on db@battenhall.com.

What is Sora 2

Sora 2, the new Sora, is essentially Sora’s iOS app, and it’s the app bit and the dramatically improved video engine that’s new. If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, just look it up in the Apple App Store, and if you’re somewhere else, go to sora.chatgpt.com and use a VPN to teleport yourself to the U.S.! You’ll need to be a ChatGPT Pro user, and you’ll also need an invite code, and for one of those just hunt around online or ask a friend, and you’ll be in.

The content on Sora is pretty dystopian right now. There’s a lot of sci and influencer stuff, but mostly though it’s clips of things that possibly could be real but they’re just not. Currently the videos in the Top section include a granny telling off a bear for going through her bins, Abraham Lincoln on a talk show, and some sci fi art.

Sora is a social network, and it’s like TikTok, but with AI video exclusively. For this reason, some would call Sora content this AI slop, or brain rot. But there’s no getting away from the fact Sora’s very fast and powerful. Will it stand on its own two feet as a network, or will it just become a video creator engine for content that will fill the other app that Sora 2 looks just like ie TikTok? Time will tell.

How does Sora work

TikTok meets AI mens Sora is pretty simple, just with a few new sections. You have a profile page that looks just like TikTok, with an avatar of your choosing, username taken from ChatGPT, follower count, likes, but you have two new labels for users to obsess over: Cameos and Remixes.

• Followers: how many people follow you

• Cameos: how many videos you or others have created *of your likeness*. This is a key function of Sora 2. You cannot upload a video of someone and ask Sora to make something using their likeness, only of yourself once you give permission. Once you do, cameos pop up here and it’s off to the races.

• Likes: how many likes your videos have

• Remixes: how many times your videos have been remixed. This is like a retweet or a repost. The remix button is on the right of every video on Sora 2, where the repost / send to button is on TikTok. But to remix, you have to tell Sora what to change about the video. See below from the top trending Sora granny video, but remix was simply to change the season from Autumn to Spring.

Below’s a look at what a profile looks like, the verified account of Jake Paul.

To make video content on Sora, just hit the + button centre bottom, and prompt your way to making some videos! These will load up while you get on with other stuff and each video you create just takes a minute or so, and appears in your drafts. You can then choose what to publish from there.

What will Sora mean for brands

While people’s likenesses are protected on Sora, brands aren’t so much. Have a search around for your brand in Sora and you will already see a lot of content using your brand’s likeness. Essentially, your brand is in the new social network, in the new AI, and it’s probably time to lean in, figure out how it works, and consider taking part.

Take the below KFC muckbang for example, a cameo video is by user ‘jakepaulthegoat’ (not the verified account jakepaul) who just posts videos that so realistic most wouldn’t be able to tell it’s not really Jake Paul.

If you’re a brand and want to get into Sora, some tips for the newbie:

• Search for your brand and how its being used

• Look up creators and influencers who you are affiliated with, of who you think could be

• Consider reserving your band name in ChatGPT Pro which means you can reserve your brand handle on Sora too

While I was getting to grips with Sora this week, a few stories have been circulating in the media that bring together just how AI is shaping how social media is used, consumed and how it influences us.

Sora beats GhatGPT record; synthetic social influencers; for some it’s love

Firstly I see that Sora 2’s launch has hit 1m downloads faster than ChatGPT did. Officially the Sora iOS app, which is what Sora 2 is, saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads during its first week. OpenAI’s head of Sora, Bill Peebles, announced that Sora reached a million downloads in under five days, which he said was faster than ChatGPT, despite Sora being in invite-only mode and in US & Canada only. Wowsers.

Since playing with Sora, the concept of synthetic content has been something I’ve been thinking about within its own network, ie just on Sora, but then more widely across platforms. Like AI influencers, which is a phenomenon on the rise.

On this note, I have been reading the reaction from Hollywood who are up in arms over AI actress Tilly Norwood. “The age of synthetic actors isn’t coming. It’s here.” Vice reports. An AI influencer, labelled as an actress but who hasn’t actually been in a film yet but that’s fine, has been built and launched “to be the kind of star studios dream about: versatile, tireless, and immune to bad press.” Its makers bill her to be “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman ... People are realizing that their creativity doesn’t need to be boxed in by a budget.” There’s no escaping that AI characters look completely realistic now, and so what kind of safeguards should be placed on such creations I wonder?

And on that topic, the last story that caught my attention this week was about child safety with AI. According to a new study in the United States, 1 in 5 high school kids is in love with their AI or knows someone who is. This is from a new study of U.S. teens and parents by the Center for Democracy and Technology.

This is a huge topic right now and I’ve seen it first hand through the research work I’ve been running as part of my social media safety nonprofit, Raise. We ran focus groups through the summer and one of the most stark findings from our research survey which is currently out in the field is how social media use for kids has ushered in AI and the extent to which teens and younger are becoming attached to it. There will be a lot more on this to come I am sure of that.

To end on a lighter note, this whole topic of AI influence is going to be explored at Battenhall’s upcoming event which is taking place on the morning of November 5th in London. Tickets are now on general release here. I’ll be speaking too, so I hope to see you there!

Some of the conversations I had with SF locals got me thinking about how much of the fabric of social media today is touching on the foundations from exactly 20 years ago, which was such a formative time in the grand scheme of social media.

20 year anniversary, and farewell to Typepad

We owe so much of today’s social media ecosystem to a single blogging platform, and one that was not too dissimilar to Substack back in its heyday. From the connections that it brokered, to the innovations it ushered in, Typepad, which for over 10 years was where I wrote a blog about the world of PR and social media, that I called Drew B’s Take on Tech PR.

In its heyday, everyone who was active on social media was a blogger. Blogging ushered in social networking which then became social media. And the biggest blogging platform was Typepad.

Well, Typepad closed down for good this week, marking the end of an era for such an important part of the fabric of modern day social media.

I shared this news earlier in the week in a post on Linkedin, thanks to a nudge from one of the OG bloggers and an inspiration to me in the early days, . I mentioned just some of the bloggers that I connected with 20 years ago in those early days, and most of them popped up in the comments, it was amazing.

So if you have an old Typepad blog like I do, this was the week to export your content so that you can preserve it, and even reincarnate it somewhere else if you like. An archive of my old blog is available to view on Wayback Machine. And I’ve also exported the blog in full, so that its content is still online over on Wordpress. Doesn’t look the same as Typepad, but all the posts are there and the comments saved.

The future of long form social

The importance of written, longer form, discoverable internet content has never been greater, due to the rise and rise of AI, and forces pulling in other directions such as ephemeral and video social content.

AI is a very interesting development due to its recency and velocity. With every AI search, a vast slew of social media content on the longer form written parts of the social web shape the results that AI summarises and that we read and listen to.

But whilst AI is helping boost the popularity of old school social, some say AI is killing the internet. That’s the headline from the latest piece in The Economist on this topic, see here.

So what does the future hold when there’s no Typepad, the web has been killed by AI, will we still have Substack and other social platforms? Will they hold value? Perhaps social media is the future of the internet, if AI is the death of the web. Which means then that, perhaps AI will bring it all together, and not kill it after all. Food for thought.

The future of cars, SF style

Just before my trip to San Fran, I was alerted to a recent development in self-driving cars that is working its way through certain cities in the U.S. by an old university friend of mine, the Executive Director of the Road Safety Foundation UK, Dr Suzy Charman, or Safety Suzy as she’s known in the UK media. Suzy shared with me just a week previous that she was in Atlanta testing the newest Waymo self-driving taxis which were now fully operational there, and she said to me that they were also in San Francisco too.

Nothing prepared me for what I would find upon arriving in San Fran. Self-driving taxis where everywhere. The first one that I saw, I thought was a Google Streetview car, as the Waymos have countless cameras attached to every corner and surface of the outside of the car, including a spinning camera on the roof. But then I saw another and another, and asked the driver in my car and he told me that Waymos already outnumber regular taxis in the city.

So I spent my week in San Francisco travelling by driverless taxi, and it was mindblowing, brilliant, it felt very safe, very convenient, and the future. You book where to pick up and drop off on the app, you press the ‘let’s go’ button when you enter the car and then the AI dashboard says a few welcoming words to you before setting off, and it’s a very comfortable and cheap journey. Waymo taxis seemed to be around half the price of other taxi fares I checked.

You get people taking photos and videos of you when you’re in one, as many people in the city still find the sight of them a bit of a surprise. One eery sight for me was that, opposite my hotel was a Waymo car park. It gave me I Am Robot vibes, the scenes where robots are kept in vast holding areas and they kind of interact with one another in a passive way. The Waymo car park was like that. Totally bizarre.

But it’s clear that, once the self-driving cars can navigate all roads, then they will be everywhere. And maybe their convenience and safety will mean that they won’t just replace taxis either. One thing they will rely on is an accurate and dynamic understanding of the world around us, which leads me to the last article I read in the last week worth sharing here.

AI and the road to superintelligence

This long read by Tim Bradshaw and Cristina Criddle in The FT from earlier this week titled: “AI groups bet on world models in race for ‘superintelligence’” is well worth a read. It explains how the future of the web, of AI and I’m guessing of cars on the road, will be relying on how “Google DeepMind, Meta and Nvidia are developing systems that aim to better understand the physical world.”

“Google DeepMind, Meta and Nvidia are among the companies attempting to gain ground in the AI race by developing systems that aim to navigate the physical world by learning from videos and robotic data rather than just language.”
…The potential market for world models could be huge, almost the size of the global economy, according to Rev Lebaredian, vice-president of Omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia, as it brings the technology into the physical domain, such as the manufacturing and healthcare sectors.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this area develops anyway, and not just because I do now love an AI robotaxi.

Writing a weekly newsletter was fun, but the combo of, well, weekends rightly becoming weekends, and the working week filling up, meant that I put this newsletter on ice. Here we are, five years later, and Substack the buzzing place for ideas and excellent content, short form as well as long. So I’m going to start publishing here again, with a focus on timely analysis of the biggest developments in how social media is shaping the world around us, warts and all.

Starting with a look ahead at 2026

Each year at this time, I work on a report on how social media is shaping up for the year ahead, and a keynote event to launch the report - The Year Ahead in Social. I look at Battenhall’s now 13+ years of annual market data, and I work with an ever growing team of researchers across our global Battenhall team, do a bit of crystal ball gazing, and speak to some clients and contacts to see what they think too.

Invites for the launch event for the report went out this week. You can register here if you’re interested in coming (half the tickets were snapped up in the first few hours, no pressure!).

Added to this, I’m hosting Battenhall’s third Social Media Sessions event of the year next week, in San Francisco. I’ll be joined by colleagues, some clients and friends of Battenhall to discuss how the key themes from our 2025 predictions that we published nearly a year ago have shaped up, and to preview some of the topics we’re looking at for 2026. Here’s a snippet from what’s coming up:

So an event next week, then another next month, so lots to prepare for and to discuss. I’ll wrap up this post with a quick run-down of what’s happened since my last piece here Substack that is of some relevance to what’s coming up in the weeks ahead and in 2026!

• Trying new things out on social: Generally I have found the innovation happening on social media to be the busiest for nearly 20 years. I’ve continued to test out most new social networks, keep tabs on the old ones, and try out new features as they emerge. stuff like Jack Dorsey’s rapid fire development and launching of Sunday and Bitchat was wild, and is a window in the kind of social app development and style we should expect to see more of next year.

• What are mainstream media asking? From time to time I’ve been invited on to the news to talk social media. Themes that come up include how Gen Alpha and Gen Z have been influenced by a youth spent on social media, and will upcoming teen bans do what they’re designed to.

• Social media safety: I launched a youth social media safety non profit, called Raise. This year we grew a team of volunteer leaders and we went global. We launched our first piece of research at Raise looking at kids’ approaches reactions to AI and social media bans.

• So much innovation: I’ve been most excited by the innovations coming from not just the social media platforms, but the trailblazing creators, brands and users. It’s use cases and communities that bring all this to life, and my experiences and those from my team over the last 12 months will be shaping our upcoming report.

• Global shifts: At Battenhall we’ve tripled in size, and I now have colleagues in the US, Canada, and across the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific. I feel so much more closely connected to the global shifts in social media and how they’re shaping the future. Oh, And I was honoured to pick up a couple of recognitions, from The Sabres and Campaign since I last posted here too which was nice.

If there’s anything you think I should look into for our upcoming 2026 forecast report and keynote, drop it in the comments or get in touch with me on the email below!

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading.

My summer reading: AI with all the feels

This year one of the books I’m taking is Klara and the Sun. So many people had told me to read it, and I’d been putting it off until this break. It seems a timely read too. The author, Kazuo Ishiguro, explores the topic that’s taken all the headlines of late: can AI have feelings, and if so, how will this shape humans’ relationships with our ‘Artificial Friends’? The book blurb says it explores “the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?”

This makes Blake Lemoine’s recent assertion that AI has feelings seem pretty low-balled if you ask me. The software engineer was derided by the AI community last month for proclaiming that he’s discovered AI was sentient, when it seemingly was just reading from millions of spreadsheets, which is what AI does. But if an AI can make a person feel a connection, isn’t that the bigger point?

Could someone really fall in love with AI?

Fast forward to our relationship with our phones, and it’s clear to see already that the algorithm has us hooked. And not always in a good way. It isn’t just our screen time or the messages we’re exposed to that are relevant here. It’s also the way in which AI’s advances could multiply the affect of us being in so deep. With future generations, or maybe even sooner, as people’s relationships develop with our AI, Siri, Alexa, Tamagotchi, a social media connection, or whatever, how deep could these relationships go? It seems to me that people could very soon become reliant on ‘Artificial Friends’.

The last book I read was Conor Grennan’s Little Princes, a funny and retro throwback tale of exploration, humanitarianism and love. I’m expecting it to be the exact opposite in fact to Klara and The Sun. I had the pleasure last year of speaking to one of the stars of the Little Princes, Liz, who it was that first mentioned Conor’s book to me. She explained how it’s really a tale of how she and Conor first met.

I can’t recommend the book highly enough. Conor’s about my age now, and in the book, set 20 years ago, he explores Nepal and the far east, with the technology and trappings befitting the period. What really struck me was how long every little thing took back in the early noughties, from sending and receiving a message (ie on email), through to how long a huge task takes, like tracking down a family or setting up an initiative. It also showed the power of networks, and of talking to people to find out information, rather than the fire and forget culture we find ourselves in today. It’s all very nostalgic, and it shows how much can be achieved when you take your time. Conor’s also hilarious.

After reading the book, I found myself in a Zoom meeting again with the star of the book Liz, who is now an expert in law and AI. She said something unrelated to the book, but related to AI’s considered potential to be sentient that got me thinking.

If you put aside the argument over whether AI could have feelings, or if it could indeed love, and think instead about whether a human could have feelings for an AI, or fall in love with it, isn’t this a more pressing concern for future generations? What if our children could fall in love with their Siri? Or worse, get manipulated by our AI? It really got me thinking.

Show me the algorithm

The social media news headlines this week are dominated by how our networks have been used for harm. We’ve had the case of the British Army’s social media accounts being hacked and used to promote crypto scams, and in China, the case of a hacker who has stolen the data of 1 billion people and is selling it on a forum - 23 terabytes of it to be precise. In Iran, a social media bot ‘army’ one million strong is attacking the #MeToo movement. It’s all a bit doom and gloom. And a story caught my eye linking this with AI this morning.

In Japan, a new case has come to light which may result in the courts forcing the country’s equivalent of TripAdvisor to expose the inner workings of its algorithm. Are we seeing a new precedent emerge, that will force an AI’s owner to disclose its inner workings? To expose their souls.

This case has been reported in the FT, explaining that in Japan, where Kakaku.com’s restaurant review site Tabelog has been requested by the Japanese courts to disclose part of its algorithms, something that tech companies have long considered trade secrets and not for disclosure. This follows a high profile case where a restaurant argued that Tabelog’s algorithm harmed its business, resulting in Kakaku.com being ordered to pay over $250,000 in damages, something Kakaku.com is appealing.

So should an algorithm or the workings of an AI be secret and mystical, or public and downloadable? And will this shape AI’s potential to strike up a relationship with a person? I seriously doubt it.

Social media and AI futures

Looking ahead, I will be watching the regulators’ moves on AI and algorithms with great interest, because I think they are more closely linked to social media than many might think. If an account on an app or a social network can befriend us, it can become a powerful force for good, but it could also cause great harm, whether we know it or not.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading.

I’m going to dig into just two of the issues that will determine, as I see it, the impact that this bill could have, as they touch on the crucial elements of both the cause of much harmful behaviour online, and the reality of protecting reputations on social media.

If and when this new bill becomes law, the biggest issue in it becoming practicable is that forcing platforms to better police themselves is only half of the battle. Threatening a social network with fines for non-compliance will no doubt bring change fast. But policing user behaviour, and educating to improve user safety should both be massive priorities.

The policing and changing of user behaviour are topics that appear to be largely missed from the 225-page bill, which focuses on how social networks and internet companies themselves should act with regard to making the internet safer for those using it. Practically, this will cause huge problems, as I’ve encountered as part of my day job working with individuals and brands on reputation management.

So let’s look at trolls and how this bill could impact things.

What makes trolls tick: they are masters of disguise, and they are relentless

The new bill describes measures that it suggests will reduce harmful content online, one of which is about identity verification. The suggestion is that all social networks should be able to verify a user’s real identity, and if a user so desires, it can automatically block all ‘non-verified’ accounts in order to reduce exposure to trolling. I like this, and can see its value, especially for big social media profiles such as footballers or politicians, as much as for the average person. It will be a major feature for all social networks to develop and standardise, but it could work for preventing many cases of trolling.

But the reality of protecting social media users from attacks is that the sheer volume of the attacks themselves, and the methods deployed by attackers to cover their tracks, makes detection hard and protection even harder.

First, let’s look at volume of harmful social media content. This is something I have researched in depth and spoken on including at my TED talk on this topic. Facebook alone has to remove 33 million pieces of spam content every hour of every day, on average. That’s 1.2 billion spam posts in the last three months of 2021 that broke Facebook’s code of conduct, or in other words, that were so harmful in some way that they had to be deleted.

Furthermore, for the same last three months of 2021, Facebook removed 8.2 million posts due to harassment and bullying, while Instagram removed a further 6.6 million for the same reason. A further 19.8 million Facebook posts and 2.6m Instagram were removed for child endangerment in the same time period, and for hate speech, 17.4 million Facebook posts and 3.8 million Instagram posts were removed.

In addition, much of the content that requires removal from Facebook is due to it being reported by another user. While Facebook states that “technology proactively detects and removes the vast majority of violating content before anyone reports it”, data shows that in the last three months of 2021, to take bullying and harassment content as an example, 41.2% of content that Facebook removed was seen and had to be reported by a user. What this illustrates is that although content is being removed, it also still does harm, and in enormous quantities, and this poses challenges to lawmakers.

Next, let’s look at behaviours of trolls.

Trolls create convincing personas online. They rarely choose to go for total randomness in their apparent approach, as this lessens their impact. On top of them having realistic looking profiles, they hack real ‘verified’ accounts, and use them to perpetuate their attacks. Recent data shows there are over 600 million hacked accounts in circulation, and I’ve encountered numerous people myself having had their authentic social media profiles taken over by ‘bad actors’, sometimes permanently.

A considerable amount of harmful content I see online is from what I can tell is a troll, but to the lay person it does in fact appear to be a real person. The difference between a disguised troll and a harmless real person is only slight, and invisible to the untrained eye, but hugely damaging in practice.

Ultimately, reducing the damage done by trolling will require close analysis of their activities, not just the rolling out of a blocking system. A blocked troll is still there, and they will become increasingly proficient at passing off as real. Education is key.

Below is the introduction to the bill, which is downloadable in full here,

Ofcom is to be put in charge of policing the new UK laws when they come into effect, meaning the government agency will be given new responsibilities and new powers. How this shapes up specifically will be critical in the success of the bill, and in the successful evolution of the safety features needed by the social networks in order to improve user safety.

This bill will no doubt send ripples globally, it won’t just be a UK thing. But if done right, it will change behaviours internationally among social networks and us, their users, and we will see a tsunami of change online.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading.

Now, as the situation Ukraine intensifies, the social media front is shifting and changing on a daily basis. With entire social networks and independent media publishers are being taken offline in Russia, and others limiting access of their own accord, I’ve taken a look at some of the ways this online war is being waged.

A look Ukrainian social media minister Mykhailo Fedorov

First, an example of social media put to use by political leadership, authentically from the top, and used to galvanise activists and western democracies alike. Ukraine’s youngest cabinet minister is Mykhailo Fedorov, and he is Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation. His Twitter following is 227,000 and he has been using his online profile as a key weapon against Russia, pressuring western tech brands to sanction the Russian government, sharing footage from the ground, and encouraging his followers to join his IT Army on Telegram, which already numbers 35,000 members.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Fedorov was leading a roughly 250-person ministry when Russia invaded, a department whose goal was to connect more Ukrainians to the Internet and modernise digital services. The BBC reports that Fedorov is now operating from a bunker in a secret location in Kyiv, and he’s now leading a team of somewhere between 250 government specialists to many thousands of virtual volunteers.

Russia reinvents the media landscape

Russia has long been a country with a skewed social media landscape. Previous to its invasion of Ukraine, access to Twitter and LinkedIn was limited in Russia, LinkedIn more so than Twitter, meaning if you were in Russia, you’d have found it pretty difficult to use either of the social networks.

Then last week, Russia announced the banning of Facebook, and reports from people in Russia stated that Twitter was taken offline too. The site Globalcheck currently shows Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as completely offline in Russia. One TikTok citizen reporter says this is so that Russia can ensure it controls what people are told, and where they can communicate with one another.

In terms of mainstream media, The BBC has also been blocked in Russia, resulting in the broadcaster publishing instructions on how to view its news coverage on the dark web, through Tor. This is alongside a number of independent media outlets being taken offline last week.

TikTok is perhaps the most interesting of developments, however. When Russia passed a new law on Friday which threatens imprisonment for sharing what Russia considers to be false information, TikTok’s response was to itself impose a ban on people in Russia uploading content to the app, including live streaming, which was proving to be a key way for younger Russians to discover what was happening in Ukraine. People with authentic stories to tell on TikTok are finding a huge audience internationally however, just taking TikTok user RussianPappiiiis as an example, having gained 70,000 followers and 6 million views just over the weekend for her explainer videos.

The next frontier for social media

Russia’s stance on social media access will continue to develop, no doubt. To combat this, Instagram has already launched encrypted DMs in Russia and Ukraine, Telegram’s use is surging, with some related news channels, used as social media groups, growing by over 80,000 members daily, and even metaverse worlds are filling with Russians and Ukrainians seeking access to open media.

Emerging networks in live streaming, from video on YouTube and Twitch, to audio on Discord, and text in Telegram, will be the networks to surge through the Ukraine invasion. Russian YouTuber Yury Dud is an example of a creator that is finding influence amongst the fog - his Telegram channel already boasts 867,000 followers, rapidly approaching the total he has of 900k over on Twitter, alongside his 9.2m YouTube subscribers.

As the situation develops in Ukraine, the changes in social media access in Russia, and the tactics deployed by Ukraine will both be critical observations, and blueprints for national and international defence strategies of the future.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading.

I’ve spent a month working in the metaverse, in Meta’s Horizon Workrooms, in an attempt to see how it can breathe life into the daily video calls which now define hybrid work. Whilst nothing can replace real life, VR work adds another dimension to community-building, collaboration and presence if you have colleagues you aren’t in front of IRL. Here’s what I’ve picked up after a month working in the metaverse.

Battenhall’s office in Meta’s Horizon Workrooms.

Like many people, have spent more time working from my home office over the last two years than my entire professional career combined. The benefit of having a tech-first group of colleagues and clients has meant that everyone around me sprung into action for this new normal when lockdowns first started, so technological changes were the least of our worries in adapting to hybrid work. The real transition was about how to best navigate a new world of screen time.

As the months have passed, my company, Battenhall, has recruited talent from all over the world, so while we started lockdown as a UK team waiting for its London office to be able to reopen, we’re now spread far and wide, and remote work is the majority of work. Screen time is the majority of work time.

Digital tweaks to work routines have helped make this hybrid much closer to the experience of a creative office, which has been critical to maintaining energy and productivity over the last two years. We have virtual coffee mornings for those who want to catch up before the day starts, there’s an office Discord channel to simulate background office chatter throughout the day, and of course every document and assignment is collaborated on in the cloud. But flat screens and Zoom calls only go so far when connecting communities.

The advent of the metaverse has shaken this up: “It makes Zoom feel prehistoric. I wasn't expecting the sense of presence to be so profound,” as Jim Rowe-Bot put it on my LinkedIn.

The metaverse and building communities

In my November edition of this newsletter, I explained the incarnations my journey through the metaverse has taken, and since then, I’ve been working at length in virtual reality work spaces. Meetings with colleagues and clients, deep work (writing basically), brainstorms and catch-ups in the metaverse are at first a mind-blowing experience, and then after time as more people join, communities emerge, which is where the real action will play out.

I’ve now spent a month working in the metaverse, from desks in a range of different virtual locations. Walking around a metaverse, building an office there to walk around or play in, acquiring land, that’s all actually a very straightforward type of thing to do if you’ve ever spent time online, and it’s all very simple. Buying a plot of land or your securing your brand name in the metaverse isn’t much more difficult than buying a URL on GoDaddy or an item off eBay. What’s harder is racking up the hours so that you can apply it all for work. And this is where Meta’s Oculus comes in.

Buying or building a presence is technical but straightforward in the metaverse

First, the virtual screen.

When I first started working from the metaverse, I downloaded a range of virtual desktop apps, which give you a layered reality. They mix your real keyboard and laptop screen which are beamed into the metaverse using an app for your computer, the location of your keyboard and your avatar’s virtual hands are then seen by your headset with its multiple spider eye cameras, then all this is overlaid on to a virtual world of your choosing.

My favourite of these virtual work apps is Immersed, which gives you Minority Report style hand-computer controls, and where I can choose to be working on my laptop from a virtual Caribbean beach, or from a space station. The effect beautiful scenery has on your laptop time is greater than you imagine. This app I’ve found isn’t so good for the social part of VR, which is what I’m most interested in exploring at the moment.

Working from the beach in Immersed, writing this newsletter

Next, the metaverse communities

Once enough of my colleagues had access to the metaverse through VR headsets, we started spending time each day working together from Meta’s Horizon Workrooms app. The mix of a highly workable computer, with spatial audio, and 3D interactive colleagues (even though they’re there as cartoon avatars) creates a far more engaging community experience than you could imagine. Everyone I’ve used this application of the metaverse with has been blown away, and as the technology develops, it will only get more advanced and easy to use.

When you’re with colleagues in the metaverse you notice how surround sound, people’s height, proximity to one another and basically just being in VR makes such a huge difference to the experience of screen time.

Seven of us in the Battenhall metaverse office

The downsides are the obvious ones: the headset you wear isn’t natural. It weighs you down, gives you a red face, and you can really only experience VR in 30-45 minute bursts at the most as a result. Spend much more time and you get a neck ache, and you’ll feel quite spaced out when you re-enter the real world. I even managed to sprain my wrist from the constant movement of the handset that you do when setting everything up, and I wasn’t the only one of my colleagues to do so! But limiting screen time to bursts perhaps is a good thing anyway.

The future of the metaverse for work and communities

As more people get their hands on and get used to VR, this way of community building will evolve. Oculus is generally considered the market leader, but other kinds of VR tech exist, and more brands are getting involved, too, with Apple’s rumoured glasses being the most hotly anticipated.

As the VR headsets themselves become less cumbersome, experiencing the metaverse will become easier, but it’s also the the layering of reality into the metaverse that will be a game changer.

Currently many people experience the metaverse as a purely virtual world, but with Meta’s Oculus and Workrooms experience you can build reality into the metaverse too. I have a sofa in my home office, for example, as well as my chair, desk and laptop. I was able to draw the furniture into my virtual office too, so as well as being able to type and work, my surroundings are also layered into the virtual world, meaning I can move around. As this evolves, you could realistically experience the real world when in the metaverse rather than departing it, making it more like AR than VR.

The evolution of social media is the focus of this newsletter, as was it for its previous incarnation back as far as 2006 when I first set this project up. It’s timely then, that 2006 was also the year I first entered the metaverse, and now that’s stepping up a gear too.

In the forthcoming editions of this newsletter I’m going to explore some of the pressing issues that I’m experiencing in public parts of the metaverse, from safety to branding and entertainment.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading.

Firstly, I want to state that I’m an early adopter (/ nerd) of metaversal technologies - I like playing with them, and I’ve been trying them out for way longer than is popular, and in doing so it has always attracted its fair share of beef along with the buzz, which I get. Colleagues and randomers have ripped the proverbial out of me for my use of every single social network I was an early adopter of, from Twitter to Clubhouse, from Foursquare to Second Life (I was an early user of Second Life in 2006, even ended up working for the company through the PR firm I was in, and from time to time acted as its UK spokesperson.)

My Second Life alter ego, Drew Brewster. 2006. Nerd.

More recently, I’ve worked my way on to projects in AR and VR, in virtual worlds such as Minecraft and in in-game advertising, I work now in augmented reality, anything from stickers in Stories to filters and lenses. I was a beta tester for Google Glass, tested Facebook / Meta’s Oculus VR in 2013, I have Snapchat Spectacles and the Facebook RayBan Stories glasses. But having immersed myself in all these places, I have come to the conclusion that the metaverse is closer to normality than most people think. And it’s the path to the full metaverse that needs more thought than the final destination.

Testing Oculus VR in 2013.

The path to the metaverse involves a multi-layered experience of augmented and virtual reality, largely playing out on our phones, laptops and widescreens.

We already spend on the majority of every waking hour in front of a screen, either endlessly scrolling, watching, working, creating or engaging, often on multiple screens at once - data from uSwitch suggests we spend on average 12hrs 15mins on screens every day. On top of this, with newer networks creating ever more viral experiences, such as TikTok’s For You page which is now being emulated even by Spotify, the pull to our screens is ever stronger. We sometimes don’t notice the impact of this digital layer on our experience of reality.

Shaping our virtual worlds are the virtual goods, such as NFTs, that very much came to the fore in 2021 (NFT being Collins’ word of the year this year no less). They determine who owns what in virtual worlds ( a record plot of virtual land this week for example selling for $2.4m) and even the verified identity of a social media user. NFTs’ links to gaming, avatars, identity, value and virtual reality make them a key part of the metaverse, but their importance to social media is what has made them so big in the year just ending, too.

It makes sense to me therefore, that the baby steps that the internet is taking are going to be critical to understand and to shape, even more so than where we end up some time in the VR future. We always over-focus on the change that will happen in the next ten years, and underestimate the change that must happen in the next two.

What will be absolutely critical in this journey to meta will be building safety into the future of the internet, from VR and AR to live gaming and immersive social media. As Meta’s own observations explain here, through its leaked memo from the chief of their metaverse moves: “monitoring billions of interactions in real time will require significant effort and may not even be possible. Reality Labs, the division headed by Bosworth, currently has no head of safety role.”

I’m hoping that there will be wider exploration by mainstream audiences of the current mini metaverse that we’re in, that more education on safety online happens too, and that more people realise how deep into the metaverse journey we are already.

Side note:

I’ve recently invested in some brick technology to force me out of some of my autopilot screen time. After poring through some of the above data on immersion, I realised I needed it. One example is that I’ve switched away from using a smartphone, and invested in a new version of the classic Nokia 6310 phone. On top of the reduction in screen time it brought about, which I knew would happen and was obvious, I’ve also found some surprising changes to my screen habits. Full findings I’ll write up in my next newsletter but am tweeting them, here.

My must reads of the week

Here are some of the stories that I have been reading this week.

Ethics & safety

• Instagram head Adam Mosseri agrees to testify on child safety at Congress.

• Algorithm ethics and how it’s being done at Twitter (well). Good read on Casey Newton’s Platformer.

• Roblox ‘cybermob leader’ lawsuit filed for abusive behaviour.

• Rest of World looks at Russia using Facebook for information-spreading in Sudan.

Metaverse

• TikTok’s plans to become Facebook in Wired.

• $2.4m patch of virtual land sells on Decentraland.

• How early contributors will create the culture of Web3 / the metaverse. Really interesting long read by Ryan Broderick.

• How gloves with air pockets will simulate touch in virtual worlds - Facebook / Meta patent deets.

Design

• Spotify experiments with new interface emulating TikTok.

• Reddit rolls out video creation tools into its main app and announces that in Feb’ 2022 it will be shutting Dubsmash which it acquired.

• Reddit’s first Chief Product Officer is former Googler Pali Bhat.

NFTs

• Music industry looks at NFTs as a way to rebalance rights power in the industry.

• Christies talks about NFTs as collectibles. The whole point here: how to reach a hard-to-reach audience.

Interviews

• Nick Clegg’s rise to social media elite: a long read from Business Insider on ‘how Meta communications chief … charmed his way from a tumultuous UK political career to becoming one of Mark Zuckerberg's closest confidants.’

• Airbnb’s Brian Chesky interviewed on the metaverse, working with Jony Ive's LoveFrom and how Airbnb restructured during the pandemic. This company is run in a different and innovative way with everything ‘laddering up’ to Brian.

Event

• I’m hosting Battenhall’s annual trends event on 30th November. You can attend online here.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

In this edition of The Social Media Report, I’m analysing the impact of the latest news to come from One Hacker Way, and the wider implications of Facebook’s vision of the future of the internet. After weeks of whistleblower revelations in the media and in the courts, Facebook has been embroiled in an ever-deepening crisis over its very identity, and whether or not it’s a harm on society. As the brand changes, how will Facebook’s ability to protect its users as Meta evolve? Let’s take a look!

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Facebook the company is now Meta, and its vision for the future of the internet is now drastically different to what we understood before: if you watch Facebook’s promo video for the launch of its new identity and vision, Meta, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we are being shown a distant, dystopian future of the internet that is a sci-fi virtual reality of Ready Player One meets The Matrix.

Compare Meta the company and Facebook the app, and you get chalk and cheese. You might watch the flying robots chatting in space and think: ‘right so this metaverse is a far future concept of Facebook’s inventor.' It certainly bares no similarity to what Facebook’s 2.9 billion users use the app for right now, which is largely status updates, local groups and reading the news.

In his launch video, Meta / Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg explains that what’s core now is core to the future of Meta - connecting people. But that this will be done in a more immersive way in the future which Meta will steer us through, using ‘glassed and headsets’. But the truth is, the metaverse is already pervasive, it’s in our pockets and Facebook’s already a purveyor of great power over it.

We are already in the metaverse. We spend our days endless scrolling, in forums, threads, on screens and in games. NFTs powered by crypto currencies fill virtual worlds which are customised with skins and power-ups, and our augmented reality is in our pockets, on our laps and in front of our eyes already for longer than we think. What Facebook / Meta is in fact doing is making a play to own a more compelling narrative over the future of the metaverse, while mitigating the negativity building around Facebook’s role as a force for harm.

However, Facebook / Meta’s vision of the future of the metaverse is also really old. Virtual worlds and VR have been around a long time, and have remained both niche and also enthralled specialist user bases. Take Second Life, for example, which I worked for when it burst on to the virtual world scene in 2006. Absolutely a metaverse, innovative on another level, enthralling, but absolutely niche. The virtual world style metaverse is old hat, and, according to most punditry, just plain boring. This by The Atlantic is worth a read.

On the face of it, Meta is therefore simply a rebrand of Facebook’s parent company. Facebook has to date been both an app and a company. This has meant that other apps owned by Facebook the company, like Instagram or WhatsApp, have been increasingly tarnished by Facebooks recently slumping brand image. This kind of a rebrand is nothing new, and over time, the distance between apps and the Facebook brand will be a valuable move no doubt. Facebook is facing an ever growing wave of pressure from lawmakers, the media, legislators and the public over whether Facebook is good for you or harmful.

So where next for Meta in the metaverse? I think the following four factors will be fundamental to the success of Meta in the metaverse. Ultimately what we have to consider is, what actually is the metaverse, why is Meta a credible force in its future, and will things evolve with any influence from Meta at all?

• Social media: lawmakers are gaining ground on the social networks in an effort to protect users from harm, businesses from monopolistic behaviours, and elections from fraud. Social media IS the metaverse, so the goalposts need to change fast. What else is in the metaverse? NFTs, crypto currencies, games and virtual worlds. All are accelerating and innovating at speed, so Meta is in fact at risk of losing out or of becoming irrelevant.

• Virtual worlds: places like Roblox, Decentraland and Minecraft are already immersive, virtual worlds. Expect Meta to seek to buy its way into this market or muscle its way in with its own version which it will use the might of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to leverage.

• Virtual goods: NFTs and crypto currencies are fundamental to the metaverse. Facebook already has a highly evolved play in digital currency. Last week Diem rebranded as Novi, and we may see this used to power the metaverse. Equally, Facebook could buy its way in with either the dominant NFT marketplace such as Opensea.

• Evolving technologies: headsets and glasses are gathering pace in terms of performance and utility. I have been testing the recently launched Facebook / RayBan Stories glasses, and they’re quite good, but lack real use case to be honest. Perhaps Meta will change that?

If we take social media, virtual worlds, virtual goods and evolving technologies together, we have a metaverse and we have the future of the internet that is also very much in the here and now. I look forward to seeing how Facebook works to shape this future, and how the innovators can perhaps spawn the next Facebook along the way, too.

My must reads of the week

Here are some of the stories that I have been reading this week. Being that the topic this week is the metaverse, they are all appropriately themed.

Meta brand

• Many reasons for the move to Meta: NY Times explains that Facebook's metaverse is designed to solve several problems: an ageing user base, dependence on Google and Apple, regulatory risk, and reputational damage.

• Can a rebrand get Facebook out of trouble? The Financial Times thinks not.

• The real reason Facebook Changed its name: Mark Zuckerberg wants to be the hero of the metaverse because he knows Facebook is boring.

• A tried and tested story: Axios looks at the brand strategies of changing your name.

Meta Reality Labs

• Meta acquires VR company Within: the company behind VR fitness game Supernatural; Within will continue working on the game and help Meta improve future VR hardware. The acquisition will operate under the new Meta Reality Labs brand.

Safety & politics

• AOC calls Facebook a cancer to democracy: ouch from the influential US politician.

• Facebook’s meta-problem on Capitol Hill: Politico on how politicians are tuning out of Facebook’s lobbying.

• How two thirds of Facebook’s staff are focused on protecting users from harm: a fascinating thread from Azeem Azhar on how crazy this situation is.

Gaming

• The metaverse has been here for years in computer games: Washington Post looks into current examples of metaverses.

NFTs

• Into the Metaverse: Bloomberg on ‘Where Crypto, Gaming and Capitalism Collide’.

• Facebook’s NFT play: The Information says: ‘Facebook’s corporate name change to Meta wasn’t the only news coming out of Connect… The tech giant revealed Thursday that it’s looking at integrating non-fungible tokens into its metaverse business.’

• The surge in interest in NFTs: how NFT-based tokens have seen a surge with Facebook’s Meta rebrand.

Coming up next

• An interview with Facebook / Meta’s Andrew Bosworth: the influential FB figure ‘Boz’ and leader of the Reality Labs division on the future of Meta.

• Meta issues its first ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour report’ and it’s in Nicaragua: a big report on troll activity on Meta’s apps (ie Facebook and Instagram). This is really fascinating actually as Meta removed a network of “937 Facebook accounts, 140 Pages, 24 Groups and 363 Instagram accounts” in Nicaragua which targeted domestic audiences and was linked to the government of Nicaragua.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

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Here come the social media sunglasses: last week saw Ray-Ban and Facebook launch the latest innovation in eyewear - glasses with a in-built cameras that can capture what you’re seeing and send it to your phone and your social network with just the tap of your specs. This is a classic Facebook move, in that it’s nothing new, rather an imitation and slight evolution of something that has already become nearly mainstream.

Facebook putting its muscle into a product like this, and it being co-branded and pushed heavily by a partner in Ray-Ban, will absolutely propel this technology to a new level of public awareness and public acceptance. You will see many people sharing Stories from their sunnies in the not-too-distant future. But does that make this technology any less creepy to be seen to be using?

Imitation is flattery: just like Facebook copied Stories from Snapchat, it’s now doing the same to Snapchat’s Specs, which were themselves an evolution of Google Glass. I beta-tested Google’s version of this technology in 2013, and was an early user of Snapchat Specs four years later. I learnt a ton about how this technology could shape future use of social media, but how consumer-grade surveillance tech worn on your face is generally perceived by others, too.

Early lessons in wearable social media cameras: for a while, when this technology was new, it started emerging in the tech early adopter scene. My colleagues at Battenhall pushed it to its limits: we were sending clients out to events wearing Google Glasses, posting reportage style to social media, we researched the technology’s implications for society such as whether facial recognition or always-on watching was ok, and we noticed a fair amount of casual wearing of the devices as early as 2013/14 too. The below pic from Paul Gailey was posted from Google Glass to Google+, shared on Twitter while I was at an event in Manchester.

But the real world use of this generally started to become considered creepy. Or as tech commentator Kate Bevan put it this week, grim.

What to expect in the coming months: it’s perhaps time that cameras became even more pervasive than they are now, and that real world and social media content become even more entwined. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg espouses the metaverse more than anything else at the moment, so is this just the next logical step? More social media in front of your eyes? Zuck says so, that this is not the end game with Ray-Ban Stories, rather a step in the direction of augmented reality.

Weird for now, but so was all social media: take it from someone who has worn glasses like this in public a lot, the reaction you get from someone when you look at them with a secret but pretty obvious camera pointed right at them isn’t pleasant. Until it’s culturally OK to point a camera in someone’s face, Ray-Ban Stories will be seen as weird and will cause discomfort from those around the wearer. But once glasses get way smarter, and the real, digital, virtual and social worlds can become more intertwined, then this will get interesting.

One last observation on virtual worlds: I was in the audience for a live interview on Twitter with artist Beeple, who I wrote about earlier this year after his NFT sold for a record $69m. Beeple says, don’t think too deeply about Facebook / Ray-Ban glasses, we’re already in the metaverse - with our heads in our phones, we’re already in a virtual reality. He even said he sees spending so much time inside Twitter as being in a virtual reality. So maybe we’re deeper into the Matrix than we know.

Until the dystopian future arrives, we will just have another Ray-Ban shaped reason to wonder who’s really watching and how this information is all being used.

My must reads of the week

Here are some of the stories that I have been reading this week.

Platforms

• Discord hits eye watering $15bn valuation: time to dive into the audio / chatter / streaming platform after it raised $500m in funding.

• Deep dive into Telegram as a dark web: the FT looks at the dark activities taking place on messaging and groups network Telegram. Connected: a network selling fake vaccination cards exposed on Telegram.

• Green pages: WhatsApp plans launch of a directory of businesses on the platform.

• Snapchat hires first global safety officer: former Microsoft exec Jacqueline Beauchere joins Snap Inc.

Disinformation

• A ‘troll farm’ of 15,000 fake Facebook pages from Kosovo and Macedonia has been exposed, which were found to be reaching a weekly audience of 140 million people with disinformation during the last US general election.

• How extremists use TikTok to promote violence: US federal officials have explained how domestic extremists had used TikTok in the lead-up to Capitol Hill riots.

• How anti-vaxxers used Facebook to undermined healthcare: how ‘a cadre of antivaccine activists flooded the network with what Facebook calls “barrier to vaccination” content.’

Health

• Insta boss comes under fire for comparing social media’s safety concerns to car deaths: “…more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents, but by and large, cars create way more value in the world than they destroy, and I think social media is similar.” Ouch.

• Instagram’s negative impact on mental health: Facebook data shows a third of teenage girls say that Instagram negatively affects them.

• When Facebook staff find bad stuff: the WSJ obtained internal documents that show Facebook's weak response after staff flagged human traffickers and drug cartels.

Policy

• Tech industry reacts to new UK DCMS head: Boris Johnson has appointed Nadine Dorries to Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and tech pundits have not reacted positively.

• A look at how and whether humans should intervene in AI decision-making: ethics in AI is really hot topic, and includes what the social media algorithms show you. Connected: UN calls for changes in AI that affects human rights.

Interviews

• SEC chair Gary Gensler interviewed in NY Magazine: the article touches on regulation, crypto currencies and investment.

• Platformer interviews WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart: looking into whether content on WhatsApp should be reviewed by WhatsApp moderators.

• Live interview with NFT artist Beeple: the wide ranging chat was hosted on Twitter Spaces and now available to listen back. Touches on NFTs, virtual worlds, Twitter communities and future trends in branded digital content.

Updates

• I was interviewed for a LinkedIn Live this week on building a business with purpose. The recording is here.

• Battenhall has been shortlisted for a consultancy of the year 2021 award by The Drum.

• We’re hiring.

• Pics are coming in of our new Los Angeles office and I’m getting fomo from London…

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

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The business of safety online and protecting society from manipulation through social media is one of the most pressing themes around right now. This week, The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, took to the stage at a GQ event to address the issue, with a piece to camera which you can view here on how social media misinformation is affecting public safety, specifically through encouraging Covid vaccine hesitancy. Prince Harry has called for governments to intervene. This is a topic I’ve explored in some depth, especially how shady organisations are paying influencer to spread fake news.

Deciding what stays and what comes down on social media isn’t just formative to society, it’s also big business. Two connected movements on this topic form the last week are worth exploring in a bit more detail:

• Facebook is setting up a new commission to decide on content removal that affects election integrity, and…

• Facebook outsources $500m+ a year’s worth of content moderation to third parties such as Accenture.

Both these findings came about from separate investigations from the New York Times, and the latter story in particular is a long read that’s worth a few minutes of your time.

The thorny side of moderating social media: the content moderation investigation by the New York Times digs deep into the process of taking down harmful information from social media, which itself has to deal with vast volumes of information. Moderating content is a thorny business, with people who carry it out reporting PTSD due to the types of images and videos they have to watch all day every day. But political issues online are more nuanced. If even a video of a dog being skinned alive is not a clear cut case, according to one source quoted by NYTimes, how on earth does an outsourced content moderator decide whether a clandestine campaign, such as those we’ve seen during the Cambridge Analytica exposé, is real, fake, and whether it interferes in public opinion?

Did big social see this coming? Social media’s influence on elections is arguably the most contentious of exports that silicon valley has created. This is certainly the picture painted in a keynote delivered by Eric Schmidt which I attended in 2019, where the former Google CEO said: “the tech industry missed the disinformation issue and political interference - we didn't foresee how powerful information could be in democracy.” Hence, of course, why initiatives like the Facebook Oversight Board now exist. And why other social networks are considering them also.

This is why the news about Facebook laying plans to add another layer to its content moderation, specifically for elections, is so important. In the report published this week, NYTimes says that Facebook has begun speaking to academics about setting up the new independent election commission later this year.

Is government intervention a help or a hinderance? Back to pressure from public figures like this week’s appearance by Prince Harry, and whether it’s time for governments to intervene. This is a delicate issue of course, as election integrity on social media relies on political parties themselves and their involvement in the process. Elections are just around the corner in France, Germany and Brazil, for example. Whether outsourcing to a consultancy, to an independent advisory board, or to a government body, one thing that’s clear is that this is a problem that’s only building in prominence and visibility. That in itself actually has to be a good thing to educate the wider public, which is a major part of the solution.

My must reads of the week

Here are some of the stories that I have been reading this week.

Innovation

• Dom Hoffman has created a social network ‘like nothing you’ve ever seen’: a with a mix of social networking, gaming, NFTs and crypto, Platformer has this fascinating interview with the creator or Loot, and formerly Vine. When Casey Newton says that this was a rare tech interview where basically every fact of it surprised him, you know it’s worth your attention.

• China to set up startup innovation stock market: China's President says a new stock exchange in Beijing for innovation focused SMEs is coming.

Safety

• Twitter planning raft of new safety controls: such as hiding old tweets and follower privacy.

• Amazon is also scaling up content moderation: this is for sites hosted on Amazon’s servers.

Networks

• Washington Post is hiring two more people for its TikTok team: the newspaper is well respected for the TikTok content it churns out.

• Reddit going public: reports suggest Reddit is going to IPO, muscling in on big social, as it is hiring lawyers and bankers.

• Facebook explains how it helped people free Afghanistan: the social network also allows Afghans ‘one click lockdowns’ of accounts to prevent non-friends from seeing personal updates.

Law

• South Korea’s big experiment in app law: the move is about how small companies (ie app makers) can make money and grow, and is being watched closely by the market.

• China is limiting kids’ video game playing time to 3hrs per week: three days a week, one hour a day (Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings only).

NFTs

• An doge meme NFT broken into small parts has sold for $200m+ more than it was bought: in a move known as fractionalizaion, an NFT that was bought for $4m has been broken into 17 billion tokens and sold for a total of $221m.

• Talent agents are signing NFT brands: the next celebrities are artists who make NTFs it seems.

Interviews

• An interview with creator VC Li Jin: a figure I’ve been reading a ton about recently, by Taylor Lorenz. Touches on NFTs, influencers and the passion economy.

• There’s a global shortage in microchips: an interview with Harvard professor Willy Shih on what this means in phones, computers, cars and PS5s - it’s all about the impact on covid on factory facilities.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

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Last week I paid a visit to Glasgow. It’s going to be the host city to the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 this November, and this week of course the UN’s climate research made the news due to the release of the IPCC’s new report into climate change.

The city of Glasgow I’m sure will prove a compelling backdrop to the climate summit, with its shipbuilding past and striking industrial architecture. Whereas at its peak, Glasgow was manufacturing one in five of the world’s ships, today we are reading in the UN report that carbon emission reduction is the most pressing concern for society to avoid climate failure.

Scrolling through the social media feeds of experts and activists in order to guide my thinking on this report, a retweet from Greta Thunberg caught my eye. Whilst the UK is experiencing a typically drizzly summer, mainland Europe is seeing its hottest temperatures on record. Impeccable timing.

However, as you might expect, the social media ecosystem is filled with an array of perspectives on the topic of climate change, and they’re not all pointing in the same direction. With just a brief scroll further down by feeds, I found people sharing the news that temperatures aren’t that bad after all and that the ‘climate crisis’ is just a hoax.

Different perspectives on matters such as the environment will always exist and should come to be expected. Debate is key, of course. But hoaxers and propaganda, or worse, coordinated disinformation campaigns, are only making matters worse.

A reporter worth following on this matter is Marianna Spring at the BBC who is currently gathering information for a report on the how “the climate change report has triggered conversation falsely suggesting climate research is a hoax to limit freedoms in Covid conspiracy circles online.” Her research in this space I always think is worth a read.

But I think that ultimately here, it’s not what’s right or wrong, whose opinions surface more one than the other online, but rather that social media offers a huge platform to galvanise huge audiences to inspire action. The IPCC report shows some good news, in that if we reach net zero, according to the research, temperatures will stop rising. So it’s all to play for. What would it take to make that happen?

I’ve gathered for examples of people and organisations actually doing something about it and using social media to help this situation and to inspire. Here’s a rundown of some profiles you might want to follow and share so that you can infuse a bit of action into your social media feed.

• Everyday Climate Change: ‘a collective of six photographers from all over the world who are documenting the real effects of climate change.’

• EcoTok: ‘the environmentalists of TikTok’ posting content to educate and inspire.

• Regenerative Futures: ‘a Gen Z-designed model for a world built upon the principles of equity, fluidity, and sustainability.’

• Immy Lucas: runs a sustainability Instagram account about food and the outdoors.

• Intersectional Environmentalist: an Instagram account and community ‘exploring the intersections of social + the environment.'

• Nat Geo and Greta: I can’t put a list together on the environment and not mention the Nat Geo Insta or Greta’s Twitter. Both are amongst the leading voices online whether you’re talking environment or just reading the news, and with 177m followers (NatGeo) and 5m (Greta) they pack a punch.

My must reads of the week

Here are some of the stories that I have been reading this week.

Safety

• Instagram and Facebook kick out some anti-vax trolls: Facebook announced that after investigating a story which I and others reported on from June this year, it has kicked hundreds of fake social media profiles promoting dangerous anti-vax propaganda off Facebook and Instagram.

• TikTok tightens teen safety: TikTok users aged 13 to 17 will begin seeing greater safety measures put in place, including turning in-app messaging off by default.

• Racist abuse through Euro 2020 analysed by Twitter: 99% of the posts Twitter had to remove came from real people (ie non anonymous, but rather bullies and racists) and most of the posts came from the UK. I find this kind of info of huge importance to understanding where such vile behaviour comes from, and how to make strides to stop it happening in the future.

• Instagram launches anti hate speech controls: in the aftermath of The Euros, above, ‘the update is designed to protect its users, particularly creators and public features, from seeing harassing, racist, homophobic and sexist content in comments and DM requests.’

• US politician suspended from Twitter: for repeated Covid misinformation posts.

Networks

• Reddit is now worth $10bn: forums are hot property, and Reddit has just secured $410m in new investment, valuing it at the princely sum of 10 unicorns.

• Is it fair that Facebook has a monopoly on Gifs? Did you know Facebook owns Giphy? The UK’s CMA thinks it could be anti-competitive.

• Facebook ads may be changing: the social network says that a ‘meaningful’ pivot is on its way, and privacy could be the reason.

Creators

• A fascinating report into community NFT projects: “Earlier this week, I got attacked by penguins,” writes the NY Times’ Kevin Roose. A look at how initiatives like Pudgy Penguins have become a new kind of financial and social status symbol on the internet. Linked: “someone made $600K flipping a penguin NFT… because it faced the other way”!

• Creators leaving Snapchat’s spotlight feature: payments are reportedly drying up.

• Is the creator economy in a crisis? a long read on how decentralised social media has impacted creators, likening many to gig economy workers.

Streams

• Salesforce to launch corporate content streaming: like Discovery+ or Sky+ but for CRM, with a 50-person team behind it. What’s not to love.

• The business of pirate video sites: according to a study of over 6,000 pirated movies and TV sites / apps has shown that they rake in $1.3B per year from ads.

Workplaces

• Facebook’s US offices will not reopen until January: I’m genuinely fascinated by how high-performing tech and digital teams are working. Facebook’s office plans have flip-flopped a fair bit in recent months.

• Amazon to track staff for security reasons: “Amazon plans to monitor keyboard strokes and mouse movements of customer service staff to stop rogue workers or hackers accessing customer data.”

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

In this edition of The Social Media Report, I review the most recently announced data from the social networks, the newly-announced plans by governments to regulate disinformation and harmful content, and the attempts from independent institutions, the most notable being NYU, to explore how social networks have been misused at scale.

I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

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A greater understanding of how organised disinformation campaigns permeate on social media will benefit society. From general and presidential election interference, to more current anti-vax movements which I covered in June this year, large scale, heavily funded, organised social media cyber attacks are happening in plain sight, and research into how they are happening is of vital importance to the public.

This week, researchers from New York University’s Cybersecurity for Democracy project were suspended from Facebook. This was for their work on making data about political disinformation on Facebook more transparent and more widely covered. Facebook’s suspension of the researchers has sent ripples across the industry.

NYU’s work on making social media safer had gathered an influential audience. Nieman Labs calls it one of the best sources available to understand organised interference in society using social media. If you ask me, this kind of high profile research is critical to public safety. So why did Facebook do it?

According to the social network, NYU’s researchers were scraping Facebook data at scale in ways that are not allowed, according to terms and conditions. Facebook is claiming that this research essentially goes against user privacy.

NYU’s work is merely scraping the tip of the iceberg. Their team and the AdObserver project is looking at the use of advertising. More widely across social media, human-run fake Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and forum profiles spread disinformation at scale, and in my team’s research of this issue (highlights here) we are seeing equal if not higher levels of disinformation campaigns on organic social media as opposed to in ads.

The NYU researchers will not suffer too great a setback from Facebook’s block of their accounts I’m sure, but I hope that their gaze widens as they consider the way around this.

Alongside the publicity that research into disinformation is receiving, regulators are closing in. The Biden administration declared war on social media disinformation, accusing Facebook of killing people by allowing fake news campaigns to flow through its servers. Independent research had shown Americans who rely on Facebook for their news are less likely to get vaccinated. Separately, Ofcom has appointed its new ‘disinformation auditor’, and, the UK’s government has now announced its plans through the Digital Markets Unit for digital markets regulation, to protect consumers mainly through helping to clamp down on monopolistic activities. Which brings us on to the other pieces of news to come from social media in recent weeks, namely the increasing size of the largest of the social networks.

Facebook has announced over 3.51 billion active users of its family of products. This means that between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp ‘family’ of products, the company Facebook has a ‘monthly active people’ total of 3.51bn users, up 12% in the last year. Facebook also now has over 63,000 employees, that’s over 10,000 new staff added to the company in the last year - approx 20 new hires every day have been joining the company. Just under half of the world’s population uses Facebook’s family of apps, more than any other app or social network.

Facebook warned of a coming slowdown however, with analysts referring to changing world dynamics due to lockdowns ending, regulatory changes and privacy changes such as those being brought about by Apple. Reports in the Financial Times cite disinformation as a contributing factor to the possible Facebook slowdown. Time will tell just how much of an impact regulation will have, and what the social networks will look like as society’s understanding of the current disinformation situation improves.

My must reads

Here are some of the stories that I have been reading.

New rules

• The Federal Trade Commission intervenes in FB’s NYU ban: statement from the bureau chief calls out Facebook’s actions as disappointing.

• Instagram to make teen accounts private by default: following in TikTok’s footsteps from earlier in the year.

• Instagram and Facebook to limit teen targeting: after reports that alcohol brands have been able to target teens, advertisers on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger will no longer be able to market to under 18s based on their interests.

• How Reddit self-moderates: a look at a different way to police content online from the Reddit ‘moderation army’.

New platforms

• TikTok trials Stories: copies wholeheartedly, er, everyone else.

• Twitter trashes Stories: deciding that its ‘Fleets’ don’t really work on Twitter, the social network admirably ditches the format.

• Snapchat moves into local discovery: Snap Maps to give recommendations on where to eat and drink.

• Metaverse: the thing discussed most notably by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook’s earnings briefing last month was the company’s big focus on ‘the metaverse’ - ie virtual and augmented reality.

Interviews

• An interview in Wired with Middle East social media rights and advocacy group on censorship in the region: Mona Shtaya of 7amleh talks about silencing of Palestinians earlier in the year on social media.

• NY Times interviews influential lawmaker on social media regulation: “Representative David Cicilline's bipartisan package takes aim at tech companies and would be the biggest antitrust reform in decades.”

• How artists and game makers are pushing virtual worlds such as Roblox to new levels: The Verge interviews a range of creators.

• Former FB integrity head talks about employee-silencing: goes against transparency and promotes ‘unchecked power’ says Yael Eisenstat.

Funds

• Dispo lands big funding and ‘second shot at being an Instagram killer’: great to see one of my favourite apps doing well.

• Email and productivity app does VC pitches differently: British founder of Superhuman talks of how he raised $75m by doing only one-on-one chats, no big pitches.

• Record number of unicorns: the FT reports that the number of tech startups valued at $1bn+ has grown at a record pace this year, led by the US and Asia.

• Wellness apps booming: London wellness app developer secures $100m series B funding.

Tech trends

• Amazon drone deliveries dropping: Wired looks at the ‘slow collapse’ and redundancies.

• Reducing screen time: a very topical issue is how platforms promote balance. China’s Tencent says that it will be limiting playing time on its big title, Honor of Kings down to one hour a day and not at all at night for under-18s.

• How Facebook is using AI to understand encrypted information without unencrypting it: interesting, as messages are encrypted.

• How tech companies are achieving flexible work: a huge debate right now, with some organisations allowing work from home, some not, and others doing a half and half, Cal Newport argues in The New Yorker that companies really need to change how work is done and how it is managed (which I wholeheartedly agree with).

Updates

• Buzzing to have been awarded a few trophies since the last edition of this newsletter. Battenhall was named Social Media Consultancy of the Year 2021 at the Global Digital Excellence Awards and the UK Digital Growth Awards.

• There’s a number of vacancies I’m hiring for in our team as we expand. Details here.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

Subscribe now

Quantifying the deadly impact of Covid disinformation: reports published by the BBC and Forbes over the last year have looked to quantify the deadly impact of Covid disinformation on social media. The BBC has the number in the hundreds, Forbes in the thousands. The real number will be almost impossible to ascertain, but one thing that is certain is that bad information in the wrong hands is deadly.

Covid disinformation takes a dark turn: this is an area I have been researching for many years now, and disinformation has risen to the fore again in recent weeks with an unprecedented dark turn. Generally speaking, the examples of fake news online you will see day to day are typically low in profile and large in number, so alone tend not to be so startling that they are newsworthy. Alone, few single examples of organised disinformation campaigns online warrant the raising of an eyebrow.

In recent weeks, however, we saw a definite double eyebrow raising example of the lengths some will go to in order to spread fake news.

A Russia-linked, London-based social media agency began contacting German and French social media influencers asking them to share a smear campaign for seemingly unlimited “colossal” financial rewards. “Very interesting: an agency contacts me and asks if I want to be part of an “information campaign”,” the below tweet from German influencer reads. “It's about sharing a link to allegedly leaked documents on Coronavirus vaccination deaths. For money. Agency headquarters: London. Residence of the CEO: Moscow.”

You might hope that the high profile social media creators and influencers that were approached would both know their stuff and have integrity - and it appears that was the case, as they called out this approach publicly. Whilst none of the initial influencers who were approached appear to have publicly fallen for this big-budget smear campaign, I would be keen to know who else was being sent such offers for paid posts. But, as I have found when researching this area in the past, it’s not the high profile influencers that will go for something like this, but the less well versed may do. Not so many in number, but some will. Then the fake accounts, made to look real, are often behind the promotion of the fake news, and that can propel the disinformation to the millions.

The spotlight turns to the marketing company approaching the influencers: with the influencers who were approached quickly blowing the whistle, the spotlight turned to the ‘influencer marketing’ company that is behind it all. Quickly, Fazze.com has taken down swathes of content including the ‘contact us’ section from its website.

Social media influencers receive requests to be paid to share promotional messages more often than you might think. The sheer volume of unsolicited pitches that are sent out on a daily basis is eye watering. The higher profile pitches come with money attached, whereby the influencer is offered cash in return for social media posts, which is a delicate area to navigate. This is why institutions such as the ASA and Ofcom try to regulate through standards and rules for best practice. But many slip through the net.

Based on research carried out on the wording used in the pitches sent to social media influencers, I would imagine that a feasible set-up for the Pfizer smear campaign scenario is as follows:

• A competitor to Pfizer would like its Covid vaccine to be promoted online, and discrediting Pfizer would help its chances of success.

• A fake influencer marketing website is set up as a vehicle to send pitches to influencers, to disguise the Pfizer competitor’s intentions.

• Light research into all of the above shows the countries and even organisations behind the set-up, through CEOs’ locations, wording from materials and techniques applied. “French media have pointed to the similarities between [this disinformation campaign’s messaging] and the official Twitter account of Russia’s Sputnik V – a viral vector vaccine like AstraZeneca – which has repeatedly claimed “real world data” shows they are “safer and more efficient” than mRNA vaccines.”, says The Guardian.

Safety nets for information online: creating safer systems for society online is something I feel passionately about, and educating users of the harms that are spread online, often not just by mere trolls, but organised groups, is key to raising awareness and helping solve the problem. But let’s see faster and more thorough intervention of examples such as this, so that it is a precedent for all the right reasons.

My must reads from this week

Here are the stories that I have been reading this week.

Political figures

• Facebook decides on two-year ban for Trump: this was passed from Facebook to its oversight board and back again, with the final decision coming just yesterday.

• Nigeria blocks access Twitter after its president’s tweets deleted: President Buhari’s tweets which were making threats to the southeastern part of the country were deleted by Twitter.

• Trump pulls plug on blog: the blog, which was designed to bypass bans from places like Twitter and Facebook, has been permanently shut now, just a month after it launched.

• Linked to the above - Facebook changes rules for politicians: this will have a huge impact on political discourse and campaigning online.

Regulation of social media

• EU and UK antitrust probes launched: on Facebook specifically for the way it promotes its own services.

• They’re regulating all wrong: a long read in MIT Tech Review argues that data privacy violations from one company on one individual are pretty insignificant. But to groups or humanity as a whole is profound. Regulation should be of a certain treatment of data, not of companies directly.

• Indian government vs social media part one: Twitter is stating that the Indian government is using "intimidation tactics" to police what it wants taken down from social media, and the social network is pushing for change.

• Indian government vs social media part two: big tech, social networks and messaging apps are starting to comply with India's new tech rules that request such companies share contact details of the person responsible for compliance / content removal queries (most of them, but not yet Twitter).

New systems

• Twitter audio ‘Spaces’ arrive on desktops: you can now listen into the Clubhouse clone on Twitter desktop, broadening its reach.

• Facebook launching a newsletter: called Bulletin. The hot tickets on social media right now, audio and newsletters.

Influencers

• Report shows undisclosed political work with TikTok influencers: how TikTok’s political influencers have been using a ‘back door’ in report which criticises the social network for its ‘shady’ influencer marketing.

• Does anyone ever win those Instagram giveaways? A popular technique for lower-level influencers to gain followers is to run competitions. An investigation has looked into whether anyone actually wins.

Privacy

• US visa applicants’ social media activity to be privatised again: Biden’s administration is winding back a proposal from the Trump-era to request social media handles from those applying for a Visa.

Speeding up

• WhatsApp voice notes can now be sped up: click the 1.5x or 2x button next to voice notes that you’ve been left and they will speed up, saving valuable seconds. This is probably the most talked-about tech newness of the week here at Battenhall HQ.

• Are 2x speed presentations the new way of reducing the time to absorb information? This article in TechCrunch caught my eye, because I love technology made by Phil Libin. I noticed he is now having meetings at his company recorded in advanced for him, then he’s watching them at 2x speed “because people can listen faster than people can talk” and that he has “stopped doing synchronous updates … we don’t have meetings anymore where people take turns updating each other because it’s not very efficient.”

Long reads

• Social robots for the old and lonely: they’re like pets, but need batteries instead of Pedigree Chum. The New Yorker’s 39-minute listen if you prefer to hear this long read rather than read it is a fascinating deep look into AI’s role as a companion to humanity. I’ve had it on in the background while writing this newsletter today. Bonus read: AI is reading our emotions all wrong. We’re doomed!

• Zoom has somehow been painted as the villain of the pandemic: this article in The Atlantic explores why, and how we’ll miss it when it’s gone.

• How Jersey managed to get its residents vaccinated: HBR explores the messaging and techniques used by The British Isle, Jersey, in order to explain why getting vaccinated is a good idea. It all lies in one word: because.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

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The UK government has made its move to regulate social media. The new Online Safety Bill is lined up to give regulator Ofcom the power ban social networks if they put a foot wrong, impose criminal offence against senior executives, and levy fines of up to $13bn.

The new regulatory framework is a pincer movement. It aims to both shield users from harm, and also to protect political content from removal. Social media content that will need to be removed will include posts that are abusive, illegal, terrorism-related, harmful to children or harmful to adults. And at the same time social networks will be asked to apply “protections equally to a range of political opinions, no matter their affiliation.” Just wait for the next major political election and see how social media moderators decide what’s political and harmful and therefore ok to leave up.

This will be a minefield for social media moderators, seeking to define what content is illegal, harmful or abusive, while at the same time protecting free speech, all the while dealing with the looming threat of a jail sentence, nationwide bans and material fines if the decision-makers in the social networks fall foul.

Abusive and illegal behaviour online has long been the bane of social media platforms, but in reality, not all harmful activity is plain to see. With millions of posts removed every hour of every day by Facebook and Instagram alone, more is left up online in the margins, awaiting reports by users who just don’t bother to, or even worse, dwelling in the murky middle ground between innocuous and invasive. In this category of harmful content you will see posts that are plain inappropriate, disguised spam, plagiarised, mildly offensive, stolen or simply fake.

This is where the social networks and the new legislations will fail. I have reported more content like this that is clear, to me, to be causing harm, but to the naked eye of a moderator of a social network is totally fine. I give some specific examples in this section of my TED talk on this topic, in particular on how an organised Russian campaign disguised as British tweets sought to destabilise Western governments through propaganda.

Therein lies the problem. And also the solution. I spend a good proportion of my time helping my clients to protect themselves online. This includes FTSE 100 CEOs, company spokespeople that put their heads above the parapet, regular everyday colleagues and the brands they represent alike. These people suffer all kinds of abuse online every day, which tend to come from all angles. Sometimes abuse is driven by personal or political beliefs, sometimes it comes from a vested interest of some kind, and sometimes abuse appears come via a coordinated attack. But often, attacks are left online as they are borderline, often they are disguised, and often there isn’t someone like me working to protect the victim.

Which is why the success of new regulation will come from education, not moderation. The social networks are already running moderate machines, and it’s not easy. The people working in moderation teams have it hard, too, as a Facebook employee shared just this week in an interview on the topic. Education on all sides will be the answer, to help the average user of a social network to spot an actual online harm, and report it, as well as educating the masses on the repercussions and impact of abuse online.

In the coming weeks we will see this new regulation take shape, and it is certain fines will be levied on the social networks. I will be interested to see what infringements will trigger Ofcom intervention. Will it be the curtailing of political discourse, overseas influence promoting disinformation, or just some digital hooliganism. Time will tell.

My must reads from this week

Here are the stories that I have been reading this week.

Safety

• China is clamping down on social networks, bans LinkedIn competitor: China has ordered domestic app stores to remove 90 apps, including Maimai, a LinkedIn rival.

• Instagram and Twitter have apologised for deleting pro-Palestine posts: they have blamed tech glitches with their algorithms.

• We call if fanning the flames: research shows that confronting trolls worsens the harassment they inflict, something I’ve experienced and can support.

• Snapchat bans anonymous apps over safety: anonymous Q&A apps Yolo and LMK taken off Snapchat after lawsuit over teen’s death.

Creators

• The new rules of the creator economy: a look by The Economist on how YouTubers, Instagrammers and TikTokers are shaping the business world.

• TikTok and infomercials: the app is working on ecommerce.

Audio

• Facebook begins testing its Clubhouse competitor: the social network is rolling out live audio in Facebook Groups.

• The blue tick’s evil cousin on Clubhouse: The Atlantic writes: “On Clubhouse, a black badge was meant to identify trolls. It’s become an emblem of the app’s dysfunctional moderation system.”

Money

• Dogecoin developers and Elon Musk: looks like, after announcing that Tesla cars cannot be bought using Bitcoin due to its harmful effects on the environment, Elon Musk is working with the developers behind Bitcoin.

• Facebook’s digital currency project, Diem, formerly called Libra, focuses on US: plans have been abandoned to secure a payment license from the Swiss watchdog.

AI

• Facebook is working on an AI that knows what to forget: kind of like when we chose to pay attention and when we let it go, and it improves intelligence.

• Google plans to double the size its AI ethics team: that will be 200 researchers at Google focused on ethics in artificial intelligence.

Long reads

• Long read on Chamath Palihapitiya and SPACs: really worth a read - “Today it seems almost every rich, underemployed man with a bit of name recognition has raised, or is raising, a SPAC, seeking to earn a big payday by finding a company to buy. There are SPACs advised by retired athletes (Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O’Neal), SPACs advised by washed-up politicians (Paul Ryan, John Delaney), and one SPAC advised by a dream team of NBA great David Robinson and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist…. Chamath Palihapitiya—tech billionaire, Golden State Warriors co-owner, and all-around meme lord—has a sure-thing, 100%, can’t-miss investment for you that will definitely, absolutely pay off for him.”

• The Decoder podcast hosts professor and researcher of Facebook’s moderation moves, Kate Klonick: an insightful chat about the Facebook Oversight Board, Trump and brands. It goes deep into the inner workings of social media moderation, and the types of characters involved. Should Facebook be trying to create a moral, legal, spiritual justification for a the figures it chooses to remove? Is this right, real, or a big distraction? Or should ever social network have an oversight board? These are things Klonick says these are all she’s been thinking about for the last two years, all on her own. Well, hi Kate!

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall. Drew advises brands, organisations and governments on social media strategies, lectures on social media at The American University of Paris, and wrote the first page on Social Media on Wikipedia in 2006. Drew has been named the UK’s most respected social media consultant by NMA and was given the outstanding contribution award by the PRCA in 2020, and his consultancy, Battenhall, has been named UK and global consultancy of the year 2021.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

I also have as usual my must-read articles of the week. Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

Subscribe now

What harm is social media truly inflicting on younger generations? Three Oxford University surveys of over 400,000 people were released this week, and they show that social media has had no greater an affect mental health than TV in the 90’s.

We’ve all seen The Social Dilemma. We all know screens deprive you of sleep and give you square eyes. We know why Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have to remove so much harmful content every hour of every day. We would all be forgiven for thinking there’s more harm than good on social media today.

But this latest piece of research from Oxford University has looked back 30 years, and it looks in particular at screens, from TV to phones to social networks, which have long been associated with negative effects on wellbeing. The report shows no ‘smoking gun’ link between the use of technology and mental health issues, and no evidence that technologies have become more harmful over time. It’s great to see all’s well in the world, but I do find we’re dealing with extremes, and when polling half a million people, the outliers fade into insignificance.

Online harms are in the balance: this whole topic is an area I spent a considerable amount of my time over the last two years researching. On Facebook alone, bullying and harassment has caused content removals to double from Q3 2020 to Q4 2020, up from 3.5m posts requiring removal, to 6.3m. That’s 3,000 posts an hour deemed to be breaking the rules on harassment grounds requiring removal from Facebook alone. On Instagram it was a similar story, doubling in the last three months of 2020 from 2.6m to 5m. But amid the trolls and the bots, the fake news and the online harms, I do feel that social media brings more good to us than bad, and it’s down to education, not regulation, to protect people from the harmful content they could see.

The extremes, I would say, are where this story lies, and where our end game should be. The research team at Oxford paint the perfect picture themselves: ‘These results don’t mean that technology is all good for teens, or all bad, or getting worse for teenagers or not. Even with some of the larger data sets available to scientists, it is difficult  conclusively to determine the roles of technologies in young people’s lives, and how their impacts might change over time.’

We need to keep working on ways to mitigate harm from the negative effects of social media on our health, and accentuate the good. Resting on what laurels Oxford’s research brings is not enough. You can watch my TED talk on this topic here, which went up on TED.com last year.

My must reads from this week

Here are the stories that I have been reading this week.

World leaders and social media

• Facebook’s final oversight decisions go to Clegg: an in depth look by the NY Times at Nick Clegg and his role in overseeing the decision over whether Donald Trump should be on Facebook. The former British deputy prime minister has carved out an influential role at the heart of silicon valley.

• 49,000 surveyed on how to deal with rule-breaking world leaders: in a survey carried out by Twitter, which aims to improve on how the network, and ultimately others, treat those in power.

• Twitter has suspended a new Trump-linked Twitter account: the social network has suspended an account with the username @DJTDEsk which was reportedly created by Trump's staff to post updates from his new website. Trump had let it be known that he planned releasing tweet-like statements on his own website, which he then hoped would be circulated on Twitter and other social networks.

Creators

• Clubhouse has announced creator programme shortlist: the new Creator First programme from Clubhouse will involve funding a set of shows, and the shortlist includes an internet scavenger hunt show, a food panel show, a k-pop show and serial killer speed dating.’ Whether you’ve tried the social network or not, the list of top creators is worth reading for the sheer creativity.

• Snapchat Creator Marketplace unveiled: Snap has announced that it will launch a creator marketplace within weeks which will matchmake brands with influencers and people who make lenses.

• Facebook funds journalist newsletters to the tune of $5m: the social network’s plan is to help independent writers attract an audience and make money through the social media network.

Launches

• Facebook unveils Neighborhoods: FB’s new addition is for location-based social networking, like it’s 2012 all over again. Exclusive launch taking place in North America only.

• TikTok launches sound-sharing tech: TikTok has announced new tools for developers, which include a login kit that would to let users sign into apps using their TikTok account and for sound sharing.

Video

• Streaming video ads to rise 40% this year in the US: a report by eMarketer shows that US advertisers are expected to spend $11.4bn on streaming TV ads on services such as Hulu in 2021, up from $8.1bn last year.

• Netflix ‘N-Plus’ teased through user research: Netflix is polling users about some quite telling topics, which include podcasts and user-generated playlists of shows and music.

Business

• Southeast Asia sees booming social commerce market: research by Bain & Co show s that buying though social media accounted for 44% of Southeast Asia's e-commerce market in 2020, with Vietnam and Thailand leading the way.

• How Facebook’s working to repair its reputation: a fascinating read on Mark Zuckerberg's plan to repair Facebook's image through talking about product more than policy, and upping his media appearances.

• Data wars: with Apple’s new opt in system, reports show startlingly few users are choosing to share their data. This is proving troublesome for the app makers whose data troves have been a source of value and power, which is worth keeping a close eye on. The near future will be markedly different to the present with specific regard to how data is gathered and used on phone and app users. Worth a read: Apple takes on the Internet, from the FT.

• Google’s new office work policy announced: CEO Sundar Pichai released a memo to staff about how staff are expected to work in the future, with 20% of staff fully remote, 20% to move offices, and 60% to return to offices a few days a week.

Smart cities

• Trackers, locks, paths and Amazon: Amazon has announced a partnership Tile and smart lock maker Level to beef up its street-level mesh network. Think doorbells, locks, people and parcels all creating a digital network.

• Spy chiefs look at smart city cyber threats: the FT looks into the safety concerns over smart cities: “The NCSC advice, seen by the FT, does not name any companies or countries of concern. But China is a lead supplier of smart city technology, which uses networks of cameras and sensors to improve the efficiency of services from parking and transport to energy use.”

Other stuff

• Harvard PhD Evelyn Douek interviewed by Wired on why social media must be moderated: “It’s time to recognise that the First Amendment–inflected approach to online speech governance that dominated the early internet no longer holds. Instead, platforms are now firmly in the business of balancing societal interests.”

• How audio social media is used in the Middle East: the NY Times looks at new data from SensorTower which shows Clubhouse is being used in the Middle East. The app has been downloaded 1.1M times in the region, where its users see it as an open forum to discuss politics and taboo issues.

• Brain-computer interface startup rings changes: change afoot at Neuralink, which has lost its cofounder (the other, a certain Elon Musk, is still there).

• The case for moving back to your hometown: a long read from The Atlantic. I did this 12 years ago, leaving London, and never looked back.

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.

Subscribe below if you’ve been sent this, and you’ll get every edition soon as it’s out.

Subscribe now

AI determines what we see and why we see it. Now it will be regulated to reduce harm. This week, the European Commission launched a ‘first ever’ legal framework for regulating artificial intelligence technologies. The AI framework, unveiled by executive vice-president and chief digital lawmonger Margarethe Vestager, is dressed up to be some kind of launchpad or incubator. Its very title, ‘Excellence and trust in artificial intelligence’, suggests a new set of tools to take AI to the next level, and the website talks of EU funded projects in AI. But this is a first of a kind set of limitations, fines and bans for uses of AI that could be harmful to society, and even that subliminally affect people.

There’s more to this AI regulation than meets the eye. This framework will pick on the relatively easier to regulate uses of AI that apply to businesses, like CV screening that is biased, or toys that harm children. Those will bed in, then this framework will easily be able to expand to cover screening of social media content that is biased, or social media content that harms children. This, I think, will be goal: regulate AI and social media in one play.

What counts as AI, and what will be the impact on social media? Setting frameworks is key to providing safety, and nowhere more so, if you ask me of course, than on social media. Social networks use sophisticated machine learning, which is AI, to make use of data on their users to decide what to show them. Social networks read what we type, they see where we search, and they know what we like. They use this information, turned into hordes of data, and use it to improve their products, and keep us scrolling, clicking, following and buying. An example of this can be seen below, in one of my must-reads from this week, where in China the government there is swooping in specifically on data troves. So how will social media’s use of AI and the algorithm change in the future? One word: safety.

Algorithms for screening are in the spotlight: the European Commission has said that this new AI framework will look specifically at how AI is being used for screening. Specifically, screening applicants for jobs in companies is one example, but screening what information people are shown, for example on a social network, is a clear, close comparison. When we buy a newspaper, or watch television, it’s the same for all. But open a browser, and we are being shown information that subliminally affects us, and can cause harm as well as bring about good, which is why I believe we will see the algorithms changing as soon as this framework clunks into gear.

Examples are already coming to light of social networks’ fair use of data and AI. For example, TikTok is being sued for several billion pounds for allegedly ‘illegally collecting the personal information of millions of children in the UK and Europe.’ This information includes biometrics, contact details and behaviours, and the case contends that this information is shared with unknown third parties for profit.

Going back to one of the two examples the AI framework gives of unacceptable uses of AI - the encouragement of dangerous behaviour in children - I think that an absolutely fundamental element of the new AI framework will need to be the safety of children consuming digital and social media content. From screen time addiction and advertising guidelines, to inappropriate content and dangerous memes which AI pushes to users, I personally think that regulation’s biggest impact here will be the safety of future generations.

My must reads from this week

Here are the stories that I have been reading this week.

Health

• How social media is being used for sharing healthcare information in India: crowdsourcing online is being used to locate free beds in hospitals.

• India orders Twitter to remove critical posts by users: the social network has been requested by the Indian Government to take down tweets, such as this one, that criticise the nation’s handling of the Covid crisis.

• Facebook contractor pens damning note on mental healthcare of social media moderators: a ‘blistering’ internal note wonders ‘how much policies would change if Mark Zuckerberg and other executives at social media companies had to sit and do content moderation for even just one 8-hour shift.says that.’

Sport

• How social media shaped European Football’s week of ‘utter chaos’: twelve clubs announced the formation of a European Super League, but within 48hrs we saw a spectacular collapse. As the FT puts it, football is based on community, not mutiny, and social media reaction sparked a turning points in negotiation talks.

Audio

• A look behind TikTok’s viral music process: the social network is paying musicians’ university fees, amongst other things.

• Facebook working on a music integration service: Project Boombox is reported to be building audio features where users can engage in real-time conversations with others.

• Spotify turns 15 - how the music industry has evolved: a look back by Variety on the impact Spotify has made on audio and music.

Data

• China is forecast to hold one third of the world’s data by 2025: new laws coming in show how China is looking to create a market for its data to propel growth.

• Facebook accidentally sends data policies to a journalist: “Longer term,” Facebook said, “we expect more scraping incidents and think it's important to both frame this as a broad industry issue and normalize the fact that this activity happens regularly.”

• Data analytics automation firm secures $35m investment: I really like this space. Data analytics is a growth area and automating it like Unsupervised is doing will be powerful for brands.

Politics

• How global governments are moving to limit the power of tech companies: from the US and Europe to China, The New York Times notes that there’s now an urgency and breadth “that no single industry has experienced before.”

• Trump’s last social media memorial of a post is still a troll fest: the LA Times looks at the discussion still burning brightly in the comments under Donald Trump’s very last Facebook post which is still up online.

Long reads

• An in-depth look at the ‘incredible rise’ of North Korea's hacking army: The New Yorker looks into North Korea’s extensive and expanding hacking operations, almost always focused on generating revenue for the closed-off country.

• Is Clubhouse a venture capital experiment? PR Ed Zitron looks at length into Clubhouse, how it lacks the virality of Twitch, Snapchat, and Discord: “I believe that Clubhouse is A16Z's experiment in their own venture ecosystem, to take a company and pump money and time into it to make it worth billions of dollars.”

The Social Media Report is written by Drew Benvie, founder & CEO of Battenhall.

You can follow The Social Media Report on Twitter at @TheSMReport. Suggestions for stories can be emailed to db@battenhall.com. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.