#SocialRecap 14: Over 58 Million Twitter Accounts Suspended, Movie Piracy on Facebook & More News!

Chia Chia
Updated March 20, 2024
8 min read

#SocialRecap 14 brings you a fresh dose of news and feature updates from the top platforms and tools in social media that we all love to use: YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and more. Keep up with important trends and relevant changes so you can make the most of your social media!

Now, here’s the latest rundown!

1. YouTube Has a New Copyright Match Tool for Busy Video Creators

After you upload a new, original video to the YouTube Creator Studio, YouTube’s Copyright Match Tool will search the platform for any identical uploads. If a match is found, the original YouTube Creator who uploaded the video will receive a notification.

What you need to know about YouTube’s Copyright Match Tool:

  1. You have to be the first person to upload the video, since matching and original videos are determined by the time of upload.
  2. Only matching uploads that are full videos will be shown, so you won’t be notified if short snippets of your video are used.
  3. The tool will show you matching videos that have at least 25 views.

For now, the Copyright Match Tool will be available to YouTube Creators who have a minimum of 100,000 subscribers. After a pilot period, it will be extended to all creators in the YouTube Partner program.

2. ‘Safe’ to Share Pirated Movies in Facebook Groups

Speaking of matching videos, Facebook Groups have grown to become a popular source of pirated movies. And this includes uploads of full movies directly to Facebook Groups, not just links to illegal copies. So what’s being done about this?

Not much, it appears. Technically, it’s the copyright owner’s responsibility to report this in the first place, and as long as Facebook can say that it wasn’t aware of these activities, they’re free to pass the buck as they bear no liability.

Not that Facebook hasn’t been busy recently, with a long to-do list full of changes and updates that need to be made on the platform. Most of these changes are related to user data security, ad transparency, as well as appropriate ad targeting – movie piracy just doesn’t seem to be a priority, at least not yet. But as sharing pirated movies becomes increasingly common across Facebook Groups, they may need to find a way to deal with this and come up with some regulations that restrict movie piracy – soon.

FYI: It took me all of 2 seconds to enter “Deadpool 2” into the search field in Facebook and come up with a bunch of results like this:

3. How Facebook Determines What Changes and Updates Its Users Get

So how does Facebook decide what kind of platform changes are important and have priority over others (like movie piracy)?

According to the Facebook Newsroom, changes to the platform are totally shaped by users. The task of obtaining user feedback that ultimately shapes the platform is led by the Facebook user research team. Like most tech companies, Facebook’s user research team relies on a combination of techniques for collecting and processing feedback. This includes surveys, focus groups, observing user sessions, conducting interviews, and other proven ways of getting user feedback.

“A lot of what user research is trying to do is help the product designers and engineers really understand who they’re building for and what their needs and wants are” – David Ginsberg, user research team leader for the Facebook App.

The ability to filter, aggregate and understand user research is key here, especially in terms of:

  • what people are talking about specifically when they mention ‘Facebook’.
  • peaks and valleys in positive and negative sentiment when talking about topics related to Facebook – and what causes them.

The chart above shows you important user feedback metrics that have been obtained via social listening. Tracking online mentions of terms like ‘Facebook’ together with ‘features’ and ‘buttons’ provides you with useful data that helps you see the bigger picture regarding what users really think about this platform and its features.

  • The blue line tells us the number of times these terms were mentioned on specific dates.
  • The green line tells us how much social media reach these mentions had.
  • The yellow line shows us how many of these mentions were positive.
  • The red line informs us on the number of negative mentions.
  • Get data for your own user research inside Brand24. Sign up here for a 2-week free trial.

For a long time, Facebook had been getting requests to create a ‘dislike’ button, but when the research team took a closer look at the user feedback, they realized it wasn’t really about being able to ‘dislike’ something. What they found was that Facebook users just didn’t feel like they had enough options to express themselves in general.

Adding a single ‘dislike’ button wouldn’t have improved user satisfaction much. Taking a closer look at the data and running a deeper analysis of user feedback is why we have 5 more reaction buttons today, instead of just a thumbs up, and without a dislike button that would just spread more negativity online.

4. Google’s Lead Chip Developer to Join Facebook (Leaving Google!)

Facebook is really much more than a social media platform, though. Its changes and expansions reach far beyond reaction buttons and what happens inside Facebook Groups. Their latest move has them developing their own custom processor chips to power server and consumer hardware.

Instead of depending on big brand external suppliers, like Intel or Qualcomm, Facebook is working on making this technology available internally. This seems to be a popular business trend, as companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are also expanding their tech teams to increase their own in-house capabilities.

Facebook’s custom chip development will be getting a hand from Google’s lead chip developer Shahriar Rabii. Shahriar led the team at Google in the development of the Visual Core chip for the Pixel, but as we can see on LinkedIn, he’ll soon be joining the team at Facebook, where he’s signed on as their new Vice President and Head of Silicon.

5. Instagram Stories Adds Another New Feature: Question Stickers

As some of you might remember from the last Recap, Instagram was recently pretty happy to announce that Instagram Stories has reached 400 Million daily active users. Naturally, this means they’re working hard to add more features that support Stories.

First, they came up with shopping bag stickers that made Stories shoppable. Then, they added music stickers to make Stories more musical. And now, they’ve come out with question mark stickers, making Stories more interactive.

Basically, when a user creates a new Story on Instagram, they can now paste a Question sticker inside. Viewers can then tap on the sticker to ask you questions during your story.

You’ll be able to see a private list of viewer submitted questions, and you can respond to them in a new story, without revealing who asked what.

6. Visual Search May Be Coming to Snapchat – and It’s Directly Connected to Amazon

With so many updates coming from Instagram and their amazing growth, it was only a matter of time before Snapchat came up with an update of their own, and this one’s a doozy. A potential new visual search feature was recently spotted inside the Snapchat code on Android.

The visual search tool is called Eagle, and it’s directly connected to Amazon. This is how it works: when users take a picture of an object or its barcode, Eagle will automatically take them to the item’s location on Amazon, where it can immediately be purchased.

And advancements in Search won’t just be visual – it looks like the tool will also be connected to Shazam and other partners, so Snap users can search for songs in additional to images, too.

7. Twitter Tests New Ad Space in Your Trends List

Twitter is currently testing new ad space inside your Trends list. These Promoted Trend Spotlight Ads will allow advertisers to display their advertisements right at the top of your Trends list, so that they appear before any actual, organic trends.

Disney is one of the first to try this, with the promotion of their latest film “Christopher Robin”. They’re combining this newfound ad visibility with a cute Twitter campaign that includes Tweets from various Winnie the Pooh characters.

8. Over 58 Million Twitter Accounts Get Suspended – Including Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks

On a more serious note, besides testing new ad space, Twitter has also been wiping out user accounts on a massive scale. Over 58 Million Twitter accounts were suspended by the end of 2017, in relation to spreading disinformation during the last presidential campaigns.

According to Statista, Twitter had 336 million monthly active users in Q1 of 2018, meaning that 58 million accounts is over 17% of its total users, or almost 1/5th.

After twelve indictments were handed out against 12 Russian Intelligence agents just a couple weeks ago, well-known accounts belonging to Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks have now been added to the list of suspended accounts.

Guccifer 2.0 had directed his followers straight to DC Leaks after that account publicly revealed a number of e-mails stolen from prominent political figures back in June of 2016. Both accounts were expressly named for their involvement in cyber attacks aimed at obtaining and leaking private information during the last presidential elections.

Screenshot of suspended account for Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter

Keep up with the latest news and updates in social media and digital marketing

Whenever there’s breaking news in our industries or a brand new feature is introduced, our social media and digital marketing strategies need to be adjusted. The #SocialRecap helps you stay up to date on game-changing news from all over social media, and keep an eye on key trends in SMM.

Get fresh insights, find out what’s trending in digital marketing, and learn more about new developments and top highlights in social media inside each new Recap.

Available in 4 different formats:

  1. As a recurring column here on the Brand24 blog – for readers.
  2. On Facebook, as a mini Recap featuring just the headlines plus a few fun facts (2-3 min) – for listeners + viewers.
  3. On YouTube, as a video news segment that goes a little more into detail (5-10 min) – for listeners + viewers.
  4. On Soundcloud, as the #SocialRecap podcast (same length as the YT version, but only audio) – for listeners.

Are there any other topics, tools, or platforms that you want to see in the Recap? Drop us a line (chia@brand24.com) and we’ll dig into it in the next #SocialRecap!

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Chia Lee
Chia Lee
Content Manager
Digital Marketing expert and passionate. Video creator and producer. Chia has written and created most of the Brand24 educational materials, social listening guidebooks, and trend analyses. She is the person you want to ask how to implement something into your digital marketing strategy.

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