Monetizing social is the next challenge, said syndication executives from Live With Kelly and Mark, The Drew Barrymore Show, Sony and Fox at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025 conference last week.
The Supreme Court will hear an array of legal arguments involving social media’s free speech wars this term with a series of dicey cases that could reshape how public officials and U.S. government agencies operate online. On Tuesday, the court will hear oral arguments in the first two of those cases, which both ask whether public officials can constitutionally block their constituents on social media — one of those cases at its core centers on a lakeside city manager in Michigan who decided he would block someone posting what he called “creepy” smiley emoji’s on his Facebook page amid criticism of the manager’s COVID-19 response.
Now rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech. Under Musk’s watch, millions of people have been exposed to misinformation about climate change. Foreign governments and operatives — from Russia to China to Hamas — have spread divisive propaganda with little or no interference.
Snap Beats Wall Street Expectations As Revenues And Users Rise
Snapchat owner Snap Inc. reported its third-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon, beating Wall Street expectations on both revenue and earnings per share. The company reported revenue of $1.2 billion and an EPS of $0.02. Wall Street had been expecting revenue of $1.11 billion and earnings per share of -$0.04. The company also said that its COO, Jerry Hunter, would retire.
Meta was sued by more than three dozen states on Tuesday for knowingly using features on Instagram and Facebook to hook children to its platforms, even as the company said its social media sites were safe for young people. Colorado and Tennessee led a joint lawsuit filed by 33 states in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of California.
Exclusives
TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 15 minute videos, the company confirmed Monday. The social media giant said the new upload limit is being tested in select regions with a limited group of users, but declined to share specifics. The new option increases the video upload limit on the app from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. TikTok initially gained fame for being the most popular short-form video platform, but has slowly been embracing long-form content.
The unexplained decision removes the only symbol distinguishing the news organization from impostors and comes amid a flood of false information related to the Israel-Gaza war, some of which Musk has personally endorsed.
The company said late Tuesday that it has started trying out the annual subscription method for new and unverified accounts. The program, dubbed Not a Bot, won’t apply to existing users. It’s not clear why it only applies to New Zealand and the Philippines or why those countries were chosen.
LinkedIn is laying off more than 660 workers across its engineering, product, talent and finance teams, the employment-focused social media site announced Monday. This marks LinkedIn’s second round of major layoffs this year, after it announced its plans to cut more than 700 jobs in May amid efforts to make “changes to our Global Business Organization and our China strategy.”
The economics of zero-ad versions of mainstream social media services are unlikely to appeal to tech companies or their users.
Teenagers in the United States say they watch more video on YouTube than Netflix, according to a new survey from investment bank Piper Sandler. The data point shows that the streaming business is getting more competitive, and highlights YouTube’s strong position as a free provider of online video, especially among young people.
Montana is at the forefront of a wave of new tech laws passed by Republican-led states. Some give parents control over their children’s social media accounts.
On Monday night the safety team for X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, detailed what they say are recent actions taken to limit hateful and violent posts and combat misinformation following the Hamas attacks on Israel over the weekend. Among other things, the safety team said in a statement that it has removed “hundreds” of Hamas-affiliated accounts that were created after the attacks, and has “actioned tens of thousands of posts for sharing graphic media, violent speech, and hateful conduct.” (Adel Hana/AP)
X Corp. may have aspirations of transforming its microblog formerly known as Twitter into the “everything app,” but one thing it has a lot less of since Elon Musk acquired it, is share of social media ad spending. Twitter/X’s share has dwindled to 5% of U.S. ad spending compiled by Guideline from actual invoiced media buys processed by the major agency holding companies and big independent media agencies. That’s down from 12% in the period preceding Musk’s reign, which closed Oct. 27, 2022.
The justices will consider whether Texas and Florida laws restricting platforms from blocking some speech are constitutional.
According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the company formerly known as Twitter will be profitable by early 2024. “Now that I have immersed myself in the business, and we have a good set of eyes on what is predictable, what’s coming is that it looks like in early ’24, we will be turning a profit,” Yaccarino said on stage at the Code Conference. That’s a big statement for a company that didn’t turn an annual profit in its first 13 years, and which has struggled to maintain profitability since — let alone for a company that was bought by Elon Musk only a year ago.
The American TV personality Tucker Carlson has lambasted the United States for sending too much aid to Ukraine, called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “sweaty and rat-like,” and given credence to Russia’s baseless justifications for its invasion. The former Fox News host’s rhetoric on the war — he has called it a U.S.-led “regime-change war” against Russia — and his attacks on Zelensky’s government — “a pure client state of the United States State Department” — aligns so well with the major propaganda points of Russian state television that one channel has decided to broadcast Carlson’s new show on X, formerly Twitter, to millions of Russians, though apparently without Carlson’s permission.
Julie Baker, a reporter at KXRM Colorado Springs, has landed strongly with users on TikTok and Instagram for her weird, funny, antic-y videos. Social platforms reward such a niche, she says, with the side benefit of letting her real self break through the TV reporter artifice. A full transcript of the conversation is included.
Elon Musk said that X, formerly known as Twitter, is moving to a “small monthly payment system” because “it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.” In a discussion Monday with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk suggested that it would be a lower-tier pricing structure than its $8-per-month Twitter Blue, its premium subscription service.
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X (formerly Twitter) has unveiled a new leadership and sales team at the social platform, including a number of executives familiar to the media and entertainment business.
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and others discussed artificial intelligence with lawmakers, as tech companies strive to influence potential regulations.
The parent of Facebook and Instagram wants an artificial-intelligence system to be as capable as OpenAI’s most advanced model.
When people want to make the case that journalism matters, they often begin with perhaps the most foundational and least controversial idea: that people rely on professionally produced news about public affairs to make decisions that shape the social and democratic wellbeing of communities. And it’s undeniably true. For decades, research has shown that news media play this vital role, for societies and for individuals — that when people follow the news, they are more likely to be informed, vote, engage in their communities, and so on. What’s not to like? Well, apparently a lot, it turns out.
AI-generated election ads on YouTube and other Google platforms that alter people or events must include a clear disclaimer located somewhere that users are likely to notice, the company said in an update to its political content policy.
The social network has introduced Community Notes, an existing program for crowdsourced moderation, for videos. The Elon Musk-owned platform announced that notes by contributors attached to a video will show up in all posts with that video. “Notes written on videos will automatically show on other posts containing matching videos. A highly-scalable way of adding context to edited clips, AI-generated videos, and more,” the company said in a post.
X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, said Tuesday it would now allow political advertising in the U.S. from candidates and political parties and expand its safety and elections team ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Before billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company last October, Twitter had banned all political ads globally since 2019. In January, Twitter lifted the ban and began allowing “cause-based ads” in the U.S. that raise awareness of issues such as voter registration, and said it planned to expand the types of political ads it would allow on the platform.
Facebook De-Platformed My Community TV Station In Canada. U.S. Broadcasters Should Take Heed
CHCO-TV relied heavily on social platforms to reach news audiences in vastly underserved New Brunswick, Canada. A recently enacted news ban on those platforms has had a chilling effect on democracy to which U.S. broadcasters need to tune in. (Shannon May Pringle photo)
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have decided they don’t need the news industry. That’s causing problems when natural disasters strike.
Absent for more than two years, former President Donald J. Trump posted his mug shot on the site, now called X.
TikTok is capitalizing on its growing use as a search tool, particularly by Gen Z consumers, by allowing brands to serve ads in its search results. The new feature in TikTok Ads Manager, called Search Ads Toggle, lets advertisers target users who are actively looking for more information on products or brands through TikTok searches. It is available now in the U.S., and testing in other markets.
Twitter’s owner plans to strip headlines from news articles shared on X (ex-Twitter). Right now, links to news articles are displayed as “Cards,” consisting of an image, a link, a headline, and a summary of the article, which doesn’t count against X’s post character limits. If Musk goes through with his idea, links to news articles would be stripped from all text, leaving just the lead image and the URL as the links to the actual article.
