After a seismic few weeks and months in the world of digital marketing, I have to admit that it feels ever so slightly like we’re now in the winding down period ahead of the festive season. Nevertheless, there is a potentially major ruling on TikTok’s future due in the US this week, and a few other bits and pieces going on elsewhere involving the major players.
I’m planning on continuing with these updates next week and possibly the week after before taking some time out until we have some meaningful news to look at, probably later on in January. In the meantime – what do we need to know from this week?
ICYMI: I looked at the upcoming 2025 trends
Will TikTok be banned this week?
We’re expecting to hear this week on whether a federal court in the US will uphold the ban on TikTok, with both sides asking for a ruling by Friday before the law is scheduled to take effect in January.
You know the story by now; the US Government wants to effectively ban TikTok in the US unless its divested by ByteDance. TikTok in turn has opened up a lawsuit against the federal government, aiming to nullify this law. There are various obvious reasons for this, but the stated ones are “technological”, “commercial” and “legal”.
The ban is due to take effect from January 19, which with the holidays factored in is barely any time at all – hence the request for a ruling so that there’s time to appeal, or put in place the steps necessary to comply with the ruling. This is important – whatever is decided this week isn’t necessarily final. Inevitably, my sending out this newsletter will mean the ruling will be about half an hour after I write this, because that’s how life seems to work in digital marketing.
The latest in the world of microblogging/tweeting/skeeting
Verification and authenticity seem to be the buzzwords in this week’s dispatch from the land-grab.
- Bluesky has an impersonation problem, and its looking to crack down on unverified/parody accounts.
- Similarly, having removed verified checkmarks (i.e. to see which accounts are real), X is now cracking down and trying to ensure ‘fake’ accounts state that they are parodies or impersonations. All of that fuss, to effectively be back at the start.
- Bluesky is now delivering more referral traffic than X for publishers; proof, if needed, that it is treating posts with links differently to X and other platforms.
Meta moderating “too much”
Meta has mistakenly removed too many posts, it revealed this week. This was shortly followed by a declaration that less than 1% of election misinformation was generated by its AI tools (which is still too much, in my view, but whatever).
Meta are taking the perhaps not unreasonable view that removing too much is better than removing too little, and are apparently working hard to ensure people are no longer “penalized unfairly.” It’ll be interesting to see if this has any material effect on the ads platform, where I’ve seen ads disapproved for some truly bizarre reasons. Fingers crossed!
Further Reading
It’s not just me – some other voices are piping up that Reddit is an underrated digital marketing platform. Happy days!
TikTok has implemented some new protections for young EU users (the most tangible one being the removal of certain filters for under-18s, among other features). This comes hot off the heels of the ban in Australia, and a lot of recent chatter around Instagram’s “teen accounts”.
Related to this – The Guardian took a good look earlier this week at why and how the Australia ban is driving concern among firms in Silicon Valley, that I recommend taking in with a cup of tea/coffee later on today.
That’s it for now! If you found this interesting, I would appreciate it if you shared it with your friends and colleagues.
If you’re feeling particularly generous, I won’t stop you from buying me a coffee. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you next week!