Weekly Update - November 24, 2018: YouTube, GMB, Cyber Monday

Shopping? Visiting family? Enjoying the great outdoors? Whatever you are doing, take a few minutes to check out this week’s updates for YouTubers, business owners, Instagrammers and more.

• YouTube is rolling out the Community tab to channels with at least 1000 subscribers. You can post text, polls, images, videos and more. Commenting is a bit limited, so it doesn’t seem like it’s ideal for discussions at the moment, but it seems useful for perhaps keeping your subscribers’ interested when you aren’t posting videos. You can see (and vote in) my first poll 
• Creators can now @mention other users when publishing a Community post, in addition to @mentions when replying to video comments. Mentions are one of the things I miss about Google+ comments on YouTube, so I’m happy about this update. It would be great if mentions were eventually available to commenters other than the channel owner (although perhaps that’s too ripe for abuse). 
• YouTube now shows a “Known issues” widget on your Studio dashboard (studio.youtube.com). If something doesn’t seem to be working right, check there first. 
•  Project Fi is giving users affected by the California wildfires a $20 credit. If that applies to you, watch for an email from Project Fi. T-Mobile, Sprint, ATT and Verizon have also provided assistance and have service updates on their websites.
•  If you are a US business owner, you can get free holiday-themed marketing materials on Google’s Small Thanks website.
• Instagram is cracking down on “inauthentic activity”: fake accounts, likes, follows, and comments form accounts that use third-party apps to boost their stats. They are also helping accounts that may have “unknowingly” shared their login credentials with third party apps, by showing an in-app message telling the user to change their password. 
• The Flat Earth Conference may sound like a joke, but many - if not most - attendees are true believers. And the believers say it was YouTube that brought them there. Kelly Weill at the Daily Beast notes “Start watching videos for less extreme conspiracy theories like 9/11 trutherism or moon landing hoaxes, and YouTube will eventually recommend you a Flat Earth video.” It’s a boon for YouTube, where people spend days watching flat Earth videos, but bad news for society in general, as it helps contribute to the spread of more harmful misinformation and conspiracy theories.
• Black Friday is over, but there are still deals through Cyber Monday. Get deals on games, apps, movies and books from Google Play, deals from the Google Store, Project Fi phones and much more from other retailers.

Read on for more tips and updates for webmasters, video creators, advertisers and more.

Image: Modegeschäft by August Macke, 1914 (public domain)

Upcoming:

• November 30: Google Partners Discover: Drive online to offline sales
• December 2: Deadline to apply for the Google Podcasts Creator Program
• December 3: Offline Gmail Chrome Web App removed from the store
• December 4: AdSense on Air; Fight against fraud and protect your revenue with ads.txt
• December 6: Google will stop serving Nearby Notifications to Android devices
• December 11: Google’s DevFest OnAir (register now!)

YouTube and Video Creation

• Community tab rolling out to YouTube channels with at least 1000 subscribers (YouTube) 
• YouTube update: Creators can now @mention each other and other users when publishing a Community Post (YouTube)
• YouTube Desktop Web Release Notes [11/16] (YouTube)
• How evolving user patterns drive new ad experiences on YouTube (Google)
• Article 13: If You Want To Force Google to Pay Artists More, Force Google to Pay Artists More (EFF)

Go Live

• Twitch Sings beta and updated Community Guidelines on music (Twitch)

Other social media

• Delhi and Bangalore, welcome to Neighbourly. More cities coming daily. (Google)
• Improving your Instagram Profile (Instagram)
• Instagram’s Crackdown on Fake Followers Just Might Work (Wired)
• Reducing Inauthentic Activity on Instagram (Instagram)
• Facebook rolls out time spent dashboard (The Verge)
• Why Facebook will never fix Facebook (Charlie Warzel @ Buzzfeed news)
• So many people are downloading their Facebook data that it’s causing delays
• (Recode)

Google Photos and Mobile Photography

• Google Photos for iOS update: adjust blur and focus of portrait mode photos (Google Photos)

Google for businesses

• Google My Business has a new sign-up flow for businesses that want to hide their address (Local Search Forum)
• US Businesses: Google's Small Thanks site has free holiday themed online and offline marketing materials for your business (Google)

Bloggers and Webmasters

• Setting Up Your WordPress Site on a Mobile Device Just Got a Lot Easier (Wordpress.com)
• Apple pulls the Tumblr app after images of child sexual abuse allegedly surface on the site (The Next Web)
• NSFW artists speak out as their accounts are suddenly ‘purged’ on Tumblr (Daily Dot)

Google Search

• New in Google Search: Asking for audience movie reviews (apparently live for several months)
• Google might soon let users comment on search results, starting with sports scores (9to5Google)

AdSense and advertising

• AdSense on Air: All you need to know about the HTTPS migration 
• How evolving user patterns drive new ad experiences on YouTube (Google)

Hangouts and Messaging

• Skype calling now available on Amazon Alexa devices (Skype)

Made by Google, Android, Project Fi

• Google's Duplex calling service arrives on (some) Pixel phones in the US (The Next Web)
• Calling all Google Play fans: Vote for your favorite content of 2018 (Google)

Productivity

• Chrome stable Channel Update for Desktop (Chrome Releases)
• Chrome for Android Update (Chrome Releases)

Privacy and Security

• How hackers are stealing high profile Instagram accounts (The Atlantic)
• You can now sign into a Microsoft Account without a password using a security key (The Verge)

More around the web

• Inside the Flat Earth Conference, where the world’s oldest conspiracy theory is hot again (Daily Beast)
• The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.(Guillaume Chaslot)
• A soap label to save the world from future Hitlers (The Establishment)
• Mapping Thanksgiving (Google Maps and Google News Lab)
• Supporting the European Union Parliamentary Elections (Google)
• California fires: how we’re providing aid and ways you can help (Google)
• Celebrating Mickey Mouse’s 90th anniversary with Google Home (Google)

Updated March 2019 to remove Google+ links