This week there were new productivity tools from Google, updates from Facebook and Twitter, and much more. And you can celebrate the Year of the Rabbit in your next video meeting.
Plus today is Data Privacy Day. Check your accounts!
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Happy New Year!
Celebrate the lunar new year in your next Meet meeting with a cute rabbit AI Filter or more professional Year of the Rabbit background.I wish you all happiness and prosperity in the new year!
Data Privacy Day
January 28 is Data Privacy Day. It’s the perfect time to run a privacy and security checkup on your online accounts.On Google and YouTube open your “My Account” settings > Data and Privacy (myaccount.google.com/data-and-privacy) to see your settings and take a Privacy Checkup (myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup).
On LinkedIn open Settings & Privacy > Data Privacy (www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/categories/privacy).
On Meta, open the Privacy Center (www.facebook.com/privacy/center/) to learn more and manage your privacy settings for Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Meta highlights their recent privacy updates.
On Microsoft open Account > Privacy (account.microsoft.com/privacy)
On Pinterest open Settings > Privacy and Data (www.pinterest.com/settings/privacy)
On Reddit click your avatar and open User Settings > Safety and Privacy (www.reddit.com/settings/privacy).
On TikTok open Settings and view the (minimal) Privacy section (www.tiktok.com/setting).
On Pinterest open Settings > Privacy and Data (www.pinterest.com/settings/privacy)
On Reddit click your avatar and open User Settings > Safety and Privacy (www.reddit.com/settings/privacy).
On TikTok open Settings and view the (minimal) Privacy section (www.tiktok.com/setting).
On Twitch open Settings > Security and Privacy (www.twitch.tv/settings/security).
On Twitter you can check your privacy settings by clicking Settings and Support on the left menu > Settings and Privacy > Privacy and Safety (twitter.com/settings/privacy_and_safety)
You can learn about Android privacy features at www.android.com/safety/
You can learn about Apple’s privacy features at
www.apple.com/privacy/ or sign up
for an
in-person Privacy on iPhone class
at your local Apple Store.
Starting February 1, Twitter is allowing anyone with a suspended account to appeal. They have been proactively restoring many “permanently” suspended accounts. Some accounts were not reinstated because they “engaged in illegal activity, threats of harm or violence, large-scale spam and platform manipulation, or when there was no recent appeal to have the account reinstated.” The restoration of a bunch of hate-monger accounts should boost engagement, right?
The new Meta Rights Manager site (rightsmanager.fb.com) explains how it works to identify and manage uploads of your images, video or audio on Facebook and Instagram. You can also apply to get access if you have a Facebook Page. Eligibility is based on whether you have exclusive rights to the content you upload, the size of your content catalog, and whether you previously uploaded copyrighted content without permission.
People are spending more time on Facebook, a change that may be driven by increased Reel (short vertical video) viewing. But content creation and engagement is declining. Is that good for Meta? Social Media Today has the story.
Meta has announced Donald Trump can return to Facebook and Instagram. Amanda Marcotte writes at Salon about how it is really unlikely his behavior will be any different. But his presence would likely significantly boost engagement, which is what Facebook (and Twitter, and really all the social media platforms) want. Facebook’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg says there are new “guardrails” including limiting distribution of some posts and heightened penalties for violating policy
On Reddit you can now (finally!) mute specific communities in your Home feed on the web. This feature originally launched in the mobile app several months ago.
Starting February 11, your newsletter subscriptions on LinkedIn will be visible to everyone. There is no way to opt out other than unsubscribing.
It is now easier to share files in Google Meet meetings. If you share a link to a Google Docs file in the meeting chat, you can easily give access to everyone in the meeting and choose to attach it to the meeting’s Google Calendar Event. And if you are presenting Docs, Sheets or Slides you can share access to that file with everyone in the meeting and on the Calendar guest list with one click. Learn how.
If you are using a Google Workspace account, there is a new simplified “Manage Members” interface in Google Chat Spaces.
Google wants you to know about all the cool things it is doing with AI in products like YouTube (automated captions), Photos (“Memories”), Gmail (spam filtering), Maps (traffic conditions), Search (multisearch) and more. They are also using AI to “solve society’s challenges”, from flood forecasting, to identifying genetic changes that cause disease, to mapping buildings. I’m guessing that this is to highlight how AI has more uses than generating BS and plagiarism (this paper by Murray Shanahan explains how a Large Language Model “generates statistically likely sequences of words” and “creates a compelling illusion of being in the presence of a thinking creature like ourselves”).
Podcasts have quietly gone missing from Google Search. In 2019 Google started showing playable podcast episodes in the search results. Those are no longer available, and links to podcasts on Google Podcasts (podcasts.google.com). Google declined to say what this means, other than that it was intentional, and they consider podcasts on YouTube and Google Podcasts “both serve podcast listeners today” and they are “not changing this right now”.
Study Hall is a new collaboration between Arizona State University and YouTube education mainstay Crash Course offering introductory college courses. The videos can be watched for free, but receiving college credit costs $400 per course ($350 if you sign up now).
That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.
Header image background: Red lanterns by aiworldexplore on Pixabay, free for commercial use.https://pixabay.com/images/id-4081256/
Start earning from YouTube Shorts
YouTube Partners: don’t forget to accept the new YouTube Partner Program terms! You can start earning from Shorts ad revenue sharing February 1.Social Media
It’s not just you: apparently many on Twitter are reporting that their Tweets are getting significantly less engagement than expected. Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today reports former Twitter employees are speculating the cause is changes to the algorithm to amplify Twitter Blue subscribers in the “For You” feed. But it sounds like Twitter doesn’t really know why it’s happening.Starting February 1, Twitter is allowing anyone with a suspended account to appeal. They have been proactively restoring many “permanently” suspended accounts. Some accounts were not reinstated because they “engaged in illegal activity, threats of harm or violence, large-scale spam and platform manipulation, or when there was no recent appeal to have the account reinstated.” The restoration of a bunch of hate-monger accounts should boost engagement, right?
The new Meta Rights Manager site (rightsmanager.fb.com) explains how it works to identify and manage uploads of your images, video or audio on Facebook and Instagram. You can also apply to get access if you have a Facebook Page. Eligibility is based on whether you have exclusive rights to the content you upload, the size of your content catalog, and whether you previously uploaded copyrighted content without permission.
People are spending more time on Facebook, a change that may be driven by increased Reel (short vertical video) viewing. But content creation and engagement is declining. Is that good for Meta? Social Media Today has the story.
Meta has announced Donald Trump can return to Facebook and Instagram. Amanda Marcotte writes at Salon about how it is really unlikely his behavior will be any different. But his presence would likely significantly boost engagement, which is what Facebook (and Twitter, and really all the social media platforms) want. Facebook’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg says there are new “guardrails” including limiting distribution of some posts and heightened penalties for violating policy
On Reddit you can now (finally!) mute specific communities in your Home feed on the web. This feature originally launched in the mobile app several months ago.
Starting February 11, your newsletter subscriptions on LinkedIn will be visible to everyone. There is no way to opt out other than unsubscribing.
Web Publishing
Twenty years ago this week, WordPress was born. Matt Mullenweg’s January 2003 post about the need for new blogging software with “the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger” is still up on his blog.Productivity
Google Workspace Individual subscribers (and other Google Workspace users) can now view multiple calendars when setting up Appointment time slots in Google Calendar. I use multiple calendars myself, for personal, work projects, family, and so forth, so I have been wanting this feature since Appointments launched.It is now easier to share files in Google Meet meetings. If you share a link to a Google Docs file in the meeting chat, you can easily give access to everyone in the meeting and choose to attach it to the meeting’s Google Calendar Event. And if you are presenting Docs, Sheets or Slides you can share access to that file with everyone in the meeting and on the Calendar guest list with one click. Learn how.
If you are using a Google Workspace account, there is a new simplified “Manage Members” interface in Google Chat Spaces.
More
Wizards of the Coast have backed away from their recently leaked draft licensing agreement for Dungeons & Dragons. The new license agreement will only cover content for table-top role-playing games, and not live streams, cosplay, virtual tabletop platforms and so forth. And they confirmed that creators will retain ownership of their content. This sounds like a significant improvement over the previous version.Google wants you to know about all the cool things it is doing with AI in products like YouTube (automated captions), Photos (“Memories”), Gmail (spam filtering), Maps (traffic conditions), Search (multisearch) and more. They are also using AI to “solve society’s challenges”, from flood forecasting, to identifying genetic changes that cause disease, to mapping buildings. I’m guessing that this is to highlight how AI has more uses than generating BS and plagiarism (this paper by Murray Shanahan explains how a Large Language Model “generates statistically likely sequences of words” and “creates a compelling illusion of being in the presence of a thinking creature like ourselves”).
Podcasts have quietly gone missing from Google Search. In 2019 Google started showing playable podcast episodes in the search results. Those are no longer available, and links to podcasts on Google Podcasts (podcasts.google.com). Google declined to say what this means, other than that it was intentional, and they consider podcasts on YouTube and Google Podcasts “both serve podcast listeners today” and they are “not changing this right now”.
Study Hall is a new collaboration between Arizona State University and YouTube education mainstay Crash Course offering introductory college courses. The videos can be watched for free, but receiving college credit costs $400 per course ($350 if you sign up now).
That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.
Header image background: Red lanterns by aiworldexplore on Pixabay, free for commercial use.https://pixabay.com/images/id-4081256/
I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter Blue subscribers take engagement away from free Twitter users. That's unfortunate.
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