Creator Weekly: Meta AI, new AdSense Auto ad format, TikTok Community Guidelines

This weekend marks the start of Earth Week, which is a great time to think about what steps you can take to help the environment. Native plants in your garden? Fewer plastic bags? It all helps.

Creator Weekly Live 🔴

Come chat about this week’s updates and tips.
Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (5:30PM UTC).
Join me live or watch the recording.

#OnEBoardChat 💬

Join me on Sunday, immediately after Creator Weekly Live (11AM Pacific), for the Earth Day 🌎 Edition of #OnEBoardChat. The discussion will be on X, YouTube and LinkedIn and I’m looking forward to learning more about what steps people are taking for the environment.

Three things you can do:

Start thinking about Earth Day is to check out the official individual action toolkit, with steps you can take to (especially) reduce plastic waste and help the environment.
Read the latest OnEBoard newsletter (pdf), with links to OnEBoard’s Earth Day banners and suggested social media posts. Use the banners and tag #OnEBoard to be featured in our Earth Day roundup post.
Download the NASA Earth Day posters and backgrounds, and learn about their work investigating the oceans. They are also asking people to share a #Global Selfie with a body of water in the photo.

Take this week’s quiz ✅

Do you know about Airchat? Take this week’s quiz.

New Tips and Tutorials

Create a Collab of a Collab on YouTube

You can use the YouTube Shorts editor in the YouTube mobile app to create a “Collab” with another video. And you can Collab with a Collab.

To do that, find the video on YouTube, tap Remix and select the Collab option. You can then record your video to go with a clip (up to 60 seconds) from the original. Here’s what it looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6kUnIUxw0h0
It automatically links back to the video you created the Collab with.

To Do & Try

Learn about YouTube Podcasts! YouTube is hosting a free virtual session with the YouTube Podcasts team with live Q&A on Friday, April 26. Register here.
There is an AdSense payments webinar on Thursday, April 23 with live Q&A. This looks like it will cover the basics of setting up your AdSense for payments, payment and reporting discrepancies and any “burning questions. Register here.
There is a YouTube Shorts #ForAFortnightChallenge to celebrate Taylor Swift's new album (and it’s first single, “Fortnight”).

Meta AI Everywhere

Another week, another platform integrating generative AI features everywhere. Right? This week it’s Meta. Meta’s current AI model is Llama 3, which they say works better than Google’s Gemini Pro 1.5.

Meta AI is available on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger in Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, United States, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

You can also go to meta.ai directly where you can use it without signing in to an account (although not all features will be available if you don’t sign in).

You can chat with Meta AI in Search for those products, get more information in the Facebook feed, and generate images. The image generation, in particular, is very fast, with updated images appearing as you type (currently rolling out in WhatsApp and the Meta AI web experience in the US).

Once you have created an image, you can then ask Meta to animate it or turn it into a GIF.

There doesn’t seem to be any limit to the number of prompts you can use or images you create, so have fun!

Image prompt: Imagine the golden gate bridge with a hot air balloon flying over it and sharks in the water, watercolor, animated.

AdSense Ad Intent Auto Ads

If you use AdSense to monetize your website or blog there is a new format for Auto Ads called “Ad Intents”.

Ad intents works by scanning your pages for opportunities to help your users find something they might be looking for.

AdSense may then either convert existing text on your site into links or place an anchor at the bottom of your web page.

If someone clicks the ad intents link or anchor, it pops up a dialog with search results that include ads. If the user clicks on an ad in the dialog, you earn. When the dialog is closed, it returns to the same page on your website.

This has a couple of advantages:

Relevant ads without using third-party cookies
It does not take the user completely away from your website

To enable Ad Intents:

Sign in to your AdSense account (www.google.com/adsense )
Click Ads on the left menu
Click the pencil icon next to your website to edit
Make sure Auto Ads are enabled
Under Intent-driven Formats enable Ad Intents

AdSense reminds publishers that “repeated unnecessary keywords” may violate policy, so don’t add a bunch of brand keywords just to get ad links.

Learn more, including how to track performance.

It appears that the Ad Intent links have a dotted underline and magnifying glass icon, so they should be distinguishable from regular link on your site. Even so, they are not enabled on my site, because I want to be sure all links here are meaningful ones.

TikTok Updates Community Guidelines and publishes Code of Conduct

TikTok updated their Community Guidelines and moderation policies, and is adding a Code of Conduct. Here’s what’s changing:

Updated definitions for hate speech, health misinformation, and other policies.
More detail about how Search, Live and the For You feed are moderated.
If a creator repeatedly violates the For You standards, the entire account will be temporarily ineligible to be recommended, and will be harder to find in search. Creators will be notified, and can appeal.
There is a new warning strike for the first violation of the Community Guidelines. It does not count towards the regular strike totally, but, even so, Creators can appeal this. Some policy violations (like incitement to violence) may still result in an immediate ban.
A new “Account Check” feature lets creators review their last 30 posts and view content removals and account status.

The new Community Guidelines go into effect May 17, 2024.

TikTok is also introducing a new Creator Code of Conduct, aimed particularly at creators who are monetizing or otherwise participating in programs or campaigns that raise their visibility.

The Code of Conduct applies to both on-platform and off-platform behavior, with the principle that creators should not “create potential harm to others”. Prohibited behaviors include:

Bullying, harassing, doxxing or threatening others
Activities that put people or animals in danger
Promoting harm to yourself or others
Risking the safety and well-being of minors
Sexual misconduct
Promoting or “engaging in imitable behaviors” that could harm people, animals or the environment
Hate speech or hateful behavior
Exploiting or false claims about a potentially traumatic ongoing tragedy or conflict
Criminal or fraudulent activities
Spam, fake engagement, posting inflammatory content to try to get people to send you gifts
Activities that unfairly advantage or or disadvantage others on the platform (for example cheating, multiple-account abuse or using “non-approved technology”)

More information:
TikTok Community Guidelines
TikTok Creator Code of Conduct

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube is cracking down on third party apps that show videos while blocking ads. If you see a message like “The following content is not available on this app”, the solution is to view the video in the official YouTube app (or other support app instead).

YouTube is experimenting with optional off-by-default personalization of the Subscriptions tab. If you are in the experiment and turn this on, you will see new videos from channels YouTube thinks would be most relevant to your interest. (Learn more from Creator Insider on YouTube)

YouTube’s VP for Europe, Middle East and Africa answered questions from creators in the Middle East and North Africa. A top question: Why are there differences in revenue across regions? The short answer is that it reflects what the advertisers are spending to reach those audiences.

Tweens with a supervised account can now be allowed to view some YouTube comments, but not post comments. Stricter comment filters are used to try to ensure they only see appropriate comments. Learn more about parental settings for supervised accounts.

This is a bit of nerdery, but it could affect your video watching. The AV1 video coding format offers smaller file size, while preserving video quality. Android has a new AV1 video decoder, which will be available on devices with Android 12 or higher. YouTube is using this new decoder by default. This is (mostly) good! But Android Police reports that older or lower end Android (or Chromecast) devices that don’t have AV1 hardware decoding support use software decoding, which can cause worse playback performance and can decrease battery life. See the discussion on Reddit.

The new Twitch Discovery Feed will roll out to users by the end of April. The feed will have a section for short-form video content (like those created with the Twitch Clips editor) and another for live streams. It will include content from streamers you follow, as well as streamers recommended based on your watch history. This is meant to help people discover new streamers to watch.

The Adobe Express mobile app, with Firefly AI, is now generally available for Android and iOS. This includes their video editing tools, including video background remover, automatic captions and character animation with your voice. It sounds similar to both Bytedance (TikTok) CapCut and YouTube Create apps.

At the professional end of things, Adobe is integrating its Firefly AI and third party models (such as Pika) into Premiere Pro, including Object Addition, Object Removal and Generative Extend. Watch the promo.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search Console now shows unused website ownership tokens, which you can remove with one click. Learn more.

Beehiiv, the newsletter service I use, has a new improved website builder. It’s designed so you can have a public home for your newsletters, which makes it a bit blog-like.
Photos and Image Design on the Web

TikTok has a new experimental photo-sharing app, TikTok Notes. It is currently available in Canada and Australia. (via Social Media Today)

Social Media

One of the unique features of Bluesky is personalized moderation options. The short version is that you can subscribe to a Labeler. That labels content with descriptive tags. You can then go into your settings and choose whether you want to see content with a particular label. So you can subscribe to a labeler that tags “Posts with cats”, and then choose whether you want to see those posts. User Kairi has a detailed explainer with links to labelers you can try.

There is now an option to embed Bluesky posts on your blog or website. Note this requires the ability to add custom HTML in the post editor. ⤵

you can now embed your posts in web pages! (the "embed" tool is available on web only at the moment) this does respect your "only logged in users can see this" settings. shout out to @samuel.bsky.team @bnewbold.net @danabra.mov @haileyok.com for getting this done

[image or embed]
— Paul "#1 NY Mets Fan" Frazee 🦋 (@pfrazee.com) Apr 13, 2024 at 12:54 PM

Substack now lets you embed Notes (its social feed posts) on your own web pages. And you can now post videos directly to Notes as well. While it’s clearly social media (and they explicitly mention why they are better than X) the purpose is supposedly to build your newsletter subscriber list.

X says it is going to charge new users $1 to use any X features, including posting and bookmarking. Users can wait 3 months to have access to those features without paying. Why? Supposedly to prevent spam bots and troll farms from signing up. That seems unlikely to work for a number of reasons. Spammers create accounts in bulk and this just shifts their use by 3 months, that is if they don’t pay the fee with stolen credit card information. There are currently even spammers paying for X Premium at $8 per month.

Post is shutting down. Post is one of the myriad “Twitter alternative” social sites, with a focus on journalism, including micropayments to mainstream media publishers to read articles. I have an account, but never really could get into it. I subscribe to news organization feeds to follow them directly, and I didn’t see conversations I was particularly interested in joining there. If you used Post you can download your content by going to Settings > Account and selecting the option there.

Snapchat will be adding a watermark to images created with Snapchat’s generative AI tools.

Meta is shutting down Threads in Turkey, due to an order that prohibits sharing of data between Threads and Instagram.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media reports: “A site that is scraping Discord en masse and selling access to some users’ server messages and activity is linked to notorious harassment site Kiwi Farms.” Discord has apparently known about this since February, and done nothing.

Communication and Collaboration

Google Meet now has in-meeting annotations for presentations. When annotations are enabled (by default) the presenter or co-annotator can mark up the presented content without leaving the meeting. This is available for select Google Workspace editions, and for personal Google Accounts with a paid Google Workspace Individual account.

Google Chat can now interoperate with Slack and Microsoft Teams. This is available to all Google Workspace customers, and requires a Mio license. Learn how to set it up on Mio.

WhatsApp has new Chat Filters that let you easily find unread messages and group conversations.

Google shared a great tip showing how to use Google Docs to create a professional-looking signature for your Gmail emails. Watch the YouTube Short.

Dark mode is now available in Google Drive for web.

There is now improved search in Google Drive for Android (this has been available for iOS since last month).

More AI Updates

Google is reorganizing to consolidate its AI teams, with Google Research teams working on Ai now part of DeepMind. There is also a new Platforms & Devices team that will oversee Pixel hardware, Android, Chrome, ChromeOS and Photos. The Verge has more about the changes.

Joan Westenberg interviewed Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine about their philosophy and policy on AI-generated content (and other topics). Medium does not want AI-generated content: “The human element is a required part of meaningful information sharing.”

Jack Brewster in the Wall Street Journal writes “How I Built an AI-Powered, Self-Running Propaganda Machine for $105”. This is worrisome, and a sign of what Google and other platforms are up against.

If you are an advertiser, you can use Google’s generative AI tools for Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns that appear on YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Discover and Gmail.

Microsoft’s VASA-1 model can generate “lifelike talking faces of virtual characters” given a single static image and an audio clip. See examples. While the researchers are “opposed to any behavior to create misleading or harmful contents of real persons”, that seems a significant risk.

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