Creator Weekly: Your 2025 YouTube Recap, Title A/B Testing, Instagram Account Support

The end of 2025 is drawing close, which means it’s time to look back at your year. YouTube launched its first viewer recap (and it’s pretty cute), and you can get recaps of your Photos, activity on Twitch and more.

The other big news this week is that Australian under-16s are being removed from major social platforms under a new law.

Plus there are updates for YouTube, TikTok, Substack, Search Console and more.

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🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Collect Images from Google Search

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

Ten years ago Google added the option to save and organize images in Search. Since then Google expanded Collections to include web pages and places, in addition to images.

In a new twist, Google just launched an Images tab in the mobile app where you can browse a Pinterest-like feed of images selected for you. You can, of course, add those images to Collections.

Is this good for the image creators? Get the full story.

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What do you know about the Instagram Reel camera? Take this week’s quiz.

Your 2025 Year in Review

‘Tis the season for annual recaps. Review what you watched, listened to, posted, photographed and more.

The first ever YouTube viewer recap is here! Learn how it came about. It will show Your Top Interests, Moments from your year, and your Personality type. It may also show a few cards from your YouTube Music Recap (which you can see in full in the YouTube Music app). You can find your recap on the “You” tab in the YouTube mobile app, or at youtube.com/recap

Google Photos is rolling out their 2025 recaps. Check the Google Photos app to see if yours is ready. More information about eligibility.

Available if you have taken enough photos, have Face Groups enabled, and have backup turned on.
If you are in the US with Gemini in Photos enabled, it will include your “standout hobbies and top highlights.
You can hide or replace people and photos
You can edit the recap video in CapCut using exclusive Google Photos templates.
At the end of the Recap there is a carousel of short videos and collages meant for sharing. You can share directly to your WhatsApp Status.

Twitch’s Recap 2025 is out too. If you are a viewer or streamer you should see your stats there, including high scores, top clips, Chats “spammed” and more. To be eligible, between October 31, 2024 and October 31, 2025 you need to have either viewed 10 hours and/or streamed 10 hours. Otherwise it’s just 25 (shareable) Clips, recapping highlights for the Twitch community. Get your recap at www.twitch.tv/annual-recap/

Discord Checkpoint is the platform’s first annual user recap (seems to be a trend!). It includes stats like number of messages sent, you most used emoji, your top server and who you chatted with the most. You’ll then get a personalized “Checkpoint” card and matching avatar decoration. To find yours, look for the flag icon on the top right corner on desktop or the You tab at bottom right in the mobile app. You must have enough activity and have “Use data to personalize my Discord experience” enabled.

Spotify Wrapped is out, with recaps for:

Listeners with Your Listening Age, Your Club, Your Top Artists, Songs, Genres, Podcasts, Audiobook Genre, Listening Archive and more.
Creators (podcasters) with top fans, most loved moments
Artists (musicians and songwriters), with Super Listeners, Top Albums, Accolades, personality club.
Authors (audiobooks), with "most popular title among first-time audiobook listeners, their biggest and highest-growth markets, and the other music and podcasts their listeners love."
Spotify also shared their methodology.

You can use Bluesky Harvest to find your most-used words on the platform. Get yours here. Mine was very predictable!

Flickr’s MyFlickrYear 2025 is now available, if you’ve posted to Flickr this year.

Next week I’ll round up the platforms’ year in review, from Google Search to Apple Podcasts.

Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act Goes Into Effect

Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act goes into effect December 10th. On the affected platforms, users under 16 are no longer allowed to use the platform or have visible uploaded content.

For adults (especially young adults and older teens) this will likely mean more age verification on the major social platforms.

For YouTube this is a “disappointing update”. What this means in practice:

YouTube will sign out any Australian under 16. Under 16s can view videos while signed out, but can’t use features like subscriptions, playlists and Wellbeing settings like Bedtime or Take A Break reminders..
Parents who supervise their teen’s or tween’s account will no longer be able to control what their teens or tweens watch, because that requires the child to be signed in. This does not affect YouTube Kids.
Creators under 16 won’t be able to upload videos or manage their channel. Channels with an under-16 primary owner will no longer be viewable. None of the content or data will be deleted, and can be unhidden when the user turns 16.
Under-16s lose access to their YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscriptions (because they can’t sign in).
If you are mis-identified as under 16, you can verify your age. If you are not living in Australia, you can submit a request to Google to change your account region.

TikTok is also removing content posted by Australian 13-15 year olds from view, and preventing those teens from signing in (other than to optionally download information). Similar to YouTube, when those users turn 16 they will be able to use their account again. If an account is incorrectly identified as under 16, there is an age confirmation process.

Meta is removing access from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. There are roughly 150,000 Facebook accounts and 350,000 Instagram accounts owned by Australian users between the ages of 13 and 15.

Snapchat will lock accounts of under-16 Australians. Teens will have 3 years to download their content. If they turn 16 within those three years, they can verify their age to reinstate their account.

Other platforms affected by the Australian under-16 ban: X, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick. (I haven’t found announcements about how the ban will be implemented on those platforms.)

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube is launching Title A/B testing. For access you must have Advanced Features enabled for your YouTube channel. Now you can test up to 3 titles, 3 thumbnails, or 3 title-thumbnail combinations. Tests run up to 2 weeks, and the combination that generates the most watchtime is the winner.

YouTube now lets you control who can comment on your videos and Shorts on individual videos. You can limit comments to subscribers and paid Members of your channel. You can set the minimum subscription time to 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week or any duration.

AI-powered Expressive Captions first launched a year ago in Live Caption for Android. Now they are on YouTube. Videos with Expressive Captions "display the intensity of speech in all caps, expressions of sounds like sighs and gasps, as well as noises from the environment." They can also detect and display the emotional tone of speech, like [joy] or [sadness], although that won’t be shown in the YouTube version (at least not yet). Expressive Captions are available for videos in English uploaded after October 2025.

YouTube’s Creator Insider posted a mythbusting video about Memberships. For viewers, they will be adding an option for viewers to filter out Members-only content.

What’s happening with TikTok? Despite claims a deal was in hand, TikTok’s sale to a US entity has not been completed. Its latest enforcement extension expires December 16th. I’m expecting yet another extension.

TikTok Nearby is a new feed of local content, creators and businesses. It includes content posted publicly in the past 90 days from over-18 accounts. TikTok can detect your location automatically (if you have location sharing enabled), or you can change it to a different location. This is available in France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

Twitch reminds non-US streamers to update their US tax information (which expires after 3 years).

Substack has expanded live streaming to desktop. You can start a livestream on desktop even if your co-hosts are on mobile. Live streaming is available to all Creators with at least 10 free subscribers. Note that there isn’t any way to live stream using OBS, StreamYard or other 3rd party platform, meaning all livestreams will be Substack-exclusive.

Substack has also improved automatically created live stream Clips, including dynamic editing (highlighting the active speaker, trimming dead air), “clean” title cards, no wait - they are available when your livestream ends, and easy sharing and downloads. Clips and other Substack video can be directly uploaded to YouTube and LinkedIn.

StreamYard has added timers for banners so you can control how long they appear in your stream (either 10, 20 or 60 seconds). That way you do not need to manually dismiss them.

StreamYard has added clickable links in On-Air webinar chats.

You can now fix your guest’s camera and microphone in Restream Studio.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search Console now lets you filter your website’s performance report by branded search queries. There’s also a Branded Traffic card in the Insights report. A branded query includes your brand name (and variations) and brand-related products and services. This is an AI-assisted system that determines your website brand name in all languages and your site’s products and services. (Google notes that “some queries may occasionally be misidentified”). This is rolling out for top level properties and subdomains, as long as the site has “a sufficient volume of queries and impressions”.

The Medium Partner Program now rewards writers for readers who click through email notifications. If a member opens a story from your emailed preview, the Partner earns “slightly more” for that engagement compared to a member finding your story on Medium itself. Why? Email notifications apparently lead to higher member retention. Partners also earn more for readers from search and social media links.

WordPress version 6.9 (“Gene”) is now available. Some new features:

Teams can now leave notes on blocks in the post editor.
A new typography option that adjusts font size to fill its container.
Abilities API “lays the groundwork for the future of automation.”
Accessibility and performance enhancements.

SearchEngine Journal shared 5 reasons to use the Internet Archive’s new anti-link rot WordPress plugin that automatically scans your outbound links and creates new snapshots if no archive exists. It can also redirect broken or missing links to archived versions.Get the Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer plugin.

Photos and Image Design

Feedback works! Google Photos is restoring the perspective tool to the editor and changing the crop screen’s rounded corners back to normal square corners.

Social Media

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) reflected on the year and how there isn’t just one Reddit. The current default feed for new users is r/popular, but that’s changing. He says, “r/popular sucks [because it gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture], and we’re moving away from it, and towards better, more relevant and personalized feeds.” They will stop showing r/popular to new users, and remove it for everyone else unless you actively visit it.

Reddit is also limiting the number of high-traffic communities a single person can moderate to 5 starting in January. High-traffic communities are those with more than 100,000 weekly visitors. They are also making it easier for Mods to see all the communities they moderate and their stats. Moderators can choose to become an Alumni Mod or the in-development Advisor role, which does not count toward the total.

Wired: AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone

X now algorithmically ranks your “Following” feed with Grok AI. It is ranked based on “predicted engagement and relevance to you”. You can switch back chronological, but you apparently have to do that every time.

X has added a Civic Integrity report flow. If you report potentially misleading content, it will route your submission to request a Community Note. Community Notes can provide context, but they often aren’t added until a post has been seen by many people (and sometimes isn’t added at all).

Meta has launched a 24/7 AI-powered centralized account support hub for Facebook and Instagram. Meta says AI-powered security systems have helped decrease account hacks by more than 30% and have reduced incorrectly suspended accounts and made the appeals process faster. Account recovery has also been improved, with alerts for risky activity, trusted device recognition, and “adaptive” recovery flows.

Casey Newton @ Platformer: Where Meta's biggest experiment in governance (Oversight Board) went wrong

Threads makes it easier to repost posts you have liked or saved, with a button to access those from the post composer. Available for iOS, and soon for Android.

Threads is testing “Dear Algo”, where you can tell the algorithm what you want to see more (or less) of. Make a “Dear algo” post and it will adjust your feed for 3 days. It’s currently available in Australia and New Zealand.

Instagram is going to revert a recent change in how Views are counted. They recently started including views from Explore and Profile “even if someone didn’t tap it.” Instagram head Adam Mosseri notes that this is confusing, and “makes it harder to understand how your content is actually performing”. It will go back to views only being counted if someone sees a post in their feed or actively taps the post to view.

Productivity

Google Drive has an improved web viewer for PDFs, videos, images and audio files.

Google Chat now lets Space owners and managers to disable the “request to join” option for restricted Spaces.

You can now start a Google Chat from a Gmail email message. Available for Google Workspace business, enterprise and non-profits.

There will now be a Gemini-powered summary of folders in Google Drive. Available for some Google Workspace business and enterprise editions, and Google One AI Premium subscribers.

More AI Updates and Tips

Google Gemini 3 Pro is “a generational leap from simple recognition to true visual and spatial reasoning.” Learn about what it can do.

Meta is partnering with news media companies, including CNN, Fox News, USA TODAY, Washington Examiner (not to be confused with the Washington Post), People and Le Monde to bring “real-time” news content to Meta AI.

Google Workspace Studio is a “new place to create, manage, and share AI agents to automate work in Workspace.” This is available for Business, Enterprise and Education Workspace editions.

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