I’ve got a little something for you

“🎶 🎄 It’s beginning to feel a lot like…” Unless you have a s**t load of scheduling posts still left to do.

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HOUSEKEEPING: Geekout Newsletter will be taking a break for the holidays after today’s edition. It will return on Friday 8th January 2021. I need a rest!

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So, Twitter has been busy this week! What the hell is going on over there. In the past seven days: They killed Periscope, bought group video chat app Squad, launched Audio Spaces, brought back easy retweets, rolled out a new verification policy, revealed a new funny tweets thing, started testing a ‘shared interests’ feature. The product team(s) must have REALLY wanted to clear their desks before heading off for the Christmas break!

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HIDDEN GEM: MusicallyDown lets you download TikTok videos with/without watermark & TikTok audio tracks as MP3s

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In other news… 

Finally, a collection of other stuff I stumbled upon this week which you may enjoy!

RANDOM AF: Go to Facebook. Publish a new post with just the letters “gg”. View post. Tap the letters.

FUN: Get an AR baby Yoda in your house.

WIN: The ‘Data Lotto’ is offering you a chance to get rich. This is SO 2020!

FAKE: Someone built this Fake ‘fake’ tweet generator

Ok… time to dig into all the news and updates spotted this week…

Even the most advanced tech companies resort to old-school media every now and then. Facebook took out full-page ads in major US newspapers this week to protest against Apple’s forthcoming move to give users the option to stop apps tracking their activity.

Apple’s move is a problem for Facebook, which benefits massively from the data it gains from all the apps that use its tech — data that helps it target ads to you and me. If users have the option to say ‘stop tracking me’ then Facebook’s ads become less valuable.

But rather than simply say this, Facebook’s message was that Apple was going to hurt small businesses (because their ads wouldn’t be as well targeted) and would even hurt the ‘free internet.’ The campaign was backed up by a #SpeakUpForSmall hashtag campaign that it hoped would mobilise a groundswell of small business owners against Apple.

But Facebook’s arguments ring a little hollow when it isn’t always friendly to small businesses itself, and it’s not exactly healthy if small businesses rely on Facebook ads to survive, is it?

What’s more, Apple’s response — essentially that users are free to continue letting Facebook track them if they want — is hard to argue with. Let’s face it, a sizeable proportion of users will probably just accept tracking to make the notification go away after a few times seeing it in different apps.

It seems Facebook will probably just have to suck this change up, and accept that it may take a hit to its targeting accuracy.

Whether it’s new regulation or new antitrust lawsuits, big tech companies have governments around the world breathing down their necks more than ever.

The new UK proposals were joined on the same day by EU proposals that would see companies like Facebook and Google face yearly checks on their work to address illegal and harmful content, and new controls around user data and how they use their size to restrict competition.

Both the UK and EU propose fines of up to 10% of global revenues for breaking the new rules, with forced breakups also on the cards in the EU plans. Responding to the UK proposals, Facebook couldn’t help but get a jab in against Apple.

Across the Atlantic, the US Federal Trade Commission launched a probe into the privacy practices of big tech companies, while a Texas-led antitrust lawsuit accused Google of colluding with Facebook. And in Australia, Facebook’s use of its Onavo Protect VPN software to monitor which apps users opened faced an antitrust action.

If you’re a lawyer looking for work, Silicon Valley is probably a good place to be right now.

We knew it was coming, and here it is: following a feedback period, Twitter has turned its previous proposals into a solid verification policy. It now has clear rules on who can get a checkmark on their account, and also how they can lose it.

The policy launches next month and should mean fewer people asking why they can’t get verified or wondering why one person gets verified while another doesn’t. That’s assuming Twitter applies the rules fairly and consistently, of course.

Meanwhile, a new label will be introduced in 2021 that signifies when an account is a bot, and you will be able to memorialise the account of a loved one who has passed away, similar to Facebook’s long-established approach.

The social media manager’s nightmare before Christmas? Check out the replies and add your own!

Updates, experiments, and useful info snippets:

This Google Arts & Culture experiment with opera singers’ voices and A.I. lets you create your own little song. And it’s really good fun.

AND… For the last time in 2020…

You.

Are.

DONE!

I will be back in your inbox again on Friday 8th Jan 2021.

Merry Christmas.

Goodbye, geeks!

COMING SOON… Geekout on Discord! (Pssst…. You might be able to find your way in already, somewhere in this newsletter. Well, I did say I had a *little* something for you. First 50 people to find it get in!)

This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant.