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social media

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Parliamentary panel suggests to set up a regulating body for social media

  • An Indian parliamentary panel has recommended treating social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as publishers and setting up a regulatory body to oversee them, potentially opening the companies up to more liability for user-generated content.
  • They said the current provisions in the personal data protection bill are too broad. The people said the committee recommended that the regulator should be set up along the lines of the Press Council of India to regulate the content.
  • Lawmakers from Washington to Brussels have contemplated action to hold social media companies like Facebook and Google accountable for the enormous content generated daily on their platforms, a view that gained momentum during the pandemic.
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India leads in downloads of social media apps in H1 2021

  • India led the world in the number of downloads of social media apps in the first half of 2021, according to a new report by App Annie, a global provider of mobile data and analytics.
  • Globally, Asia was the largest region for downloads of social media apps during this period, accounting for 60% of the market.
  • Globally, social media apps commanded 740 billion hours in the first half of 2021.
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Instagram may not be a photo-sharing app anymore

  • Still, the app takes your App Store payment info right away, so it could be a barrier to entry for people who worry they won’t remember to delete Glass before the trial period ends, should they not want to continue with it.
  • Glass also appeals to photographers by allowing for a wider variety of image sizes on the app – the maximum aspect ratio is 16 x 9, which accommodates the size of standard camera photos.
  • At the time of the app’s waitlist launch in August, Watson told TechCrunch that Glass was sending hundreds of invites out every day.
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Social media cos may meet Ministry again

  • Social media companies across the board are likely to approach the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology once again to expedite the process of putting in place a standard operating procedure for the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, sources in know of the development told The Indian Express.
  • The need for an SOP for the intermediary guidelines was felt once again, following the recent controversy over Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s post across social media platforms, wherein he had posted a photo of the parents of a nine-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly raped.
  • An executive at another social media firm said that as per the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shreya Singhal case, where Section 66A of the IT Act had been struck down, the direction to remove any content from social media can only be if there is a court order, or if a competent authority of the Central government issues such order under Section 69A of the IT Act.
[Via]
Netflix Tests Feature To Limit Password Sharing!

Netflix Tests Feature to Limit Password Sharing!

For anyone still using someone else’s Netflix account, Netflix is bringing a new feature to put an end to it. The streaming platform is testing a feature that intends viewers to verify they share the same household with the account holder to limit the password sharing. This test is to stop the spread of passwords among people to prevent fraud.

“If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching,” the screen reads, according to Streamable.com, which first reported the test.

The streaming platform wants to ensure that the owner and the users of an account live in the same household to limit screen sharing. The test has been rolled out to some customers using Netflix’s TV app. The company’s terms of service also added that it “may not be shared with individuals beyond your household.”

The major reason behind the test is the fact that streaming services proliferate, and more people share passwords and services.

A Netflix spokesperson said, “This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so.”

When a Netflix user chooses their profile on a shared account, a question box pops up asking them to verify their account by confirming by a text or email sent to them. Viewers are given the option to verify their identity through a code sent to the Netflix account’s owner. If the user is not an authorized user of the account, Netflix gives a prompt to set up a new account with a 30-day free trial.

Netflix has benefited the most as the streamer, which added about 37 million new customers last year, reaching around 203.67 million subscribers in 2020.

Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings said back in 2016, “no plans on making any changes” to limit the password sharing. Reed also added that “password sharing is something you have to learn to live with because there’s so much legitimate password sharing, like you sharing with your spouse, with your kids …. so there’s no bright line, and we’re doing fine as is.”

Netflix confirmed the test but didn’t confirm the location or the number of users who were a part of this test. We need to wait and watch if this testing feature is going to be universally accepted.

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Smartphones unleashed 3 distinct attention wars. Social media can only *effectively* compete in 1. This post will tell you how!

The “Three Attention Wars” Of Social Media!

If each war is winner-take-all and has one clearly superior format, then we’d expect the winner in each war to offer a feed that is 100% the best of that format.
🙉 When Instagram launched and started delivering high-quality full-bleed pictures (incl. from many pro photographers!), FB’s legacy text-centric mixed-media feed was like a knife in a gun fight. IG quickly became the most engaging place on our phones. Until the 2nd war began.
🐵 In the no-constraints heavyweight division, we’d expect the winning app to be 100% video and *really* take advantage of sound to further outgun any mixed-media competitor that can’t assume your sound is on. TikTok executed perfectly. You can’t even use it without sound-on.
TikTok doesn’t even pretend to be “social” media — while IG/FB force you to jump through hoops like making an account and adding friends, the For You Page is a straight dopamine IV-drip into your eyes and ears; the maximally engaging entertainment machine.
🙈 It’s kind of surprising how long podcasts and music shared a weird duopoly on the third battleground? Clubhouse is quickly building a supply of quality audio creators and becoming the most engaging option when you can only listen but not look.
Clubhouse’s huge advantage over Twitter of course is that it’s 100% audio, and can fully optimize for one war (like TikTok) instead of foolishly trying to fight two wars at once. A futile strategy!
Twitter has always been in the purely visual arena (in the attention wars, text+photos are closer than photos+videos). They could carve out a modest (compared to IG) niche simply because text as a format selected for a very different type of successful creator.
This is why Fleets are so weird. I chose my Twitter graph based on the quality of their thoughts, not the quality of their sunset pics (no offense). There are so many ways Twitter could make better use of that real estate. On that note:
Spaces could work if it turns out that (a) there’s a lot of overlap between the best text & best audio creators (likely) and (b) they nail push notifs that bypass the feed entirely. Listen-only is our default resting mode so push is especially powerful in this war.
At risk of playing armchair PM, if I were Twitter I’d turn the Fleets bar into the truly live (i.e. audio) layer of the “pulse of the planet” that their text feed always strived for, and definitely extend visibility beyond followers-only (bring a gun to a gun fight!).
Now that Twitter is shipping stuff, it could be an interesting battle. TikTok is leagues ahead in the heavyweight division but the other two arenas will be fun to watch.
Thank you for coming to my “Three Attention Wars” TED talk — I know you have many options for where to direct your eyeballs and hope these humble tweets were an okay use of your attention 😄
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