The new Threads homepage now sports a login page with a QR code which leads to the relevant app stores for the mobile app. Of course, it goes without saying that you will be logging in with your Instagram account details. You’re given the option to sign in with your email, username or phone number and your password. If you encounter a message instructing you to “set up your profile using the Threads app” while using your email, there’s no need for concern. If you’ve already completed this step, one of the alternative methods may serve as a suitable solution.
Threads’s web interface is pretty straightforward and minimal. The centre of the screen is emblazoned with your feed. At the bottom left, you have a toggle to switch between your “Following” and “For You” feeds. Of course, if you’ve been following the developments at Threads, you’ll know that the latter has content recommended by the algorithm included in the feed while the “Following” feed only contains content exclusively from accounts you follow.
Platform navigation is parked at the top. You’ll see quick navigation buttons for home, search, new post, notifications and your profile. Other options like logging out and reporting problems are in a dropdown menu on the top right. You also have the option to create a new post by simply starting to type in the space beside your profile image.
The new web version of threads will no doubt be a welcomed development for those managing multiple accounts. However, the one feature not yet available on the web version is the ability to switch between accounts. Knowing the team behind Threads, it’s probably already being worked on.
It feels like Threads is gearing up to do big things – but there’s one caveat to that – that activity on the platform continues to pick up. Meta’s answer to Twitter’s slow demise was initially all the rage with rapid adoption and increasing interactions on the platform, however, the platform hasn’t managed to stay top of mind. Time will only tell if Meta’s Threads will be able to stick its landing and expand its reach.
Social Media can create a dangerous echo chamber that supports our views. However, things can be even more dangerous when politically-linked individuals end up as content moderators at social media companies. That’s precisely why Tiktok is being called out for on its own platform by Yuwana TV.
Malaysia’s relationship with TikTok and social media has become a little bit strenuous after their previous General Elections. Like the U.S., social media became the battleground for votes particularly when it came to the younger generation of voters. In Malaysia, TikTok became ground zero for bipartisan and racist propaganda.
With that as our backdrop, it comes as no surprise that things are being stirred up once again as an individual linked to Malaysia’s opposition coalition, Perikatan Nasional (PN), was working at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, as a content moderator close to the elections. The fact was highlighted in a TikTok video uploaded by Yuwana TV to promote their Facebook Live session. The video cites a Forbes report alleging that employees engage in the practice of “heating” where they manually push content into FYPs to help them go viral. The report was written after seven sources verified the practice.
In the video, one of the hosts highlights that the “For You” page (FYP) in TikTok is done by an algorithm. He also notes that content moderators are able to overwrite the algorithm and push their own content into the FYP of other users. This assertion was supported by @cikguseo on Twitter. Some of the denizens of Twitterjaya (Malaysia’s slang for netizens) have since attributed PN’s social media success during the elections to this.
Tepat sekali, saya adalah tiktokguru pertama di Malaysia, memang ada manual push by moderator tiktok bila sampai kesesuatu tahap selepas penapisan mmgikut c.guideline.
Saya ada mengatakan temphari mcm ada sesuatu tk kena bila sesuai mnjadi fyp yg jelas2 lggr guideline.
Be that as it may, it seems like that may not be the case. TikTok has issued a statement addressing the issue. In a statement from Hafizin Tajudin, TikTok’s Head of Public Policy, the company asserts that the accusations are false. In fact, they refer to the individual implicated, Suffi Kamari, as a former employee. This is supported by a tweet by Kamari, himself, who is now the Head of Communications of the Gombak Youth Division at the Malaysian Pan-Islamic Party (PAS). In his tweet, Kamari clarifies that he had left ByteDance in June 2022 – about 5 months before the elections.
Tajudin also clarified that “moderators do not have any authority or access to any forms of promotional tools for content” and that “[TikTok has] a robust quality assurance system in place to ensure that the political or personal opinions of our employees do not affect their work quality and ethics, including when performing content moderation tasks. TikTok’s content moderation decisions are based on a set of clearly defined Community Guidelines and have layers of checks and balances including quality assurance and third-party fact-checkers, to uphold safety and ensure fairness in moderation.”
TikTok has tried to proactively address concerns such as these as they arose amidst the American elections in 2020 on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The company has adopted policies that try to limit the proliferation of misinformation and political rhetoric on the platform. In their statement, TikTok asserts that political ads on their platform. This is an assertion which is enshrined in their advertising policy. They have since introduced a policy for government, politician and political party accounts which prohibit monetization and promotion by these accounts.
In fact, their statement even addresses Forbes’s assertion of content “heating”. They do admit that they “do promote a small fraction of videos to help diversify the content experience and introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.” This does bring up the question of whether “heating” is a policy which needs to be revisited by TikTok. While it does help with creating platforms for emerging content creators, it makes us ask, “how are they vetting these creators?”. However, it can’t fall to the company to ensure that these creators are completely clean when they do promote content. We’ve all seen creators go off the deep end at some point in their careers.
Be that as it may, the content that made PN relevant wasn’t from a political party or politician account; instead, it was rhetoric spread by regular users and influencers that were incentivised to do so. This issue highlights a growing concern of individuals, government and watchdogs about the role social media is playing when it comes to political rhetoric.
Is it then possible to actually snip movements like this in the bud as a social media company? Should they be allowed to police what is spread on their platforms? These are questions which continue to be asked in situations like these. Where does freedom of expression end and where does moral policing begin?
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, still is known for Facebook, has just posted their quarterly earnings report. For the first time since 2007, they have posted a decline in revenue, US$ 28.82 billion versus US$ 29.07 billion in the second quarter of 2021. That is a whopping 1% drop in revenue year-on-year. No, that is not a lot, to be fair. It is not that alarming either, if you ask us. What could be more alarming is that the drop in revenue comes with a larger drop in net income for Meta, about 36% loss compared to the same quarter last year (Q2 2021).
The drop in revenue could be due to many reasons. One of the reasons could be also because of the loss in user base and daily user counts thanks to the ongoing crisis over in Russia and Ukraine. The loss in revenue and profits could also be largely due to Apple’s new “opt out” policy that significantly changes how ads are being served on iOS devices.
While a decline in revenue and profits is bad news, it is not something we should really feel bad about. After all, Meta still rakes in profits in the billions. What could be bad news to us though is what Mark Zuckerberg is planning for Instagram to make it more profitable than before.
Instagram primarily does photos and images. It started its life to be a one-stop shop for sharing your photos with your friends and family with no fuss or frills. When Meta, or then Facebook gotten a hold of Instagram, they saw it as an opportunity to level the playing field with Snapchat and introduced Instagram Stories, a sub platform within Instagram to share photos with your followers available for the next 24 hours. A sort of “what’s on my mind”, or “what am I doing right now” kind of thing for the masses.
Recently, Instagram has started to favour more video contents. Understandably, the rise in short form video contents had an astronomical rise thanks to the likes of TikTok. Instagram tried to introduce more video features within their platform starting with Instagram TV, a long format video platform within Instagram to encourage content creators to post longer format videos on Instagram. Then there is Reels now, a short form video platform within Instagram that is supposed to encourage content creators to post more bite sized chunks of videos on their profile.
While more contents from our friends is great for us in the grand scheme of things, Instagram has also tweaked their algorithms alongside all the new features they have added. Your Instagram main feed is now loaded with posts from strangers and accounts you have never followed. They are recommendations based on the posts you have been responding to or interacted with. Nothing wrong with that, except you are seeing less of your friends and more strangers on your feed. It is starting to be more like TikTok, and people have mentioned that they hated it.
Unfortunately, their woes will fall on deaf ears. Meta’s CEO has mentioned that the company will be doubling the amount of ‘recommended’ contents to users by 2023. The same changes apply to Facebook as well. This also means that at least 30% of our feeds on Instagram and Facebook will be filled by contents from people we do not know or have never followed suggested by Meta’s recommendation algorithm.
If you want to only see feeds from people you are following, there is a way. All you need to do is to hit the ‘Instagram’ logo on the top right corner of your display or the app and select ‘following’ there. That way you are seeing feed only from people you are following. It is an extra step, but hey, it is better than seeing strangers on your feed all the time.
There were rumours that Telegram will start offering a “premium” plan that allows users to have access to a more powerful Telegram than regular users. That rumour is not a rumour anymore though. As of today, Telegram has made that rumour a reality for about US$ 5 a month (MYR 22.99*).
Now is the time to ask; “why do you need to pay for Telegram Premium?”
As paying users, you get access to upload files with up to 4GB in size. That means you can technically send out an entire Full HD movie out to your friends via Telegram. Regular users can upload files up to 2GB. Paying users also get to download their files faster than before, as fast as your internet connection can go, which means that a 4GB file might not be too big of an issue when you have high-speed internet.
You get your limits doubled too with Telegram Premium. You can follow up to 1000 channels and groups. You can pin up to 10 chats instead of five. Instead of two accounts in a single app, premium users get to work with up to four accounts. At the same time, you can now write a longer bio on your Telegram profile with links in it. At the same time, with up to 400 saved GIFs, responding to texts with witty images is faster than ever.
Paying users can also convert voice to text within the chat now. Instead of listening to a voice note, you can just get Telegram to convert voice messages to texts. It also improves over time with your rating and input.
At the same time, paying users get to have unique reactions to texts. You have exclusive stickers that is only available to paying users and over 10 new exclusive emoji to react to messages. Even your profile pictures can be animated now, alongside a premium badge on your profile so that others know you are paying for Telegram. If you want, you can even change your app icon on your smartphone. Of course, the other improvement to Telegram with Premium is that you do not get served ads in public channels.
To get Telegram Premium, you must update your app to version 8.8 which is currently only available on iOS for now. The 8.8 update is coming to Android devices very soon, so we should see some paying users from both the iOS and Android realms. More information and improvements on Telegram version 8,8 can be found on their blog.
Love it or hate it, NFT is here to stay for a while. If you are not familiar yet, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) really took off in the past year. It started out as something of a trading alternative for artists in the digital space. It also stems from cryptocurrency, which is another completely different and large topic on its own.
The rise of NFTs does pave plenty of ways for artists and content creators to make millions in a matter of minutes, faster than ever before. There are always two sides of the coin though. Some may like the idea of NFT, some opposed it and thinks that NFT is just a fad. Then again, cryptocurrency is not everyone’s cup of tea either.
Instagram seems to be one that hopes that the NFT trend could boost their own popularity though. To be fair, this should not be something new. Instagram has been contemplating on allowing the sharing of NFTs on their platform for a while now. Recently, the thoughts have been put to action as announced by Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri via Twitter and Instagram Reels.
This does not mean that Instagram is going to be a marketplace for NFTs though. It is a mere platform to showcase owned NFTs. According to Adam, there will be additional information provided with NFT postings. Information like who owns the NFT, for example, will be essential and shared with the posts. He also added that NFTs can be posted and shared across the platform without additional fees or costs.
NFTs on Instagram 🎉
This week we’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG.
Still, you do want to take Instagram’s stance on NFTs with a pinch of salt though. Adam Mosseri’s post says that they are just beginning the tests with a handful of creators and NFT owners. That also means that not all users might get to share their NFT contents just yet. It could pave a way for Instagram to become one of the NFT marketplaces in the future, depending on how its users receive the feature. For now, it will act like a gallery for NFT placements. If you wish to buy NFTs, you still should head to the appropriate marketplaces to make your purchases or bids.
What do you think about NFTs? Is this the right move for Instagram? Would you share your digital collectible on Instagram? Would you even buy NFTs off Instagram? Comment below!
A few years ago, on Kickstarter and a few other crowdsourcing platforms, we saw something quite intriguing. We saw a small drone that is supposed to be sold to consumers. It is made to eliminate the need for selfie sticks, allowing self-portrait subjects a free range of movements in their own photos. It allows them to have a more flexible control on the frame of the photos. We thought that it was brilliant and odd at the same time. The idea never really took off anywhere though, at least until now. Snap, the people behind Snapchat (obviously), introduces a new hardware for Snapchat users, the Pixy.
The idea of Pixy is nothing new. Ever since DJI started selling consumer grade drones that is smaller than smartphones, the idea of using a drone to capture selfies has been born. It makes a lot of sense too since with a drone, you have a larger creative canvas anyway. You can push it further than you physically can with a selfie stick and bring it closer when you need it to. Like what DJI does with their drones, a flying camera can also be a personal vlogging camera that gives you the full motion of both your hands.
That is basically what Pixy is. It is a pocket-sized, free-flying personal camera that you can take with you anywhere you go. Unlike DJI drones, it does not come with a comprehensive remote. It is made to be used quickly and seamlessly, so we assume that you can control it with your smartphone. We suspect also that the controls on the smartphone could be limited since Snap has mentioned in their release that the Pixy can fly in four preset flight paths. Once you set the flight path, you should not need to look at your smartphone until you are done with it.
Unlike DJI’s devices as well, the Pixy is made with less powerful motors, because it is a simpler and lighter compact drone anyway. Because of that, they designed the Pixy to take off and land on your hands instead of the ground.
We also assume that the Pixy is going to be fully controlled via the Snapchat app. Snap says that the Pixy will be a companion device to the app in the future. All videos and photos from the drone can be transferred to a smartphone device wirelessly to be saved into Snapchat Memories. Everything captured via the Pixy can also be edited on the Snapchat app itself.
The Pixy is now available in the United States and France only. There are no mentions on its availability elsewhere, but we expect that the Pixy will at least make a few more markets in the North American and European regions. It will set you back US$ 229.99 (MYR 1,001*). If you are planning to get one somehow, do check with the local laws to ensure you do not get into trouble taking a selfie. More information on the Pixy can be found on their website.
*Approximately based on exchange rate of US$ 1 = MYR 4.35 as of 28/04/2022 on xe.com
Being rich has a lot of perks. One of them, as the richest man on earth, Elon Musk shows, is simply acquiring companies. His most prominent acquisition so far, that just went through anyway, is Twitter at US$ 44 Billion (MYR 191.333 billion*).
Of course, while this is our first report on Elon Musk’s bid to acquiring Twitter, it is not something that has gone quiet. Elon Musk bought over some Twitter shares a few weeks back and has been bidding to acquire the platform entirely ever since. Why? We do not know.
A few weeks back, with his acquisition of Twitter shares, he also promised that Twitter will soon have an ‘edit post’ button. The ‘edit’ button is something Twitter sorely lacks since its inception. While we would appreciate an ‘edit’ function, we have sort of lived with it. An ‘edit’ button will be nice though.
The acquisition that just went through not too long ago today has more questions surrounding it than answers too. One thing that has already been known with the acquisition is that the current CEO, Parag Agrawal will be leaving the company, though there are no mentions of when that will happen. We also know that Elon Musk is big on “free speech within the bounds of the law”, which is still rather vague but could mean less regulations from Twitter’s end. Elon also says that he wants to make Twitter better with new features and open sourcing the algorithms within Twitter.
What does this mean for Twitter?
Nobody knows, really. When the deal went through, there were plenty of speculations on organisational restructuring. Employees at Twitter are still nervous about their jobs or even compensations if they suddenly become unemployed. So far, there are no mentions on a major restructuring in Twitter yet.
In terms of the Twitter platform itself, you could be seeing the return of multiple names that was banned by Twitter for political correctness and other reasons. We said ‘could’, not ‘will’, so even we are taking that with a pinch of salt for now. Still, in favour of Elon Musk’s “free speech” commitment, we are expecting looser regulations from Twitter and less intervention from the platform in plenty of topics, “fake news” included.
Of course, such high-profile acquisition will attract the attention of Wall Street. That led to a 5% spike of Twitter’s share prices before Wall Street had to stop the trade of Twitter’s stocks. Elon Musk is known to turn many things into gold, and we believe that Twitter’s stocks will continue to increase in value at least for the time being.
The current CEO of Twitter says that there are no planned changes at this time, at least before he leaves. He added though that he is unsure about changers in the future ones the deal closes later this year. The deal is expected to take another six months before Elon fully takes control of Twitter. At least for the next six months, there should not be much in terms of change within and on Twitter as a platform.
*Approximately based on exchange rate of US$ 1 = MYR 4.35 as of 26/04/2022 on xe.com
WhtasApp’s beta is now available for iOS 15! While that is news, it is not the one we are excited about. Sure, it is important that WhatsApp explore and test their app on every available platform as soon as they are available. But new WhatsApp beta builds always come with new features we are likely to see in the coming updates for regular WhatsApp users.
The update is iOS beta version 22.7.0.76. The update introduced to be compatible with iOS 15 brings about quite a significant step forward in the functionality that is file sharing on WhatsApp. It bumped up the 100MB limit that used to be the staple for WhatsApp. It is important, especially when you need to be sharing large format media files like videos to your colleagues, or friends, or clients without the clutter and slowness of emails, or simply uploading to a cloud storage only to share a link after. They did not bump up the 100MB limit to 150MB, not just 1GB too. They have bumped up the file sending capacity to 2GB.
Source: WhatsApp Beta Info
While WhatsApp tends to compress your images and videos, you currently can send uncompressed image files within WhatsApp. It is a small turnaround, but it is possible. But the current release of WhatsApp will still limit your file sharing size to 100MB. You can send most photos, AAC and FLAC audio files. You will not be able to share high resolution videos, or WAV files in most cases, important in certain professional environments.
2GB is basically a 2000% jump from the current limit. For us at least, 2GB could allow us to get our finished videos out to our clients via WhatsApp immediately instead of slow emails. It improves our workflow alongside the clients.
The test is currently only available to iOS and certain Android users in Argentina. It is just a test though, so we can only take it with a pinch of salt. Only time will tell if we are going to be able to share larger format files via WhatsApp for now. We are hopeful though, since WhatsApp is one of the main communication platforms we heavily rely on in Malaysia.
The audio based social media platform space blew up in the past couple of months. This is a space technically pioneered by Clubhouse. The app was so popular that other social media platforms paid attention. They wanted a piece of that pie as well. As a result, platform makers started looking into building their own platforms.
Spotify developed their own platform too for audio based social media platform. They developed Greenroom, a Clubhouse clone in one way but with Spotify’s official colours plastered over everything on the platform. It is, in its own rights, quite a successful experiment by Spotify and it is among the only platforms of its kind that is still in existence, or rather, frequently visited.
When they launched the platform though, it was launched as an app of its own. While you can use your regular Spotify account to get on to the platform and start having conversations with strangers about all sorts of topics, the app has no other correlation with the main Spotify app. We thought, perhaps Spotify Greenroom is meant to sit separately as a separate app since it does not offer any similar services to Spotify. Until now, that is.
Based on what has been spotted on Spotify’s beta app, Spotify will be integrating Greenroom or Greenroom similar functionality into the main app itself. The feature will be renamed to Spotify Live instead though. There are rumours as well that the update will be rolling out in the second quarter of 2022. Though this might mean that Greenroom itself might be taken down and moved to the new platform under Spotify’s app, it does not mean that its functions and contents will be removed.
It will fundamentally be the same as working with Greenroom, except that everything comes under one app now. While it does create a bigger, more complex app, it is a more sensible thing to do for Spotify. The platform within Spotify will allow content creators to organise and manage conversations on the app itself. Users can subscribe to content creators on the app itself and listen in on their LIVE conversations whenever their subscribed content creator creates the conversation room.
Getting apps banned in certain countries is a lot more common than you think. China is a prime example of plenty of apps and platforms getting banned in favour of their own in-house platforms. Facebook and Google cannot operate in China currently. That also means your WhatsApp will not work in China unless you use a VPN to bypass all the restrictions.
Banning a communication platform or website does a few things for a country. For one, it helps curb the spreading of information from inside and outside the country. There is another aspect of monitoring the communication channels inside the country, but most independent platforms are encrypted enough that governments do not usually have a hold of your chat information – so we are mostly safe.
Countries like the United States wants to have more control over companies like Facebook and Google because of the amount of information that these platforms have. They argued that these companies have breached a few privacy laws and are using our data illegally. Information, after all, is power. But there is also another thing that social media and communication platforms can do. You can spread untrue information and that information can be gospel.
That is exactly what happened with Telegram in Brazil and the government has no choice but to curb the problem by banning the use of Telegram in the entire nation. Brazil has recently hosted a successful election campaign. Politics are never straightforward though and there will always be people who are unhappy about the results. That leads to misleading information being created and possibly circulated. The easiest way to disseminate disinformation is via social media.
While Facebook and Google have been doing their part in keeping misinformation in check on their own platforms, Telegram is a more open-sourced platform that has not done a lot in filtering out bad actors. They can manually filter disinformation channels and users though, if you email them. Brazil did the exact same thing anyone would then. Nothing happened though, and that led to Brazil banning the platform on Friday.
Telegram has since responded by removing the whatever reported posts that are pointed in the emails the Brazilian government has sent them. But they also claimed that they have missed the email. There is also a reason for them missing these emails. Apparently, Telegram uses a dedicated email for complains and takedown requests. The Brazilian court emailed Telegram on their general use email that they hardly check apparently. In that case, Telegram has also referred the Brazilian government to the correct email and rectified the issue.
As of today, Telegram is no longer banned in Brazil. Telegram also promises that they will be doing better in labelling and taking down accounts, groups, and even misinformed posts in general. They have removed classified information shared by the Brazilian President and removed accounts belonging and connected to an activist that is accused of misinformation.
