Umpf / Blog / Friday Social: #10YearChallenge, Gillette’s Twitter Storm, and YouTube Crackdown

Friday Social: #10YearChallenge, Gillette’s Twitter Storm, and YouTube Crackdown

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Our #FridaySocial is a weekly round-up of the key social media news stories from the previous seven days.  Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter – @Umpf / @GrittAlessandra 

YouTube Cracks Down on Stunts

YouTube has this week published new guidelines which crack down on content showing ‘dangerous challenges and pranks’.

The new policy follows the recent Bird Box Challenge, which Netflix had to recommend viewers don’t try, and the earlier Tide Pod Challenge.

More information on enforcement can be found in Google’s support section.

Twitter’s Beta Program

We told you last week about some upcoming updates to Twitter including a presence-indicator and ‘ice breakers’.

This week, TechCrunch has revealed more details about the potential changes to the social media app with a behind-the-scenes peek at the new beta program.

In an interview with Twitter’s Director of Product Management, Sara Haider, it was revealed that the program will offer a few thousand users – who won’t be under an NDA – the chance to use and talk about new features.

The beta will initially look at the way conversation threads work on Twitter, incorporating colour-coded replies to conversations.

Other tweaks include algorithmic sorting of replies to tweets and removing ‘love’ hearts and other icons. User feedback will determine whether the potential updates are widely rolled out, or scrapped.

Gillette’s Twitter Storm

You must’ve seen it by now –

Gillett’s new ad as part of its #TheBestMenCanBe campaign has caused a social media storm this week. The ad, which challenges men to do more to become ‘closer to our best’, has riled some corners of the internet – including everyone’s favourite advertising springboard, Piers Morgan:

While the ad has also been widely praised for its positive message, some of those angry about the ad might not have thought their next actions through…

10 Year Challenge

It’s been all over your Timeline – Facebook’s 10 Year Challenge is the latest photo-sharing trend. But is it as innocent as it appears?

Kate O’Neill expanded on her tweet in a piece for Wired, in which she mentions that Facebook has denied having a part in the challenge, saying that it ‘is a user-generated meme that went viral on its own’.

If Facebook does want to improve its facial recognition tech, we’ve got a good place it can start – a new study has revealed that facial recognition and particularly emotional analysis tech is biased against black faces.

University ‘Switches Off’ Social

Leicester’s De Montfort University will be ‘switching off’ its social channels for a short period to encourage students to follow suit.

From Wednesday this week, the university has stopped using its nine various social channels. Business as usual will resume from Monday 21 January – Blue Monday – with the aim of warning students that overuse of social media can have a negative effect on wellbeing.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Dominic Shellard told BBC News: “In conversations I’ve had with students, I’ve been really struck by the degree to which their over-engagement on social media is having a negative impact on their mental health. They don’t want to come off social media completely but they do want to recalibrate their relationship with social media.”

During the social media-free days, a variety of free activities including gym classes will be on offer.