Friday Social: Facebook Live Polls, InstaLive, and Dorsey Suspended
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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
Facebook Cracks Down on Facebook Live Reaction Polls
Spotted those Facebook Live polls doing the rounds? It’s been hard to miss ‘em…
Love them or hate them, you shouldn’t be seeing any more in your News Feed, as Facebook has now called time on using Reactions as a voting mechanism or to influence actions in a Live broadcast:
Facebook has FINALLY banned the use of Reactions as a voting mechanism in Facebook Live videos.
h/t @jspeiser pic.twitter.com/k624W0rdJR
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) November 23, 2016
Many brands have been using the mechanic to make the most of the reach that a Live broadcast offers, while users have raised complaints about the legitimacy of non-live videos. Read more about Facebook’s latest update here.
Instagram officially goes live
It was announced in October that Instagram has been testing out a Live feature on its app to a limited amount of people. Not even a month later, the feature is officially being rolled out over the coming weeks.
Users will be able to access the new feature by swiping left to view their camera – at the bottom of the screen there will be the option to go ‘Live’. Users that go live will be able to stream for up to an hour, and friends will receive a notification when they have gone live.
Along with the new Stories feature at the top of the page, a small ‘Live’ logo will appear with their story. Users will also be able to see ‘Top Live Videos’ in the Explore page, allowing people to see content outside of their friend group.
Like Snapchat, once users have finished streaming a live video, it will automatically disappear.
Reddit CEO in Trouble
Let’s just say Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is not the most popular man on the internet right now.
He’s recently admitted to modifying a number of obscene posts directed at him on a popular Donald Trump subreddit. Huffman anonymously changed references to his username, “spez”, to the pro-Donald Trump subreddit — r/the_donald.
This whole debacle follows the news that Reddit banned a thread which discussed “Pizzagate”, a conspiracy which claimed Hillary Clinton was running a paedophile group out of a pizza restaurant. After receiving death threats, the manager of the restaurant reached out to social networks to help him stop the conspiracy theory from spreading.
Huffman has released a statement addressing his mistake, “As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a paedophile constantly.”
“As the CEO, I shouldn’t play such games, and it’s all fixed now.”
Facebook Helps Find WiFi
Facebook has been testing a new feature to allow users to find WiFi hotspots near them – potentially, as The Next Web points out, aiming to encourage users to take advantage of Facebook Live while out and about.
The feature follows Facebook’s recent request for Pages to list the available WiFi at their locations. So far, just select iOS users have seen the new feature…
Twitter Suspends Jack
Twitter accidentally suspended the account of a user you’re probably familiar with this week… its own CEO, Jack Dorsey.
https://twitter.com/bakedalaska/status/801243486724886528
To his credit, Dorsey took the mistake with good humour:
just setting up my twttr…again (account suspension was an internal mistake)
— jack (@jack) November 23, 2016
Dorsey’s account was active again around 15 minutes later.