New social media features and updates to know this week

Safety, election integrity and new commenting systems are high on social media apps’ priorities these last few weeks. Let’s see what’s new and what it means for your social media practice.

X

In a small but handy tweak, X now allows users to edit their DMs. While editing posts is available only to Premium subscribers, the DM editing ability is available to all.

YouTube

YouTube has introduced some new safety features for teens. Parents will be able to link their accounts to their teens’, creating a dashboard that allows them to see insights such as the number of subscriptions, uploads and comments. Parents can also be notified via email when their child uploads new content.. It seems to be an attempt to strike a balance of keeping parents involved with a teen’s account without giving them direct.

Going even deeper into security ,  designed to protect copyright holders against unauthorized AI use. One tool will help copyright holders identify if their voice was used to create a new song via AI while the other will help identify if a person’s face is used in an image.

Both of these represent steps to keep copyright holders happy, similar to how YouTube detects music or video footage that infringes on protected content. How well it will work is another story.

Instagram

Over on Instagram, , in what the app calls a way to “spark conversations via comments.” These comments will be visible to anyone who can see your Stories, but by default, only mutual follows will be able to leave comments, though this setting can be toggled off. Comments are also now allowed on Broadcast Channels.

Instagram is also offering new aesthetic options for Reels and Stories, including:

• New fonts, animations and effects
• Text and stickers can now be added to carousels and photos
• Carousels can now include up to 20 images and videos.

Finally, Instagram is adding a number of new options for DMs, such as stickers, cutouts, birthday reminders and new fall chat themes, Social Media Today reported.

Threads

For those of us still in mourning over old-school TweetDeck, Threads’ new update is something to smile about. You can now rearrange Threads columns on desktop, customizing your screen to fit your needs.

TikTok

TikTok has its eye on election integrity this week.

The elections updates are fairly standard stuff, the kind of PR moves social media companies frequently make to improve trust, with much discussion of community partners and transparency. TikTok is beefing up its Elections Center, including detailed information on how to vote. Real-time results will be available through the app come November, provided by the Associated Press.

Two-step security verification will also be required for accounts tied to the U.S. government, candidates and parties to reduce hacking.

TikTok is also allowing users to more carefully curate the topics  fed to them on their For You page. A slider enables users to say how much (or how little) of a given topic they want the algorithm to show them – a nice control measure for when you end up  on some random side of TikTok where you’d  rather not be.

Finally, for once, TikTok is emulating Instagram instead of the other way around. In a pretty clear copycat of Instagram’s Notes feature, you can now share bits of text on other people’s posts.

Snap

In a note sent to Snap employees celebrating 13 years of the app, CEO Evan Spiegel gave a preview of several new initiatives. Among these:

• Beefed up insights for advertisers, including “privacy-safe insights around store visitation powered by the Snap Map,” use of Lenses and public content posts.
• New Sponsored Snaps ad format, which will appear in the chat section.
• New Promoted Places ad, using data harvested from the Snap Map.
• Use of AI to improve the ad purchasing process and AI Lenses.

While many of these features are long-term plans, Snap also released several  new features August. Snapchat+ subscribers can assign  ringtones to different friends or group chats to know at a listen who’s messaging them. Premium subscribers can also replay their videos for five minutes after sending. Lyric stickers help add the words to songs, and new Bitmoji comics are now available.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.