New social media updates and features to know this week

Two social media platforms are making big moves this week. Some of X’s decisions have users running for competitors, while YouTube is going all-in on Shorts and offering a number of quality-of-life improvements. Let’s get into it.

X

After a relatively quiet period without major, platform-changing updates, Elon Musk is now busily shaping the platform to meet his exact desires.

But will those be appealing to the average user — or to brand users?

Two major updates seem to be causing a new exodus of users to competitors like Bluesky. First, Musk has taken aim at one of his most-hated features: block. X has announced that users you’ve blocked will still be able to see your posts — they simply won’t be able to interact with them. Of course, this doesn’t stop them from screenshotting the post.

Now, evading a block under the old system wasn’t onerous. It wasn’t difficult to create a second account which would allow you to view a user’s content. But there was at least a slight friction. Now, blocked accounts will be able to see content with no additional effort whatsoever.

The impetus behind the change, X said, is to combat accounts that “share and hide harmful or private information about those they’ve blocked.”

The other major update comes to X’s terms of service. Starting Nov. 15, users must agree that X has the right to “analyze text and other information you provide and to otherwise provide, promote, and improve the Services, including, for example, for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type,” PC Mag reports. It’s unclear if the current opt-out will persist beyond Nov. 15. But it may cause concerns for some security-minded brands.

These changes seem to have caused a new surge of interest in competitive platforms, such as Bluesky, which gained half a million new users in one day after the block change announcement.

As we’ve seen over the last two years since Musk bought the platform, X won’t disappear overnight. It remains a major player in the social place. But each unpopular change chips away at its user base just a bit more, which could impact your social strategy.

Finally, in a more benign (even beneficial) update, Social Media Today reports that X is expanding access to its Radar social listening tool. Premium+ subscribers who pay $16 per month will gain access to the tool, which gives access to a suite of keyword monitoring tools.

YouTube

Tons of new updates, big and small, are coming from YouTube this week, many of them around its updated Shorts feature, which now supports videos up to 3 minutes in length. Let’s go through them bullet style:

• YouTube clarified that only videos of 1-3 minutes in length uploaded after Oct. 15 will be automatically converted into Shorts; this won’t be done retroactively.
• Users creating Shorts in the United States can experiment with adding AI-generated instrumental backing tracks.
• You can now save Shorts to drafts for later posting.

YouTube also unveiled a number of small but impactful quality-of-life improvements, including:

• An improved mini player allowing users to more easily watch videos while searching for more videos to watch in the YouTube app.
• Finetune how fast (or slow) a video plays. Change the playback speed in 0.05 increments.
• Share playlists via QR code. You’ll also be able to create custom thumbnails for playlists, and later this year, users will be able to vote on which videos appear on playlists, which YouTube touts as an engagement play for creators.
• A sleep timer, for those of us who doze off to YouTube.

Meta

Meta is offering a number of new features designed to protect teens from sextortion scams. These damaging schemes often play off the shame and fear of young people for profit. Some accounts sending spam signals will now have follow requests automatically sent to the spam folder. Teens will also receive a warning when they’re chatting with someone in another country, regardless of what their profile indicates. Accounts suspected of spam will also be blocked from viewing a user’s followers and following account — often these lists are used in extortion bids. Screenshots will also be blocked from content sent using “view once” options.

Instagram

Instagram is currently testing a “Social Library,” that would keep the content you’ve shared or been sent via chat, collection and likes. It further underscores the importance of social sharing as a signal on Instagram and all social apps.

Threads

In an instant messaging twist, Threads has instituted a new indicator that shows when a user is online. Only followers will be able to see this indicator for private accounts. A green light will appear when a user is currently active on the site.

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