🥱 Zuck testifies... again

Zuck testifies in landmark social media safety trial. Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in a Los Angeles case accusing Instagram of harming young users, telling jurors that Meta builds for "usefulness" not addiction.

This could redraw the rules for every platform. 😬 ~TWISM

✨Want an edge for creating a winning social media strategy?
Upgrade to Pro to get the weekly executive briefing.

Upgrade now »

Together with Outskill: 🤝 Build AI agents this weekend. Free.

Outskill has trained 10M+ learners with instructors from Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Google. This Saturday and Sunday (Feb 28 to Mar 1), they're running a 16-hour live AI Mastermind.

You'll build real automations, create personalized AI agents, and learn frameworks to turn AI skills into a competitive edge.

Show up and unlock these bonuses for free:

✅ Prompt Bible
✅ AI monetization roadmap
✅ Personalized toolkit builder

These bonuses sell for $1,000+ outside this event.

📅 Sat + Sun | 10 AM to 7 PM EST

Registration is free until Wednesday. Seats are limited.

Claim Your Free Spot →

Instagram’s Reels-first redesign adds customizable "Your Feed". Meta is testing a Reels-first home screen plus a new "Your Feed" tab you can customize: Following, Latest (chronological), Saved, Posts-only, Favorites, and Suggested.

This lets brands choose when to play the Reels game and when to show followers real posts. 😍 ~TWISM

Instagram adds screenshot protection for the one-time view. One-time photos and videos now block screenshots for all users, making ephemeral DMs harder to save.

Instagram tests "Add interests" on profiles. Instagram is trialing an "Add interests" field so users can list topics they like.

Instagram adds business icons to ads. Icons will flag ads run by business accounts so users can tell them from personal or creator posts, improving transparency and possibly changing ad trust and CTRs.

Facebook tests "Thoughts" Stories sticker. Thoughts hides text in a Story until followers tap to reveal it.

Love this for curiosity-driven posts. 😉 ~TWISM

Meta updates Marketing API to standardize viewers. New API adds a Page "Viewers" metric (out by June 2026), retires legacy reach and impression metrics, and phases out older Advantage+ API endpoints; expect third-party ad tools to need updates by May 19, 2026.

Meta details the midterm elections integrity plan. Meta will label AI ads, surface voting info, and monitor for coordinated interference.

Threads adds one-tap share to Instagram Stories. New button shares a public Thread directly to an IG Story from within Threads; it auto-formats into an uneditable full-screen template with a preview before posting.

Quick win for small teams, test crops and CTAs before you scale. 🚀 ~TWISM

Threads adds emotional-support calls. Users can now call licensed experts or notify a trusted friend when reporting content. This lets the users get crisis support and strengthen community safety.

Together with The Marketing Against The Grain: 🤝 Scale your marketing efforts.

61% of marketers say this is the biggest marketing shift in decades.

Get the data and trends shaping growth in 2026 with this groundbreaking state of marketing report.

Inside you’ll discover:

Download your 2026 state of marketing report today.

Get Your Report

YouTube expands Jewels, Shorts tools, and CTV AI. Jewels (YouTube's live-stream donation currency) rolls out to YPP creators in Canada. Shorts gets track-level editing (zoom, rearrange, precise timing), Studio shows Shorts in a grid, and YouTube tests a voice-driven conversational AI on connected TVs.

More ways to earn and less editing fuss. 🤩 ~TWISM

YouTube leads January US streaming with 12.5% share. Total TV viewing rose 3.7%; cable jumped 9% with ESPN driving gains.

YouTube names top Super Bowl 60 ads. e.l.f.'s Melissa McCarthy spot drove nearly 40M views; YouTube points to early drops, nostalgia, creator tie-ins (Salesforce x MrBeast), and remixable ads as the biggest drivers.

YouTube fuels kids' pester power. Precisify finds 80% of 10–12-year-olds watch YouTube regularly, and parents report frequent product requests after ads: a clear sign for brands to balance product pushes with kid-safe messaging and parent-facing targeting.

TikTok Shop adds Seller Assistant and Auto-post clips. Seller Assistant chatbot is now widely available in Seller Center for on-demand help with listings and analytics.

Brands grow fastest on TikTok; Instagram reach falls. Emplifi's 2026 benchmarks show median brand followers on TikTok rose >200% YoY, while Instagram organic reach drops, carousels and Reels still lead.

TikTok joins the European Advertising Standards Alliance. TikTok becomes a full EASA member, pledging to adopt EU ad self-regulation and support 28 national advertising bodies to improve compliance and advertiser confidence across Europe.

Good for brands: fewer policy surprises and more trust, but expect stricter ad reviews. 🤝 ~TWISM

LinkedIn bans automated comment farms. New detection tools will remove auto-comments from the "Most Relevant" feed, limit some comments to a poster's network, and could fully restrict repeat offenders.

Finally! Platforms should stop rewarding fake engagement. 🔍 ~TWISM

LinkedIn pushes Premium with humorous job ads. The campaign spotlights Premium's job-seeker benefits as subscriptions hit $2B/year and nearly 50% growth over two years.

X appeals €120M DSA fine. X is appealing a €120M EU fine over verification changes and restricted researcher access, calling the probe flawed.

X rewrites search to fight AI bots. X is rebuilding search after AI agents overloaded results, pairing a full rewrite with tighter bot detection to cut AI-generated replies.

Expect some noise while they tune it. 🔧 ~TWISM

Ireland and Spain open probes into X's Grok. Both countries are investigating Grok for generating non-consensual sexualized images, which could lead to fines and platform limits.

Snapchat launches creator subscriptions. Alpha rolls out in the U.S. with select creators, subscribers get exclusive Snaps and Stories, priority replies, and an ad-free creator Stories experience.

Snapchat+ hits 25 million subscribers. Snap says 25M subs and $1B+ annual non-ad revenue, driven by exclusive tools and AR, proof that subscriptions can monetize audiences as user growth slows.

WhatsApp adds group message history. WhatsApp's Group Message History lets admins resend the most recent 25, 50, 75 or 100 messages to new members (end-to-end encrypted).

Netflix and Warner threaten ByteDance over Seedance 2.0. Netflix calls Seedance 2.0 a "high-speed piracy engine" after AI clips mimic Stranger Things and Squid Game; Warner alleges characters were "pre-loaded." Both demand ByteDance halt training and add guardrails.

Don't trust pre-built models; test for IP leakage before you use them. 😬 ~TWISM

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading. Now…

Go BIG or go home!

~ Josh from “This Week in Social Media”

Questions? Reply to this email or send one here. I read all emails.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you?

Subscribe to “This Week in Social Media” here »