Trends That Matter: More Regulatory Control On Your Social Media Content
Since 2018, we are seeing constant changes in regulatory control on our social media.
2018 was especially a monumental year for social platforms as they introduced several strict measures, and in some instances the changes were specific to each country. Several of the changes included limitations on how many messages you can send, to how many people in one go, as well as seeing a lot of awareness about possible fake news.
Here is a graph from Statista showing the percentage of adults in the US who believe that fake news is a big problem.
Image via Statista
Many companies and social leading platforms rushed into making a lot of changes in an effort to appease their users.
If you think of a year ago, Facebook was under a lot of scrutiny after an international leak scandal that involved over 87 million users.
Image via Business Insider
To top it all off Cambridge Analytica was accused of using/selling the personal information of Facebook users for the sake of political campaigns.
As this was the first time the world was seeing this type of data leak everyone was glued to the news, waiting to see how the world leaders would handle the situation.
The IT ministry served Cambridge Analytica and Facebook with a couple of notices for data breach.
Then we had Twitter that decided to join the game and crackdown on fake and automated accounts. A whole lot of suspicious accounts were removed and this led to a significant decrease in followers for a lot of companies and brands.
What Were the Real Effects on People?
We have all experienced how Facebook and other major social platforms are informing users to avoid uploading or sharing (or hosting) content that might be hateful, obscene, sexual, threatening in any capacity, etc.
Even breastfeeding pictures were not allowed for a while there.
So, on the one hand, you have people worrying about ‘fake news’ and on the other hand you have social platforms placing new terms and conditions on their users about what can be shared.
The online “free” world has started to resemble the mess we are constantly experiencing in the real one!
Understanding how to write the right content is now critical.
Although the benefits coming from social platforms are unparalleled, we are also experiencing some unwanted side effects. Come to think of it, the amount of information we are placing in these global tech giants gives them a lot of power.
What is Likely to Happen in 2020?
Social Media is unfortunately still being considered not safe.
Getting your content to the level of authority content would be a great first step in the right direction if you want to remain unaffected.
Although a lot will probably happen to help in regulating the social platforms, we have to hope for a balance between regulation and freedom of expression and speech.
So, be ready for more regulations and restrictions on all platforms.
Have any of the recent changes affected your brand?
If so, in what way?
