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Creator Weekly: YouTube Turns 20, Edits Video Editor, Adobe Content Authenticity App

Creator Weekly: YouTube Turns 20, Edits Video Editor, Adobe Content Authenticity App

Peggy K
April 26, 2025

YouTube celebrated its 20th birthday this week (that makes me feel so old!). Plus the new Instagram Edits video editor is now available, Adobe connects your verified identity (via LinkedIn) to your digital art, and more updates from AdSense, Facebook, Bluesky, and Threads.

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Top news and updates this week

YouTube celebrates its 20th birthday with facts, figures, and new features.
YouTube is testing Search AI Overviews that highlight clips in response to shopping or location searches.
AdSense updates the account Policy Center to make it easier to understand ad-serving issues.
Instagram’s Edits free video editing app is now available for iOS and Android.
Facebook is battling spam at least in part to help Creators get their posts seen.
Linktree now offers multiple ways for Creators to monetize, including Kajabi course creation, selling digital products, and sponsored links.
Medium adds email notifications for new posts.
Google Chrome will not be blocking 3rd party cookies by default.
Bluesky now has blue-check verification by Trusted Verifier organizations.
Threads is now a .com, rather than .org, and there are improvements for posting and browsing on the web.
The Adobe Content Authenticity App lets you connect your Verified on LinkedIn identity and social media profiles with your digital images.
Adobe announces Firefly Image Model 4 that generates more accurately photorealistic people and animals and a new Firefly app.
Adobe Firefly Boards, formerly Project Concept, a new AI-first moodboarding platform is now available.
Adobe adds AI-powered video creation and editing tools to Adobe Express.
Google Vids adds easier scene editing and control of audio timing and transitions.
Microsoft 365 Copilot now includes Copilot Notebooks, which is very similar to Google’s NotebookLM. That includes podcast-style audio overviews. (And there are a bunch more Copilot updates for business).

Ten Years Ago This Week: Facebook Favors Friends

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

Ten years ago Facebook tried to rebalance the News Feed by ranking posts from Friends higher in the feed. Ten years later, they are still trying to work out the right balance between Friends and Pages (when not claiming they aren’t really about connecting with friends and family).

YouTube is 20

This week is the 20th anniversary of the first video uploaded to YouTube. “Me at the zoo” now has 357 million views and 10.4 million comments. YouTube celebrated with stats (with more from Alphabet’s quarterly report), announcement of upcoming new features and a video you should check out.

Over 20 million videos uploaded per day
Over 100 million comments posted per day
Over 3.5 billion likes on videos per day
Over 1 billion monthly podcast users
Over 125 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers.

Features coming soon (or rolling out now):

Voice reply to comments coming to more creators.
YouTube Premium and Music Premium subscribers can use AI-powered “Ask Music” to create a personalized “radio station”.
YouTube Premium Subscribers can now watch videos at up to 4x speed in the mobile app.
YouTube on TV redesign with easier navigation, commenting and improved quality.
YouTube TV subscribers can create their own multiview with non-sports channels.

AdSense Policy Center Update

The AdSense Policy Center is the place to find information about ad-serving issues and Program Policy violations. AdSense just updated the Policy Center to make it easier to understand issues with your account.

Issues are now labeled as either policy issue, regulatory issue (GDPR, privacy laws) or advertiser preference. AdSense explains how those may affect your account:

You will not receive advertising where there are policy issues. Repeated policy violations may lead to an account suspension. You don’t have to fix regulatory issues or advertiser preferences, but you'll likely receive less advertising, which may impact your revenue.

The review proces has also been updated so you can report that your site has been incorrectly labeled.

(Note that the Policy center is only for AdSense for Content, not AdSense for YouTube.)

Instagram Launches CapCut Competitor Edits

Meta launched Edits, its new mobile video editing app. It’s available for both Android and iOS devices (including tablets). It’s free to use, but requires an Instagram sign-in. Current features:

No watermark on videos. Share directly to Facebook and Instagram, or export and post to other sites. Up to 4k resolution.
Camera capture up to 10 minutes.
“Frame-accurate timeline” editing, with transitions, green screen and other features.
Real-time stats from Facebook and Instagram.

Does it compete with CapCut? This is definitely version 1, but more features are coming: keyframes, AI effects, collaboration tools, and more fonts, text animations, voice effects and other creative tools (“including royalty free”, which suggests some won’t be).

Facebook Battles Spam

Facebook says they are battling spam by reducing the reach of spammy content and preventing monetization of spammy accounts. What kind of spam?

Off-topic captions or excessive hashtags
Floods of the same content from spam networks
Coordinated fake engagement, including follows and comments
Impersonation

Facebook notes that this should help Creators, because Creator posts are less likely to be flooded out by this (let’s call it what it is) crap. They are enhancing Rights Manager to help Creators protect their original content.

Connect your verified identity to your digital images

Adobe launched the public beta of their Adobe Content Authenticity app. This allows you to sign your work with Content Credentials. It is integrated with Verified on LinkedIn, and social media accounts (Behance, Instagram, X) so you can attach your identity to the image. Adobe says the credentials will still be included even if someone takes a screenshot. You can also set a preference for allowing AI training, but 3rd party AI companies don’t currently have to follow that setting.

You can verify your identity for free on LinkedIn. Verified on LinkedIn allows 3rd parties (like Adobe, Behance,TrustRadius and others) to use your verified identity.

Adobe Launches new AI-Powered Image and Video Tools

Announcements from the Adobe MAX London Creativity Conference:

Adobe is launching a new Firefly mobile app for Android and iOS.

Firefly Boards (beta) is a new “AI-first” moodboarding platform. Learn more and join the waitlist. This was originally announced as Project Concept last October.

Adobe’s latest AI text-to-image models Firefly Image Model 4 and Image Model 4 Ultra have “enhanced prompt fidelity” and “now renders people, animals, and architectural elements with exceptional precision, clarity, and realism.” The examples are pretty stunning. And, as Adobe always reminds everyone, the models are designed to be commercially safe, with training on licensed images.

Adobe is adding video editing and generation in Adobe Express.

Clip Maker automatically creates clips from long-form videos, adding captions and reframing the content.
Generate Video generates custom b-roll clips using Firefly Video.
Enhance Speech removes noise from audio.
Record yourself directly in Adobe Express.
Drop Zone and Scene View let you compile and rearrange clips into longer videos.
Vimeo integration for direct export.

The Adobe Fresco painting and drawing app now lets you label your images as “created without generative AI”.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube is testing Search AI Overviews. This will highlight AI-selected clips that answer your search query. The AI Overviews are most likely to appear for searches related to shopping or locations (like finding top museums or restaurants). This will be available to some YouTube Premium members in the US - if you see it, send feedback by tapping the 3 dot menu icon and giving it a thumbs up or down.

From Tubefilter: Creators are building their own streaming services. Dropout, the Try Guys, and the Sidemen all used Vimeo to do it.

Web Publishers and Search

Linktree, best known for “link in bio” pages, has launched a number of ways for Creators to use the platform to monetize as Linktree Earn.

Build a course powered by Kajabi
Sell digital products
Monetize with sponsored links (US Only)
Sell affiliate products via Linktree Shops (US Only)

Medium now lets you subscribe to email notifications from writers you follow. If you blog on Medium, that means you don’t need to use a third party RSS to Email platform to email new articles to your followers.

In July 2024 Google announced they would not be deprecating third party cookies in Chrome. Instead they would give users a choice whether to allow third party cookies in the Chrome settings. Google has decided to stick with that, and will not be rolling out a more aggressive stand-alone prompt for third-party cookie settings. They are working on increasing privacy when using Incognito mode, including IP protection, which will roll out later this year. In contrast, third-party cookies are blocked by default by Firefox and Safari. Who is the winner here? Advertisers, and probably Google’s advertising business.

In a cryptic post on the WordPress(dot)org blog, Matt Mullenweb declared “WordPress Jubilee” and announced that all the “human blocks” would be dropped. Fortunately the folks on the WPDrama subReddit knew the score: Mullenweg and the WordPressOrg social accounts (which Mullenweg owns) are unblocking people accounts that were blocked during recent legal issues. Speculation is that there may be a settlement with WPEngine in the works.

Bluesky launched verification for profiles. If your profile is verified by a Trusted Verifier it can get a blue check. What makes this different from other blue checks is that Bluesky is not the only verifier. The New York Times, for example, can also issue blue checks. You can click the blue check to see which organization granted verification. Bluesky is not currently accepting requests, and suggests self-verification by setting your domain as your username.

The OpenVibe app for Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, and (sort-of) Threads, now has a “For You” feed. You can pick the topics you are interested in.

If you are using Surf Social to follow content, you can now publish your feeds to Bluesky.

Threads for web is now on threads.com instead of threads.org, and has new features.

Easier to customize your display and view custom feeds.
Copy a Threads post as an image to share on Instagram or other platforms.
A new floating + button on the bottom right corner makes it easier to post while you are scrolling.
More easily access liked and saved posts through the main menu icon.
Fediverse sharing will remain on .net, rather than .com

Ads are rolling out more broadly on Threads. Threads (and Instagram) head Adam Mosseri says their goal is for the ads to “enhance your overall experience.” I wish he would just say they are doing it because they want money to support the platform, not because it’s some kind of favor to users (do ads ever enhance your experience?).

Meta was fined €200 million for violations of the EU Digital Markets Act. Meta was unsurprisingly unpleased, stating “The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.”

The New York Times looked at what happens on X to people or accounts that criticize Elon Musk. It turns out the reach of their posts flatlines.

Communication and Collaboration

Google Vids now lets you resize the height of the timeline, letting you view more objects when editing a scene. Google Vids availability.

Google Vids also lets you control audio timing and transitions with audio tracks. Google Vids availability.

Google Slides is rolling out more new templates, with options for business proposals, marketing plans, team intros, celebrations and more.

The latest version of Microsoft 365 Copilot has Researcher and Analyst reasoning models, enterprise Search, Personalization based on your job description and other personal details, Create image generation based on the OpenAI GPT-4o model, Copilot Notebooks (like Google’s NotebookLM, including the podcast-style audio overview) and more.