Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube channel links, block the GPTbot, set a passkey for security

This week you’ll soon need to change the way you promote links on YouTube, ChatGPT lets website owners block their bot, Instagram added new features in Reels, X/Twitter has made it slightly easier to qualify for ad revenue sharing, and more. And secure your account with a Passkey!

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No More Links on YouTube Shorts and New Channel Profile Links

If you are on Instagram you’ve probably seen posters point to “Links in bio”, because you can’t share clickable links on posts or reels.

Now this will be the new norm for YouTube Shorts. Yay?

On August 23, YouTube will make the links in Shorts (and vertical video) descriptions and comments unclickable. This is at least in part to counter people leaving links to malicious sites or spamming. You’ll still be able to @mention people and add clickable hashtags. And YouTube promises a new option for linking to other content on YouTube by the end of September.

This update does not affect links in descriptions or comments on long-form videos or landscape live streams.

Also, as part of the changes, the clickable icons on channel banners on desktop have been removed.

What creators can do is point viewers to the new Channel Profile Links which are viewable on a Channel’s About tab, and will be prominently accessible from the channel header. (So maybe it’s “Links on Profile”).

I’ve written up a tutorial on how to configure your channel links with a short (but not Short) video with an overview of all the changes.

Passkeys over passwords

This week I joined Michael Daniels on Tinkering with Tech to talk about Passkeys.

Passkeys are more secure than passwords because they rely on a device you own to sign in to your account. They haven’t replaced passwords (yet), but that’s likely going to happen in the future. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, social sites, banks, shopping platforms and more sites are all on board. Check out the Fido Alliance for more information.

Set up a passkey:

• Sign in to your Google account with a passkey, rather than a password.

• Set up Windows Hello to sign in to your Microsoft account

• Create a passkey on your Apple iPhone

Just be sure you have an alternate method or backup set.

More Video Creator Updates

There is a new metric in YouTube Analytics that lets you see new and returning users by format. Check it out by signing in to YouTube Studio and viewing the Analytics > Content > All tab. Creator Insider has the details.

YouTube viewers can now opt in to be eligible to receive Memberships on all channels with a single toggle.

YouTube is testing a “For You” shelf on channel home pages. This recommends content from the channel to viewers, based on their watch habits. During testing channels cannot opt out, but once it launches more widely there will be creator controls. Creator Insider has a sneak peek.

Instagram launched several new Reels features: Collab with up to three friends (with public or private accounts), Creators and Artists can use the “Add Yours” sticker to create prompts and challenges, and Instagram’s music library is expanding to more countries.

If you want to upload video with password protection, try Vimeo. The platform has additional privacy settings for paid and enterprise accounts.

TikTok is hosting a virtual music talent show with the hashtag #GIMMETHEMIC. Participants need to submit an audition video by August 16.

TikTok now requires labeling of “AI-generated content that shows realistic scenes”. The new policy is that unlabeled AI content may be taken down.

Music and Podcasting

TikTok is allowing podcasters to upload their podcasts via an RSS feed and link videos to the episodes. Viewers can listen to the podcast from the linked video. (via Ilene)

Web Publishers

Google Search is changing how sites with FAQ and How-To structured data will appear in the search results. “FAQ rich results will only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites” and “How-To rich results will only be shown for desktop users, and not for users on mobile devices.” See the article for more detailed information for site owners.

You can disallow the GPT bot access to your website by updating the robots.txt file. Sites crawled by the GPTBot may be used to improve their AI models.

WordPress updated the design of the Jetpack Mobile WordPress app. It includes a cleaner interface, faster media insertion, more space to write, and better block controls.

Social Media

Instagram now lets you add music to your photo carousels. And you can invite up to 3 friends to collab on a feed post, photo carousel or Reel.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced several new Threads features: easy sharing to Instagram DMs, see all “Your Likes”, add alt-text to shared images and videos, and sort your followers.

You can now verify your Threads account on your Mastodon profile. The idea is that you link your Mastodon profile on your Threads profile, and your Threads profile on your Mastodon profile, and Mastodon will show the verified checkmark next to that link. Is this a sign that Threads is heading towards Activity Pub integration as promised? It’s hard to know, but seems like a nice first step.

On SnapChat you can post “After Dark” Snaps between 8pm and 5am. By posting an After Dark Snap you can see what nighttime content your friends posted the next morning.

The Social Media Platform Formerly Known as Twitter

X has updated its brand assets page, in case you want to add the official logo to your website. I expected the Twitter account widget I have on my site would be updated to X automatically, but it seems that hasn’t been done. You can still create a Twitter follow button for your site at publish.twitter.com/# (via Matt Navarra).

X creators with Subscriptions can limit replies to a public Tweet to Subscribers. This could make subscribers much more visible.

Matt Binder @ Mashable reports “X/Twitter executives had a very bad day defending Musk's platform”. Apparently the “sharing child abuse imagery ‘out of outrage’ isn’t a bannable offense” argument didn’t go over well (the dude that shared it is still monetized even).

X is making it easier to be eligible for ad revenue sharing. Now you only need 5 million impressions on your Tweets in the past 90 days, rather than 15 million. They also reduced the minimum payout amount from $50 to $10, which cuts the time to payout for creators only earning a few dollars a month in ad revenue. Check your eligibility at twitter.com/settings/monetization.

Casey Newton suggests the press should be more skeptical of what Elon Musk says. Less breathless reporting of Musk’s every statement (many of which are not true) would be nice.

More AI Updates

This week there was a big todo about Zoom’s terms of service allowing customer data to be used for AI training. Zoom published a clarification that they “do not use your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models.” Zoom uses AI for their Meet Summary and Team Chat Compose features.

Microsoft is celebrating 6 months of AI in Bing and Edge. Highlights include Bing Image Creator (powered by DALL-E), Bing Chat history, AI search in the Bing Mobile App, Windows Copilot, and Bing in SwiftKey. Soon to be available new features will include third-party browser support and multimodal visual search in chat (input into Chat with images and prompt related questions).

Google shared “10 helpful ways to use Bard”, including analyzing an image, writing a draft, brainstorming, generating code, planning a project or trip and more.

Communication and Collaboration

Zoom has a new asynchronous video messaging option called Zoom Clips. They are promoting it as a collaborative tool, but the announcement makes it sound more creator-like and there are individual video watch pages: “people can view, leave comments, or use emojis to react to a clip, and you can track views [...] you can even respond to viewers’ comments, providing an easy way to answer questions and promote engagement, and track video metrics, like completion rate, to get a sense of how your content is being received.” This is available for all Zoom One customers, including free Zoom One Basic.

Google Slides now has a pen tool that you can use to annotate slides.

Gmail has finally added built-in translation into the Gmail mobile app for Android and iOS.

Native integration eSignature for Google Docs is now in open beta for Google Workspace Individual subscribers. There has been eSig with Docs for a while, but this is the first native integration. And new features on the horizon: audit trail, multi-signer, non-Google account users, and intiating an eSignature on PDFs.

More

My heart goes out to the residents of Maui, which has been devastated by wildfire. It looks like a good place to donate is the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong fund.

Google Arts & Culture: Celebrating 50 Years of Hip-Hop and YouTube’s FIFTY DEEP celebration of hip-hop,

Google Arts & Culture: Poem Postcards (match art with AI-generated poetry and send it to a friend)

Karawynn Long @ Nine Lives: Language is a poor heuristic for intelligence

Header image background: Peridot by klaber on Pixabay. Free for commercial use: https://pixabay.com/photos/peridot-gemstone-jewellery-polished-1689938/