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Peggy K's Creator Weekly: US Elections, YouTube Badges, Twitch Labels

Peggy K's Creator Weekly: US Elections, YouTube Badges, Twitch Labels

Peggy K
November 02, 2024

As we head into the US Presidential Election, many online platforms are trying to head off misinformation by limiting political ads, ramping up policy enforcement, or are proactively sharing authoritative information. Will it make a difference? I hope so.

There are also updates this week for Twitch, YouTube, AdSense, Google Search, Instagram and more.

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Top news and updates this week

Everything you need to know about YouTube Badges
Update your AdSense email preferences
Online platforms are ready (or not) for the US Presidential Election
Twitch expands Content Classification Labels to include politics and sensitive social issues.
YouTube is changing the default settings for livestream ads. YouTube Partners should check their defaults!
YouTube Studio Comments tab is getting a big update.
The YouTube Studio mobile app has a redesigned Content tab.
Instagram lowers the resolution of less viewed videos.
Google says websites that dropped in Google Search rankings may not be able to recover from the Helpful Content Update.
Apple acquired photo editing software maker Pixelmator.
New options for Google Chat visual notifications and layout.
Gmail lets you use AI to “polish” your emails.

Read on for more!

Creator Weekly Live 🔴
What do you think about this week’s updates? Join the live Creator Weekly on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (5:30PM UTC).

Take this week’s quiz ✅
What do you know about YouTube Badges?

To Do & Try

Everything you need to know about the new YouTube achievement Badges. The new YouTube Badges are rolling out. To get a badge, take a course, or work on your Quiz Whiz badge by correctly answering quiz questions.
Update your AdSense email preferences: AdSense Inbox notifications will be deprecated starting in November. In an email, AdSense suggested that “to continue receiving performance reports, personalized tips, and webinar invites, please ensure you're opted in to performance suggestions.”
In AdSense you can opt in to those emails by going to Account (left menu) > Settings > Personal Settings > Email Preferences > enable “Customized help and performance suggestions”.

Platforms Ready (Or Not) for US Election

With the US presidential election on Tuesday, November 5, most online platforms have procedures and policies in place to provide authoritative news and voting information and prevent the spread of misinformation.

I’ve written up the details of the steps YouTube and Google, Meta (including Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and others are taking to protect election integrity.

Notably:

Real time election results will be displayed on Google Search, Microsoft Bing and TikTok with information provided by the Associated Press.
On election day, the YouTube homepage will have a shelf with live streams from authoritative news channels.
YouTube, Meta, and TikTok all emphasized that their community guidelines do not allow election and voter interference, hate speech and other malicious behaviors.
Google and YouTube will temporarily pause ads related to US elections when the last polls close on November 5. They will let advertisers know when they start running again (so there's no fixed date for that).
Google is putting election-related restrictions on AI tools including Search AI Overviews and image generation in Gemini.
Meta does not allow any new election or political ads starting one week before the election until one day after the election. Previously running ads can continue to run.
TikTok fully prohibits paid promotion of political content.
X is not taking any such actions, and owner Elon Musk has been posting and promoting election misinformation.

Please vote, if you are eligible! It’s important to vote for local offices, as well as the presidential election, as those choices can affect you and your community for years to come.

I haven’t decided whether to watch the results live or skip the live updates until the final results are called. I’m not looking forward to it.

Twitch Expands Content Classification Labels to Include Political Issues

This week Twitch updated their policies to require content that is mainly focused on “Politics or Sensitive Social Issues” to be labeled.

Content Classification Labels were introduced in 2023, as a way to protect younger viewers and advertisers, and to help streamers “connect with viewers who are more likely to be a good fit for their communities”. The original labels included mature-rated games, drugs, violence, significant profanity and gambling.

There are drawbacks. Viewers have to click through a warning to watch the content, and some advertisers may decide they don’t want their ads there, which can decrease creator revenue.

So what do “Politics and Sensitive Social Issues” include? If the stream focuses on:

Current or past political officials, if discussing policy.
Live coverage of elections.
Live streams of rallies, protests or civil unrest around civil rights issues or government policies.
Discussing military conflicts or foreign policy decisions.
Discussing “ideological or socio-political views on topics like gender, race, sexuality, or religion”
Discussion legislation around “sensitive social issues”, including reproductive or LGBTQ+ rights or immigration.

What is not included?

Informational or educational content presented in a “neutral, fact-based manner”.
Occasional mentions of politics, politicians, or sensitive social issues.

More information about TwitchContent Classification labels.

The question is how this will be enforced. One person’s claimed “neutral facts” may be another person’s “ideological views”.

Why now? Twitch didn’t provide those details, but related news this week:

There have been heated and intense debates and nasty comments (leading to some creator suspensions) about Israel and Palestine. Twitch CEO Dan Clancey posted a notice that “Hate and harassment have no place on Twitch”. Twitch may want to place related content behind the warning label.
The US elections in less than a week, with more political content likely well beyond the election.
This is the direction more platforms are moving towards. See, for example, Instagram and Threads not recommending political content by default.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

If your YouTube channel is in the YouTube Partner Program, and you monetize live streams, default channel level settings for live mid-rolls will be turned “ON” to the recommended “Let YouTube Decide - Balanced” option if no previous mid-rolls settings were chosen. If this isn't what you want, you can update your settings for your channel or for individual live streams in Live Control Room.

YouTube Studio mobile app has a redesigned Content tab, separating Videos, Live Streams and Shorts. This is rolling out over the coming weeks. Watch Creator Insider for more details.

Updates are coming to the Comments tab in YouTube Studio, as announced in September. It’s being renamed “Community”, will show audience metrics (like returning viewers) and have a Community Spotlight to highlight the most engaged viewers. Updated AI-powered smart reply suggestions will make editable suggestions that use your tone. The new Comments tab will be rolling out over the coming weeks, and improved smart reply suggestions will roll out “gradually over time”. Watch Creator Insider for more details.

YouTube is expanding AI-generated video summaries to more English-language videos. These summaries complement video descriptions. Watch Creator Insider for more details.

YouTube is testing an AI-powered help chatbot in YouTube Studio on desktop. If you are interested in testing it, you should post that in the Creator Insider video comments.

YouTube’s Creator Insider has a new deep dive into Communities (which are still only available to limited creators). YouTube says one reason they are launching Communities is so that creators don’t have to start every conversation with their fans. Watch the video.

If you use Lightstream, check out the new Lightstream Studio.

Instagram lowers the resolution of older and less popular videos. Instagram head Adam Mosseri suggested that viewers care more about the video content than video quality, so creators should focus on that.

Lindsey Gamble explains Why You Should Be Posting Short-Form Video on LinkedIn

Web Publishers and Search

Search Engine Land and Glenn Gabe report Google Search is demoting content that is starkly different from the main content of the site. This is like news sites that create a subdomain for “deals” or coupons.

Dispatches from the recent Web Creator Summit hosted by Google: Google: Search Ranking Update Coming Soon But HCU (Helpful Content Update) Victims May Not Recover

Google’s AI Search Overviews are expanding to 100 new countries.

Kate Knibbs @ WIRED reports: AI Slop Is Flooding Medium. Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine says that the platform’s people-powered content recommendation system means those spammy posts don’t get viewed.

Substack is rolling out free previews for Chat, which lets creators paywall replies to Chat posts (which act like a preview). Previously the only option was to paywall the entire Chat or leave it entirely open to free Subscribers.

Taylor Lorenz @ User Mag: How Substack's follow feature betrays its original mission

Beehiiv has a new RSS to Send feature that lets you embed content from your website in your newsletter. This is for paid accounts only.

Open source platform Ghost cofounder John O’Nolan wrote about Democratising publishing, how the Ghost (profitable) non-profit works, and goals for the project.

If you use Ghost to share posts to the Fediverse, there is now a bridge to Bluesky so people can follow your Ghost posts there.

Openvibe added Threads support, so you can use the app to post to Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky all at once. It’s not possible to follow your Threads feed in the app as yet.

Photos and Image Design

Apple acquired Mac photo editing application Pixelmator. Pixelmator’s Photomator is an Adobe Photoshop alternative. Jeremy Grey wrote for PetaPixel: It's a Big Deal That Apple is Getting Back into Photo Editing Software.

Good news for serious phone photographers: Google and Apple are making HDR photos work better on Android and iOS. They have agreed to a standard that makes HDR photos look good on both platforms.

Bluesky didn’t make my list of big platforms preparing for the US election. But they are doing that, including labeling misinformation about misleading claims about the election or voting. They are also prioritizing reports and flags about election-related content.

Openvibe added Threads support, so you can use the app to post to Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky all at once. It’s not possible to follow your Threads feed in the app as yet.

Apparently Mark Zuckerberg is touting the coming onslaught of AI-generated content on Facebook and Instagram, or what various tech outlets are calling “AI-generated slop”. Yech!

Instagram now lets you filter DM message requests by follower accounts, verified accounts, brands, and creators.

If you share a post from the X app to an Instagram Story, it will automatically link back to the original X post.

X is doubling the price of their self-serve API access from $100 to $200 per month, with access limits. Emergency and public utility apps will have double higher access limits included. This will likely price out more individual developers from using the API.

X has faster Community Notes, but they still may not be fast enough to combat misinformation.

Netflix has a new “Moments” feature that lets you save clips from its original movies, and share them on social media. The clips link back to the original movie.

Communication and Collaboration

Features are available to free accounts unless otherwise noted.

Google shared how they developed adaptive audio for Google Meet. This allows multiple laptops in a small shared space to be all joined to the same meeting without audio interference. This will (alas) only be available for Google Workspace accounts with the additional Gemini for Workspace add-on.

There are several new features for Google Chat:

Activity from unread threads you do not follow will no longer be bold and show at the top of your conversation lists.
Control the visual density of Google Chat on the web by selecting between “Comfortable” and “Compact” layouts.
Gemini is now available in the side panel of Google Chat on the web. You can use it to summarize and analyze messages you are viewing. This requires the Gemini Enterprise, Business or Education add-on.

The document scanning feature in Google Drive for Android now lets you apply a black and white filter, to improve readability of text and other elements.

Gmail has a new “Polish” option that turns a rough draft (with at least 12 words) into a polished message. This requires the Gemini add-on for Business & Enterprise, Education or Google One Premium.

More AI Updates and News

Google has a new “Prompting Essentials” course through Grow with Google on Coursera.