New social media features and updates to know this week

After the long holiday weekend here in the United States, we’re seeing plenty of items in the testing phase. How many of these will become real features, and which will be lost to the swirling mists of beta testing? And at long last, X has considered the plea of people who don’t want to be judged for liking Bad Tweets.

Let’s see what’s new this week.

TikTok

TikTok, which is under fire in the United States for its potential to influence the country’s politics, has released new rules about state-affiliated media. Once these outlets are identified, they will not be shown in the For You feed, though users can still follow them. Additionally, the outlets will only be able to advertise in their home country. “This is an additional measure to prevent accounts from attempting to reach wider communities on these topics,” TikTok wrote.

The app is also beefing up its desktop presence by introducing a Floating Player, which will keep a small window playing your video in the lower corner of your screen, even if you’re using other tabs.

X

In a controversial move, X has removed the ability to browse a user’s likes. “Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior. For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image,” posted X Director of Engineering Haofei Wang. Wang later clarified that the post’s author will still be able to see who likes their content, but not the general public. It’s a Musk-esque choice, for sure.

Musk’s Grok AI is being used for fact checks, to mixed effect. It’s pretty funny when Grok misunderstands a tweet about a basketball player “throwing bricks” and thinks he went on a vandalism spree, but less amusing when it falsely says that Iran has attacked Israel. Given Google’s struggles with its AI search results, perhaps everyone should slow their roll here.

Finally, X will now require those enrolled in their Creator Subscriptions and Ad Revenue Share to provide a government ID to get paid.

Snapchat

Snapchat is extending the use of its wildly popular AR lenses outside of the app and onto your PC. By using a simple Chrome extension, you can now look like a dog anytime you’re using your webcam.

YouTube

YouTube has announced a new Dream Tracks feature, which will allow users to create AI-generated music by typing text prompts describing the piece they want plus a genre description. We’ll see if this manages to avoid copyright claims from musical artists.

YouTube is also working to make it easier for creators to understand why their videos have been demonetized. If a creator appeals a demonetization, they will receive back a timestamp of where the violation of YouTube’s rules occurred and an explanation of the issue.

Instagram

The gram is testing out a number of minor new features, including:

• The ability to highlight recent stories with “Lately.”
• Testing opt-in early access to some features.
• A “Meme” button that allows you to easily edit popular memes into your Reels.

All are still in the testing phase — we’ll see what, if anything, comes to fruition.

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.