Meta Launches New Tools To Help Brands Fight IP Infringement via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Meta has launched new tools and services to help brands protect their intellectual property and prevent unauthorized use.

This includes an updated Brand Rights Protection suite to identify and take action against infringing content and a new Intellectual Property Reporting Center where brands can submit complaints.

Brand Rights Protection Receives a Facelift

The newly updated Brand Rights Protection service provides brand owners with enhanced tools to monitor and respond to misuse of their trademarks. It includes improved capabilities such as more sophisticated matching algorithms, saved searches, and an expanded reference library, enabling brands to identify and report infringements and impersonations readily.

“Saved searches are unique to each user and do not sync across everyone with access to a business account,” Meta stated, emphasizing the personalized nature of the new tools.

A key new feature is cross-surface searching, which allows simultaneous searches across multiple platform areas, including advertisements, commerce, accounts, and posts. This eliminates the need to enter search terms repeatedly, significantly streamlining the process.

Meta Introduces The Intellectual Property Reporting Center

Meta has introduced a new Intellectual Property Reporting Center to improve the process for reporting intellectual property rights violations.

The center allows rights holders to save account information and reporting history to streamline the reporting process and track and manage cases more efficiently.

Users log in with their Facebook, Instagram, or Business Manager credentials for a personalized and secure experience.

“Multiple users who are logged in under the same Business Manager account will be able to see reporting history for the entire business,” Meta explained, highlighting the collaborative potential of the platform.

Rights Manager Empowers Image Protection

Meta has updated Rights Manager with new features to help rights holders better manage and protect image content.

The update introduces capabilities such as automatic blocking of unauthorized image use, adding ownership information and calls-to-action directly on images, and enabling actions on multiple images simultaneously.

According to Meta, these additions will allow those who own rights to images to enforce their rights across a broader range of content more proactively.

New Resources For Business Protection

Accompanying these tool upgrades, Meta is rolling out new resources to help businesses protect their brands on Meta’s platforms. This includes upgrades to existing tools and a new “Protecting Businesses” section on the Meta for Business website.

The new website section offers guidance for companies to develop strategies for brand protection, including prevention of misuse, monitoring for violations, and resolution of issues.

In Summary

Meta has introduced several new and upgraded tools to help brands better protect their intellectual property on Meta’s platforms.

Key highlights include enhanced search and detection capabilities, simplified reporting processes, expanded image rights protection, and new online resources to guide brand protection strategies.

While vigilance is still required, brands now have more robust options to defend their trademarks, copyrights, and other IP assets across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta’s advertising services.

Featured Image: rafapress/Shutterstock

Instagram Adds New Ways To Create Content via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Instagram added new ways to share content with reels, feed photos, carousels and stories plus added a new for content creators to gain insights into content performance.

Instagram added the following new ways to create content:

• Streamlined Video Editing
  New undo and redo functions enhance video editing, saving users time.
• Dedicated Media Clip Hub for Memes
  A media clip hub facilitates the creation of engaging memes by incorporating audio into reels.
• Text-to-Speech and Font Style Updates
  Updated voices, fonts, and text styles offer users enhanced creative expression.
• Custom Stickers for Personalization
  Instagram users can now turn any part of a photo into a custom sticker to personalize reels and stories.
• Mood-Capturing Photo Filters
  New photo filters allow users to express different moods in their photos and carousels.

Update To Creating Content With Reels

Instagram is testing new flexibility and creative options to content creation with new ways to scale, crop and rotate individual clips, plus the new undo and redo functions.

Users will be able to create memeable content by incorporating audio clips from the platform’s clip hub into their reels.

Instagram is also adding ten new English language text-to-speech voices, which will be available to a limited group of countries.

New features for fonts and text styles are rolling out to hundreds of languages. The new features are six new fonts and styles, including the ability to add outlines to fonts.

More Creative Options For Reels

Instagram is also testing new ways to add audio to reels.

According to the announcement:

“And when you’re looking to find the right audio for your reel, we’re testing new ways to access the audio browser or trending audio.

You can now quickly jump to the audio page from the top of the camera roll and find what inspires you.”

Another new experimental feature is the ability to create custom stickers from user photos and videos, as well as eligible content on Instagram.

This new feature is powered by Meta’s ‘Segment Anything’ AI model.”

Lastly a better editing experience is coming with a better functionality for drafts.

The announcement explains:

“We’re making it easier to edit your in-progress reels by giving you a streamlined view of all your saved drafts.

Not sure which draft you were editing? Soon you’ll be able to preview your drafts, rename them, and schedule them in advance.”

New Filters And Better Editing

Instagram unveiled new filters that make it easy to express moods in photos and videos.

Users can now find and preview images and photos in their camera with updated preview feature, and zoom and search.

Improved Content Performance Analytics

Lastly, Instagram announced improvements to their performance analytics that will help users better understand how other users are engaging with their content.

Instagram explained:

“We introduced a new Reels metric on Facebook and Instagram called Replays and we updated the definition of Reels Plays to also include Replays in addition to Initial Plays.

You may notice an increase in your Reels Plays as a result of this.”

Takeaways

Instagram’s latest updates offer a more streamlined user experience that makes it easier for them to be creative and gives them new ways to express themselves.

From enhanced editing tools to experimental features like custom stickers plus the improved analytics, Instagram is making improvements that keeps the platform fresh and will probably keep their users happy.

Read the official announcement on Meta:

New Ways to Create Content on Instagram

This Lawsuit Could Make Social Media Safer For Your Kids via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A lawsuit accusing social media companies of intentionally harming children through addictive platform designs is allowed to advance, a federal court ruled today.

Brought on behalf of hundreds of minors across the U.S., the consolidated lawsuit alleges companies including Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube specifically designed their platforms to “hook” young users, leading to mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

The case consolidates over 100 individual lawsuits filed beginning in early 2022, soon after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal research about Instagram’s adverse effects on teen mental health.

Judge Allows Bulk Of Lawsuit to Proceed

“Defendants are alleged to target children as a core market and designed their platforms to appeal to and addict them,” wrote Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the order issued in California.

The companies sought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing they are shielded from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Known simply as Section 230, this 1996 law protects online platforms from lawsuits over user-generated content.

But after a detailed analysis, Rogers wrote, “the parties’ ‘all or nothing’ approach to the motions to dismiss does not sufficiently address the complexity of the issues facing this litigation.”

At the center of the lawsuit are allegations around the platforms’ never-ending feeds, push notifications, algorithmic recommendations, and other design features that make them addictive. The plaintiffs say these intentional design choices are to blame for mental health harms, not the content itself.

Rogers agreed. Section 230 does not prohibit product liability claims focused on design defects like ineffective parental controls, age verification, time limits, and barriers to account deletion. However, claims about using algorithms to recommend accounts and some notification features were dismissed.

“The same applies here. The Court must consider the specific conduct through which the defendants allegedly violated their duties to plaintiffs,” Rogers wrote. “It is these detailed, conduct-specific allegations that require analysis.”

Potentially Damaging Discovery Ahead

With the case moving into discovery, internal documents and data from the tech companies related to their knowledge of potential harms could come to light. The plaintiffs argue the companies were aware of the mental health effects on children but did little to address safety concerns.

“The parties’ all or nothing approach does not fairly or accurately represent the Ninth Circuit’s application of Section 230 immunity,” wrote Rogers. “Rather, the Court has conducted an analysis of the actual functionality defects alleged in the complaint.”

Lawsuit Seeks Design Changes, Damages

The lawsuit seeks to apply product liability law to social media, treating platforms as defective products that require improved designs and warnings.

Tech companies have long maintained legal immunity for user content alone. Still, this case and others signal a new threat focused on algorithms, recommendation systems, and other operational choices embedded in platforms.

Attorneys for the companies have not indicated if they will appeal the decision, allowing significant parts of the lawsuit to advance. With billions of dollars and the future design of social media at stake, the case is being closely watched in tech and legal circles.

If the class action is certified, the plaintiffs will seek damages and force platform changes like default time limits, age verification, algorithmic transparency, etc. However, the case still faces hurdles like proving the platforms directly caused mental health harm suffered by individual minors.

Ultimately, the lawsuit takes aim at the core advertising business model of social media companies that depends on maximizing user engagement time through design choices like endless scrolling feeds. Any changes forced upon the companies could impact their profits.

Looking Ahead

While still at an early stage, the mixed ruling keeps the lawsuit alive and paves the way for internal documents to potentially expose how far Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube may have gone to hook in young users at the expense of their well-being.

Featured Image: DavideAngelini/Shutterstock

Majority Of Social Media Users Admit They’d Be Happier If It Didn’t Exist via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A new study reveals that most social media users, especially young people, continue to use platforms like Instagram and TikTok even though doing so makes them unhappy. They feel trapped in using these apps primarily because they fear missing out if they don’t participate.

Online Experiment Surveys 1,000 College Students

Researchers at the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, Bocconi University, and the University of Cologne conducted an online survey experiment of 1,000 college students across the U.S. focused on Instagram and TikTok use. Participants were randomly assigned to different groups.

Students were first asked how much money they would need to be paid to deactivate their Instagram or TikTok accounts for four weeks while their peers continued using the platforms. This measured individual consumer surplus.

They were then asked how much they would pay to have their entire university network, including themselves, deactivate the platforms for four weeks. This accounted for negative spillovers.

Finally, students reported how much they value the platforms when everyone else is on them versus when no one else is. This quantified the network effect.

Majority Find Social Media Use Unfulfilling

The study found that students would need to be paid $59 on average to deactivate their TikTok accounts and $47 to deactivate Instagram for one month, assuming their peers continued using the platforms.

However, if both they and their peers deactivated their accounts, students said they would be willing to pay $28 on average to delete TikTok and $10 to remove Instagram.

The authors write:

“Taken together, these results imply the existence of a ‘social media trap’ for a large share of consumers, whose utility from the platforms is negative but would have been even more negative if they didn’t use social media.”

By accounting for the adverse spillover effects to non-users, the study calculates that 64% of TikTok users and 48% of Instagram users experience a net loss of welfare from the products existing in the first place.

The findings suggest students value social media platforms significantly more when their peers also use them, revealing a strong network effect. TikTok usage was valued 33% higher among peers, while Instagram was valued 24% higher.

These platforms have figured out how to make people feel left out for not participating. Even when users themselves report negative well-being from spending time on the apps.

In Summary

This research reveals that most young social media users feel trapped by platforms that ultimately decrease their happiness. While fear of missing out and network effects strongly compel participation, users would prefer non-use if peers abandoned accounts, too.

As social media continues growing, society must grapple with its complex effects on wellbeing.

Featured Image: nito/Shutterstock