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TikTok brings in outside experts to help it craft moderation and content policies

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In October, TikTok href=»https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/tiktok-taps-corporate-law-firm-kl-gates-to-advise-on-its-u-s-content-moderation-policies/»> tapped corporate law firm K&L Gates to advise the company on its moderation policies and other topics afflicting social media platforms. As a part of those efforts, TikTok said it would form a new committee of experts to advise the business on topics like child safety, hate speech, misinformation, bullying and other potential problems. Today, TikTok is announcing the technology and safety experts who will be the company’s first committee members.
The committee, known as the TikTok Content Advisory Council, will be chaired by Dawn Nunziato, a professor at George Washington University Law School and co-director of the Global Internet Freedom Project. Nunziato specializes in free speech issues and content regulation — areas where TikTok has fallen short.
“A company willing to open its doors to outside experts to help shape upcoming policy shows organizational maturity and humility,” said Nunziato, of her joining. “I am working with TikTok because they’ve shown that they take content moderation seriously, are open to feedback and understand the importance of this area both for their community and for the future of healthy public discourse,” she added.
TikTok says it plans to grow the committee to around a dozen experts in time.
According to the company, other committee members include:
Rob Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, brings academic, private sector, and government experience as well as knowledge of technology policy that can advise our approach to innovation
Hany Farid, University of California, Berkeley Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and  School of Information, is a renowned expert on digital image and video forensics, computer vision, deep fakes, and robust hashing
Mary Anne Franks, University of Miami Law School, focuses on the intersection of law and technology and will provide valuable insight into industry challenges including discrimination, safety, and online identity
Vicki Harrison, Stanford Psychiatry Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, is a social worker at the intersection of social media and mental health who understands child safety issues and holistic youth needs
Dawn Nunziato, chair, George Washington University Law School, is an internationally recognized expert in free speech and content regulation
David Ryan Polgar, All Tech Is Human, is a leading voice in tech ethics, digital citizenship, and navigating the complex challenge of aligning societal interests with technological priorities
Dan Schnur, USC Annenberg Center on Communication and UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, brings valuable experience and insight on political communications and voter information
Nunziato’s view of TikTok — of a company being open and willing to change — is a charitable one, it should be said.
The company is in dangerous territory here in the U.S., despite its popularity among Gen Z and millennial users. TikTok today is facing a national security review and a potential ban on all government workers’ phones. In addition, the Dept. of Defense suggested the app should be blocked on phones belonging to U.S. military personnel. Its 2017 acquisition of U.S.-based Musical.ly may even come under review.
Though known for its lighthearted content — like short videos of dances, comedy and various other creative endeavors — TikTok has also been accused of things like censoring the Hong Kong protests and more, which contributed to U.S. lawmakers’ fears that the Chinese-owned company may have to comply with “state intelligence work.” 
TikTok has also been accused of having censored content from unattractive, poor or disabled persons, as well as videos from users identified as LGBTQ+. The company explained in December these guidelines are no longer used, as they were an early and misguided attempt to protect users from online bullying. TikTok had limited the reach of videos where such harassment could occur. But this suppression was done in the dark, unasked for by the “protected” parties — and it wasn’t until exposed by German site NetzPolitik that anyone knew these rules had existed.
In light of the increased scrutiny of its platform and its ties to China, TikTok has been taking a number of steps in an attempt to change its perception. The company released new Community Guidelines and published its first Transparency Report a few months ago. It also hired a global General Counsel and expanded its Trust & Safety hubs in the U.S., Ireland and Singapore. And it just announced a Transparency Center open to outside experts who want to review its moderation practices.
TikTok’s new Advisory Council will meet with the company’s U.S. leadership to focus on the key topics of importance starting at the end of the month, with an early focus on creating policies around misinformation and election interference.

“All of our actions, including the creation of this Council, help advance our focus on creating an entertaining, genuine experience for our community by staying true to why users uniquely love the TikTok platform. As our company grows, we are focused on reflection and learning as a part of company culture and committed to transparently sharing our progress with our users and stakeholders,” said TikTok’s U.S. general manager, Vanessa Pappas. “Our hope is that through thought-provoking conversations and candid feedback, we will find productive ways to support platform integrity, counter potential misuse, and protect the interests of all those who use our platform,” she added. 

TikTok brings in outside experts to help it craft moderation and content policies

FTC votes to review influencer marketing rules & penalties

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Undisclosed influencer marketing posts on social media should trigger financial penalties, according to a statement released today by the Federal Trade Commission’s Rohit Chopra. The FTC has voted 5-0 to approve a Federal Register notice calling for public comments on questions related to whether The Endorsement Guides for advertising need to be updated.
“When companies launder advertising by paying an influencer to pretend that their endorsement or review is untainted by a financial relationship, this is illegal payola,” Chopra writes. “The FTC will need to determine whether to create new requirements for social media platforms and advertisers and whether to activate civil penalty liability.”
Currently the non-binding Endorsement Guides stipulate that “when there is a connection between an endorser and a seller of an advertised product that could affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, the connection must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed.” In the case of social media, that means creators need to note their post is part of an “ad,” “sponsored” content or “paid partnership.”
But Chopra wants the FTC to consider making those rules official by “Codifying elements of the existing endorsement guides into formal rules so that violators can be liable for civil penalties under Section 5(m)(1)(A) and liable for damages under Section 19.” He cites weak enforcement to date, noting that in the case of department store Lord & Taylor not insisting 50 paid influencers specify their posts were sponsored, “the Commission settled the matter for no customer refunds, no forfeiture of ill-gotten gains, no notice to consumers, no deletion of wrongfully obtained personal data, and no findings or admission of liability.”

Strangely, Chopra fixates on Instagram’s Branded Content Ads that let marketers pay to turn posts by influencers tagging brands into ads. However, these ads include a clear “Sponsored. Paid partnership with [brand]” and seem to meet all necessary disclosure requirements. He also mentions concerns about sponcon on YouTube and TikTok.
Additional targets of the FTC’s review will be use of fake or incentivized reviews. It’s seeking public comment on whether free or discounted products influence reviews and should require disclosure, how to handle affiliate links and whether warnings should be posted by advertisers or review sites about incentivized reviews. It also wants to know about how influencer marketing affects and is understood by children.
Chopra wisely suggests the FTC focus on the platforms and advertisers that are earning tons of money from potentially undisclosed influencer marketing, rather than the smaller influencers themselves who might not be as well versed in the law and are just trying to hustle. “When individual influencers are able to post about their interests to earn extra money on the side, this is not a cause for major concern,” he writes, but “when we do not hold lawbreaking companies accountable, this harms every honest business looking to compete fairly.”

While many of the social media platforms have moved to self-police with rules about revealing paid partnerships, there remain gray areas around incentives like free clothes or discount rates. Codifying what constitutes incentivized endorsement, formally demanding social media platforms to implement policies and features for disclosure and making influencer marketing contracts state that participation must be disclosed would all be sensible updates.
Society has enough trouble with misinformation on the internet, from trolls to election meddlers. They should at least be able to trust that if someone says they love their new jacket, they didn’t secretly get paid for it.

FTC votes to review influencer marketing rules & penalties

Vine reboot Byte officially launches

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Two years after Vine’s co-founder Dom Hofmann announced he was building a successor to the short-form video app, today Byte makes its debut on iOS and Android. Byte lets you shoot or upload and then share six-second videos. The tiny time limit necessitates no-filler content that’s denser than the maximum 1-minute clips on TikTok.
Byte comes equipped with standard social features like a feed, Explore page, notifications, and profiles. For now, though Byte lacks the remixability, augmented reality filters, transition effects, and other bonus features you’ll find in apps like TikTok .

What Hofmann hopes will differentiate Byte is an early focus on helping content creators make money — something TikTok, and other micro-entertainment apps largely don’t offer. The app plans to soon launch a pilot of its partner program for offering monetization options to people proving popular on Byte. When asked if Byte would offer ad revenue sharing, tipping, or other options to partners, Hofmann told me that “We’re looking at all of those, but we’ll be starting with a revenue share + supplementing with our own funds. We’ll have more details about exactly how the pilot program will work soon.”
Many creators who’ve grown popular on apps like TikTok and Snapchat that lack direct monetization have tried to pull their audiences over to YouTube where they can earn a steady ad-share. By getting started paying early, Byte might lure some of those dancers, comedians, and pranksters over to its app and be able to retain them long-term. Former Vine stars turned TikTok stars like Chris Melberger. Joshdarnit, and Lance Stewart are already on Byte.

very soon, we’ll introduce a pilot version of our partner program which we will use to pay creators. byte celebrates creativity and community, and compensating creators is one important way we can support both. stay tuned for more info.
— byte (@byte_app) January 25, 2020

Staying connected with Byte’s most loyal users is another way Hofmann hopes to set his app apart. He’s been actively running a beta tester forum since the initial Byte announcement in early 2018, and sees it as a way to find out what features to build next. “It’s always a bummer when the people behind online services and the people that actually use them are disconnected from one another, so we’re trying out these forums to see if we can do a better job at that” Hofmann writes.
Byte founder Dom Hofmann
Byte is a long time coming. To rewind all the way, Hofmann co-founded Vine in June 2012 with Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, but it was acquired by Twitter before its launch in January 2013. By that fall, Hofmann had left the company. But 2014 and 2015 saw Vine’s popularity grow thanks to rapid-fire comedy skits and the creativity unlocked by its looping effect. Vine reached over 200 million active users. Then the unthinkable happened. Desperate to cut costs, Twitter shut down Vine’s sharing feed in late 2016 so it wouldn’t have to host any more video content. The creative web mourned.
By then, Hofmann had already built the first version of Byte, which offered more free-form creation. You could pull together photos, GIFs, drawings and more into little shareable creations. But this prototype never gained steam. Hofmann gave Vine fans hope when he announced plans to build a successor called V2 in early 2018, but cancelled it a few months later. Hofmann got more serious about the project by then end of 2018, announcing the name Byte and then beginning beta testing in April 2019.

Vine reboot Byte begins beta testing

Now the big question will be whether Byte can take off despite its late start. Between TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and more, do people need another short-form video app? Winning here will require seducing high quality creators who can get bigger view counts elsewhere. Considering there’s already a pile of TikTok competitors like Dubsmash, Triller, Firework, and Facebook’s Lasso available in the US, creators seeking stardom on a less competitive network already have plenty of apps to try. Hofmann may have to rely on the soft spot for Vine in people’s memories to get enough activity on Byte to recreate its predecessor’s magic.

Vine reboot Byte officially launches

Instagram drops IGTV button, but only 1% downloaded the app

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At most, 7 million of Instagram’s 1 billion-plus users have downloaded its standalone IGTV app in the 18 months since launch. And now, Instagram’s main app is removing the annoying orange IGTV button from its home page in what feels like an admission of lackluster results. For reference, TikTok received 1.15 billion downloads in the same period since IGTV launched in June 2018. In just the US, TikTok received 80.5 million downloads compared to IGTV’s 1.1 million since then, according to research commissioned by TechCrunch from Sensor Tower.
To be fair, TikTok has spent huge sums on install ads. But while long-form mobile video might gain steam as the years progress, Instagram hasn’t seemed to crack the code yet.
“As we’ve continued to work on making it easier for people to create and discover IGTV content, we’ve learned that most people are finding IGTV content through previews in Feed, the IGTV channel in Explore, creators’ profiles and the standalone app. Very few are clicking into the IGTV icon in the top right corner of the home screen in the Instagram app” a Facebook company spokesperson tells TechCrunch. “We always aim to keep Instagram as simple as possible, so we’re removing this icon based on these learnings and feedback from our community.”

Instagram users don’t need the separate IGTV app to watch longer videos, as the IGTV experience is embedded in the main app and can be accessed via in-feed teasers, a tab of the Explore page, promo stickers in Stories, and profile tabs. Still, the fact that it wasn’t an appealing enough destination to warrant a home page button shows IGTV hasn’t become a staple like past Instagram launches including video, Stories, augmented reality filters, or Close Friends.
One thing still missing is an open way for Instagram creators to earn money directly from their IGTV videos. Users can’t get an ad revenue share like with YouTube or Facebook Watch. They also can’t receive tips or sell exclusive content subscriptions like on Facebook, Twitch, or Patreon.
The only financial support Facebook and Instagram have offered IGTV creators is reimbursement for production costs for a few celebrities. Those contracts also require creators to avoid making content related to politics, social issues, or elections, according to Bloomberg‘s Lucas Shaw and Sarah Frier.
“In the last few years we’ve offset small production costs for video creators on our platforms and have put certain guidelines in place,” a Facebook spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We believe there’s a fundamental difference between allowing political and issue-based content on our platform and funding it ourselves.” That seems somewhat hypocritical given Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s criticism of Chinese app TikTok over censorship of political content.

Now users need to tap the IGTV tab inside Instagram Explore to view long-form videoAnother thing absent from IGTV? Large view counts. The first 20 IGTV videos I saw today in its Popular feed all had fewer than 200,000 views. BabyAriel, a creator with nearly 10 million Instagram followers that the company touted as a top IGTV creator has only post 20 of the longer videos to date with only one receiving over 500,000 views.
When the lack of monetization is combined with less than stellar view counts compared to YouTube and TikTok, it’s understandable why some creators might be hesistant to dedicate time to IGTV. Without their content keeping the feature reliably interesting, it’s no surprise users aren’t voluntarily diving in from the home page.
In another sign that Instagram is folding IGTV deeper into its app rather than providing it more breathing room of its own, and that it’s eager for more content, you can now opt to post IGTV videos right from the main Instagram feed post video uploader. AdWeek Social Pro reported this new “long video” upload option yesterday. A Facebook company spokesperson tells me “We want to keep our video upload process as simple as possible” and that “Our goal is to create a central place for video uploads”.

 
IGTV launched with a zealotish devotion to long-form vertical video despite the fact that little high quality content of this nature was being produced. Landscape orientation is helpful for longer clips that often require establishing shots and fitting multiple people on screen, while vertical was better for quick selfie monologues.
Yet Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom described IGTV to me in August 2018, declaring that “What I’m most proud of is that Instagram took a stand and tried a brand new thing that is frankly hard to pull off. Full-screen vertical video that’s mobile only. That doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Now it doesn’t exist on Instagram at all since May 2019 when IGTV retreated from its orthodoxy and began allowing landscape content. I’d recommended it do that from the beginning, or at least offer a cropping tool for helping users turn their landscape videos into coherent vertical ones, but nothing’s been launched there either.

If Instagram still cares about IGTV, it needs to attract more must-see videos by helping creators get paid for their art. Or it needs to pour investment into buying high quality programming like Snapchat Discover’s Shows. If Instagram doesn’t care, it should divert development resources to it’s TikTok clone Reels that actually looks very well made and has a shot at stealing market share in the remixable social entertainment space.
For a company that’s won by betting big and moving fast, IGTV feels half-baked and sluggish. That might have been alright when Snapchat was shrinking and TikTok was still Musically, but Instagram is heading into an era of much stiffer competition. Quibi and more want to consume multi-minute spans of video viewing on mobile, and the space could grow as adults familiarize with the format. But offering the platform isn’t enough for Instagram. It needs to actively assist creators with finding what content works, and how to earn sustainable wages marking it.

Instagram drops IGTV button, but only 1% downloaded the app