Is this the end of Instagram ‘link in bio’?

...and Meta’s accused of ignoring child safety... again

Author

Matt Navarra
September 12, 2025

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Hello, geeks!

It’s been a wild — and mildly terrifying — week in social.

Featuring a surprise Instagram feature none of us saw coming… and global governments losing the f**king plot!

Here’s what’s coming up in this week’s Geekout:

🌍 Nepal tried banning social media. Gen Z revolted. 19 dead, 100s injured. U-turn achieved.

🇪🇺 The EU is now also flirting with a social media ban for kids. Did they not see what happened in Nepal?!

🇺🇸 US Senators are mad at Zuck (again). This time? Those flirty Meta AI chatbots seducing teens. Alarm bells are ringing in D.C.

📱 Instagram might finally let users add 🔗 links to posts. Did hell just freeze over? (scroll to end of today’s Geekout for my wild prediction)

🆕 30+ new platform features discovered on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn Threads (and more.)

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But before we get into it...

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🔥 GEEKOUT HOT 5

Geekout’s pick of the hottest headlines in social this week:

Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say

The company’s lawyers intervened to shape research that might have shed light on risks in virtual reality, four current and former staffers have told Congress. Meta denies the allegations.

  1. Nepal lifts social media ban after 19 killed and more than 100 injured following Gen-Z protests [RIOTING] 🤬

  2. Google, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Snap face FTC probe over AI chatbot safety for kids [SCRUTINIZING] 🏛️

  3. Meta disregarded warnings about AI chatbots and teens, senator says [BUSINESS-AS-USUAL-ING] 🙄

  4. UK online safety laws to be toughened to make blocking of self-harm content a legal requirement [PROTECTING] 🚫

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🚨 EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Links in Instagram posts? Be careful what you wish for…

“You can't [post] links in-feed because it'll make Instagram about news," Instagram boss Adam Mosseri once said.

But never say never. One of the top app researchers out there, Alessandro Paluzzi, has spotted an option in Instagram code that would allow you to add a link to a post!

Users have been clamouring for this feature for years. You want to shout about your new thing and link to it without having to add ‘link in bio’, an inelegant way of sending people in the right direction.

But be careful what you wish for…

Even if it could be bending to pressure and offering the feature in the near future, there are clear reasons for Instagram not to prioritise posts with links in the algorithm.

Aside from making the platform “about news”, it’s a way to spam people or send them to malware, it takes people off the app more regularly, and it makes ads less appealing to people casually promoting things.

So it’s easy to imagine links in posts being with restricted to certain kinds of accounts (creators with big followings?) or being down-ranked to the point of making them pointless.

And yet there seems to be a wave of social platforms seemingly becoming more relaxed about links. Threads has become more link friendly, and this week LinkedIn said there is no algorithmic penalty for posts containing links—if your content leads with value.

The need for words like ‘link in bio’ and ‘find the link in the comments’ is one of the most annoying and user-hostile aspects of modern social media.

If product managers are starting to realise the users LIKE links and will still come back to spend more time on the platform, that’s a positive thing. But don’t get your hopes up that the need to keep usage metrics and ad revenue growing won’t spoil the party.

In the end, the stock price always takes priority…

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✨ NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Everything else you need to know from the past seven days…

Meta / Facebook / Messenger 👥

Meta’s ‘Community Notes’ fact-checking feature. {Image: Meta]

  • Meta will now notify users when they’ve interacted with a post that gets a Community Note, and anyone can now request a note or rate a note if it’s been helpful to them

  • Meta is being sued by WhatsApp’s former security lead who claims employees could view users' photos, locations, and contact data; and that Meta was negligent on hacking

  • Meta’s TBD Lab ‘superintelligence’ team is apparently so prized that it sits near Zuck's desk with special badge access required, and their names are not on the internal org chart

  • Meta and TikTok beat the EU in court over a disputed supervisory fee tied to the Digital Services Act

  • Meta has not penalised an Instagram account with almost 400,000 followers that promotes racist and antisemitic t-shirts

  • Meta is launching two creator-focused APIs for Instagram and Facebook, to boost brand-collab tools

  • Facebook appears to be rolling out its Topics feature for Groups to more communities. Admins can create and edit topic tags based on common group interests, and change the topics as the group evolves

  • Facebook now adjusts post distribution—increasing or decreasing reach based on content quality

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Instagram ✨

Instagram’s new ‘Pin your favourite comment’ feature [Image: Meta]

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Threads 🧵

Threads new Carousel and 4:5 image / video ad formats. [Image: Meta]

 WhatsApp 🟢

WhatsApp’s ‘Live Photo’ feature on iOS beta. [Image: @WABetaInfo]

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Twitter (‘X’) 🤡

Polymarket better’s predictions for next CEO at Elon Musk’s X

  • Polymarket betters say there’s a 51% chance no CEO will be picked for X in 2025 (more like there’s nobody brave stupid enough to take the job)

  • X revealed key signals its algorithm uses to rank posts and boost reach; e.g, replies that get replies are weighted 75x more than likes or retweets

  • X is getting MUCH less ad revenue than it used to (-85% to be precise) from Elon-owned sister company Tesla

  • X’s encrypted chat is rolling out more widely, but beware of its security claims

  • X has been fined $100,000 in Canada for refusing to delete a non-consensual nude photo

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TikTok 📱 / YouTube 📺

TikTok’s new ‘Enhanced Inbox for Creators’. [Image: @jonahmanzano]

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LinkedIn / Reddit / Pinterest / More… 👔

LinkedIn’s new ‘Sends’ + ‘Saves’ engagement metrics. [Image: LinkedIn]

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🔥 Want to see more hot NEW features spotted in the wild this week?

Just head to the ‘More news’ section below!

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🤖 SOCIAL AI

The newest social media AI features spotted this week:

Snapchat’s new Imagine Lens lets users generate AI images using text prompts for the first time

Snapchat Launches First Open Prompt AI Lens

Also spotted this week 👀

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💬 YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THAT

When I’m quoted in the news, you’ll find it here:

BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Great Influencer Experiment’ is a new three-part series testing what it really takes to succeed as a creator in 2025.

I feature in Episode 1, explaining the rise of creators and what social algorithms really reward.

Skip to 19:26 + 34:40

BBC Radio 4 - The Great Influencer Experiment, Canaries in the Mine

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😆 LOL

Dealbreaker on the job application…?

Small wins!

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🌡️ VIRAL

Livestreams aren’t just for humans.

Witness Winnie the Cow, who has really taken to her status as a Twitch star…

Winnie the Cow is going viral on Twitch after mooing for chat to send her treats

Also going viral this week: 🔥

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🪧 BRANDS

AI-generated influencers aren’t new, but they’re becoming more convincing, and brands are becoming more confident about using them.

Vodafone in Germany has embraced the trend as an experiment, but not everyone is happy about it…

@vodafonedeutschland

Jetzt Internet mit bis zu 1000 Mbit/s im Download für Dein Zuhause.

More brand news this week: 👀

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🙊 WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

“…Somehow AI Twitter/AI Reddit feels very fake in a way it really didn’t a year or two ago…”

- OpenAI’s Sam Altman is worried social media is flooded with bot-written or bot-like posts. It’s currently unclear if he was wearing a hotdog costume at the time. 😁

-
Also overheard this week: 👂

  • “…Squeezed between the tech giants and smaller competitors, on the verge of greatness, we find ourselves in a crucible moment. I suppose it’s a bit like being the middle child…”

    -

    – Snap CEO Evan Spiegel on the company’s big challenges in 2025

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👀 MY FAV READS

“Your 15 minutes of fame may be more unpleasant than you ever imagined… Living in the panopticon means every person you meet is also someone who can ruin your life.”

Anonymity is dead and we’re all content now

And in the week when the killing of Charlie Kirk dominated headlines, it was all too easy to witness the moment for yourself…

Charlie Kirk shooting footage shows media’s gatekeeper role has changed

While legacy media were more restrained about showing graphic footage, it was easily available across X and Meta, writes Andrew Griffin

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😮 WTF?!

“Sellers are cashing in on the Ozempic craze with unregulated patches that experts warn don’t deliver real GLP-1 drugs…” and they’re all over TikTok.

TikTok is flooded with ‘GLP-1 patches,’ despite its ban on selling weight-loss products

Also WTF this week: 👀

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🤦‍♂️ FAIL

Cringe… Zuck was caught on a hot mic talking to Donald Trump about a major Meta AI investment in the US he’d just announced.

“I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with," he told the US President 😬

He later defended the comment, saying it reflected internal projections and prior conversations with Trump. Still, fascinating to hear

Also: 

  • Reddit let AI rewrite subreddit bios… leading to the mislabeling of a subreddit for lesbians as being for “straight and transgender” women 🤔

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📺 WATCH THIS

Pinterest is putting its product discovery power front and centre in a sleek new ad campaign.

The campaign highlights advanced tools that let you click on parts of an image to surface relevant, shoppable items...

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👔 YOU’RE HIRED!

Hot new social media jobs worth checking out this week:

GoPro is looking for a Social Media Community Manager [Remote/flexible/Carlsbad, CA, USA]

More top social media jobs spotted this week 💼

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🪦 RIP

Social media features heading for the graveyard:

Facebook is shutting down Community Chats after low engagement from group members.

I set a few up for the Geekout group on Facebook when they launched. But they were time consuming to moderate, and didn’t spark much activity.

Facebook Is Getting Rid of Community Chats

Also:

  • Meta is deleting every user-uploaded video from Quest’s TV app by 22 September — The revamped app is shifting focus to Prime Video and Peacock, now acting as a sleek content launcher.

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👌 PRO TIPS

An up-to-date image sizes guide is an essential part of life as a social media manager.

Luckily, this guide from Hootsuite has you sorted. Click through for all the details…

Social media image sizes for all networks [September 2025]

More pro-tips worth checking out ✨

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📊 SOCIAL STATS

$385 BILLION

– TikTok parent ByteDance’s valuation, according to big investor Fidelity. The company currently values itself at a still massive $330 billion.

Even more social stats: 📈

  • GOOD FOR THE HEAD: 60% of consumers say social has improved their mental health—Gen Z especially uses it for financial and emotional support. That’s according to Sprout Social’s latest pulse surveys

  • TOPTUBE: 91% of US teens use YouTube (up 14% YoY), far outpacing TikTok’s 75%

  • SOCIAL SEARCH: TikTok searches are up 40% YoY, with Gen Z using it almost as much as Google

  • GIMME MORE: Facebook ad costs have jumped 21% in 2025, but still beat Google on cost-per-lead

  • TOUCHDOWN: YouTube’s first exclusive NFL livestream smashed records with over 17.3 million global viewers

  • CREATING A BUZZ: Spotlight posts from verified creators jumped 145% in N America YoY, as Snapchat bets on creators for growth

  • ONLINE SAFETY: A UK survey found 64% of consumers support the Online Safety Act for protecting children online, but 48% fear it could fuel censorship and suppress content

  • HOT SHOP: TikTok Shop is scaling fast, driving a 120% YoY sales jump

  • RECONNECT: VPN usage spiked 500% in Turkey as citizens scrambled to regain access after social platforms were blocked in the wake of political unrest

  • RECONNECT 2: Nepal saw an 8,000% spike in VPN signups after deadly protests against social platforms being banned in the country

  • BAN BACKFIRES: 145,000+ Nepalese citizens have flooded a Discord server in just four days following the disastrous social media ban

  • EDU-TUBE: 74% of teens use YouTube to learn for school, and 71% use it to explore topics outside class, according to a new study by the platform

  • HEALTHY CHAT: Healthcare is now one of Reddit’s fastest-growing verticals, up 48% year-over-year

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📈 CHARTED

TikTok’s fastest-growing group of users in the U.S? Adults 45+!

TikTok’s 45+ user share has surged to 26% in 2025, up from 2% in 2019 (13x increase!)

Younger groups still dominate—73% of users are 18–24, but their growth is slowing.

39% of U.S. adults say they now use TikTok weekly.

More charted social insights spotted: 👀.

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💥 EVEN MORE SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS & UPDATES

Europe Will Study Social Media Bans for Children Under 16

The European Commission said it would examine possible restrictions on social media for children under 16 years old following similar rules planned in Australia.

  • Trump’s “no tax on tips” law will lets creators deduct up to $25K in tip income starting this tax season, it’s been confirmed. [Business Insider $$$]

  • The US FTC commissioner is angry nothing yet has been done at the DOJ about its complaint over potential risks to kids from Snap’s MyAI. [CNBC]

  • Ofcom is overpromising what the Online Safety Act can deliver, experts have warned. [The Register]

  • Vimeo is to be acquired for $1.38 billion in cash by Italian tech firm Bending Spoons. [Variety]

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📰 WEEKEND READS

Geekout’s pick of the best longer reads to sink into over the weekend:

“Over the past few months, I’ve discovered more than 15.8 million videos from more than 2 million channels that tech companies have, without permission, downloaded to train AI products...”

AI Is Coming for YouTube Creators

More great weekend reads:

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😳 AND FINALLY…

😍 It’s that time of year… here’s the list of new emojis we can look forward to popping up on our phones in the coming months.

I reckon the trombone and the treasure chest have loads of potential.

Which will you be using first…?

What's New In Unicode 17.0

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📅 BACK NEXT WEEK…

Alrighty folks, that’s your social media debriefing. Done. ☑️

I’m heading off to read the 347 hot takes on LinkedIn about Instagram (maybe, possibly, kind of) adding link posts…

…and then wait for the inevitable Voice of Insta Doom™ Reel from Adam Mosseri, calmly stating:

“…Calm TF down. t’s a super-limited test, for a very small number of users only…. PEACE!” ✌️

Goodbye, geeks! PEACE ✌️

P.S. This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant

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