✨ Advertise in Geekout
30K Subscribers / 55% Open Rate
Book Geekout Ad / More Info

🤝 Work with me
Consulting, brand collabs, keynotes
Watch clips / Get in touch

Hello, geeks!

Welcome back to your weekly social media news briefing.

It may be the summer break season, but the big social platforms haven’t stopped shipping updates, or generating drama.

The stories sparking the most headlines in the past seven days include…

…🚫 The UK switched on strict new age verification rules for social media to protect teens. Teens switched on VPNs.

…🤖 Zuck tried to get us all hyped about “personal superintelligence.” No one’s quite sure what it is, but it likely involves him winning at Jiu Jitsu in the metaverse.

…⛔️ YouTube thought it had escaped the under-16 social media ban in Australia. Australia said think again.

…📱 TikTok launched a new, more positive version of the app in Europe called TikTok Pro. Good vibes only, it promises. Creators and AI may have other ideas.

…🫖 Viral women’s ‘dating safety app’ Tea got hacked… and immediately started spilling. Everything. Everywhere. So much for safety, huh?

Plus…

✨ Over 40 NEW social platform features spotted in the wild, including new creator tools for IG’s Edit’s app, and a suite of new teen safety tools for TikTok.

__________

But first… These are worth your attention: 👀

This 2025 trends report is 🔥. 540,000+ TikTok + IG posts analysed. Smart insights. Real-world tips. Not just vibes. [ad]

And…

This wild AI assistant is saving me hours every week. No hype. Try it for free [ad]

.

SPONSORED - NEW 2025 INSIGHTS - FREE REPORT
The 5 Trends Shaping Social in 2025 — Backed by Data from 540K TikTok + Instagram Posts

Social is not about how many people follow you anymore.

It’s about how many share your content, send you DMs, and connect on a deeper level with your brand.

Dash Social just dropped one of the sharpest, no-filler trend reports we’ve seen this year.

This isn’t another vibes-based trends list!

It’s built on analysis of 540,000+ TikTok + Instagram posts from top brands — using Dash’s proprietary Entertainment Score system.

Real data. Fresh insights. Zero fluff.

Highlights from the report:

  • 📲 Entertainment-led posts generated 13x IG reach, 4.5x on TikTok

  • 📩 Brands are replying to DMs 30x more than engaging in comments

  • 🔁 Shares now outpace follower growth across industries

  • 🤝 Creator content gets 6x more engagement than brand posts

  • ✨ AI is now predicting high-performing content before it goes live

Inside the full report, you will…

  • ⤷ DISCOVER what high-performing content really looks like

  • ⤷ LEARN how viral brands beat the algorithm—without chasing trends

  • ⤷ REVEAL why DMs are your next trust + conversion channel

  • ⤷ UNCOVER the content mistakes killing your reach before the algorithm does

No recycled advice from ‘thought leaders.’

Just a sharp, strategic read worthy of your attention.

→ Download the NEW 2025 Social Trends Report (free + really useful!)

📊 Reveal 2025 Social Trends

.

🔥 GEEKOUT HOT 5

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

VPNs top App Store charts as UK social media age verification kicks in

Experts say free versions of such apps or services may carry potential security and privacy risks.

  1. Mark Zuckerberg shares his bold vision for 'Personal Superintelligence' [MOONSHOTTING]

  2. TikTok follows X's lead and adds community fact-checking ‘Footnotes’ in the US [DEBUNKING]

  3. TikTok launches a more positive version of the app in Europe called TikTok Pro [PIVOTING]

  4. Viral ‘Tea’ app turns off DMs after exposing users’ messages about abortions, cheating, and more [TEA-SPILLING]

.

SPONSORED - TOP AI TOOL - FREE TRIAL

An AI scheduling assistant that lives up to the hype.

Skej is an AI scheduling assistant that works just like a human. You can CC Skej on any email, and watch it book all your meetings. Skej handles scheduling, rescheduling, and event reminders. Imagine life with a 24/7 assistant who responds so naturally, you’ll forget it’s AI.

Try now to get 10 meetings free

.

🚨 EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

There are no easy fixes in internet safety, as users lash out

Hundreds of thousands of people backlash against internet safety rules

As last Friday’s Geekout went out to you, the UK was freshly into a new era of age checks across social media and adult content sites. But it didn’t take long for the cracks in the Online Safety Act to start to show.

VPNs topped the charts on app stores hilariously quickly. I suspect it was more to do with people wanting to avoid age checks on p**n sites than on social sites. New data showed the new rules led to 5 million extra age checks a day for adult content sites.

Five days since Ofcom's new internet regulations began being enforced, nearly 400,000 people had signed a petition asking for them to be repealed.

The government might say it has no plan to repeal the law, but it’s clear the Online Safety Act going to need to be revised. And even if you accept age checks as necessary, current tech often isn’t up to the task of verifying users’ ages.

I mean, come on! The tech providing Reddit and Discord’s age verification checks can be bypassed with the help of Sam Porter Bridges from PlayStation hit Death Stranding. A lot of people suddenly look just like actor Norman Reedus, who plays the video game character!

There are other ways age-appropriate content can be enforced, but they’re not necessarily better.

There has been drama in Australia this week, where YouTube found itself re-added to the list of platforms set to be banned for under-16s. Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat have been scrambling to avoid being swept up in the law, which is set to go into force in December.

Meanwhile, app stores could be responsible for age checks instead of individual apps, although there’s a dispute between big tech companies about whether that’s a good idea.

No law is going to be a perfect solution, and nothing beats parenting that prepares kids for the adult world in an appropriate way for the child.

Platforms can provide tools to help with that (such as TikTok’s new alerts for parents when their teen posts a public video) but ultimately, easily circumvented bans just provide false peace of mind for parents and politicians alike, while kids take glee in ignoring them.

So how about governments think less about bans and restrictions, and more about equipping parents with the skills and tools they need to help their children thrive responsibly online?

.

✨ NEW & NOTEWORTHY

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

Meta / Facebook / Messenger 👥

Meta’s ultra-thin holographic display prototype for VR glasses

__________


Instagram ✨

Instagram Edits app’s new ‘Save drafts’ feature

__________


WhatsApp 🟢 / Threads 🧵

WhatsApp’s new PIN protection feature to reduce unwanted messages

__________


YouTube 📺

Image Credit: The Verge

__________


TikTok 📱

TikTok’s new ‘Well-being missions’ to gamify mindfulness in-app

  • TikTok gamified mindfulness with new 'well-being missions' that lets you earn badges for completing challenges related to balanced digital habits

  • TikTok significantly upgraded its parental controls and creator safety tools, including a new ‘Creator Care’ mode that automatically filters all comments identified as offensive, inappropriate, or profane

  • TikTok’s new 'content check' tells creators if their videos will be blocked from For You pages

  • TikTok Live and iHeartRadio have launched a new singing competition show

  • TikTok is testing a new Search feature, letting users create text posts based on a subject that does not exist or is not well covered by others

  • TikTok added an unlockable, interactive ‘Streak Pet’ for DMs between friends

  • TikTok is testing an ‘Article’ sticker for photo posts, video posts and stories

  • TikTok’s new Engaged Session tool lets advertisers retarget users who spend 10+ seconds on their sites—no pixel required.

  • TikTok added Canva-like templates for photo posts

  • TikTok signed deals to bring its content to tens of thousands of screens in taxis, gyms, and water stations in the USA

  • TikTok now lets you share live recordings with guests and moderators

  • TikTok now lets you save songs straight to YouTube Music

__________


LinkedIn / Reddit / Twitch / X 💼

LinkedIn’s new daily leaderboards for games

  • LinkedIn is adding daily leaderboards ranking you against your own network in its viral in-app games

  • LinkedIn won a lawsuit against user data scraper Proxycurl

  • Reddit now offers automated bidding for Brand Awareness and Reach ad campaigns

  • Reddit is working on becoming your go-to search engine

  • Twitch is opening up some monetization tools to more creators, including including Bits, subs, emotes, badges, and Channel Points

  • X rolled out upgraded XChat features for Premium users, including DM search, typing indicators, and custom push alerts

  • X will now give brands lower ad rates for ‘Aesthetic’ ads free of URLs and emojis. It will ranks ads with an “aesthetic score” based on elegance. Low scorers face algorithmic suppression and higher rates

__________

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

Just head to the ‘More news’ section below!

.

🤖 SOCIAL AI

The newest social media AI features spotted this week:

YouTube has announced it will use new AI tech can identify teens based on their viewing behaviour, not just self-entered birthdays.

If your YouTube viewing habits include Cocomelon, MrBeast, and skibidi toilet memes, you might face restrictions…

YouTube will identify and restrict minors’ accounts with AI

YouTube will apply several restrictions to underage accounts.

Also spotted this week 👀

.

😆 LOL

.

🌡️ VIRAL

The crown for viral victory of the week definitely goes to Astronomer and Maximum Effort, Ryan Reynolds’ ad agency.

They cooked up a pitch-perfect response to the recent ‘Coldplay couple’ drama, shifting the narrative with the help of Chris Martin’s ex, Gwyneth Paltrow.

It was EVERYWHERE last weekend, and deservedly so.

Also going viral this week: 🔥

.

🪧 BRANDS

“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” is a silly, slightly cringey pun in a new American Eagle ad.

But it’s a sign of the times that it quickly became a culture war flashpoint, with some right-wingers cooking up a narrative that ‘woke’ people were upset by the ad being a nod to eugenics.

…when really it was just a bad ad.

Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle Ad Mocked on TikTok Amid Backlash

More brand news this week: 👀

.

🙊 WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

“You have to pick and choose your f**ks carefully.”

- YouTube's policy boss Conor Kavanagh says creators still need to be careful with their swearing, after the platform started to allow f-bombs at the start of videos without penalty

-
Also overheard this week: 👂

  • “Superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose"

    -

    – Mark Zuckerberg explains his vision for ‘personal superintelligence’

    -

  • "I don't know if I want my kids to be watching short-form content as their only way, and they can't be able to watch something that's more than 15 minutes in length… shorter form content equates to shorter attention spans."
    -
    – YouTube co-founder Steve Chen doesn’t want his kids spending too long on TikTok

    -

  • “I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI — or some way to interact with AI — I think you’re … probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people,”

    – Mark Zuckerberg thinks Meta smartglasses will one day be nearly essential (he would say that, wouldn’t he?)

    -

  • “We're concentrating our resources on the areas that will drive results for our most pressing needs, improving the core product, making Reddit a go-to search engine, and expanding internationally."

    -

    - Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wants Reddit to be a true search engine in its own right

    -

  • "If you make no distinction between the two activities, if you don't evaluate researchers and engineers with different criteria, you run the risk of killing breakthrough innovation… True breakthroughs require teams with a long horizon and minimal constraints from product development and management."

    -

    – Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun hits back at Elon Musk in the latest spat between the pair., this time over whether it made sense to have AI ‘researchers’ as well as ‘engineers’

.

👀 MY FAV READS

Here’s a good look at how social media 'newsfluencers' have made their way into the heart of the US government…

White House embraces rise of 'newsfluencers'

.

📺 MUST WATCH

Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth–now at Tinder parent Match–is always worth listening to.

Here he shares thoughts on his time at Twitter, the moderation challenges facing decentralised social networks, and more…

.

😮 WTF?!

The Jet2 meme was all fun and games until the White House got its hands on it…

Zoë Lister and Jess Glynne, responsible for the voice and music in the meme, have expressed their disgust after the Trump administration used it to make fun of people being deported from the US.

Jet2 isn’t happy either…

Jess Glynne feels ‘sick’ over use of Jet2 song to promote US deportations

Jet2 also condemns White House post about Ice enforcement using viral holiday ad featuring Hold My Hand

Also WTF this week: 👀

.

🤦‍♂️ FAIL

Tea is an app that went viral in the past week, letting women share negative dating experiences.

…but for an app with such sensitive content, its security was… not great. It was hit by not one, but TWO data breaches.

The first exposed 72,000 images, including selfies and IDs. The second exposed users’s DMs about some highly sensitive topics. 😳

A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating

Also:

  • LinkedIn deleted a line in its terms of service banning misgendering and deadnaming in its hate policy, sparking a backlash.

  • Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messaging app Bitchat now on App Store. Critics say the app is insecure—anyone can pretend to be someone else, and Dorsey admits there hasn’t been a proper security review. To make matters worse, fake Bitchat apps are already flooding Google Play with thousands of downloads

  • An Instagram glitch caused the platform to mislabel users’ friends as “AI”. Ooof!

  • ByteDance’s AI tool Trae has been secretly collecting personal data, even if users disabled tracking settings

  • The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been posting ICE raid videos to X and Instagram with stolen art (many would say that’s the least of the posts’ problems)

.

📲 NEW APPS

If you’re a Bluesky user and want more secure DMs with other users, Germ wants to be your solution…

Germ brings end-to-end encrypted messages to Bluesky | TechCrunch

.

💰 RESULTS DAY

This week saw financial results reported by Meta, Reddit, and LinkedIn parent Microsoft.

Here’s what we learned…

“Meta’s stock price shot up over 10 percent on Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings. Revenue generated in the second quarter was $47.5 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago.”

Meta is playing the AI game with house money

Out with the metaverse, in with superintelligence. 

Also:

.

👔 YOU’RE HIRED!

Hot new social media jobs worth checking out this week:

Vox Media needs a Social Media Manager for The Dodo [Remote, USA]

More top social media jobs spotted this week 💼

.

🪦 RIP

Social media features heading for the graveyard:

Not having a YouTube Premium subscription is getting ever more painful. Now some users say their ‘skip ad’ button never shows up! 😳

YouTube's skip ad button has gone poof for many, including us

.

👌 PRO TIPS

“The essential TikTok statistics you need to know in 2025 — from demographics to what is actually driving views and engagement on the platform.”

31 TikTok Statistics to Know for 2025

More pro-tips worth checking out ✨

  • Pinterest has revealed a four-part strategy to help marketers crush Q4 despite economic jitters

.

📊 SOCIAL STATS

1.1 BILLION

– The number of views Labubu collectibles have received on TikTok Shop so far in 2025

Even more social stats: 📈

  • AI-DVANTAGE: AI-powered recommendations drove a 20% year-over-year rise in Instagram video watch time, Meta says

  • TOP TUBE: One in five UK kids aged 4–15 now choose YouTube first on TV, outpacing Netflix and BBC

  • STAY GLASSY: Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled in 2025

  • SEARCHEDIT: Reddit’s internal search has hit 70 million weekly users, fuelling a pivot toward search as a strategic focus for the company

  • MEALTIME: Social media is now a top driver in fast food cravings, with 76% ordering after seeing appetising posts, according to new findings from Snapchat

.

📈 CHARTED

How Google searches for VPNs spiked as the UK’s online age checks came into place…

More charted social insights spotted: 👀.

  • TOP OF THE PILE: 76% of top creators stay there for multiple years, showing how difficult it is for new creators to break through

  • CHAT KING: YouTube is winning the AI chatbot referral game

  • REAL LOSSES: Quarterly losses by Meta’s Reality Labs, charted

  • ON THE UP: Reddit’s user and revenue growth, charted

  • HEATED CLIMATE: 92% of environmental defenders reported online abuse, in a new survey. Facebook was named by 62% as the main source of harassment, followed by X (37%) and WhatsApp (36%)

.

💥 EVEN MORE SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS & UPDATES

In creator marketing, loose disclosures are finally catching up

As brands spend more on influencer marketing, creators' undisclosed partnerships are drawing the attention of both watchdogs and the FTC.

  • Democratic senator Ed Markey proposed new safeguards to keep TikTok online. His bill would scrap the ByteDance sell-off in favour of strict data and content rules. [Reuters $$$]

  • Facebook is aggressively censoring posts that mention piracy service MagisTV, even when the content is legal reporting or anti-piracy messaging. [TorrentFreak]

  • DoubleVerify has rolled out broader brand suitability tools for Facebook and Instagram ads, now covering Reels and Feeds. [Social Media Today]

  • Some DJs are abandoning TikTok as terms of service changes have made their output more risky on the platform. [DailyDot]

  • TikTok is on a recruitment drive for its search ads division around the world. [DigiDay $$$]

  • TikTok has merged its Core Product and Trust & Safety teams. [TechCrunch]

New features and tests:

  • TikTok has added Quick Replies under Messaging Tools. [@jonahmanzano]

  • Creator-focused shopping platform LTK is adding new social features. [Modern Retail]

.

📰 WEEKEND READS

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

Welcome to the college parent group chat… 💬

Gen X parents are apparently terrified to let their Gen Z kids grow up

Parents of college kids are getting unhinged in their group chats

Gen X parents are terrified to let their Gen Z kids grow up, even as they head to college. Here are the group chats to prove it.

More great weekend reads:

.

😳 AND FINALLY…

Ready for a whole new Zuck in the sequel to The Social Network…?

Succession star Jeremy Strong is reportedly the top pick to play an older Zuckerberg at an embattled Facebook.

Apparently Jesse Eisenberg, who played Zuck in original movie, doesn’t want to reprise his role… Or he is playing hard ball to bump up his fee.

I’m really looking forward to this one!

Jeremy Strong Front-Runner To Play Mark Zuckerberg In ‘The Social Network Part II’

.

📅 BACK NEXT WEEK…

End scene. And cut! you have reached the end of this week’s Geekout. 🎬

I’m heading off to check whether my teenage kids have downloaded a VPN yet.

Looking at your kids social media and web browsing habits is sensible… But utterly terrifying!

I’m thankful I was a teen in the late 90’s…

…”500+ FREE hours of AOL web browsing”, ICQ, MSN Messenger, and visits to some seriously sketchy websites.

My poor mum had no clue what I was doing. But the good news? I wasn’t radicalised!

Goodbye, geeks!

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

Reply

or to participate

Keep Reading

No posts found