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Hello, geeks!

Welcome to your one-stop social media news debriefing in what has been another wild week for TikTok and Meta. We have a LOT to dig into.

Before we dive in… A quick tip from me.

This is one of the best media newsletters I read every week - Semafor Media.

Semafor Media gives you the latest insider info and expert analysis of the biggest breaking media industry news stories every week. And it’s FREE!

*This is not an ad. I just love the newsletter, and think you will too.

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Tough time but getting better… ❤️‍🩹

As some of you may know already, I’m currently dealing with a family emergency that has led me to step back from work this past week.

It’s a really tough time right now as I try to be there for my family as I try to steady the ship and care for the ones I love the most.

I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has sent me DMs and emails wishing me well and offering your support. Your messages have really touched me.

I also want to thank Geekout co-editor Martin SFP Bryant and Geekout Pro community member Bryan Larkin who have both kindly stepped in help me with my work, and make sure Geekout lands in your inbox today.

Things may be rough for me for a little while longer, so thank you for your patience as I try to keep the show on the road whilst taking care of my people.

For now, maybe I need a new Geekout intern to get me through it? 😁

The Must-Read Media Newsletter Top Marketers Swear By 

Sick of getting your news secondhand? 

Semafor Media takes you straight to the source, uncovering the political, cultural, and financial forces that shape the media landscape.

Penned by industry veterans Ben Smith (ex-BuzzFeed News) and Max Tani, who have a combined 20+ years reporting in the trenches, Semafor Media isn't just news – it's the inside track on how news gets made. 

Expect sharp analysis, the occasional juicy scoop, and insights you can leverage in your own social strategy.

✨ Subscribe for FREE – and get ahead of the narrative.

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🔥 GEEKOUT HOT 5

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

2. Meta announces a new CapCut rival called Edits [EDITING]

3. Instagram Reels can be three minutes long now [EXTENDING]

4. The EU wants to know just how X’s recommendation algorithm works [INQUIRING]

5. Subreddits ban links to X over Musk’s foul salute [PROTESTING]

ADVERTISE IN GEEKOUT FTW!

• Geekout has 30,000+ subscribers

• Geekout subscribers manage social media for the world’s biggest brands including Apple, Amazon, Disney, Redbull, McDonald’s, Nike.

• Geekout has an industry-beating open rate of 55% and a 12% click rate

• Geekout ads typically generate 2-4% ad click-through-rate

• Limited number of slots available in February.

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🚨 EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT…

TikTok goes, comes back, and is just as precarious in the US as before

Big news has a habit of dropping just after we hit ‘send’ on Geekout. I like to imagine the US Supreme Court gleefully waiting for the newsletter to land in their inbox before they announced that TikTok would be banned after all.

And lo, the app went dark on Sunday in the US… for a few hours, before coming back online.

The swift return was a surprise, because TikTok’s service providers like its cloud partner Oracle risk billions in penalties for bringing it back online, no matter what new US President Donald Trump might claim. According to the law, they can face punishment up to five years from now, meaning they could fall victim to Trump’s notoriously changing whims… or even the whim of the next president.

The app–along with other ByteDance-related apps, from Lemon8 and CapCut to a Marvel-themed game of snap–remain locked out of app stores, because Apple and Google are NOT willing to risk breaking the law.

All of this disruption caused anger (and seemingly even violence in one case!) among users. The top 20 apps in Apple’s US App Store were mostly VPNs and video editing or social media posting apps, as users struggled to evade the ban or find new ways of creating content.

So what’s next? Trump has given TikTok a 75-day reprieve, and after having spoken to China’s President Xi about TikTok just ahead of Supreme Court ruling, is downplaying the security threat from China that the app presents.

And with the news that China is open to a deal over TikTok after all, all eyes are on what shape it might take. AI search scale-up Perplexity has placed a bid for a merger with TikTok US, MrBeast is supposedly involved in a number of proposals (he hasn’t commented), while a Saudi prince who wants Elon ‘never forget that foul salute’ Musk to buy TikTok is also in the mix

Trump’s own favoured solution appears to be some kind of joint venture where the United States itself co-owns TikTok.

TikTok as state media? Stranger things have happened. Although remember that this is just the US part of the platform. Ownership would likely remain the same as now elsewhere in the world.

Oh and after all the hype about RedNote last week, it has remained popular... for now. It has even recruited US influencers to promote the app. But whether it can maintain the interest of the ‘TikTok refugees’ remains to be seen.

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✨ NEW & NOTEWORTHY

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

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💬 YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THAT

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

BBC News asked me for help understanding the weird case of Instagram hiding search results for ‘Democrats’ and other terms - not a good look after Meta’s Trump-y turn but just one of the weird glitches that crop up from time to time.

Also:

• Buffer asked me for my predictions for social media in 2025

• …and The Drum asked Geekout co-editor Martin for thoughts on Meta’s incentives for TikTok creators to switch

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😆 LOL

Oh you sweet summer child…

When work moves to WhatsApp, the vibe changes 😀

Turns out the bots on Bluesky have great comic timing….

The struggle is real:

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📈 MEMES

TikTok addicts in the US might have had a frustrating Sunday, but at least they could make fun of the messages that popped up when they tried to use the app…

If only…!

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🌡️ VIRAL

Have you seen this ridiculous AI image floating around lately? Here’s the story behind it….

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🪧 BRANDS

As Sunday loomed, brands got their goodbyes in for TikTok while they could…

@sonypictures

🙃 #TheSocialNetwork #AndrewGarfield #JustinTimberlake

@streamonmax

The suspense is killing me. #TikTokBan #GameOfThrones #GOT #EddardStark #SeanBean

…meanwhile:

• Ikea has be reviving ancient social media challenges

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🙊 WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

“We’d rather be Chinese”

– TikTok ‘refugees’ are using App Store reviews of RedNote to criticise the US government and American life

• “The current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced” – Elon Musk (never forget that salute, folks 🤮) complains about TikTok being banned
  

• “The technology that was intended to free us has become the tool of our own oppression” – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
  

• Meta rebranded its performance-based layoffs as “non-regrettable attrition”
  

• “Sheryl did amazing work at Meta and will forever be a legend in the industry. She built one of the greatest businesses of all time and taught me much of what I know.” – Mark Zuckerberg is keen to let you know he still likes Sheryl Sandberg after he reportedly threw her under the bus to the Trump team.
  

• ByteDance director Bill Ford thinks there could be a solution for TikTok that is "short of divestiture"
  

• Former Meta policy chief Nick Clegg says the company will still have “the industry’s most sophisticated community standards” after the Trump-y switch in approach.

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👀 MY FAV READS

With everything that' has been happening at TikTok, Meta, and X lately, the need for social protocols that aren’t controlled by billionaires is becoming a hot topic again.

“If we don’t act soon, our online world will continue to be run at the whim of capricious billionaires.”

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😮 WTF?!

“With the app still unavailable on US app stores, people are betting on TikTok being a profitable added extra to secondhand handsets.”

Also:

• Police say a man admitted to setting fire to a congressman's office over the TikTok ban

• Some creators say they won't pay their taxes if TikTok gets banned in the US

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🤦 FAIL

“TikTok's algo seems to have lost its rhythm after Sunday's brief blackout.”

Also:

• Meta’s AI chatbot sometimes says Joe Biden is still US president

• Facebook removed, then reinstated, the Page of a British anti-racism organisation

• Nasdaq’s X account was compromised to promote scam meme coin

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👔 YOU’RE HIRED!

Hot new social media jobs worth checking out this week:

• LEGO is recruiting a Community Engagement Lead – Social Media [Slough, UK]

• E.L.F. Beauty is hiring a Manager, Social Media, Keys Soulcare [New York City, NY. USA]

• TED is looking for a YouTube Channel Manager [remote, USA]

• The BBC wants a new Social Media Executive [Salford or London, UK]

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👌 PRO TIPS

“An inside look at how the Instagram algorithm works for the feed, Explore pages, stories, and reels, the 'signals' that impact them most, and how to make them work for you…”

• How to Use Apple’s Genmoji to create new kinds of emojis

• LinkedIn has shared some tips for thought leadership

• How brands are tapping into LinkedIn’s influencer revolution 

• X has shared a 2025 events calendar for marketers

• Snapchat has shared new data on the benefits of brand and creator partnerships

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📊 SOCIAL STATS

5,000%
— The surge in alternative app searches following implementation of the TikTok Ban in the U.S.

• TikTok Shop: On the day the TikTok outage was lifted, total sales volume on TikTok Shop amounted to $32,064,590 — more than $500,000 more than the total sales figure of $31,429,366 the day before

• 92% of TikTok users also visit YouTube monthly, and 61% engage daily

• 86% of sampled posts got past Meta’s fact checking flags in a recent study

• 75% of news on Facebook gets reposted without users reading it

• ⁠Bluesky: Reports submitted to moderators on Bluesky increased 17x in 2024, compared to 2023.

• ByteDance’s value without TikTok could be $700 billion

• TikTok spent more than $10 million on lobbying in 2024

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📈 CHARTED

Sensor Tower’s latest State of Mobile 2025 report is out. 📊

Last year, U.S. TikTok users spent most of their time on the app (55%) watching short videos on TikTok

Instagram came in a distant 2nd, with users dedicating 37% of their time on the platform to its Reels feature

YouTube Shorts captured 26% of people’s time

• How much TikTok has dominated short-form video

• News Publishers: The biggest news publishers on YouTube

• Where TikTok’s former employees go next

• Advertisers increase spend on Google, Pinterest amid TikTok shutdown and Meta’s content moderation makeover

• LinkedIn’s userbase has tripled in the past decade

• TikTok's US shutdown has little impact on publishers' traffic and video strategies

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• Russian hackers have targeted the WhatsApp accounts of ministers worldwide. [The Guardian]

• Instagram and Facebook blocked and hid abortion pill providers’ posts. Meta says some cases were ‘over-enforcement’ of the laws it was complying with. [New York Times $$$]

• WhatsApp has won a reprieve in India over sharing user data with Meta. [TechCrunch]

New features and tests:

Facebook:

• Facebook has added the ability to pin comments to encourage more subscribers. [@jonahmanzano]

• You can now add affiliate products to the Facebook Live app. [@jonahmanzano]

Instagram:

• Instagram has been spotted rolling out its new compact profile UI. [@theahmedghanem]

• Instagram now lets you send HD photos in DMs. [@oncescuradu]

• Instagram’s Community Notes support has been spotted in code. [@alex193a]

• Instagram has a new setting for Disappearing Messages, letting you control their duration. [@theahmedghanem]

• Instagram has added a ‘Saved Audio’ section for Reels on Android. [@oncescuradu]

• Instagram has simplified the user interface for cross-posting within the share screen. [@theahmedghanem]

• Instagram is testing two new colour schemes and a new animation for the Like button. [@oncescuradu]

Messenger:

• Messenger’s Block screen has had a refresh. [@theahmedghanem]

WhatsApp:

• WhatsApp is rolling out a privacy feature that allows users to display PIX keys on their profiles. [@WABetaInfo]

• WhatsApp is testing a search feature for channels. [@oncescuradu]

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New features and tests:

• X has added Videos to its sidebar menu. [@theahmedghanem]

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• Seven French families suing TikTok saying the platform exposes children to life-threatening material. [Fast Company $$$]

• The uncertainty over TikTok is a big problem for the beauty industry. [Bloomberg]

New features and tests:

• TikTok can now show detailed rewards analytics for every post.. [@jonahmanzano]

• TikTok has added the ability for people to join your group using a QR code. [@jonahmanzano]

• TikTok Work With Artists has introduced a new feature that allows you to manage preferences directly in the app. [@jonahmanzano]

• TikTok has added a ‘Higher colour contrast’ accessibility option on Android. [@oncescuradu]

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💥 EVEN MORE SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS & UPDATES

• Lawmakers have pressed Meta, Apple, Google, and others on their massive Trump donations. [The Verge]

• r/NBA went further than many subreddits and has banned links to Meta apps as well as X. [The Verge]

• Google has won an injunction in London prevent the enforcement of Russian judgments against the US tech giant over the closure of various Google and YouTube accounts. [Reuters $$$]

• Pinterest is trying to woo advertisers to switch their US budgets from TikTok. [Business Insider $$$]

• Trump's inauguration stream shows that his YouTube presence could play a bigger role during his second term. [TubeFilter]

• Pinterest is backing state laws that restrict cellphone use in classrooms amid a political reckoning over youth safety online. [Washington Post $$$]

New features and tests:

• LinkedIn has launched an improved approach to ad attribution. [Social Media Today]

• Flipboard’s new app Surf has added its own video feed, a current trend amid TikTok uncertainty. [TechCrunch]

• Pinterest has launched a new mini-site which highlights the benefits of its evolving ad tools, and how brands can use them to advantage. [Social Media Today]

• Website builder Wix now integrates with YouTube Shopping. [TechRadar]

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📰 WEEKEND READS

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

“China’s internet companies and their hard-working, resourceful professionals make world-class products, in spite of censorship and malign neglect by Beijing.”

• From job board to influencer hub: How LinkedIn became a creator goldmine

• Inside TikTok’s frantic scramble to halt the US ban

• Welcome to the era of gangster tech regulation

• Decentralised social media is the only alternative to the tech oligarchy

• Facebook’s group moderators are its last, best hope

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😳 AND FINALLY…

Time to touch grass… or concrete, at least….

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📅 BACK NEXT WEEK…

That’s everything that went down in social media land this week.

With TikTok’s fate still hanging in the balance, and Meta, YouTube circling like piranhas, snapping up the short-form video refugees… The coming week’s look set to change the social media landscape forever.

And Geekout will be here to keep you in the loop, with everything you need to know.

Right folks… I need to go wrap up a few more bits of client work before I can log off for the weekend.

Goodbye, geeks!

p.s. This newsletter is edited by Martin SFP Bryant