Google has been revealed to continue recording your location history even
after you tell it to stop.
Hey! This is Chia from Brand24. Welcome to the #SocialRecap - our rundown out of the latest
highlights from social media and digital marketing news. So, in the last #SocialRecap
we talked about rising trends in voice tech including the addition of
voice messaging on LinkedIn, the ability to schedule routines in Google Home, and
the integration of voice search and voice controls in BMW's latest
collaboration with Alexa. This time we're gonna take a quick peek at the
development of voice shopping before we talk about a certain block list that's
gone viral thanks to a technical loophole on Twitter, how Google always
knows exactly where we are, and then a quick rundown of some key feature
updates that are coming soon to some popular tools and platforms. Now, let's
start with voice shopping. So, voice shopping is set to have been on the rise
for the past two years since Amazon came out with Alexa in 2016. However recent
research indicates that most of these voice-activated smart speakers are
actually more often used to create shopping lists instead of making actual
purchases. A report from news site "The Information" showed that just 2 percent
of devices with access to Alexa have been used to make purchases and from
that 2 percent only 10 percent have made repeat purchases. Experts have predicted
voice search sales to reach 40 billion dollars by 2022 but that's a pretty big
leap considering that it's almost the end of 2018 and sales have reached two
billion dollars so far. Predictions are probably influenced by the growing
number of companies investing in voice shopping such as Google and Samsung.
And I'm sure they count on the further development of voice shopping
technologies. A recent survey conducted by HubSpot on 500 Internet users across
the US and UK saw that nearly half of these users have never made a purchase
via voice shopping and about 20 percent don't even own a voice shopping device.
In a similar survey when participants were asked what they use their smart
speakers for. Half of them didn't use smart speakers at all, while 12% said
they used it to check the weather. And then bigger report from SmartAudio: the
overall top three uses for smart speakers were: to control household
devices, add items to a shopping list, and add activities to a to-do list.
Voice tech is definitely growing trend as we've seen from BMW, Alexa, Google and
even LinkedIn. But for now it's more rooted in voice
search or voice-activated commands instead of voice shopping. And now
chances are even if you're not a fan you've probably heard of Infowars and
its host Alex Jones. Well, the host and conspiracy theorist, who is also behind
Pizza Gate, as well as widely propagated claims that the Sandy Hook tragedy was
fake news supported by crisis actors, has recently stirred up quite a commotion on
Twitter. Even causing a block list with his name on it to go viral. After getting
banned from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and more, due to angry
public backlash from the highly controversial content. A Twitter
eventually followed suit and gave the Infowars host a one-week suspension.
However during the suspension users were still seeing tweets from Jones's account.
Evidently tweets that have been scheduled in advance
that's prior to a suspension will still be published during the suspension.
Seeing this loophole in action prompted Shannon Coulter co-founder of Grab Your
Wallet to create a block list that could be installed to block tweets from Alex
Jones as well as advertising tweets from a number of Fortune 500 companies. More
than 50,000 Twitter users have already downloaded Coulter's block list tool. And
another huge concern for Twitter is online disinformation, having suspended
over 58 million Twitter accounts by the end of 2017, most of these accounts were
connected to the Internet research agency, a Russian propaganda agency in
Saint Petersburg. In 2016 the internet research agency cooked up and served a
hungry public staggering amounts of disinformation during the presidential
campaigns. In 2017 which saw the indictment of the propaganda agency plus
13 individuals for interfering with the presidential elections content from
TruthFeed already accounted for 95 percent of the IRAs Twitter activity.
TruthFeed is a US-based new site that specializes in hyper-partisan clickbait
articles such as the factually incorrect "Refugees with Tuberculosis are interviewing at
Starbucks" or "The Liberal Left has lost their minds and are now killing their
neighbors for supporting Trump". Deeper investigations have revealed that
most of the fake news getting retweeted by fake accounts from the Russian
internet research agency had actually been fabricated domestically by TruthFeed.
At least by the time 2017 rolled around.
And in a recent effort to enhance security Twitter has made a series of
changes to its API. Changes include a delay in push notifications for mentions
and direct messages, disabled timeline streaming via Wi-Fi, as well as disabled
push notifications for likes, retweets, follows and quotes. Unfortunately, while
necessary for security, these changes have caused apps like TweetBot, widely
used among iOS fans, to lose some key features. And now a few updates from
Facebook. Facebook "Birthday Fundraisers" have only been around for a year but
benevolent Facebook users have already raised over 300 million dollars. Organizations like
Saint Jude's Hospital, the Alzheimer's Association, the American Cancer Society
and the ASPCA are among some of the top beneficiaries. Not all of Facebook's
features have been so well received as we can see with the complete removal of
Facebook trends but Birthday Fundraisers are here to stay. Seeing its success
Facebook has developed fundraising features like the ability to match
donations, make recurring donations, add organizers to a fundraiser, and they've
also waived associated fees. So, new interactive tools for Facebook's live
and maybe in the near future for Facebook. Having just partnered up with a
VidPresso after acquiring its staff and technology it looks like Facebook
users might be getting access to some new interactive features on Facebook Live.
VidPresso is known for creating tech that lets users add comments, polls, and
other interactive content to live videos which is the ideal complement to
Facebook's push for live engagement. And another side of live is of course live
News. Facebook isn't really your typical source of live or breaking news, this is
much more Twitter speed but that may change with the new breaking news tag.
This is a tag that lets users follow updates on certain news stories in
Facebook with the option to view updates for each story in chronological order.
It's currently being tested in the US, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and India
with a small handful of publishers. And Instagram is starting to get personal.
Polls have been available in Instagram stories since October but now users can
create more private polls and send them to select individuals or groups through
direct messages. This allows Instagram users to interact
on a more personal level with relevant audiences instead of polling the general
public who might have unknown biases or complete apathy for the topic being
polled. And Spotify is also potentially working on a surprising feature update.
The popular music streaming service may soon be making its users very very happy
by giving them, all of them, the option to skip all video and audio ads with a new
active media feature. Advertisers would only have to pay for ads that have not
been skipped and this would be available to both users with paid accounts and
free accounts. Although it might seem like an unusual move to make this
available to free accounts it's also the perfect opportunity for Spotify to
gather data and significantly improve both user and advertiser experiences.
They'll be able to find out what their listeners prefer and use this data to
help their advertisers increase ad consumption by delivering more
personalized advertising. And a closer look at how Google seems to always know
where you are reveals a bit of a dark side. Google has
been revealed to continue recording your location history even after you tell it
to stop. Apparently when you turn off your location history certain services
from Google will continue logging your location. Google is far from the only
company to implement Dark Patterns in its UX design. Dark patterns are those little
tricks in the way that user interface is designed to confuse users into doing
things they don't really want to do like make a purchase or give away a private
information. But with recent heightened awareness over usage data security
consumer trust has become increasingly intertwined with company transparency.
Google does vaguely mention continued location tracking after turning off your
location history. This can be found by clicking on the Learn More link when you
go to turn off your location history. But it conveniently fails to mention where
you can go to really turn off location tracking for all location services. It's
possible to do this in your web and app activity setting, though information
about where and how to do this from Google seems to be lacking in
transparency. And that's it for episode 16. Don't miss out on the latest updates
from social media and beyond. Subscribe to the #SocialRecap and keep up with
important changes in the world of social media and digital marketing. Thanks for
tuning in and I'll see you next time. Bye!