Drain the Slop
Social media companies are finally trying to cut all the junk out of their diet.
Last week, Meta announced the removal of over 500,000 Facebook accounts engaged in “spammy behavior or fake engagement,” including things like long, unrelated, hashtag-filled captions on images and videos or regurgitated content from other creators.
Similarly, YouTube also updated its Partner Program policy this month to crack down on “inauthentic content,” which it defines as being mass-produced and repetitive.
As Digiday reports, some creators are looking at YouTube’s crackdown in particular as a pushback against AI-generated videos, many of which are automated, mass-produced and published by “faceless” channels, where the creator does not actually appear on camera.
Marketers, though, don’t seem to mind; in fact, Digiday’s sources suggest that they were already putting the bulk of their ad dollars toward longer-form, personality-driven videos in the first place.
Here’s the real question: Will it work? After all, it already feels like AI slop has taken over most of the internet. One recent study estimates that 40% of all the content on Medium, Quota and Reddit is AI-generated, and those are just the text-based platforms.
For Facebook and YouTube, both of which have invested millions of dollars into in-app image and video generation tools, this feels like an attempt to close Pandora’s box.
Neutering The News
The Trump administration is wielding its power to reshape American media.
On Friday, the House joined the Senate in voting to pull back $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting that Congress had previously approved. The funding supports national broadcasters like NPR and PBS, as well as local networks.
The pullback is the culmination of a decades-long project by Republicans to defund public media, which they accuse of supporting liberal causes, according to The New York Times.
It’s also the latest example of Republican opposition to media entities they view as biased. It joins the FTC’s ongoing investigation into media ratings companies and ad agencies, which Republicans accuse of conspiring to defund conservative news.
In addition, Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show on CBS, announced on Thursday that the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, will end the late-night institution next May. Paramount claims the cancellation was a financial decision. But Colbert’s show actually has higher ratings than Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and was an ad revenue leader for CBS, The Measure reports.
Democratic and Independent lawmakers blasted the move as another attempt by Paramount to win Trump’s approval of its impending merger with Skydance Media. Paramount previously struck a $16 million settlement with the president over accusations of favorable news coverage for Democrats, which Colbert recently called a “big, fat bribe.” Colbert is also a longtime Trump critic, and the president said he “absolutely love[s] that Colbert got fired.”
Ro’ Against The Current
It’s a familiar story by now.
The Netflix executives despaired of the idea of bringing ads to the platform. The Instagram founders never dreamed of ads on Instagram.
That’s always the way of it, until someone really needs to make a buck.
Roku’s co-founder and CEO, Anthony Wood, likewise opposed any ads appearing on Roku home screens unless they were for certain shows, movies or streaming services, which are intuitive.
That line in the sand has long since been passed.
Roku’s original ad-free stance was about providing “a great viewer experience,” Wood tells The Information. But “we didn’t really focus on, ‘How can we use it to drive our business?’”
But even if Roku never wanted to tangle with the ad biz, advertising was always going to come for its business anyway. And now it faces new competitors who are in the TV biz for the ads. Walmart, for example, was a major Roku client, since Walmart’s house brand of TVs, called Onn, used the Roku OS. But that deal shifted to Vizio OS ever since Walmart acquired the smart TV manufacturer to boost its own advertising and data business.
But Wait! There’s More
ICYMI: What is bid throttling? [AdMonsters]
Trump has officially filed lawsuits against News Corp, Dow Jones, Rupert Murdoch and two individual Wall Street reporters. [Reuters]
Google files a lawsuit against the makers of a botnet that infected over 10 million Android devices with malware to commit “large-scale ad fraud.” [Adweek]
Microsoft has abruptly taken its movie and TV store off Xbox consoles and Windows PCs. [The Verge]
Meta refuses to sign the European Union’s AI Act code of practice, citing overreach. [TechCrunch]
Brands capitalizing on the Astronomer CEO gossip is kind of dystopian, actually. [404 Media]
Netflix’s podcasting challenge. [The Information]
Apple and Google are finally diverging in their basic approach to new smartphone features. [NYT]
You’re Hired!
U.S. News & World Report announces a bunch of promotions, including Alex Kalaf to SVP of sales and marketing strategy. [release]
