Weekly social roundup
Somebody is watching me…
And it’s Meta and its Smart Glasses! I feel like I am on the lookout every time I am outside now that someone is wearing Smart Glasses. Anyone else, or am I a bit too paranoid now that I know how they are training their AI (more on that below!)?
But let’s bypass that for now and get into the other stories this week! Because there are quite a few. From US TikTok going down … again, to Meta adding a ton of new features across their apps this past week.
It’s been a heck of a week, let’s get into it.
Watch out, Google!
49% of TikTok users use TikTok as a search engine 🔎
I don’t think this stat is going to surprise anyone who has a TikTok.
Over 2 in 5 Americans now use TikTok as a search engine, and nearly 1 in 10 Gen Zers prefer TikTok over Google.
Whoa.
People are searching for recipes, travel recommendations, fashion advice, product reviews, how-to guides, and so much more.
For many people (and our ever-shortening attention spans), having short-form videos that are educational and informative is what is driving the increase in searching for something specific on the app. With Google, you’re given a bunch of links, whereas TikTok is giving you a person showing (and telling!) you what you need to know.
Next time you’re creating content on TikTok, you might want to think of how people would discover the video through search and start optimizing your content that way.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top Meta news from the week
Woof. Meta is being sued over its AI Smart Glasses after an investigation found that workers are reviewing the footage on the glasses and seeing users naked, having sex, and more.
Facebook has added a new feature called “Friends with things in common.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: a way to filter your friends based on location, pages you like, workplace, language, and more.
It’s official: All users on Instagram can schedule their content inside the app (well, if you have 1000 followers or more).
Instagram is testing a new feature inside Close Friends called “Secret Friends.” What this means? No one really knows.
Instagram has merged “Effects” and “Restyle” on Instagram Story into one feature. In case you freaked out and couldn’t find the “Restyle” button on Stories.
More features have been added to Edits!! You can now add emphasis to words in your captions, new video effects, and so much more. Better look out, CapCut!
You can only follow up to 7500 people on Instagram. In case you wanted to know.
Meta is still in court, and new documents show that Instagram had continued growth on the platform, the more they targeted teens.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top TikTok news from the week
Womp womp. US TikTok has gone down again … this is the second time in a month.
Have you done a TikTok Feed Refresh? The feature has been updated, where it will now take days to complete, and TikTok will show you popular videos you wouldn’t normally see to understand what type of content you want on your FYP.
If this doesn’t show you how powerful TikTok ads are, I don’t know what will.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top X news from the week
A new feature has launched in X’s Creator Subscriptions: Exclusive Threads. Creators can paywall the end of their post threads.
No more hashtags! X has created a Paid Partnership label so creators can tag their content properly and avoid adding the hashtag (#ad) that Musk dislikes so much.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top other social media news from the week
Snapchat seems to want to lean into B2B marketing … but how in the world is that going to happen?
Google is showing more and more social media posts in its “Discover” feed, so making sure your captions are SEO-friendly is going to be more important than ever.
If you’re a social media manager and feeling incredibly burnt out recently, you’re not alone. 87% of social media managers say they feel overwhelmed in 2026.
Uh, oh!!!
Meta is being sued (again) over privacy concerns with its Smart Glasses 🤓
Well, this isn’t good, is it?
Meta is facing another lawsuit (!) about privacy concerns after an investigation found that there are third-party contractors in Kenya viewing footage from users’ glasses to help train Meta’s AI.
Yes, all footage, including nudity, using the bathroom, having sex, and more. Oof.
With Meta advertising the Smart Glasses as “built for your privacy,” it seems there might be a little bit of false advertising going on.
Meta released a statement following the investigation, saying:
Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands-free, to answer questions about the world around you. Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed.
According to Meta, faces in the footage have been blurred, but according to reports, the blurring didn’t work often. And not only that, but users can’t even opt out of their data being shared and viewed by a third-party contractor, as it’s part of its Privacy Policy.
Yikes.
This is definitely a lawsuit to keep an eye on, especially as more and more people buy Smart Glasses in the future.
Read of the week
Why banning social media for children is bad for all
I know that Taylor Lorenz is a divisive figure on the internet, but her piece on banning social media is so good.
Yes, I understand that I have a bias of being against social media bans as a whole (with little evidence proving its beneficial even after countries have started putting the bans in place), but I think this piece highlights the consequences of age checks, data and privacy concerns, and so much more in a really digestible way.
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And that’s all, folks!
Thank you, as ever, for supporting and reading! It always means a lot. I’ll talk to you all next week!
Mackenzie
