Weekly social roundup
Hot dang! It’s been a weeeeeeek
Meta is in court. Instagram is hiding your DMs (more on that below). Organic reach is down (across the board). Snap’s CEO is going off on Australia (whoops). And so much more.
What a week for Big Tech.
Let’s get into it.
Ruh-roh, Instagram
Organic reach on Instagram keeps shrinking 📉
Well, it’s not a surprise for those of us who are on social media day in and day out. Organic reach on Instagram is abysmal and seems to just keep getting worse.
Emplifi’s latest report analyzed over 200,000 social media accounts, and there were two big takeaways:
Brands are seeing the most growth in followers on TikTok (with media brand follower counts rising by over 200% year-over-year in 2025!!)
Organic reach on Instagram is declining, but Reels and Carousel posts are doing the best for brands
While Facebook and Instagram are still incredibly important to have a presence on (and help establish trust that you’re a real brand!), if you’re not experimenting on TikTok yet, you might need to change that ASAP.
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Top Meta news from the week
Facebook is rolling out a new Sticker for Stories called “Thoughts,” where all text from your Story will be hidden until your followers tap to reveal the text.
Look out, Apple Watch! Meta is working on launching its very own smartwatch later this year.
No more screenshots! Instagram has launched screenshot prevention for DMs.
Meta is shutting down even more of Messenger: you will no longer be able to use the desktop app or the web version after April.
Spoiler alert! WhatsApp is adding a new “spoiler” option, which will hide the text until someone unhides the information.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top TikTok news from the week
Apple Music and TikTok are partnering! And you’ll be able to play a full song, not just 30 seconds.
TikTok is allowing you to personalize your feed more and more. How? Engage with videos. That’s it.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top X news from the week
X is going all in on short-form video (much like all the other social media platforms out there) with its new video player that launched last week.
X is cracking down hard on bots and spam with new tools to stop fake engagement.
Extra, extra! Read all about it!
Top other social media news from the week
Google loves AI and is rolling it out everywhere, including YouTube. With its latest AI rollout, YouTube will have its AI analyze content and creators on the platform to match brands with creators that will help boost sales for them.
Seems like LinkedIn is cracking down on spam, much like X. The platform announced an update to crack down on fake engagement and automated comments from third-party tools.
Looks like Apple Music is going the way of Spotify! The app is letting users switch between video and audio quickly inside the app.
The man, the myth, the Zuck
Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stand 😵💫
Here we go!!!
The Zuck has officially taken the stand in the social media addiction trial of the year. The man behind Meta told the judge that Meta’s main goal is to make Instagram “useful” and not addictive.
Sure, Jan.
According to people who were there, Zuckerberg was getting a bit combative and said that Instagram is “focusing instead on utility” because “if something is valuable, people will use it more because it’s useful to them.”
Sounds like trying to make people stay on the platform and be addicted to me, but what do I know?!
Oh, and the best part of this whole trial so far? The judge warned people in the courtroom not to record proceedings using AI glasses after Zuckerberg’s entourage came in, all wearing Meta Smart Glasses. Womp womp.
The case was brought forward by a 20-year-old who claims she was harmed as a child by addictive features in Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. TikTok and Snap settled before it went to trial, but Meta decided to push back.
This is just one of a series of cases Meta is facing around child safety, and it’s definitely one worth watching.
Read of the week
The case for being more fangirl on social media
As someone who used to run a Hilary Duff forum back in 2004, I completely loved this Substack from Pretty Little Marketer about brands and marketers needing to learn from fangirls.
Brands want people to ride-or-die for them, and the best way to do that is by seeing how fangirls operate. They are creative. They are fun. They are quick. They are unapologetic. They are FANGIRLS!
PLM breaks down how brands can copy fangirls to help build out their marketing strategy and grow their socials.
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
