November is over and we are fast approaching 2020! Whilst we are all getting ready for a visit from Santa, let’s take a look at what happened in November 2019.

What Happened?

1. John Lewis released their long-awaited Christmas Advert
2. Twitter will start removing inactive accounts
3. Linkedin removes fake accounts

1, John Lewis Christmas Advert Starring Excitable Edgar

When it comes to Christmas Adverts, it’s safe to say everyone in the UK has pretty high expectations from John Lewis. Surely that adds a little pressure to the festive spirits, but they seem to cope well with it.

The advert follows the oh-so-cute Exciteable Edgar and Ava as they try to take part in seasonal activities with the other villagers, although not being too successful with it. We won’t tell you how it ends, but here is the advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9D-uvKih_k

Isn’t Excitable Edgar just adoring? Well, the world seems to agree with you. There is a range of merchandise released by John Lewis and Waitrose (good luck finding them in stock), Snapchat has created an Excitable Edgar filter and there is an Edgar emoji available on Twitter until 25 December.

The John Lewis Christmas advert currently boasts 9.1 million views on youtube which just goes to show how Christmas adverts have become a part of our culture in the UK, (also named as the ‘battle of the Christmas adverts’).

What’s your favourite Christmas advert?

2, Twitter Announced Plans to Start Removing Inactive Accounts

Twitter ruffled some feathers in November when they announced on the 26th that they would be emailing the owners of inactive accounts a warning: sign in by December 11th or your account will be deactivated. This included deceased users.

Twitter’s idea behind this is to free up usernames and reduce the number of spam accounts on their channel. This would give new users a chance to pick from a broader range of user names.

Twitter faced some controversy for this announcement with the main concern being that the public don’t want accounts from deceased users to be removed. Twitter at this moment in time does not offer the function to request that an account be made into a memorial account (something which Facebook allows members to request).

As of this week, due to the backlash they received, Twitter announced that this will only impact accounts in the EU (which wasn’t made clear when the news broke on 26th November) and that they have put this plan on pause in order to look into how they can turn the accounts of deceased users into memorial accounts.

3, LinkedIn Removes Fake Accounts

Earlier in 2019, LinkedIn removed 21 million accounts. It has now been revealed that those accounts were fake, used for espionage and spying. A couple of weeks ago, the Microsoft-owned platform released a report revealing that 19.5 million fake accounts had been automatically interfered at the moment of registration by its AI systems.

LinkedIn, the social network best known for job-hunters and recruiters is suffering like Facebook and Twitter with fake accounts and inappropriate content. During the removal of over 21 million accounts, over 60 million pieces of spam were also removed, which included fake job postings.

It seems as though issues with bots, improper usage, and data concerns are effecting the social industry and large platforms. But big tech shows no sign of slowing down, with new features and policies aiming to crack down on these issues being introduced regularly.