Even though the summer is the time for people to relax and unwind, social media has not. Platforms such as YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok have not slowed down in terms of updates and new features. Here is all you need to know about the latest in digital marketing and industry news from this past month!

Social Media Updates

After American media personality, socialite, model, and businesswoman, Kylie Jenner of a new trending petition to ‘Make Instagram, Instagram Again’, Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri and CEO Mark Zuckerberg put out a public response. The calls for reverting the app back to how it was before the platform began inserting much more video and recommended content into people’s home feeds. Mosseri and Zuckerberg came forward to explain the reasons behind these changes, including the need to keep up with trends, people’s interest, advertising potential, and to increase AI recommendations. However, Mosseri made a statement saying that Instagram will be taking a step back in recommended content and it’s experiments with a full screen format. Instagram will also back track to fix any ranking and recommend content issues before moving forward to new features.

Like movies and video games, TikTok will be enacting a content maturity rating system to prevent younger audiences from seeing videos that are inappropriate. The rating system will be based on “thematic maturity” flagging videos that contain mature or complex themes and assigning them a maturity score to determine if these videos can or cannot appear in the feeds of those under 18. It is unclear how TikTok will verify whether a user is 18 since the full version of the app is available to those 13 and up. Currently TikTok, asks for a photo id of the user if they try to change their age, but not when they initially sign up.

Meta has released its . In its 83 pages, the report provides insight into how the company is working to address human rights concerns from its products, policies, and business practices. Their principles are for the right to freedom of expression, the right to privacy, the right to equality and non-discrimination, child protection, and more. These principles will also be integrated into the VR Metaverse. Meta’s mission statement is to build community and bring the world closer together.

Google has updated reports for GA4, which now counts traffic from Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns. This data is listed under a new channel group called “cross-network” which is listed alongside other channel groups such as Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, and Display. This update will make it easier to determine where your traffic is generated from to best reach your marketing goals.

What’s the biggest news that stood out to you this month? Let us know in the comments below!