Is that even legal?
⚖️ Make sure you don't break these new laws. Plus, six social media lessons from the holiday travel chaos. And the dog bus breaking TikTok.
Happy New Year 🎉 As you get ready to do your annual social media housekeeping tasks — like updating passwords and admin access — you might want to including adding multi-factor authentication to your Twitter account. That’s because the platform just suffered a major hack, resulting in email accounts for 235 million accounts being shared in an online hacking forum. The Washington Post has more details.
In today’s newsletter:
What social media managers and content creators need to know about new Canadian legislation
Travel chaos: Six social media lessons for brands
And the dog bus breaking TikTok
LEGAL EAGLES
It is honestly amazing how many skills that social media managers have to have. And one of the most important ones is protecting brand accounts — from trolls, hacks, reputational issues, and potential legal problems. As we kick off 2023, here are a few legal issues and Bills that social media managers, content creators, and others will want to watch for.
1/3 Canada extends copyright protection
If you were hoping to share a book, song or play, you might want to make sure it’s in the public domain, because Canada recently extended copyright protection applied to literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works. Copyright protection, which used to be for the life of the author plus 50 years, was extended at the end of December to the life of the author plus 70 years. If a work is not in the public domain, you must get permission to post it, or pay for the right to post it.
2/3 Bill C-11: The Online Streaming Act
This one could impact content creators. Bill C-11 would expand Canada’s current Broadcast Act to include streaming platforms, such as Netflix and YouTube, and hold them accountable for supporting the creation, promotion and discoverability of Canadian creative content, such as songs, films, and TV shows. In December, Senators amended one section of the Bill, which would have also given the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission the ability to essentially regulate all content, including user-generated content. It now defines programs to be regulated as those that are professionally produced vs. amateur content (I would say most content creators are professionals, so this still seems concerning to me). Stay tuned.
3/3 Bill C-18: The Online News Act
Meta is already threatening Canada over Bill C-18, which would require tech giants like Google and Meta to compensate Canadian media for sharing journalistic content. The House passed the bill at the end of January, and it now goes to Senate. Meta says that if this goes through, they may be forced to “consider removing news from Facebook in Canada rather than being compelled to submit to government-mandated negotiations that do not properly account for the value we provide publishers.” This is the same tactic that Meta took with Australia last year, but it eventually struck a deal with the government.
ICYMI
LinkedIn announces 7 updates coming in 2023 [Search Engine Journal]
Instagram introduces new sharing options, including notes, group profiles, and more [Meta Blog]
Twitter brings back Twitter Blue, and introduces gold checkmarks [Twitter Blog]
TikTok has begun rolling out the ability for creators to restrict videos to adult viewers [TechCrunch]
Snapchat offers 16 strategies for increasing online sales [Snapchat Blog]
Ticket to ride
I was never a huge fan of school buses (too bouncy and no seat belts). But this is one bus that I would love to take a ride on. With more than 50 million views, this TikTok video from @mo_mountain_mutts is sure to give you all the feels. Here’s the background story from Distractify.
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