What are the top 10 social media apps in 2020?

What are the top 10 social media apps in 2020?

as we near the 2020 election social media companies are making changes to their policies to fix mistakes pointing out pointed out during the previous election cycle Facebook has announced it will be ending commissions for employees who sell political ads will also be banning ads the tell users not to vote they're also working on putting together an independent oversight committee with the power to take

down any posts twitter has announced it'll be alerting users when a politician's tweet violates its standards and it'll be grain out the content the user will still be able to see if the content that if they click on it joining us ran to discuss these preparations and more is aleca Alex Kantrowitz senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed also our guest host Ed Lee this morning good morning to to both of you Alex how much of a difference is this going to make in Washington right now well I think that it's going to show that these companies are trying to do something we all know that the federal government is bearing down on the big tech companies Twitter seem to have escaped that a little bit but you know as we come closer to 2020 you know that that's subject to change I think this is a chance for them to say hey we're doing something when lawmakers are going out there and trying to make names for themselves by being tough on the social media companies ultimately how much does this do from a practical standpoint I think pretty little but it's something that they can take into the offices in Washington and say hey we're trying right and that's what's going on here this is not yeah this is but this is built in all these programs are built to appease and placate what can I do to get them off my back exactly my question does it do that though I think it does a little bit its large increment I agree with Alex I think it practically speaking I don't know that it does a ton I think longer-term Facebook Twitter all these guys they really don't want this responsibility they just don't want this on them and I'm curious get Alex's take on this I think the most interesting thing right now that Facebook isn't me to do is this like idea of a Supreme Court that will decide you know a separate body that will decide what is or isn't within the policies and what the policy Alex why don't they just say we just won't accept any of this kind of advertising you know I think that's exactly what they should do I am shocked they continue to take political advertising I mean if you think about it it's a slow single-digit percent of the revenue and all it does so this stuff was initially served as a case study to advertise to show hey this is how effective our political advertising is and now we all know how problematic that is so I do think that the only reason they're continuing to accept political advertising well there's probably two reasons one is ego and two is hey it actually is a pretty good case study for advertisers elsewhere and they're willing to take the blow I think that the flip side alex is the conundrum is if you said no advertising then you're going to get an A into some kind of freedom of speech' argument be online if you kiddin advertise on Facebook Twitter and Google said you know what No Mas we're out of the business what would you do if you were a political get two people I think Melissa's exactly right that's the bigger context here right like every post on Facebook isn't ad right you as a political entity can create your own page and distribute them disseminate them and get your followers to share them as much as possible you were exactly so I think that the activity won't stop on Facebook it's just your ability to boost it to make it more visible to the general population what could go away and even still it still you're gonna attract followers you're gonna write that message is still gonna get out there through social media it's just they're not gonna directly pay for it Alex you're making an interesting point about the share button on Facebook and how in the last elections that helped proliferate fake news etc it's still there I mean that seems like a an even bigger risk than just you know political ads yeah all these changes we talked about at the beginning of the segment the way that they're gonna handle advertising I think that's just window dressing I think the real issue that we need to look at is whether or not Facebook should continue to have that share button maybe doesn't want to have it on political posts you know there was no share button during the 2012 election there was one during the 2016 election or at least the quick chair the reshare that you can just hit a tap and the content goes to your your news feed so if I see a a post that says Hillary Clinton's a space alien it's gonna be much easier for me to just take no thought and hit that share button versus copy and paste the link and decide to share it to my followers the share button removes that hesitation that you have before you push content out and that's why we've seen this proliferation of fake news and outrage and doesn't matter all the policies you you put in place to deal with that in the aftermath what you really should do is address the actual machinery that makes it so and I think that's something that we need to have a conversation about heading into this new election is how it says that share button belong Alex twenty seconds do you think that the government is either going to break up or meaningfully regulate Facebook or Twitter or the other social media companies in the next week all three years no I don't have any confidence in the government to do anything meaningful to these companies we see the size the FTC fine it's not so big a lot of people out there trying to make a name for themselves right but no there's not gonna be any breakup at least in the next three years you