Category: Platform Watch
What changed on the platforms, read properly, with what it means for the people posting.
Platforms change constantly, and most coverage of it is a rewritten press release. The posts here start from the primary document: an engineering post, a policy page, a system card, a statement with a date on it. Where a belief circulates without a source, we say so rather than repeating it. Where something genuinely changed, we say what it costs you to respond to it.
You will find claims traced back to their origin, dated records of what moved and when, and myths tested against evidence. You will not find predictions about unannounced features, or advice built on what the algorithm supposedly wants.
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YouTube’s title and thumbnail test picks on watch time, not clicks
YouTube’s A/B test declares a winner by watch time share, not click-through rate. What its help page says,…
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Auto-Captions Are a Draft: What YouTube and W3C Say
YouTube’s help pages tell creators to review automatic captions, and W3C says unverified ones fall short. Here is…
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YouTube Partner Program Eligibility Won’t Get You Live
YouTube’s Partner Program eligibility and its live streaming eligibility are two separate bars, quoted directly from YouTube’s own…
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What Meta’s documentation says a save is, and what it leaves out
Meta’s Instagram documentation lists saves, shares, likes and comments as separate metrics. Here is what each definition states,…
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Meta’s AI info label: what it detects, what it leaves to you
Meta names what triggers its AI info label and where disclosure is required. Its statements read with dates,…
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Two free links a month: Facebook and X now charge for the post that leaves
X now charges $0.20 per API post with a link, and Facebook caps non-paying Pages at two link…
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What X’s Open Recommendation Code Still Says, Two Years On
X open-sourced its ranking code in 2023. Two years and 31 commits later, here is what the repository…
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Google’s Video Markup Requirements Most Posts Never Meet
Google’s documentation names three required fields for video rich results: name, thumbnailUrl, uploadDate. Here is what platform post…
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Meta’s Ad Library: what it publishes about an ordinary ad
Meta’s Ad Library API documents 28 fields for an archived ad. Only 13 are returned for an ordinary…
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The YouTube payout rules that live outside the sign-up page
The YPP sign-up page shows subscriber and watch-hour thresholds. The separate content policies decide whether a video earns…
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