Social Media Industry Round-Up #114: TikTok Is Being Shut Down From Canada, How to Do Audience Sampling on Instagram & Exciting Threads API Updates

Every week, the team at The Social Shepherd puts together all the relevant industry updates in a round-up newsletter.

This way, we keep our team, clients and interested marketers up to date with what's going on in the social media industry :)

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TikTok Shut Down… In Canada

TikTok is challenging Canada’s order to shut down its local operations over national security concerns. This means that the app will not be banned in the country, but TikTok would have to close its offices in Canada and carry on its operations from elsewhere. 

The company has now requested a judicial review to overturn or reconsider it, and argues the decision is unreasonable and warns of significant job losses if enforced.

This follows similar actions in the US, where TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, faces a January 2025 deadline to sell its US assets or face a ban. Despite the Canadian shutdown order, TikTok is still available to its 14 million Canadian users.

US Sell-Off Bill 

TikTok has filed for an injunction to delay the January 19th sell-off deadline, in order to make time for the Supreme Court to hear its appeal. 

The company warns the ban could cost creators and small businesses billions in lost revenue and significantly impact the U.S. economy. 

We asked our TikTok rep about this update and how it could affect brands that are investing on the platform. 

To that, TikTok said: “We strongly disagree with the court's decision, and will be seeking an injunction to stop the TikTok ban from going into effect until the US Supreme Court has an opportunity to review it. It's important to reiterate that the risks raised by US politicians are theoretical and unsubstantiated, but the work we have done to address these concerns is very real: 

• We have 2000+ employees at USDS (US Data Security) working tirelessly to keep US user data safe.
• We signed with Oracle and other third parties for unprecedented oversight and transparency. 
• We established industry-leading standards for data access and have invested billions of dollars into USDS to set an industry-leading standard for security. 
• Through Project Texas, TikTok USDS is already well ahead of any peer companies in terms of how we secure users’ data and by providing unparalleled transparency by making our source code available to a third-party for review.

We will continue investing and innovating to ensure TikTok remains a space where Americans can safely come to share their experiences, find joy, and be inspired.”

TikTok Shop Credits 

TikTok is offering Shop credits as a 'limited-time offer' to US users for inviting friends and shopping in-app, aiming to boost its user base and engagement. It seems to be a push to grow US support as the company faces a ban deadline in January.

TikTok Shop Launches in the EU 

TikTok has launched its in-app shopping service in Spain and Ireland, as a first step to expand across Europe. 

For now, sellers can only participate by invitation and there haven’t been any official announcements by TikTok. Still, some merchants have been able to access and start selling on the platform as of December 9th.

Audience Sampling for Reels

We announced this test a while ago, and Instagram is finally rolling it out to all users! 

This new tool will allow creators to share their Reels with a selection of users who don’t follow them first. 24 hours after sharing the Reel trial, creators be able to see key engagement metrics like views, likes, comments and shares, to see if the piece of content will perform well when sharing with the full audience.

No Edit Label on Meta

Facebook is testing a ‘No Edit’ label for Stories that haven’t been edited in the app. 

How does it work? When in the process of sharing a Story, the user will be given the option to skip edits and share instantly. 

This potential update could help increase content authenticity. However, pictures could still have been edited on an external app and then uploaded to Facebook.

Threads API News  

Threads has released some updates for its API. 

Back in June, the platform introduced scheduling from third-party platforms, as well as post and data retrieval. Threads’ API now allows users to reply to, repost and quote public posts from third-party apps. 

The platform has also introduced new analytics: “We added shares – the number of times a post was shared outside of the app – to the list of metrics already available via the API – views, likes, replies, reposts and quotes.”

Monthly Subscriptions on Bluesky

The platform is working on add-on features users could access via paid monthly subscriptions. These premium features could include: 

• A “Bluesky+” profile badge
• Custom app icons
• Profile customisations
• Higher-quality video uploads
• Higher-quality video playback
• Post translations
• Analytics
• Bookmarks

This is an effort from the platform to monetise it and see some revenue off the pack of its rising popularity.