The world’s city sq. Twitter was taken over by ‘free-speech absolutist’ Elon Musk, amended guidelines for digital platforms set the stage for grievance appellate panels and extra accountability, work began on new norms for information safety, and workers received fired from what was as soon as touted as dream jobs.
Meta stated it’s going to minimize 13% of its international workforce, greater than 11,000 workers, marking one of many largest tech layoffs of the 12 months as fabled firms wobbled beneath slowdown headwinds, hovering prices and a sluggish promoting market.
While Musk continued to experiment with paid verifications, takedowns, lifting life bans and Twitter polls, social media customers, usually, modified the best way they posted on-line. Posting blurry images on Instagram turned a fad, and Gen Z fortunately traded image perfection for unfiltered photograph dumps.
New apps corresponding to BeReal appealed to these bored with unrealistic requirements of Instagram clicks.
“The world regained normalcy in 2022 but social media continued to remain a major source of entertainment for the users,” stated Pranav Srivastava, accomplice at Phoenix Legal.
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Bite-sized, snackable, and super-personalised content material, flourished.
The 12 months gave a tonne of recent methods for customers and platforms to reward creativity, and pay the creators. Tumblr launched tip jar characteristic and YouTube introduced new pathways for creators to make cash for his or her content material.
That stated, not every thing modified. Selfies, for one, remained a staple, and so did the overflow of excellent morning greetings on WhatsApp replete with photographs of dewy flowers and motivational messages.
On the worldwide stage, the $44-billion dramatic takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk grabbed eyeballs however comparisons of self-anointed ‘Chief Twit’ modified in a single day from that of Avenger’s Iron Man to real-life Thanos.
In the purge that adopted – like tremendous villain Thanos’ ‘snap’ that had worn out half of all life in Avengers: Infinity War – hundreds of workers have been handed pink slips at Twitter, as Musk, chased deep price cuts and imposed rigorous work hours.
The agency reportedly downsized from greater than 7,000 individuals to beneath 2,000 throughout the globe – the mass-layoffs started with firing of CEO Parag Agrawal in addition to the CFO and plenty of different excessive rating leaders.
Twitter fired nearly all of its over 200 workers in India as effectively. Only a handful have been spared as layoffs culled roles throughout engineering, gross sales and advertising and marketing, and communications groups.
The US-based social media platform, in an inner electronic mail to workers in early November stated, “in an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce…”
The high-profile departures weren’t confined to Twitter, alone.
On November 3, Meta’s India head Ajit Mohan stepped down with rapid impact, and the exit was adopted by the departure of Abhijit Bose, WhatsApp’s India head, and Rajiv Aggarwal, Meta India public coverage head.
Vinay Choletti stop as WhatsApp Pay India head after only a few months into the job.
Sandhya Devanathan has been appointed as Vice President of Meta India – she takes cost at a time when daring, new guidelines to curb consumer hurt and rein in Big Tech, are taking form in India.
On the regulatory aspect, the federal government amended IT guidelines for social media firms to ‘comply with’ and hit refresh on draft information safety norms.
After a 12 months of bitter confrontation with Big Tech, the federal government moved decisively in 2022 to tighten the foundations for security of digital and social media customers, curb poisonous content material, and defend residents’ information.
The authorities notified guidelines beneath which it’s going to arrange appellate panels to redress grievances that customers could have in opposition to selections of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook on internet hosting contentious content material.
The hardening of stance in opposition to the Big Tech firms comes at a time when discontent has been brewing over alleged arbitrary acts of social media platforms on flagged content material, or not responding quick sufficient to grievances.
The authorities stated the “broken” grievance redressal mechanism supplied by intermediaries (social media platforms) and lakhs of messages flagging customers’ considerations round unresolved complaints compelled its hand.
IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar had stated the modification of IT guidelines will put extra particular due diligence obligations on social media firms to make efforts that no illegal content material or misinformation is posted on their platforms.
Those aggrieved by choice of the grievance officer of social media firms can attraction to the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC), in accordance with the amended IT guidelines.
“We believe that this empowers the users and their digital rights. The GAC seems like a timely counterfoil to protect the rights of users,” stated Aprameya Radhakrishna, CEO and cofounder of Indian microblogging platform Koo.
In one other important transfer, the federal government mooted a brand new information privateness legislation. The new model proposes to permit the switch and storage of private information in some international locations whereas elevating the penalty for violations.
The draft Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill 2022, presently beneath session course of, has stipulated consent earlier than amassing private information and gives for stiff penalties of as a lot as Rs 500 crore on individuals and firms that fail to forestall information breaches.
Companies are allowed to retailer the collected information for less than specified intervals. The draft has additionally proposed to arrange a Data Protection Board of India.
As social media and different gamers brace to maintain tempo with regulatory compliances and take care of market-related challenges, there can be some stable alternatives, too.
Market watchers imagine that hyper concentrating on skill that entrepreneurs want will put the platforms on the desired degree for consideration.
“Also the nurturing of an influencer and community ecosystem on the social media platform that supports the advertisers’ needs can bring better opportunities to the platform. Tech-based hyper personalisation of content and recommendations will be a focus area,” stated Chandrashekhar Mantha, Partner at Deloitte India.
An rising pattern which will spillover into coming years will probably be social commerce, Mantha stated, including the modern integration of e-commerce with social commerce can yield a brand new line of revenues for the platforms.