Every two weeks, Vanguard distills hundreds of digital media headlines into the best “byte”- sized pieces of useful information. Each edition has news ranging from the latest Facebook algorithm changes to best practices for email marketing. Share Digital Bytes with your organization to keep your digital strategies ahead of the pack.

Digital Bytes

How do you moderate 2 billion people? That has been the subject of recent conversations between Mark Zuckerberg and academics. A longform Motherboard article on Facebook about the conundrum notes, “Size is the one thing Facebook isn’t willing to give up. And so Facebook’s content moderation team has been given a Sisyphean task: Fix the mess Facebook’s worldview and business model has created, without changing the worldview or business model itself.” Sounds like just a small task to check off the to-do list, right? ?

In other news …

• The Pew Research Center has released a new report about teens and screen time. According to the report, “Fully 72 percent of teens say they often or sometimes check for messages or notifications as soon as they wake up, while roughly four-in-ten say they feel anxious when they do not have their cellphone with them.”
• Tech companies are trying to get ahead of 2018 election meddling by meeting privately today in San Francisco.
• Facebook is changing its advertising target options this fall, citing a need to avoid discriminatory advertising practices based on race and ethnicity.
• Twitter bots may be fueling the anti-vaccine debate and making it appear that more people are anti-vaccine than in reality.
• What does online privacy mean for Internet users in 2018? The Atlantic’s Ian Bogost shares his take, and it’s grim: “The personal-data privacy war is long over, and you lost.”

Fun Resources

• What makes a good landing page? Social Media Today shares five designs with high conversion rates.
• There has been some chatter recently about the overuse of mobile phone push notifications, but research shows that in retail settings, push notifications drive 9.6 times more users to make a purchase. In a nonprofit setting, these notifications can be used to drive donations and take actions like emailing a member of Congress.

Finally …

Yes, some will say the Internet has turned into a sort of corporate dystopian wasteland — however, there are glimmers of hope that keep me optimistic. Case in point? The New York Public Library shared the full text of “Alice in Wonderland” on Instagram Stories this week, bringing a classic text to more than 40,000 people.