Netlytic

I used Netlytic for the first time a few days ago for our assignment. I haven’t dealt much in external social media analytics before this. Netlytic is a “community-supported text and social networks analyzer that can automatically summarize and visualize public online conversations on social media sites” and was “made for researchers by researchers, no programming/API skills required,” as per their About page. It’s fairly easy once you understand what the deal is.

Netlytic requires you to make an account and then plug in your own social media for whatever site you’re trying to analyze. Luckily, it’s a free service at its base, but you can pay to upgrade your account and keep more data sets. I only needed one and the free version has three sets, so I’m good. I wasn’t keen on plugging my own social media account in to analyze hashtags or accounts that aren’t related to me, but you do what you gotta do, you know?

Netlytic allows datasets for Twitter, YouTube, Google Sheets, Text Files, RSS, and Reddit. After you put your own social media in, you follow the directions. You name your data set, choose a language, a location (or a radius), as well as choose keywords, hashtags, and relevant accounts. Once the website extracts and analyzes the data, you can look through it and mess around however you want to see what changes. I can definitely see how this would be helpful to people using it for business purposes.

Social media metrics

I think that it’s interesting how exhaustive social media metrics can be. When I think of analyzing a video or Tweet, I generally just think of checking how many views it received or how many times it was shared; it usually doesn’t occur to me to check the site for repeated visits. Granted, part of this is probably because I’m not very familiar with site metrics beyond the very basics--which, in hindsight, is probably because I’m only scratching the surface of what can be done (and because I’m not privy to a lot of the information a site might have. But mostly the first one). Using social media metrics is probably a good way to determine what users like and dislike and how they interact with certain products and features; for example, a site that sells shoes might have the ability to view how many people bought a specific piece of footwear, which might determine how the company will proceed in future endeavors.

TikTok and Public Libraries

     TikTok has taken over the social media stage during the pandemic. Between political drama, and teens doing weird dances in public, is there really a need for libraries to use the platform?

YES. 

    When we take a look at social media as a whole, people all have their reasons for using it. Whether it be to connect with family that live across the country or just to watch funny videos, it is all about sharing. Sharing your life, your experiences, and things that you find entertaining and valuable. While most of TikTok is individuals that are creating content for entertainment, businesses have began to catch on and use the platform as well. 

    But rather than use the platform to directly advertise their goods and services, brands and companies have incorporated subtle marketing techniques into comedic entertainment. With a majority user base in the United States using TikTok being 10-29, businesses can directly reach a large demographic. 

    So where do libraries come into play? Well just looking at the library I personally work at, we are having a huge issue with reaching and connecting with certain user groups. There is a large fallout between the ages of 12-30, which ironically is the largest user group on TikTok. Libraries can join in on the entertainment factor, and create content whether it be original or a trend. 

    Each type of social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok) has their own type of vibe, type of post, and humor that resonates amongst the users. Libraries can add this social media platform to expand who and how they reach the community, but it will take a little practice and finesse!

I found this video that made me chuckle a few times, thought I would share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8P0eQYMnyo

Social Media Analytics and Mental Health

While the ability to access social media analytics is obviously very useful for companies and researchers alike, I have to wonder what the effect is on the average user. It seems like social media is a constant numbers game, always pushing people to produce more and more content for free and obsess over how well it does. When I first joined social media, I started largely on Tumblr. One of the quirks of the platform is that your number of followers is hidden from public view. Only you really know how large your audience is, although anybody can see hints of it based on the average number of interactions your posts get and other signs like that. Eventually Tumblr fell out of favor when it banned adult content and I moved to Twitter along with many other users. On Twitter, your follower count is displayed prominently under your bio and available for everyone to see. It's no longer something you can hide at all. I think this causes a lot of people to take it pretty seriously and probably isn't great for mental health.

Another thing I've seen on Twitter that just feels unhealthy are external sites that will track things like how many people have unfollowed you in the last week. While this is probably very helpful for companies to gauge their social media success, I've mostly seen it used by average people who check it obsessively and seem to base their self-worth on keeping followers. It's especially common with young teenagers who treat unfollowing someone like a personal betrayal. That's definitely not healthy behavior.

These sort of tools are really useful for researchers and I can see why they should be available to the public, but social media isn't designed to help mental health. It's designed to attract as many users as possible and keep them scrolling so they can see ads. The addition of numbers to gauge how well their posts are doing in a very tangible way really just reinforces how unhealthy it can be sometimes.

Facebook and Data Profiles

It seems as though every time Facebook makes an update to their Terms of Service, new stories pop up about what the new or changed features do to change your experience with the site -- and what new ways the site is adding to the overstuffed folder of data it has collected about you. These pieces seem to show up every few months, and not without legitimate concern: Facebook has the ability to collect a really thorough profile on someone using the site, from religious and political views, to hobbies and interests, to geotagged check ins at various locals, to years worth of photos. With Facebook's ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp as well, those profiles become even more complete. Factor in the number of websites using Facebook's API for third party site account creation (you know, when you have the opportunity to either type in your email and a unique, secure password or just click the Facebook button and gain access to the website immediately by logging in with your Facebook credentials instead?) and the profiles become even more layered.
Wired.com published a piece by David Nield in January 2020 about this particular phenomenon. One of the neat features of this piece was how David highlighted ways to see what kind of advertising-specific profile Facebook has for you. I easily lost twenty minutes scrolling through, laughing at the mismatches and feeling a little exposed from the direct hits. Interestingly, he also noted that a lot of the tools that Facebook has rolled out in the name of controlling who has access to your data do not do anything to erase the profile that Facebook already has of you, or to even stop Facebook from gathering more data. These tools are all about how ads are targeted at you. So with these tools engaged, posting pictures of your newborn might not get you quite as many advertisements for the latest and greatest in diaper technology, but that does not mean that Facebook's profile of you has not carefully noted the new addition to your family -- it just does not specifically send ads for Pampers your way.
Even using Facebook's mobile apps can spell bad news for your privacy. These apps, such as the primary Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, receive information about what Wi-Fi networks you connect to, the type of phone you use, other apps you have downloaded, and more (Nield).
If completely removing yourself from all of these websites (and all third-party websites that use the Facebook API for account creation, tracking statistics and more) is a little unrealistic, there are some measures you can take to reduce the amount of data gathered in the future. In the settings for all three apps, be sure to turn off or disconnect every feature or tool that you can related to advertising or 'improving your experience'. Remove applications from your phone and limit mobile use to only within the mobile web browser whenever possible. On desktop sites, choose a browser with robust privacy features and turn off any features that remember your data for later. Skip the geolocation check-ins, sketchy third-party quizzes and tagged photos, and become a social media lurker instead of sharing the play-by-play of your day. To go even more robust, you can add a VPN, or virtual private network, into the mix to shield your location data. It's difficult to remove yourself from Facebook's long reach of data collection should you become wary, but these practices a good idea even beyond its reach to ensure data safety and privacy.

Social Media Analytics

A few years ago, it was common to think that a social media position in a company was held by some unpaid intern. Nowadays “social media manager” is recognized as a real, often difficult job. “Why would a company care about how it looks on Twitter or Facebook? It can’t be that hard, just give the passwords to the kid here for school,” people would think. Even now, on occasion I’ll hear someone talk about companies’ social medias as if it’s run by interns. Obviously, that’s not the case.

 

Social media analytics is basically public relations and brand management, updated. The purpose is to see what people say about your company, what they’re seeing by your company, and how the posts are being received. Most social media websites offer ways in-site to track analytics. Twitter, for example, allows you to “view tweet activity” on tweets sent out by your account. It’ll show you the total engagements (times people saw the tweet on twitter), total engagements (times people interacted with the tweet), likes, detail expands, profile clicks (times people clicked on the account’s name, @handle, or profile picture), retweets, replies, and link clicks. If a tweet did not receive any of these values, it is not shown. So, if a tweet has a hundred likes but no retweets, it will show the amount of likes but not mention retweets. Twitter also allows for paid promotions.

 

Besides in-site analytics, there are plenty of websites and services that provide analytics for you. Hootsuite is one such website. A paid service, Hootsuite is an advertising and analytics website. It allows you to publish (share and schedule engaging content to your profiles), engage (address incoming messages and deliver timely replies), monitor (stay informed about market trends and competitors), advertise (promote your organic content and manage paid ads), and analyze (measure your results across all social media networks). Hootsuite is integrated into over twenty social networks, including the big ones like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. Plans start at about $50 per month and increase in price.

 

By tracking analytics, companies get to see how they’re doing. They may see the audience they are reaching isn’t quite their target audience and shift marketing approaches to fix it. They can also measure their reach and make sure word is getting out at all. They can also make sure things being said about their companies are mostly positive, to keep their image clean.

Data mining

 Data mining is one of those hot-button topics that everyone has an opinion about--opinions which are almost never positive. To be fair, it’s hard not to feel wary about some weird software on a website that keeps track of your data, and it doesn’t help that it has the most suspicious-sounding name possible. Seriously, “data mining?” That term reminds me of those lame-but-cool-rebel-hackers in bad action movies who can gain instant access to your computer files with a mere click of a button. Of course, reality tends to be far less glamorous than the movies: “data mining,” at least as it is used in social media research, can be used for practical research purposes. Still, I find that many people still have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the topic, likely because they associate the process with websites like Amazon using their information to recommend products similar to ones they have previously bought (a big problem if you’re susceptible to buyer’s remorse). Those aren’t unreasonable complaints, but the truth is that data mining can be utilized for multiple purposes, some good and some bad; as a result, it’s important to be mindful.

Instagram and COVID-19 Information

     Instagram has been marking posts and stories that mention COVID or the vaccine with an information label with a link to learn more about COVID from a verified source such as the World Health Orginization (WHO) or the Center for Disease Control (CDC). If a post contains claims or information that goes against or violates Instagram's COVID-19 and vaccine policy, Instagram will remove the posts. 

     It is important that large companies are taking misinformation seriously, and doing their best to try and stop the spread of misinformation. Especially when misinformation can lead to negatively impacting others. When going through the policy, there are some interesting points, (that to my own non-scientist eye) seem incorrect in themselves. Just a few days ago, the administration of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been halted due to rare side affects of blood clotting. Yet under Instagram's policy, posts can be removed based on sharing "Claims about the safety or serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, including: Claims that COVID-19 vaccines kill or seriously harm people (such as, causing blood clots)."  

    My hope is that Instagram updates their policies as new discoveries and updates are made as we learn more about the virus each day and the vaccines that are being distributed to stop the spread. 

https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/continuing-to-keep-people-safe-and-informed-about-covid-19

https://help.instagram.com/697825587576762

https://www.cnet.com/health/us-officials-call-for-johnson-johnson-vaccine-pause-due-to-rare-clotting-problems/ 

Attention as Social Currency

All this talk about social commerce has gotten me thinking about attention and how social media treats it like a sort of currency. And in a way, it kind of is. Monetization strategies for platforms like YouTube reward people for their view counts. In other words, people are paid for the attention they can attract. And that's not always a good thing.

Social commerce is a clever way to do business, but it can bring out the worst in some people. It's generally assumed that people will do anything when money is on the line and social commerce makes attention into a new form of money. So now people will do anything for attention and there's a lot of bad stuff that will get you attention very quickly.

I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but there was a viral Twitter thread a few months back. I don't remember exactly what it was about, but the thread got attention by just being really stupid. People did some digging and it turned out that the woman who posted the thread also had a Patreon account where you could commission her to post stupid stuff about any topic to start arguments. Now that's an innovative business strategy. Of course it's also causing a ton of drama where none needs to exist, but people are clearly getting their money's worth.

I guess there's nothing inherently wrong about starting fights online as a business model, but it just feels scummy. Most people don't like arguing, it ruins their day. So it seems generally detrimental to social media as a whole. On the other hand, it apparently pays pretty well.

Online Apartment Listings as Social Commerce

In the past couple years whenever I find myself searching for apartments, I always go through a few different websites. Some I use as a default, others out of curiosity. Typically, I do the searches on my computer rather than on my phone because I don’t want to have to download any apps and the websites don’t really look that great in phone browsers. It always feels like it’ll mis-click on a filter or something. It’s always interesting to look through apartments online, but it never really occurred to me that I was effectively trying to shop online for a place to live. The commerce portion of the websites is obvious—I look at rent above anything else (and since I’m stuck on Long Island, one of the most expensive places to live in New York, it’s hard to not flinch at the prices for even the smallest place). It’s weird to think about, that everything can be bought online, from food to cosmetics to places to live. Most apartment hunting websites are either posted by the person renting out the space or may go through a broker, so you may be interacting one on one with your potential new landlord.

 

I have a few opinions on what draws me into certain postings, but they may not be universal. A lot of apartment listings will post very bright, well lit, beautiful pictures of well-furnished rooms and manicured lawns and obscenely blue pools. It’s mostly the chain complexes that do these, and they seem so fake that it loops around to unappealing to me. It’s so clearly staged that I can’t imagine a person living in it. Obviously the best posts show well lit, clean apartments and maybe any outside area involved, but there’s a line where it just feels like being lied to. I also like when they get a clear scale for how large the rooms are and show the kitchen appliances. A lot of apartment postings, I’ve noticed, don’t have stoves or ovens or refrigerators, and every time I see one, I wonder how they expect me to eat.

 

It’s to be expected that apartment postings have some sort of rules or restrictions. No dogs, no smoking, that sort of thing. But on websites that are less explicitly geared towards advertising apartments, such as Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, sometimes people get weird. It may be a person seeking a roommate or a landlord seeking a tenant, but they will post some vey specific demands at times. Some postings are obvious scams and red flags, such as offering you a free room if you’re a young single woman willing to be a live-in maid or “be in a relationship with” the original poster. When I saw the latter posted once on Craigslist and I almost spat my drink out. Online social commerce will bring out the creeps no matter what, I guess. (And don't worry, I've never contacted these types).

Yelp Reviews

 Like many people, I’m not a stranger to Yelp. If you’ve been active in the social media sphere for any amount of time, it’s hard not to know about it. As a service, it combines the two things that brings people together online: buying products and leaving bad reviews. Sure, Yelp is a good idea in theory--it’s important to give the customer a voice, and it’s nice when someone gives your business four stars or whatever rating system it has (last time I checked, they were using stars as a unit of measurement--I have no idea if they still do). Problem is, a lot of users don’t leave positive reviews on Yelp for whatever reason. It makes sense, in a way--businesses are supposed to run smoothly, so if I’m at King Kullen and have an average shopping experience there, it doesn’t motivate me to go online and write something like “yeah, it was alright.” If a cashier is rude to me or I see rats running around in the meat aisle, you can bet that I’ll suddenly be motivated to sit down and furiously type out an angry Yelp review.

This can be a problem, though--if people are only motivated to leave negative Yelp reviews, how can they be motivated to leave positive Yelp reviews? I’ve thought about this, and it seems like an unsolvable dilemma. Yeah, you can bribe people to give positive reviews by sending them free perks and gifts, but people see through that kind of stuff all the time. You can try giving your customers a magical experience at your shop, but that’s pretty unrealistic. Besides that, sometimes the problem isn’t the shop or business itself--the customer isn’t always right, after all--so how can you fix something that you have no control over? It’s an issue that doesn’t have an easy solution, and if there is one, it’s probably entirely out of our control.

Using Social Media To Connect to Missing Users

     The library I work at is lovely, but we have a major problem. We have a LARGE gap in our user group base. We have families and children that come visit the library, and we have a large adult/senior population. But we are failing to reach and serve the teen/young adult community. One of the reasons that I feel we have such a gap is the type of services we offer and the way that we are marketing these services. 

    We tend to focus on programs for the more responsive users that we currently have, and have not really used any social media outlets to share our services. Prior to my investigation, we have relied on an OUTDATED website, the town newspaper and fliers on our bulletin board. No Facebook events, or Instagram posts. Now that I have come into a position where I have more control on what goes on in the library, I am hoping that incorporating the use of social media and increasing our presence may broaden our reach. We are even talking about *attempting* to make a TikTok account! It is difficult with a smaller library (we have 12 staff members) and two of us are under the age of 65. But steps are being made to expand the way that we share information with patrons.

Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace has been a feature of the popular social networking site since 2016. With the ability to buy, sell, and advertise items and services both to people local to you as well as anyone within shipping distance, this flexible service provides easy to use e-commerce tools for people selling just a few items or to businesses selling goods and services online either exclusively or in support of in-person commerce.

As Facebook itself was originally about person-to-person connections within a shared collegiate community, it seems fitting that the expansion to Facebook Marketplace allows for individuals to sell items to one another one to one. Similar to the For Sale section of a local Craigslist page, users can create sales that are intended to be conducted in person and simply facilitated or advertised by Facebook. These sales work well for items that are not easily shipped -- oversized items such as furniture and cars; delicate items such as dried flowers or glassware; items of primarily local interest such as resale of a gift certificate to a local restaurant, to name a few examples. They also work well for advertising services that cannot be shipped -- DJ services for weddings, landscaping services, and the like. There is even a category for listing apartments and real estate for rent or sale. Additionally, some sellers do not want to be bothered with trying to ship something even if it is feasible and are willing to limit their market to anyone local enough to bother to drive to their arranged meeting location in exchange for less work involved in the sale.

Items can also be listed as available for shipping. This opens up a much larger pool of potential buyers for these items, and even with the extra work involved in having to ship the item to the buyer, can still be worth it. These can be one-off items, such as the resale of clothing items or decor items, or can be used as an e-commerce advertising option for a business. Additionally, listings do not have to be exclusively for local pickup or shipped; sellers can make both available to buyers, ensuring maximum reach to potential buyers. This means that things that have a more limited pool of potential buyers, such as reselling wedding dresses, have a much better chance of being sold. People running small businesses can also expand their potential market reach by putting up listings on Facebook Marketplace. With minimal costs to list and the ability to link to their business page for interested potential buyers, Facebook Marketplace allows these small businesses to inexpensively advertise their services to new people, including those who may accidentally stumble upon their services through simple browsing activities or from a search for a related service.

Facebook Marketplace is a popular addition to the already expansive umbrella of services under the Facebook name. With the ability to shop and sell unneeded items or even to promote your business, it is no wonder why so many people choose to use this tool.

My Favorite ARG

ARGs—or Alternate Reality Games—are interactive “games” or events that cross different types of media for the players to use, investigate, and ultimately “solve.” It’s kind of like a puzzle that you and dozens of other people are trying to solve at the same time. The other players are both your competition and your allies as you try to unravel the ARG. A lot of times, there’s a sort of mystery at the center, and you’re following clues to find whatever it’s leading you towards. It’s kind of like a treasure map, which I think is funny when you remember that ARG is both what the game is called and a famous pirate exclamation.

 

My favorite example of an ARG is one I didn’t participate in but kept loose tabs on. In the summer of 2016, a kid’s cartoon called “Gravity Falls” had its series finale. Gravity Falls was a supernatural mystery show set in the Pacific Northwest absolutely riddled with codes and cyphers, and at the very end, the bad guy (an evil magic triangle named “Bill Cipher”) got turned into a statue and left in a forest. One of the final shots was an actual, very large statue of the bad guy in a real forest. Soon after, the creator of the show announced a “treasure hunt” to find the real-life statue, with the promise of some real “treasure” to those who found it. There were thirteen clues hidden around the world that led to the next clue. It’s worth noting that while Gravity Falls was a kids’ cartoon, the mysterious nature of the show had broad appeal and had a large adult fan-base.

 

The hunt started in late July of 2016. I won’t go into too much detail, but the clues were in cyphers and themed after the show. Most clues had some form of writing or were items with writing on them. Invisible ink was involved. One was even a two thousand puzzle pieces with the phrase “I hope you like puzzles” written in code included on a separate piece of paper. The first clue was in a Russian cathedral, the second in a shrine in Japan, then one in the American state of Georgia, then Rhode Island, and then after that the rest of the clues were up and down the west coast several times over. All the clues were shared online after being discovered and deciphered so that anyone could participate. To my knowledge some people really did travel back and forth to clues once they started popping up on the west coast and were somewhat near each other.

 

The hunt ended when players found the statue and hidden treasure in early August of that year. Some players found the statue and tweeted out pictures of it, half buried in the woods of Oregon where the show took place, while another group dug up the buried treasure, which included Russian and Japanese money, some plastic coins and gems, a blacklight used to find invisible ink, a plastic crown and sash and a lot of memorabilia from the show, including another (though, much smaller) statue of the bad guy. The statue was left where it was found to commemorate the show and the treasure hunt, while the players who found the treasure chest got to keep it’s contents.

Libraries and Video Games

    There were two types of people early in the pandemic, ones who were able to purchase gaming consoles and ones who could not. It is an absolutely trivial aspect of the times, but was a big deal for some trying to purchase consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite. These devices, due to production shortages as well as astronomical demand, were extremely hard to come by. With children and adults stuck inside, some turned to video games to pass the time and entertain themselves. 

    Oh how I wish I had access to our means of promotion at this time last year... Our library has video game consoles and games that can be checked out, but many patrons are unaware of this service! Video games are a great way for people to interact, and many times have aspects of social media intertwined in their use. 

    In March of 2020 when the pandemic first hit the United States hard and the shut down began, a highly anticipated video game newly rereleased for the switch came out: Animal Crossing. I was obsessed and played for hours at a time. I joined Facebook groups where other users across the country would visit each others islands, trade goods and tips. 

   Hindsight is 20/20, but oh how I wish that the library worked to organize a video game "club" of sorts during the pandemic. Even a platform where patrons could borrow games and talk about them with other patrons. The combination of a fun interactive game and talking to other people about their experiences with the game was fun and therapeutic. We have recently purchased 5 Switch games as well as a few consoles, and I think that creating a video game club would be a really fun program for all ages. Either in person or on a social media platform, the interactions and discussions would be fun for all. 

Social TV

 (I accidentally mixed up the topics for this learning unit, so I’m just going to blog about what I should’ve blogged about last week).

Social TV is something that I theoretically “get” as a concept, but also don’t get at the same time. Maybe it’s just because I’m a fuddy-duddy who’s not “with it” when it comes to technology? On the one hand, I can see the appeal if you, as the viewer, are able to interact with other people while watching the program, such as joining a streaming site that allows you to watch a show alongside your online friends; in that way, you’re able to recreate the experience of watching a show with your friends. However, what if the site you use doesn’t allow that sort of interactivity? If that’s the case, why bother even using it at all, seeing as it takes the “social” out of “social TV?” In my opinion, it’s a concept that’s at its best when it gives users a way to interact with each other.

New Feature Alert! Auto-Captioning on TikTok

The social networking app TikTok announced a new feature today that will make strides forwards towards accessibility and inclusivity on the platform: an autocaptioning feature for videos, as reported on the tech website Gizmodo as well as others. Creators can now choose to have their videos autocaptioned by the app using a captioning algorithm, either when creating the video or after it has posted -- a great boon for creators who want to make their back catalog of content also accessible. Creators will also have the option to make small edits to the captions easily on the site, a helpful feature particularly for things such as as proper nouns or slang, which the captioning algorithm might not have in its library of knowledge. Creators can also choose to turn off the feature in the app's settings. Captioning is only initially available in American English and Japanese, but Gizmodo writer Shoshana Wodinsky notes that the company plans to add additional languages in "the coming months."

The press release from TikTok itself highlighted a few other changes they were making to promote accessibility within their app. Additional changes to the app up until this point have included making thumbnails animated instead of static images; a warning that pops up to notify creators if they are making a video with effects that might trigger photosensitive epilepsy in their viewers; a setting that allows a viewer to skip content that has been identified as containing photosensitive effects, which is important for people with photosensitive epilepsy; and a text-to-speech feature that converts written text into an audio effect.

Before this change, users were able to manually add text and captions to their videos. This was somewhat tedious, as they would need to place each text box and type in the text throughout the video, but it did give them the option to make their videos more accessible. This Distractify tutorial on how to manually add captions notes that videos with captions are more likely to go viral, which is an incentive for some creators to go that extra step. For those who wanted accessibility (or just a chance at having their video go viral,) there are some companies such as Rev.com or third-party apps such as CaptionExpert that would caption videos for them, usually for a fee.

I think this is a fantastic addition to the app. By making it so that inclusive, accessible content is easier to produce and publish, it will hopefully become the norm within the culture of TikTok to make accessible content. There are many reasons why someone might prefer captions on the TikToks they watch -- they may be deaf or hard of hearing, they may have an auditory processing disorder, they might be watching videos somewhere where it is noisy or where it would be rude or inappropriate to have audio playing, just to name a few -- and this change makes it so that so much more of the content on the app can be available to them.