On this episode, Katie and special guest, Emmy award-winning editor, Jenny Randle, chat about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and how it might affect your church, as well as Twitter trolls, and Facebook’s new rating system based on sentiment for pages and brands.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
By now, you have likely heard of the GDPR: the General Data Protection Regulation, a European privacy law approved by the European Commission in 2016. The GDPR will replace a prior European Union privacy directive known as Directive 95/46/EC (the “Directive”), which has been the basis of European data protection law since 1995.
A regulation such as the GDPR is a binding act, which must be followed in its entirety throughout the EU. The GDPR is an attempt to strengthen, harmonize, and modernize EU data protection law and enhance individual rights and freedoms, consistent with the European understanding of privacy as a fundamental human right. The GDPR regulates, among other things, how individuals and organizations may obtain, use, store, and eliminate personal data. It will have a significant impact on businesses around the world. (Source: Mailchimp!)
What does this mean for your church?
There are small changes like:
- updating your website policy
- must get affirmative consent for the exact way you use the data
- must get affirmative consent to use cookies (google analytics, pixels, etc) on all websites + link to privacy policy
privacy policies on all websites
These rules are effective May 25, 2018.
Twitter algorithm changes will hide more bad tweets and trolls
Twitter is making some new changes that calls on how the collective Twitterverse is responding to tweets to influence how often people see them. With these upcoming changes, tweets in conversations and search will be ranked based on a greater variety of data that takes into account things like the number of accounts registered to that user, whether that tweet prompted people to block the accounts and the IP address.
Tweets that are determined to most likely be bad aren’t just automatically deleted, but they’ll get cast down into the “Show more replies” section where fewer eyes will encounter them. The welcome change is likely to cut down on tweets that you don’t want to see in your timeline. Twitter says that abuse reports were down 8 percent in conversations where this feature was being tested. (Source: TechCrunch)
What does this mean for your church?
Essentially, nothing but maybe you’ll notice less trolls and more actual conversation.
Facebook Tests New Rating System for Brand Pages
This is interesting – Facebook’s reportedly working on a new scoring system for business Pages, which would rate them out of ten stars, and take into account a range of measures.
“We’re testing a new score out of 10 to help people find great places more easily. The score is based on multiple ratings, reviews and recommendations people share about Pages on Facebook”
By taking into account more than direct audience ratings, Facebook would expand its capacity to uncover more relevant business for users. For example, they could use sentiment scoring based on messages, user query response time and various other Facebook cues to help inform that final figure. That could also make the scores harder to game, as businesses wouldn’t know, for sure, what impacts them, helping to eliminate the impact of false reviews and concerted efforts to reduce a businesses’ standing. (Source: Social Media Today)
What does this mean for your church?
Turn your reviews off in setting tab if your score is bad.
Lift Up
Katie: I will lift up Beth Moore who is now hilarious and killing it on Twitter. Also White Space is Not Your Enemy (affiliate link, meaning we make a commission if you buy it) is great for the designer in your life.
Jenny: Carlos Whittaker’s “Kill the Spider” (affiliate link, meaning we make a commission if you buy it through this link)
Check out Jenny Randle on her website and pre-order her book, Courageous Creative. (Also an affiliate link, I think you get it now.)
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