Social Round-Up: 16 September 2026

Welcome back to this week’s TEAM LEWIS Social Round-Up. Social media has spent the past few days doing what it does best. Adding features nobody asked for, arguing with governments, and finding increasingly sophisticated ways to sell us things while we’re trying to look at pictures of our friends.

This week Australia would quite like to give us an escape hatch from the algorithm, although Instagram boss Adam Mosseri thinks we’ll regret it. Instagram is also letting other people onto your carefully curated grid, Snapchat wants to organise your social life and then sell you something in the DMs, while YouTube has been investigating whether mainstream culture still actually exists.

Let’s get into it 👇

Latest News

🇦🇺 Australia wants to give you an algorithm off-switch. Instagram isn’t convinced

The Australian Government is moving ahead with plans that would require social platforms to let users opt out of engagement-driven algorithms and switch to chronological feeds showing content from accounts they actually follow. The proposal is aimed at giving people greater control over what they see and reducing the amplification of harmful or addictive content.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, perhaps unsurprisingly, isn’t a fan. Speaking to Australian journalists, he argued that without algorithmic ranking people use Instagram less, creators lose reach and feeds become dominated by whoever posts most frequently. He also reckons only a “vocal minority” actually wants chronological feeds. For brands, it’s a fascinating debate. The government wants less algorithm, Instagram says the algorithm makes the product better, and somewhere in the middle sits every social manager wondering what on earth will happen to reach. 👉 Read More
👉 Australia’s proposed algorithm opt-out

📸 Instagram lets tagged posts onto your main grid

Instagram is rolling out a feature that lets users add posts they’ve been tagged in directly to their main profile grid. You can add them from the tag notification, the original post or your Tagged tab, then remove them whenever you like without affecting the original content.

It sounds small, but it’s genuinely handy for creator partnerships, events and UGC. Brands can now highlight a strong piece of creator content on their actual grid without downloading it, reposting it or asking everyone involved to set up a collaboration post. Somewhere, a social media manager has just quietly deleted one step from a workflow. 👉 Read More

👻 Snapchat would now like to organise your night out

Snapchat has launched Plans, letting users create events directly from a chat, invite up to 200 people, collect RSVPs and keep everything together in a new My Plans area. Invitations arrive privately inside chats, complete with wonderfully Snapchatty Bitmoji artwork, and attendees get a reminder before things kick off.

It fits nicely with Snap’s continuing attempt to position itself as the social platform that actually helps you see other human beings in real life. There’s an interesting opportunity here for events, entertainment and hospitality brands too, particularly if Snapchat keeps building functionality around places, gatherings and Snap Map discovery. 👉 Read More

🛍️ Snapchat is also putting product ads in your DMs

Snap has expanded Dynamic Product Ads into Sponsored Snaps, meaning retailers can now automatically showcase relevant catalogue products directly inside the messaging experience. The update sits inside a wider Commerce Power Pack aimed at helping retail advertisers turn product feeds into more personalised promotions ahead of the holiday shopping period.

Sponsored messages obviously need a fairly delicate touch because nobody opens a DM hoping to find a dynamically generated pair of trousers waiting for them. But for retail brands with large catalogues, this is another sign that social commerce is moving away from “click this ad and leave the app” towards increasingly personalised shopping experiences inside social itself. 👉 Read More

📺 YouTube says mainstream culture isn’t dead. It’s just changed

YouTube’s latest Culture & Trends Report, produced with NRG, argues that mainstream culture hasn’t disappeared despite everyone now living inside increasingly personalised feeds. Instead, cultural moments are increasingly starting inside niche online communities before breaking through more widely. Among younger respondents, YouTube creators were considered almost as widely known as Hollywood celebrities, while memes weren’t far behind either.

That’s a pretty useful way for brands to think about culture now. You don’t necessarily need to start with something everybody already knows. Smaller communities, fandoms and internet-native ideas can become the route into the mainstream rather than sitting outside it. Or, put another way, the weird thing 40 people are obsessing over today may be the thing your client desperately wants a reactive post about next month. 👉 Read More

🔧 Quick Tip of the Week

Don’t just chase what’s already mainstream.

YouTube’s research is a good reminder to watch smaller communities, fandoms and creator niches for ideas that are beginning to travel. By the time something appears on every brand’s trend deck, you’re probably already late.

✨ Campaigns We Love ✨

KFC-PICKLECORE-TEASE

🥒 KFC invents Picklecore

KFC Australia and Special have taken the launch of its pickle menu considerably further than “here is chicken with pickles on it”, creating an entire Picklecore subculture around the product. The campaign gives pickle obsessives the full fashion and lifestyle treatment, turning a polarising flavour into something people can identify with, parody and share. A very silly world built around a very simple product truth. Exactly as it should be.

👉 Please respect the pickle lifestyle

🍎 Aussie Apples sends a superhero into your snack drawer

Meet Appy the Amazing Apple, a social-first mascot whose sole purpose appears to be stopping Australians making terrible decisions at 3pm. Content is timed around common snacking moments, with Appy appearing in offices, supermarkets and other places where the biscuit drawer traditionally wins. It’s a nice example of taking an existing brand platform and giving it a character capable of producing ongoing social content rather than another six-week campaign burst.

👉 Somebody please save me from the 3pm Tim Tam