Obnoxious behavior from Facebook is no surprise but we still should mention that they just blocked their users from all legitimate Australian news sources. Lies are still welcome. It’s part of Facebook’s fight against a proposal that they pay news companies for using the information. Google also dislikes the idea but chose to cut a global deal with News Corp.

Email optimization vendor Validity has sorrows of its own: best practices including list hygiene, deliverability optimization, and A/B testing were used less last year than the year before.  High-performing companies were more likely to use most tools although AI was an intriguing exception: it was actually more common among marketers with lower inbox placement rates.

Twilio is adding ‘contextual awareness’ to its Segment CDP, which in plainer English means data stored in Segment will be available when creating event-triggered, real-time messages. This and a redesigned journey architecture are part of Twilio’s “next generation” customer engagement platform, which also includes natural voice AI agents, voice and text analytics, and RCS and WhatsApp messaging. Twilio separately announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft to speed the adoption of conversational AI for customer engagement.