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"The decision will be the most consequential yet made by Facebook's Oversight Board, a group of 20 members who range from humanitarian activists and religious experts to lawyers and a former prime minister. The board, which launched in late 2020, is meant to function as an independent arm of the social platform, making binding decisions on a selection of its thorniest content moderation issues."

"Conspiracy theories about Jewish people "controlling the world" are to be explicitly banned from Facebook and Instagram for the first time, after the company announced an update to its content policies on Tuesday. The ban on "certain kinds of implicit hate speech" would also include content depicting blackface, Facebook's vice-president of integrity, Guy Rosen, said."

"Two years after admitting under political pressure that Facebook must do more to prevent disinformation campaigns on its platform, founder Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News on Thursday that the company should step away from regulating online speech."

"Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that could erode legal protections for social media companies for content posted on their platforms, potentially opening them to liability claims over controversial content."

"Facebook has taken down the pages of US right-wing group Patriot Prayer and its founder Joey Gibson, a company spokesman said, as part of efforts to remove "violent social militias" from the platform. Patriot Prayer has hosted dozens of pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies and attendees have repeatedly clashed with leftwing groups around Portland, Oregon, where one supporter of the group was killed this week."

"Facebook will ban any groups, pages or Instagram accounts that "represent" QAnon, the company announced Tuesday, in a sharp escalation of its attempt to crack down on the antisemitic conspiracy movement that has thrived on its platform."

"The Solomon Islands government is preparing to ban Facebook - an attempt, it says, to limit "abusive language" and "character assassination" but which critics argue is an attempt to curtail criticism of the government. "

"People have been censored or blocked from the platform because their names sounded too fake. Ads for clothing disabled people we removed buy algorithms that believed they were breaking the rules and promoting medical devices. The Vienna Tourist Board had to move to adult content friendly site OnlyFans to share works of art from their museum after Facebook removed photos of paintings. Words that have rude popular meanings but other more specific definitions in certain circles - like "hoe" amongst gardeners, or "cock" amongst chicken farmers or gun enthusiasts - can land people in the so-called "Facebook jail" for days or even weeks."

"The Nigerian government reinstated Twitter on Jan 13, 2022, after Twitter agreed to conditions issued by the Nigerian government, according to CNN. Notably, one of these conditions includes "managing prohibited publication in line with Nigerian law". Twitter also has to comply with "applicable tax obligations on its operations under Nigerian law" as well as enroll Nigeria in its Partner Support and Law Enforcement Portals."

"A virtual protest has taken place on China's heavily monitored social media platforms, where netizens took turns to keep a censored video called the Voice of April alive and overwhelm censors."

"That ties their hands in how they can treat content related to the killings, they say, and forces them to leave up some content they believe ought to be removed. "It's been a month since the massacre and mass graves in Bucha, but this event hasn't been even designated a 'violating event', let alone a hate crime," said one moderator, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. "On that same day there was a shooting in the US, with one fatality and two casualties, and this was declared a violating event within three hours.""

"Russia's online trolling operation is becoming increasingly decentralised and is gaining "incredible traction" on TikTok with misinformation aimed at sowing doubt over events in Ukraine, a US social media researcher has warned."

"Smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying, a UN report has recommended. Unesco, the UN's education, science and culture agency, said there was evidence that excessive mobile phone use was linked to reduced educational performance and that high levels of screen time had a negative effect on children's emotional stability."

"In some respects, singling out Twitter is unfair: it was a collective failure of social media. People were able to name Edwards as the BBC presenter with impunity in social media comment sections. TikTok suggested Edwards and other BBC presenters' names as "hot" search terms, appending the fire emoji to their names. Google showed news stories and videos about the then-unnamed BBC presenter to people who searched for Huw Edwards' name, connecting him to the scandal."

"Emmanuel Macron is facing a backlash after threatening to cut off social media networks as a means of stopping the spread of violence during periods of unrest. Élysée officials and government ministers responded on Wednesday by insisting the president was not threatening a "general blackout" but instead the "occasional and temporary" suspension of platforms. The president's comments came as ministers blamed young people using social media such as Snapchat and TikTok for organising and encouraging rioting and violence after the shooting dead of a teenager during a police traffic stop in a Paris suburb last week."

"Social media giant TikTok has announced it will actively ban videos that encourage tanning and add educational content to its platform after alarm from Australian medical experts over the platform's sharing of pro-tanning material. In September, Melanoma Institute Australia co-medical directors Prof Georgina Long and Prof Richard Scolyer, speaking at the National Press Club, took issue with the video-sharing app for its popular #sunburnchallenge hashtag."

"Twitter has been flooded with nuisance posts designed to obscure news of the coronavirus lockdown protests in China, in an apparent state-directed attempt to suppress footage of the demonstrations. Chinese bot accounts - not operated by humans - are being used to flood the social networking service with adverts for sex workers, pornography and gambling when users search for a major city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing, using Chinese script."

"Among the most urgent questions facing Twitter in its new era as a private company under Elon Musk, a self-declared "free speech absolutist", is how the platform will handle moderation. After finalizing his takeover and ousting senior leadership, Musk declared on Friday that he would be forming a new "content moderation council" that would bring together "diverse views" on the issue."

"Such bans are possible because school policies allow for the blocking of traffic to certain websites on campus wifi networks, measures that are typically reserved for harmful content and pornography. But those policies can also extend to specific apps, which has been done in the past with platforms like anonymous social media account Yik Yak."