Social Media Quiz: Sizzling Hot Questions from 2022

In a deal valued at $44 billion, Twitter announced on Apr. 25, 2022, that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Elon Musk. The transaction would result in Twitter becoming a privately owned company.

Did Musk drop out of the Twitter deal?

On May 13, 2022, Elon Musk tweeted, "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% of users." On July  8, he said in a letter to Twitter that the company's "misrepresentation of the number of spam accounts" might be a "material adverse effect (MAE)" that would allow him to walk away under the terms of the deal contract.

Was that the end of it?

Twitter filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Musk on July 12, 2022, trying to force Musk to complete the takeover. Ahead of the Delaware court face-off on Oct. 17, Musk tweeted on Oct. 4, 2022, that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an "everything app" called X and proposed to proceed with his original $44 billion bid to take Twitter, which he eventually did.

Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter on Oct. 28, 2022, led to a 500% increase in the use of the N-word to demean Black people on the platform within just 12 hours, according to the National Contagion Research Institute, a disinformation tracking agency. Users were encouraged to amplify derogatory slurs on Twitter in several posts on the 4chan fringe message board website.

Is Trump returning to Twitter?

As of Nov. 2, 2022, Elon Musk announced Twitter would only allow people banned from its site to return once it sets up procedures on how to do so. That includes the former President, despite a fake meme stating otherwise.

Data collected by Newswhip from Apr. 4 to May 16, 2022, and published in Axios on May 17, indicated that news articles about the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial had generated more social media interactions per-article in the US compared to all other news topics.

Who won the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial?

On June 1, 2022, a seven-person jury in Fairfax, Virginia, found that Johnny Depp and his Ex-wife Amber Heard defamed each other. Heard was ordered to pay $10.35 million in damages for describing herself in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post as a "public figure representing domestic abuse." Depp was ordered to pay $2 million in damages after the jury ruled that his lawyer had defamed Heard in one instance when he accused her of damaging the couple's penthouse and blaming it on Depp. Heard plans to appeal.

According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released on June 21, 2022, members of LGBTQ+ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment on social media. Two-thirds of LGBTQ+ respondents said they had been harassed online, and 53% said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation. 39% of Asian American responders reported harassment in 2022, up from 21% in 2021, and women, in general, were more than twice as likely to report experiencing sexual harassment online than men (14% versus 5%).

On Jan. 2, 2022, Twitter had banned the personal account of far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for multiple violations of the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. The ban applies to Greene’s personal account, @mtgreenee, but does not affect her official Twitter account, @RepMTG. “Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,” Greene responded.

What’s Twitter’s Strike System?

Under the “strike” system, Twitter uses artificial intelligence to identify misleading, harmful posts about the coronavirus. Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock. Four strikes evoke a weeklong suspension. Five or more strikes can get a user permanently removed from the platform. Twitter had previously suspended Greene’s personal account for periods ranging from 12 hours to an entire week.

Over 3.5 billion people worldwide use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp - all of which were inaccessible for over five hours on Oct. 4, 2021. Facebook is also used to sign in to many other apps and services, making users unable to log in to other websites or sign in to their smart TVs.

What caused the 2021 Facebook outage?

Facebook said the 2021 outage was caused by changes to its underlying internet infrastructure that coordinates the traffic between its data centers, “bringing our services to a halt.”

When was Facebook’s previous outage?

Facebook’s last significant outage was in 2019, when a technical error affected its sites for 24 hours.

Facebook announced on July 21, 2022, that it is rolling out a new Feeds tab, displaying posts from the users' Facebook favorites, Facebook groups, and Facebook friends in the order they were shared. The new tab is on the shortcut bar in Facebook's iPhone and Android apps.

Simply put, Metaverse is a collection of Virtual 3D meeting spaces. It’s been one of the most prominent tech buzz terms of 2021. Epic Games directed fundraising to build Fortnite into a metaverse; Microsoft presented Mesh, a mixed reality software enabling virtual presence through Microsoft devices. South Korea announced the creation of a national metaverse alliance to build a unified national VR and AR platform.

What’s Facebook’s Metaverse?

In 2021 Facebook announced it attempts to develop a Metaverse. On Oct. 18, Facebook announced plans to create 10,000 jobs in the European Union over the next five years to help build the virtual environment. US tech news website The Verge broke the news that Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, is preparing to change the name of the company at the company’s annual Connect conference on Oct. 28, 2021, to match its new ambitions. The new name chosen for the company is Meta.

Meta Platforms Inc, the owner of Facebook, plans to open its first physical store on May 9, 2022. The store will sell virtual reality headsets and video conferencing devices, including Ray-Ban smart glasses, Portal video-calling devices, and Oculus VR headsets. The store can be found in the Silicon Valley town of Burlingame, at the main campus of Meta's Reality Labs division.

The "Disinformation Dozen" are 12 anti-vaxxers responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content on social media.

Is Facebook in trouble?

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen presented documents that show the social media platform has built a system that exempts high-profile users from some or all of its rules. On Wednesday, Oct. 13, the attorneys general of 14 U.S. states sent a letter to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. They said they are "extremely concerned" with the recent reports and want to know if the "Disinformation Dozen" are among those receiving special attention treatment from the company.

Former Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt is a member of the Facebook Oversight Board. Since ending her political career between 2015 and 2019, she has been the chief executive of the British international NGO Save the Children.

What did Facebook's Oversight Board rule?

Facebook's Oversight Board, the independent body that reviews content moderation decisions made by the social media company, on May 5, 2021, upheld Facebook's Jan. 7 decision to "restrict" former President Trump's access to his Facebook and Instagram account. In its ruling, the Oversight Board found that Trump "severely violated Facebook's Community Standards and Instagram's Community Guidelines."

What happens now?

According to the decision, "Facebook's normal penalties include removing the violating content, imposing a time-bound period of suspension, or permanently disabling the page and account." Therefore, the Oversight Board has given Facebook six months to apply an appropriate "proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform."

On Feb 19, 2021, Facebook blocked Australian users from viewing and sharing local and international news and restricted local publishers from posting links on their pages. The move came as part of a dispute with the Australian government over a planned law forcing tech giants to pay for news content on their platforms. In a statement posted on Facebook, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the social media company's actions to "unfriend Australia" were "as arrogant as disappointing."

Are Facebook and Australia friends now?

Facebook agreed to reverse the decision on Tuesday, Feb 23, 2021, after the Australian government decided on last-minute changes to its proposed media bargaining code to bring Facebook back to the negotiating table with news companies.

While it offers other streams, Twitch is mainly a streaming service for video games with commentary and e-sport competitions.

Bonus Question: Who owns Twitch?

Twitch Interactive is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.

Twitch Fact

On April 7, 2021, Twitch announced a new policy for investigating streamers’ serious indiscretions in real life or services like Discord and Twitter. In partnership with a third-party law firm, Twitch will examine reports of offenses like sexual assault, extremist behavior, and threats of violence that occur off-stream.

Facebook has rolled out a new prayer request feature. In Facebook Groups employing it, members can urge prayers for upcoming job interviews, illnesses, and such. After creating a post, other users can tap an “I prayed” button, respond with a “like” or other reaction, leave a comment or send a direct message. According to an August 8, 2021, Associated Press report, Facebook began testing it in the U.S. in December 2020.

Donald Trump's new social media platform, Truth Social, promises free speech (unlike other social platforms that banned the ex-president). That doesn't stop its terms of use from prohibiting not only to "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site," but also "excessive use of capital letters." The new platform also bans specific user names.

What's Truth Social?

Donald Trump's new social media venture, Truth Social, launched Feb. 20, 2022, in Apple's App Store, potentially marking the former president's return to social media after being banned from several platforms in 2021. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube banned Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol after he was accused of posting messages inciting violence. While having technical and other difficulties in its post-launch days, Truth Social should be fully operational by the end of March 2022.

Cyberflashing is a term that describes someone using the internet to send an image of their naked body to someone they do not know and who has not asked them to do this (commonly known as sending a di** pic) - And it is now illegal in the UK. On March 13, 2022, UK ministers have confirmed that the British Online Safety Bill will include laws banning cyberflashing. The change means that anyone who sends a photo or film of a person’s genitals may face up to two years in prison - if their purpose was their sexual gratification or to cause the recipient humiliation, alarm, or distress.

Telegram is Ukraine's most popular messaging app. The app, which has more than 550 million monthly users globally, was banned in Russia in 2018 after its founder Pavel Durov refused to give the authorities access to its user data. Russia lifted the ban in mid-2020. Telegram became a 24-hour news source for civilians, journalists, and even the military in the Ukrainian war.

Does Telegram block Russian and Ukrainian communications?

"We do not want Telegram to be used as a tool that exacerbates conflicts and incites ethnic hatred," 37-year-old Durov posted on Feb. 27, 2022, as Telegram has been heavily used to spread fake news related to the war. Hours later, he changed his mind, following mass requests from users, who said it was their only source of information. "Double-check and do not take on faith the data that is published in Telegram channels during this difficult period," Durov advised.

As of mid-Sept. 2022, TikTok is the second most popular domain in the world, after Google, according to online performance and security company Cloudflare. As reported by NewsGuard on Sept. 14, 2022, nearly one in five videos that TikTok automatically suggests when searching for videos related to prominent news topics contained misinformation. TikTok's official community guidelines prohibit harmful misinformation. Chinese company ByteDance owns the app.

Instagram moderators restricted Kanye West's account after the rapper posted a screenshot of a message he had sent Sean "Diddy" Combs, which implied that Combs was "controlled by shadowy, powerful Jewish people." Shortly after Instagram took the post down, Ye tweeted: "I'm a bit sleepy tonight, but when I wake up, I'm going to death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE." Twitter removed the antisemitic tweet on Oct. 8, 2022, for violating their policies.

Is Kanye West antisemitic?

A segment of Kanye West's interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that went unaired on Oct. 7 was reported on Vice on Oct. 11, 2022. According to the rapper, Planned Parenthood was founded "to control the Jewish population" - an unfounded and antisemitic conspiracy theory. "When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are" (The tribe of Judah was actually one of the 12 tribes of Israel.) West added, "I prefer my children to know Hanukah than Kwanzaa – at least it will include some financial engineering."

In 2016, Mastodon was launched as a "free, open-source, decentralized social media platform" aimed at being a "viable alternative to Twitter." Mastodon is a federated social network owned by different people and groups. A lot of Mastodon is crowdfunded. The servers it runs are funded through Patreon, a subscription platform used by content creators. More than 70,000 users joined Mastodon on the day after Elon Musk announced he bought Twitter.

Wasn't Mastodon something else?

The Mastodon social platform was named after an extinct relative of elephants and mammoths.

After Elon Musk announced that his newly acquired company had restored Kanye West's Twitter account, the rapper returned to the platform on Nov. 20, 2022. In October 2022, Twitter moderators blocked Ye's page because of his antisemitic tweets. After confirming Twitter unblocked him, Ye tweeted: "Shalom : )."

Is Ye still on Twitter?

By Dec. 1, West's account was suspended after the troubled rapper tweeted an image of a Nazi swastika inside the Jewish Star of David. The indefinite suspension happened the same day Ye appeared on Infowars' conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones's podcast, during which he said, "I like Hitler."

A TikTok video posted on Oct. 9, 2022, featured Madonna playing basketball with pink pants and a trash can. The pop star captioned the video, "If I miss, I'm Gay." When missing the shot, Madonna waved a peace sign.