Social Media Quiz: Sizzling Hot Questions from 2022

Parag Agrawal is the new Twitter CEO, replacing Jack Dorsey. Agrawal, a 37-year-old immigrant from India, has been with the company for ten years – most recently as chief technology officer.

What?! Jack Dorsey left Twitter? Again?

Jack Dorsey announced his departure from the role of Twitter's CEO on Nov. 29, 2021, effective immediately. He will now focus primarily on his payments processing company Square and other pursuits such as philanthropy.

Pictured is Twitter's Former CEO, Jack Dorsey. Having already briefly suspended Donald Trump's account on Jan.6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riots, Twitter later banned Trump entirely, then smacked down the president's attempts to tweet using other accounts. In a Twitter thread posted Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, Dorsey wrote: "I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter. I believe this was the right decision for Twitter."

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.

Twitter Blue is the company’s subscription service, allowing paying subscribers to recall tweets, theme their Twitter app and app icon, and experience new features early.

Where and when is Twitter Blue available?

Twitter first launched the Twitter Blue service in June 2021 in Canada and Australia on iOS. Starting Nov. 9, 2021, Twitter Blue is available in the US and New Zealand and on Android and the web.

More than 3.5 billion people worldwide use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp - all of which were inaccessible for over five hours on Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. Facebook is also used to sign in to many other apps and services, leading to users not being able to log in to other websites or signing 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.

Frances Haugen is the Facebook whistleblower who, in 2021, released tens of thousands of internal documents detailing the company's failure to keep its users safe from harmful content. Wall Street Journal exposed the documents in its investigation dubbed The Facebook Files in Oct. 2021. According to the report, Facebook knew Instagram was damaging teen mental health and that its platform was being used to incite ethnic violence in Ethiopia. Haugen told US senators in Washington that Facebook put "astronomical profits before people."

What's the British Online Safety Bill?

On Oct. 25, 2021,  Haugen, 37, testified at the joint committee of the British parliament reviewing the draft online safety bill, a piece of legislation that places a duty of care on social media companies to protect users. The online safety bill came into focus last week after the murder of Conservative MP David Amess.

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."

Twitter deleted a tweet from Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, May 2, 2021. The company also suspended Buhari from using the platform for 12 hours. In response, on Friday, May 4, 2021, the Nigerian government announced its "indefinite" suspension of Twitter. On Saturday, the Nigerian government started blocking access to Twitter from within the country. In addition, the government announced that it would arrest and prosecute anyone in Nigeria caught using the social platform.

Bonus Fact:

Twitter has more than 39 million users located in Nigeria.

Facebook applied new rules on Friday, Feb 19, 2021, blocking Australian users from viewing and sharing local and international news, and restricting local publishers from posting links on their pages. The move came as part of a dispute with the Australian government over a planned law that will force 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 they were disappointing."

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.

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.

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.

2021 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.

A month after the Facebook Oversight Board published 17 recommendations for improving its content moderation, one of the changes Facebook decided to adopt is Instagram's nudity policy to clarify "health-related nudity" is allowed. The Oversight Board recommended that Facebook update Instagram's community guidelines around adult nudity to explain that some nudity — health-related, photos of breastfeeding, giving birth, breast cancer awareness, gender confirmation surgery, or in the act of protest — is allowed on the platform.

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.