SM Companies had to set up procedures to review complaints about content they were hosting, remove anything that was clearly illegal within 24 hours and publish updates every 6 months about how they were doing.
3. Australia passed the Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material Act in 2019, introducing criminal penalties for social media companies and financial penalties worth up to 10% of a company's global turnover.
As Social media is becoming more and more powerful, governments are developing policies to either control, regulate or curb social media completely.
1. Germany's NetzDG law came into effect at the beginning of 2018, applying to companies with more than two million registered users in the country.
SM Companies had to set up procedures to review complaints about content they were hosting, remove anything that was clearly illegal within 24 hours and publish updates every 6 months about how they were doing.
Individuals may be fined up to €5m ($5.6m; £4.4m) and companies up to €50m for failing to comply with these requirements.
2. European Union: Social media platforms face fines if they do not delete extremist content within an hour.
The EU also introduced the GDPR which set rules on how companies, including social media platforms, store and use people's data.
3. Australia passed the Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material Act in 2019, introducing criminal penalties for social media companies and financial penalties worth up to 10% of a company's global turnover.
In 2015, the Enhancing Online Safety Act created an eSafety Commissioner with the power to demand that SM giants take down harassing or abusive posts.
4. Russia : A law came into force in November giving regulators the power to switch off connections to the worldwide web "in an emergency".
Russia's data laws from 2015 required social media companies to store any data about Russians on servers within the country.
5. China: Sites such as Twitter, Google and WhatsApp are blocked in China and Chinese providers such as Weibo, Baidu and WeChat are used instead.
China has hundreds of thousands of cyber-police, who monitor social media platforms and screen messages that are deemed to be politically sensitive.
Some keywords are automatically censored outright, such as references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.