In order to comply with a new German law requiring social media sites to take down hate speech, Twitter and Facebook removed anti-Islamic social media posts authored by a German far-right political party.

The Obama administration's screening of social media accounts of aspiring immigrants from majority-Muslim nations yielded little actionable intelligence, but the Trump administration is building on the practice anyway.

Over the first half of 2017, Facebook received 32,716 requests from law enforcement for user data, with 57% of those requests containing non-disclosure orders that prohibited the social media giant from notifying the user.

In other Facebook news, the social media giant is now using its facial recognition technology to notify users whenever someone posts photos of them on the platform.

Last year Twitter dealt with a variety of missteps, including failing to include women on its tech and science follow list and an incident in which a rogue Twitter employee temporarily disabled President Trump's Twitter account. Here's a month-by-month look back at Twitter's tumultuous 2017.

Many YouTube celebrities' new-subscriber and monthly-view numbers aren't climbing nearly as fast as they once did. Possible explanations include bugs resulting from changes in YouTube's algorithms intended to reduce inappropriate content.

Stock exchanges are testing the use of blockchain technology for mutual-fund trading, proxy voting, issuing shares in private companies and facilitating shareholder communications.

Snapchat's disappearing message feature doesn't prevent law enforcement from identifying the authors of threats sent using the app.

Some people are using Instagram to connect with romantic prospects, creating portfolios intended to catch the attention of desirable dating candidates and gauging and expressing interest with likes, comments and Stories views.

Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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