Having come back after two weeks away, the main social media story in the UK involves Twitter knocking down so called 'super injunctions.'
These are double gagging orders that the rich and famous employ to stop the media reporting about some scandal. The double bit refers to the fact that they are not allowed to say that the injunction exists in the first place.
The use of Twitter to get around the UK's antiquated defamation laws has resulted in the social network breaking its UK traffic record - Time Magazine has a good explanation of the back-story for non UK readers.
The latest twist involves a footballer referred to in court as "CTB" allegedly involved in an affair with a reality TV star.
CTB is taking legal action against Twitter to force the social network to reveal the identities of people behind the accounts who have been talking about the alleged affair. Symbolic of the inability of the old order to keep up with the new, the footballer in question was - according to the Daily Mail - being named 16x per minute on Twitter this afternoon (a 5 sec search is enough to tell you who CTB is supposed to be).
The reaction from the parts of the legal establishment has been predictable. According to the appropriately named lord chief justice, Lord Judge, "modern technology was totally out of control."
According to Lord Judge, readers place greater trust in the content of traditional media than those who 'peddle lies' on websites (via The Guardian).
Actually they don't. This is what OFCOM, an official body a bit like the US FCC, has to say on the matter:
1 - 34% of UK consumers trust and 43% don't trust what they read in newspapers, or a difference of minus nine
2 - 36% of UK consumers trust and 33% don't trust what they see on social networks, or a difference of plus three (news websites are actually the media commanding the highest trust ratio)
It's a fundamental point and one which large parts of the establishment hasn't really grasped yet. Until they do, expect social networks to continue to blow holes in any attempts by the law to control what can and can't be read, heard or seen.
(Above - the rise of CTB mentions on Twitter over Fri and Saturday)