Social media firms will have to remove harmful content quickly or potentially face multi-billion-pound fines under new legislation.
The government's Online Safety Bill, announced in the Queen's Speech, comes with a promise of protecting debate.
It is "especially" geared at keeping children safe and says "democratically important" content should be preserved.
Internet trolls who create derogatory hashtags or doctored images to humiliate others could face prosecution in England and Wales.
Inciting people to harass others online, known as virtual mobbing, could also result in court action, under new Crown Prosecution Service guidance.
The director of public prosecutions said it means the CPS would prosecute just as if offences occurred offline.
Employers can read workers' private messages sent via chat software and webmail accounts during working hours, judges have ruled.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said a firm that read a worker's Yahoo Messenger chats sent while he was at work was within its rights.
'Looking up information on social media is starting to become a standard part of the background checks which employers run on prospective job candidates, or even on existing employees. This briefing, the last in a three-part series on social media, looks at whether such checks: can be used as a basis for rejecting a job candidate; infringe an employee's data protection rights or privacy; or permit an employer to dismiss an employee.'
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