The charge sheet of crimes allegedly committed by giant social media companies such as Facebook has grown a lot longer recently.

A few years ago Facebook was rocked by a scandal over its sharing of individuals’ personal data with a political research organisation called Cambridge Analytica without their consent.

But in the past few weeks its image problem has grown worse. A former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, blew the whistle at a US congressional committee hearing with internal documents that showed the company was warned of the harmful psychological impacts on teenagers of its popular app Instagram.

The internal documents also revealed that Facebook makes exceptions to its in-house rules banning incitement to violence and harassment for certain high-profile accounts.

Then, on Friday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched an attack on social media companies for spreading anonymous misinformation about Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s daughter. Mr Morrison called social media sites a “coward’s palace” for anonymous internet trolls.

Facebook has already taken some steps to meet these criticisms. It says it will warn teenage users to take a break and nudge people away from sites that could be bad for their wellbeing.

But this might not be enough and pressure is growing for social media to be subject to regulation comparable with that faced by traditional forms of media, including newspapers such as the Herald.

In his remarks on Friday, Mr Morrison hinted that he might require social media companies to make users prove their identity. A cross-party Senate report in April recommended this change to help combat family, domestic and sexual violence.

The measure sounds attractive but it raises privacy concerns and some experts say that many people use their real names when spreading online misinformation and abuse. Mr Morrison does not need a new law to track down the identity of MP Craig Kelly.

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash has also proposed changing defamation laws in relation to social media companies’ liability for damaging posts by third parties.