Vary by country but in nutshell Laws applying to newspapers cover a range of issues, including freedom of the press, defamation, privacy, intellectual property (authors' rights), and legal requirements for advertisements and public notices.

The main issue with today’s social media is the algo that act like a chief editor pushing opinion/specific in your face. Regarding fediverse, yes. If you start to hosting/publishing, copyrighted article, illegal content , etc.related to where it is hosted you will face the law in reality. This is why each server have their specific approach to this problem depending on where they are hosted https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/ as an example