BOTH THE TAOISEACH and Tánaiste have expressed concerns over X, formerly Twitter, after it was reported last week that the social media platform has instructed staff not to suspend users that post explicitly racist, sexist and homophobic content. 

The Business Post reported on 17 December that Elon Musk’s X has also instructed staff not to suspend users who send sexual material to another person, as part of a new policy. 

Documents obtained by the news outlet have shown that X has significantly watered down its trust and safety rules in recent months. 

Speaking to reporters during a roundtable interview this week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he has noticed a deterioration of X since it was taken over by Elon Musk.

“Despite what some people may say I am actually somebody who believes in free speech. But there has to be limitations and standards,” he said.

“I don’t believe that Twitter/X implements its own community standards. Other social media platforms do and I think if you’re not able to even to live up to your own standards, it doesn’t reflect very well on any organisation,” the Taoiseach said. 

Meanwhile, the Tánaiste confirmed he has read the Business Post article and said he “would have real concerns about what is happening at X”. 

“The degree to which, under the cover of free speech, it essentially is allowing in my view unacceptable material in terms of hate, bile and attacks, and so on. I have noticed it, yes,” Martin said.

Speaking in the Dáil on 29 November, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said X did not engage with gardaí when contacted to take down “vile” posts in the wake of the Dublin riots the week prior. 

McEntee said other social media companies did engage with the gardaí.

She said she had spoken to a garda detective who “was actively engaged with TikTok, actively engaged with Meta – so Instagram and Facebook – was actively engaged with Twitter, or X”.

“She said very clearly that social media companies,in particular Tik Tok and Meta, they were responding, they were engaging with gardaí and they were taking down these vile posts as they came up,” McEntee said.

“X were not, they didn’t engage. They did not fulfill their own community standards,” the Minister said.

Speaking during the roundtable interview this week, the Tánaiste said: “If you recall in the aftermath of the rioting in Dublin it was communicated to me by Minister Martin and others that X were not as responsive to the authorities as the other platforms were.”

“I will talk to my government colleagues in respect of this and it is a serious issue,” he said. 

“I would like to get an assessment of the platform’s agenda and its potential impact on democracy and society. Then for us to have an engagement with X, whether that would be fruitful or not given the position adopted by its owner, I would have concerns.”

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the government has a role to play when it comes to hateful content online and specifically on X.

“We do now have regulation of social media platforms. We said very clearly a year or two ago that the era of self regulation is over.

“We have an Online Safety Commissioner, and we have Coimisiún na Meán and I think things are goning to change,” he said.

Following McEntee’s contribution to the Dáil regarding social media complaints, the Fine Gael X account posted a video of her comments, tagging the company and its billionaire-owner Elon Musk, and said government were to take action “to ensure social media companies are held to account”.

Responding to the party’s tweet, X said it met with the Coimisiún na Meán on Friday 24 November – the day after the riot. The social media company added that gardaí did not make any formal requests to the platform until late on Monday 27 November.

Infringement proceedings

On 18 December, the EU announced  “formal infringement proceedings” against X under a law cracking down on illegal online content, after identifying disinformation related to Hamas’s 7 October attack in Israel.

The action against X is the first against a major online platform since Brussels implemented the Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping piece of European Union legislation that strengthens online companies’ responsibility for content moderation.

The European Commission said a preliminary information-gathering investigation it launched against X in October, which included looking at “the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel”, led to the formal probe.

The formal probe will examine four areas: the dissemination of illegal content; the effectiveness of X’s efforts to combat disinformation; suspected restrictions on giving researchers access to its data; and suspected deceptive practices – known as “dark patterns” – related to its Blue Tick subscription product.

In the event of proven infringements, the DSA carries penalties that can include fines going up to 6% of an online company’s global revenues.

For serious and repeated violations, the EU can ban a platform operating in the 27-nation bloc.

Includes reporting by Muiris O’Cearbhaill, Christina Finn, Jane Matthews and - © AFP 2023