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COMISIÚN NA MEÁN, Ireland’s media watchdog, has begun a formal review of online platforms including the likes of Tiktok, X and Youtube, which will investigate why people are having difficulty reporting illegal content online.
Under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), online platforms are required to act on reports of illegal content. Illegal content can include, for example, child sexual abuse material or terrorist propaganda.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly recently launched a taskforce with a mandate to protect children from being exposed to harmful content online, saying that the State would no longer be “asking nicely” when it deals with social media sites and apps.
“I think the time of asking or expecting online platforms do the right thing is over,” he said. ”
“I think we might as well be asking tobacco companies to do the right thing.”
The Comisiún’s concerns have come following an initial review, alongside information gathered from its Contact Centre, and complaints passed on by other European regulators.
“An Coimisiún is now initiating a formal review of online platforms’ systems, to ensure that the platforms are complying with their obligations under the EU Digital Services Act,” the watchdog said.
The DSA mandates that platforms must have easy to access and user-friendly ways to report illegal content and must also have a clear and accessible point of contact for such reports.
“Coimisiún na Meán has now issued formal requests for information to a range of platforms for further comprehensive detail on their approach to reporting options for illegal content and points of contact for users,” a spokesperson for the watchdog said.
“Once the information gathering phase is complete, Coimisiún na Meán will engage with the platforms to ensure that their reporting mechanisms and point of contacts comply with the requirements of the DSA.”
Failure to comply with requests to address shortcomings from Coimisiún na Meán can lead to a formal investigation and possible sanctions in the form of fines.
“An Coimisiún can also enter into a binding commitment agreement with a platform, in which the platform gives undertakings to bring its behaviour into line with the law.”
John Evans, digital services commissioner at Coimisiún na Meán, said “The DSA is a landmark law aimed at creating a safer and fairer online environment for users.”
However, he said its effectiveness “hinges on the full implementation of its provisions by platforms”.
“Of the complaints we have from people in Ireland and across Europe about online platforms, one in three are about problems when reporting illegal content online. We are intervening now to ensure that platforms follow the rules so that people can effectively exercise their rights under the DSA.’’
Niamh Hodnett, who is online safety commissioner at the watchdog, said, “We are committed to using the full range of powers available under our Online Safety Framework to hold platforms to account for keeping people safe online”.
“Through the DSA, our upcoming Online Safety Code and the EU Terrorist Content Online Regulation, we are working towards a digital landscape where adults and children can go online without fear of being harmed by the content or behaviour they come across.”
The companies being looked into as part of the review include YouTube, TikTok, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Temu, Pinterest, Etsy, Dropbox, Hostelworld and Tumblr.
Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta has not been included because it is already subject to an EU Commission investigation. X is also under investigation by the EU but is being looked at in areas where there is no overlap with that probe.
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Governments in the west are desperate to limit freedom of speech
@cup of tea: Do you regard mis/disinformation as freedom of speech?
@cup of tea: Oh dear …
@cup of tea: Yours seems fairly limited on it’s own tbf.
@William Slevin: Sure Willie, if that’s what makes ya happy LMFAO!
@cup of tea: Online has zero freedom of speech. You agree to the terms and conditions and if you break said terms and conditions you’ll be in trouble. Freedom of speech my hxxe
@Brendan O’Brien: You don’t need to believe everything you read. If I want to say the sky is green I should be able to, not my fault if someone believes me.
@marklars81: Of course, but if you want to say ‘A foreigner has attacked someone in Dublin: let’s beat up all the foreigners!’, that’s not so harmless.
@cup of tea: How is removing CSAM and crap like that limiting free speech?
@Brendan O’Brien: Yes, it is illegal content. The review will investigate why people are having difficulty reporting illegal content online. So what’s the problem?
Perhaps you should try reading the article.
@William Slevin: I accidentally replied to my own comment instead of yours: big deal.
@cup of tea: they are private corporations run by billionaires who profit from the misinformation and toxic hate that proliferates on their platforms. Making them accountable for the for-profit toxic online environment they have engineered is not curtailing free speech. Social media has little to do with free speech, it’s about spreading whatever ‘speech’ makes these companies the most money.
@cup of tea: so child porn and terrorism are free speech now?
Still no word on who signed off on the bike shed?
Ahh regulation and watchdogs. Works so well, I mean there are regulators and watchdogs on the public expenditure which managed to prevent overspends on boke sheds and hospitals, not to mention RThehehe …. fill in the rest yourselves!
On X in particular there are 10-15 Irish accounts who have paid Elon Musk a subscription in order to boost their Tweets, which every day for the past 2 years call for attacks on immigrants. These people are successfully monetising hate.
@Jacintha Dumbrell: Name of the accounts ? I haven’t seen any accounts on X calling for attacks on immigrants.
@Andrew Martin: Check this out.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-41461513.html
@Andrew Martin: Well if you haven’t seen it it couldn’t be happening right? Right?
@Jacintha Dumbrell: Absolutely. The hard and far-right are well funded and organised. They push their narrative continuously, often with outside help from foreign groups. The main thing for them is to be visible and push the same ideas 24/7. They group together or use multiple accounts to upvote posts and make it appear that extreme ideas are completely legit and supported by the wider public.
We’re pack animals and many don’t realise how deliberate the campaign is to gradually erode our values and beliefs and lead us somewhere else. ‘Everyone else thinks this too’ = gradual acceptance and normalisation of extreme ideas. This method was highly visible in British papers before it took off here. The small c conservative papers were swamped in the comments sections by people a lot further to the right than the traditional base and after a certain amount of time, these ideas and their views of other humans became ‘normal’.
Thankfully there are still people pushing back against these narratives but having someone like Musk running Twitter has been a huge boost for the far-right. The only upside is that it might well become an echo chamber as many people leave, completely sick of opening a total hatefest. Everyone knows its agenda and political leanings now.
It’s not that long ago that the vast majority would have been ashamed at the idea of burning the accommodation of vulnerable people. You read a depressing number of comments justifying actions like this now. All part of a highly organised and deliberate plan to change people and their values.
@SerotoninWars: Couldn’t have summarised it better myself. Another interesting aspect re: ‘boosting’ these hate accounts is almost all of the replies are also by Blue Tick subscribers based outside Ireland, again, it’s about the appearance that these are ‘majority views’, when in reality, only 6% of Irish people use X regularly.
@Brendan O’Brien: This is so grim. We’re in a war alright. Just not the one they think. It’s a battle for some sort of a centre ground. These extreme beliefs have become almost fashionable. Even in people who haven’t fully bought in, you see slightly watered down variants of this ideology all the time. Drip drip drip…
@SerotoninWars: When they find the tide turn in a thread they feed it full of unrelated crap to distract.
@SerotoninWars: I totally agree with both your comments here. We need to be aware of this trend (which also manifests in the comments on this site).
@Jacintha Dumbrell: 100%. They haven’t even been subtle about it. Steve Bannon laid out the methods and aims of what’s become a global ‘movement’ a decade ago. This is a highly organised and purposeful coalition with of groups and lone actors influenced by their propaganda.
@Chutes: Big time. If there were awards for whataboutery…
@Brendan O’Brien: Agreed. You have to remember there’s the empty vessel making lots of noise aspect to it but the impression of widespread support and total normality of extreme beliefs really does have an effect. That’s the aim. It’s genuinely scary how quickly people can turn and have their values upended when the tide changes. We’ve lived with a naive assumption that so many things just wouldn’t happen again as history has shown us where they lead. But nope, it’s the same old battles for a bit of decency and humanity.
@SerotoninWars: Unfortunately it’s decency and humanity pitched against greed and power.
@SerotoninWars: The sad thing is that the people who ‘support’ and follow these big accounts call themselves ‘truth seekers’ and think they are pushing back at ‘elites’, when in reality they are all being led by the nose in order to make the billionaires (elites) who own these platforms wealthier through engagement farming.
@William Slevin: Your comment doesn’t even rise to the level of a good try.
@Andrew Martin: well last November we had the riots and should we remind you how that happened? On X. Ben Gilroy in particular is leading it. The man is a convicted criminal ffs and he’s lecturing people about people that don’t sound like me and you, don’t have the same religion as me and you, attacks on the LGBTQ. I hope this hate speech bill passes because we need to bring these people down a peg or two. Stop being arrogant, we all seen the posts with the Irish tricolour and Irish is full, get them out crowd. Being a nationalist is racism with regards to the Irish have any rights over fellow EU citizens
@Chutes: It really is. So much of the guidebook has been written by complete loons in the US. Ethno-nationalist evangelicals who want to turn the clock back on pretty much everything. There’s a terrifying cohort of brainwashed kids parroting the stuff they’ve been pulped with by their parents on social media channels with large followings. It’s so depressing seeing young women, teenagers even, trying to push the idea that women should be meek and subservient. It always comes with a race element too. ‘They’re trying to destroy us’. You just know what ‘us’ looks like. Some ideas deserve to be pushed back against with all our might.
@Jacintha Dumbrell: Completely! The actual elites, the rich kid extremists like Trump and friends just flipped the script, told people they were the ones rallying against the elites and somehow people believed it. It doesn’t make a jot of sense but people respond to highly charged, low-on-facts emotive populism.
You see it everywhere. Huge papers and outlets owned by the richest section of society pretend they are against the very system and tier of extreme wealth that they belong to. It’s an amazing coincidence that all of the things they promote manage to work out as advantageous to their own interests!
@William Slevin: No one is calling people with concerns about immigration far-right or racist, you are the only person to bring those terms into the discourse here. We are discussing a small but vocal minority on social media urging attacks on immigrants. As for loyalist fascists, it was the far-right who marched and had pints with Loyalists last month.
@William Slevin: Fighting for human rights and aiming for a world where people are treated fairly and with respect is not fascism! It’s the opposite. You try and make out that any sort of pushback against extreme beliefs = fascism because… free speech or something? As if that same free speech isn’t there for people who wish to push back against the views of a group of people who hold the most regressive beliefs imaginable. Not once has violence been mentioned. The idea of taking control of the state and enforcing it through violence is pretty much the entire MO of the Trump movement and all of its global subsidiaries. They have bent over backwards to make sure the same people who are armed to the teeth and want a total purge of certain viewpoints, feel seen, listened to and supported. The rot has spread far and wide.
@Jacintha Dumbrell: William Slevin is spot on there, if you say anything about immigration those on the left will call you a racist and it’s funny how he didn’t mention race but it was you who brought it up, you’ve 100% proved his point.
@William Slevin: I have never called anyone who wants to discuss immigration far-right. The people who I have called far-right are the ones using dehumanising language and using all the dog whistle and full whistle terminology to describe other human beings. If this was all just a bit of harmless back n forth, it’d be easier to accept as some banine argy bargy online. This isn’t the case though. We’ve seen people light tents on fire with other human beings in them. In Ireland. It’s not some vague abstract thing happening thousands of miles away. The conveyor belt of dehumanising language has an effect. It adds up, riles up and leads to the darkest of places. Surely we want to aim higher than being a people who shrug off burning poor and isolated people out of their meagre accommodation?
@William Slevin: ‘much of them are paid agitators like false flag type to demonise nationalists’: can you provide any evidence of this?
@Jacintha Dumbrell: Peaceful protesters across the country have been called far right for protesting, it’s the government trying to justify the thugs of the public order unit pepper spraying pensioners and kicking people on their knees.
@William Slevin: OK, so you can’t provide any evidence for your claim that ‘theirs only a small number of anti mass immigration that have used violence and much of them are paid agitators like false flag type to demonise nationalists’.
@SerotoninWars: Remember I was saying they’ll fill the thread with shyte so it gets lost earlier? Well here we are with the same old names doing just that!
@Chutes: So true. It’s everywhere! Flood the channels and hope people get so tired they just remember the soundbites. War! Invasion! West about implode! Actually most people are fine. Challenging times after Covid, economic issues, war in Ukraine and housing has to be addressed no question. But so many people are actually doing ok. They might not be in a dream house with endless holidays and disposable income but are relatively well off. The politics of grievance is there to make everyone feel like they are losing at capitalism when huge numbers in the west lead lives the richest people in history would marvel at. No it’s not elite living but ironically none of the actual elites stirring up grievance want these people on their level. Do they honestly think the Trump’s of this world want them as neighbours?!
Needs to be done. I have reported some disgusting content including inaccurate child related content only for the site to say it didn’t go against their rules. I’m talking Facebook and X. They’re cesspits.
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: inappropriate*
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: Of course they only use child abuse as the example, what they mean is they watch everything, who’s gonna argue against child abuse right? (no one of course) how much “illegal” activity involves ‘child abuse’? maybe a decimal of a percent? The responsability for restricting access to inappropriate content (even more subjective what that is), should probably be with the responsibility of the provider. Tbh robots shoudl have been handling all this by now, but the lads are still trying to figure out how much money they can make, so we wait.
@Thesaltyurchin: the sad thing is that I think it’s the robots that are handling initial reports. Both of the companies I’ve mentioned have seriously reduced the amount of human moderators they employ.
None of this is about cracking down on illegal content or even right-wing nutters having an online circle jerk, while fantasising about committing violence against other ethnic or religious groups of people.
Because none of these people are going to be changed or dissuaded by being banned from popular online platforms. They will simply move to other obscure platforms or even to their own private servers to which access is only shared with like-minded loonies at protests.
It is being used as a justification to normalise the realtime application of broad censorship online, with the majority incorrectly assuming that if something is being censored, or users are being banned, then they must be right-wing, or child abusers, rather than legitimate critics of those in positions of power…
@Dvsespaña: You’re doing a lot of “incorrectly assuming” yourself there it would seem, completely unsubstantiated as per usual. Who are you to decide who’s “incorrectly assuming”? Furthermore that it’s “the majority incorrectly assuming”.
I take it you’ve personally asked ‘the majority’ yes? How exactly is it that you’ve arrived at your stated position?
@Dvsespaña: But if they ‘simply move to other obscure platforms’, that is an improvement (the more obscure the better). They will be less able to disseminate their hate widely.
If that hate can be quarantined to ‘like-minded loonies’, that’s a win. Legitimate critics of those in power, meanwhile, should not be banned.
@William Slevin: Funny that the far right label pisses you off so much when you espouse far right views, you’re weird!
@Chutes: It’s not difficult to test that the majority of people incorrectly assume that once an accusation is made that it has validity.
Accusations alone, nevermind any punative action being taken, or any sanction being implemented against any individual or group, by those in a position of power or authority, are deemed to be inherently just, the presumption of innocence no longer exists in our society.
Every accusation is viewed as a case of being guilty until proven innocent, and the assumption persists even if someone was found innocent through due process, it’s assumed they got away with something.
Look at any miscarriage of justice that has taken place since the advent of social media, and see how the majority assume that an accusation is in their minds equivalent to guilt.
@Brendan O’Brien: Not really, because if right wing and other extremist advocates of violence against are not seen in the light of day, they get to fester and spread in the shadows.
Anyone who is of a similar mindset or someone that is primed for indoctrination, is going to gravitate towards and find these people and group’s anyway.
In fact, their being pushed into the shadows only adds to their appeal for impressionable young people and other sad losers, that want to be part of something which makes them feel special and a breed apart.
Giving them their own private online cesspool, just means they go entirely unchallenged and unquestioned by anyone.
@Dvsespaña: I don’t see that as a compelling argument for allowing them to spread their hatred and misinformation all over the place. It would be better to crack down on them everywhere: the fact that the more obscure corners may be difficult to deal with is not a good reason for not trying, and is certainly not a good reason for giving the hate-mongers free rein.
Fines aren’t a deterrent to the rich!!
@Chutes: They are when the fines are based on percentages of the company’s revenue, and increase each time the company is found liable.
USA may fine a company like X or FB 15k$, which is barely a rounding error to FB, but EU could fine them 1% to 6% of their yearly worldwide revenue, under the DSA.
Something similar is already in place in Finland, for driving offences. They issue fines based on the income of the offender. A driver there got hit with a 120k€ fine for driving his Ferrari 30kmph over the speed limit.
Probably still doesn’t dent his multi-millions, but I’d be sure to think it gives a big deterrent from repeating.
Start by taking Meta off the internet. That cesspool is chock full of misinformation and absolute trash.
@Daniel Skelton: Why not just close your account and not use it. That’s how you close Facebook, stop using it, if everyone who says they hate Facebook just never used it again how long do you think it would survive?
@marklars81: I completely wiped my account with them ages ago, and never looked back since. I may have lost contact with a lot of my friends and family, but it’s a price worth paying imho. I can’t wait to see the day that cesspool gets deleted from the internet once and for all.
If asylum seekers can find jobs, why can’t our own dole. merchants
The journal is a waste of time
Where is Helen Livingston when you need her?
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