ELON MUSK’S X, formerly known as Twitter, has failed in a High Court bid challenging how the Irish media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, deals with user complaints against social media platforms.

At the High Court today, judge Cian Ferriter ruled that the commission is entitled under law to refer information from complaints made under the Digital Services Act to a ‘supervisory’ unit, which also has the power to retain those complaints to identify possible future compliance issues.

X had submitted that the commission could not legally refer information garnered from complaints to the supervision team if those complaints were already concluded or undetermined. They also submitted that information contained within those complaints could not be used for broader, future systemic investigations and that the regulator had therefore acted outside of the law.

X further submitted that it regularly takes “unilateral” removal action, such as in cases of child exploitation, which it is obligated to do by its own regulatory policies. They submitted that the commission was acting in an “extra statutory” manner.

X had argued that complainants were entitled to an outcome instead of the commission “kicking the can down the road without notification” on any possible future purported breaches.

David Fennelly SC, for the Commission, had said that X was attempting to undermine the watchdog’s important role in cases that had implications across the EU.

The judge said in his judgment that the commission has discretion as to who investigates complaints, adding: “In the circumstances, I do not believe it can be said that the Commission improperly disabled itself from exercising its statutory discretion by reference to any of the matters available to it.”

Ferriter said there was no “improper fettering of discretion involved and no legally impermissible steps on the part of the Commission or its delegates”.