Social media companies cannot guarantee that no harmful material will appear on their platforms, a senior executive at TikTok’s Irish operation told an Oireachtas committee on Wednesday.
TikTok’s head of public policy and government relations, Susan Moss, said her company’s goal was to get to “as close to zero as possible” instances of harmful material.
“The harsh reality is it will never be zero – and it will never be zero for as long as there are bad actors who are attempting to circumvent our processes and circumvent our moderation,” she told the Oireachtas media committee.
The existence of harmful material on social media did not mean moderation was “failing”, she said, adding that the responsibility for social media groups was in “minimising harm” and in removing content “as quickly as possible”.
Moss said that 99.5 per cent of content on the platform is “good, positive and educational” and said the company is “aggressively addressing” the remaining 0.5 per cent of violative content.
Her comments came as TikTok, Meta and Google attended a meeting of the Oireachtas committee that X chose not to attend.
Responding to a direct query from Fianna Fáil’s Malcolm Byrne, the three said Elon Musk’s X platform should have accepted an invitation to appear before the committee.
X, whose European headquarters are based in Dublin, refused invitations from the chairman of the committee, Alan Kelly, and from the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, to speak at the sitting.
The sitting of the Oireachtas joint committee on arts, media, communications, culture and sport comes shortly after the European Commission opened a formal investigation into social media platform X and Grok’s “nudification” feature that allowed users to digitally undress images of people, including children, without their consent.
The controversy has been the catalyst for moves to ban access to social media for children under certain ages in France, Spain and the UK as well as inquiries into the actions of X and its Grok AI.
Queried at the committee about the prospects of a ban on social media for young people, representatives of all three companies indicated they were not supportive of such a restriction, which Moss called a “blunt instrument that is disproportionate”.
TikTok’s minor safety public policy lead Richard Collard said child safety groups have pointed to a risk “that teens are likely to move to unsafe areas of the internet” should they be banned from social media.
He said any ban should apply equally to “all technology companies”, not just certain named entities.
Speaking at the start of the meeting, Kelly said he wanted to put on the record that the refusal of X to attend the session was “incredibly worrying”.
“It is extremely disappointing that a company with its European headquarters literally down the road here has refused to attend an Oireachtas meeting based on issues they were largely involved in and have been involved.
“Not alone did we write to them and communicate with them on a number of occasions, but furthermore I asked the Taoiseach to write to them, and he has confirmed that he did write to them.”
Kelly thanked Meta, Google and TikTok for attending but noted there had been a “degree of conditionality” for their attendance, with the companies only willing to attend on the basis that three of the four companies invited would appear.
“I found that very strange, actually I found that unacceptable,” he said. “You cannot put conditionality like that to an Oireachtas committee. Very strange, extremely strange.”
Separately, speaking after a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan said he felt it was a “big mistake” for X to decline to appear before the committee.
Meanwhile, in the Dáil on Wednesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin rejected as “reprehensible political behaviour”, the portrayal of the Government as “somehow” condoning the behaviour of X, Grok and of Elon Musk.
People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said Musk had turned X into a “machine” for the mass production of child sexual abuse imagery and sexual imagery of women.
He said “the Government’s approach to big tech is ‘see no evil, hear no evil’”.
The Government did not want to do anything about the production of child abuse material because “big tech investment is more important”.
The Taoiseach said he took exception to Murphy’s “reprehensible” and “shocking” remarks, insisting there is no tolerance of child abuse material on any platform and no attempt to protect proliferation of abuse material.
“How dare you,” the Taoiseach said. “Who the hell do you think you are,” he told Murphy, and that he thought “you have moral superiority over everyone else”.
The Dublin Southwest TD said the French prosecutors had raided X’s offices in Paris and had summonsed Musk for questioning. He claimed Martin had scoffed at the idea those responsible in X would be arrested.
Murphy also said Minister of State Niamh Smyth was wrong when she said after a meeting with X executives that they had disabled the Grok app’s capacity to remove clothing.
“Right now anyone in Ireland can still create sexual abuse imagery through X using a VPN” (virtual private network).
He said the State could act against X without waiting for the European Commission and said the Government was “kicking the can” to the commission to deal with X.
The Taoiseach said the Government did not interfere in Garda investigations. He said An Garda Síochána indicated there were up to 200 complaints. The European Commission had opened an investigation into large tech companies and was working with national regulators including Coimisiún na Meán.
All potential measures for dealing with social media are under review, he said.