{"id":321158,"date":"2026-02-05T06:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/321158\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T06:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T06:24:09","slug":"social-media-groups-cannot-catch-all-harmful-posts-tiktok-tells-oireachtas-committee-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/321158\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media groups cannot catch all harmful posts, TikTok tells Oireachtas committee \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media companies cannot guarantee that no harmful material will appear on their platforms, a senior executive at TikTok\u2019s Irish operation told an Oireachtas <\/a>committee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

TikTok<\/a>\u2019s head of public policy and government relations, Susan Moss, said her company\u2019s goal was to get to \u201cas close to zero as possible\u201d instances of harmful material.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe harsh reality is it will never be zero \u2013 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,\u201d she told the Oireachtas media committee.<\/p>\n

The existence of harmful material on social media did not mean moderation was \u201cfailing\u201d, she said, adding that the responsibility for social media groups was in \u201cminimising harm\u201d and in removing content \u201cas quickly as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Moss said that 99.5 per cent of content on the platform is \u201cgood, positive and educational\u201d and said the company is \u201caggressively addressing\u201d the remaining 0.5 per cent of violative content.<\/p>\n

Her comments came as TikTok, Meta and Google attended a meeting of the Oireachtas committee that X chose not to attend.<\/p>\n

Responding to a direct query from Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s Malcolm Byrne<\/a>, the three said Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s X<\/a> platform should have accepted an invitation to appear before the committee.<\/p>\n

X, whose European headquarters are based in Dublin, refused invitations from the chairman of the committee, Alan Kelly<\/a>, and from the Taoiseach, Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a>, to speak at the sitting.<\/p>\n

The sitting of the Oireachtas joint committee on arts, media, communications, culture and sport comes shortly after the European Commission<\/a> opened a formal investigation into social media platform X and Grok<\/a>\u2019s \u201cnudification\u201d feature that allowed users to digitally undress images of people, including children, without their consent.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Tech giants are victims of \u2018harassment\u2019 by Irish and EU regulators, US Congress panel claimsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cblunt instrument that is disproportionate\u201d.<\/p>\n

TikTok\u2019s minor safety public policy lead Richard Collard said child safety groups have pointed to a risk \u201cthat teens are likely to move to unsafe areas of the internet\u201d should they be banned from social media.<\/p>\n

He said any ban should apply equally to \u201call technology companies\u201d, not just certain named entities.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cincredibly worrying\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/technology\/big-tech\/2026\/01\/05\/eu-readies-tougher-tech-enforcement-in-2026-as-trump-warns-of-retaliation\/Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Kelly thanked Meta, Google and TikTok for attending but noted there had been a \u201cdegree of conditionality\u201d for their attendance, with the companies only willing to attend on the basis that three of the four companies invited would appear. <\/p>\n

\u201cI found that very strange, actually I found that unacceptable,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot put conditionality like that to an Oireachtas committee. Very strange, extremely strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Separately, speaking after a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Minister for Media Patrick O\u2019Donovan<\/a> said he felt it was a \u201cbig mistake\u201d for X to decline to appear before the committee.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the D\u00e1il on Wednesday, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin rejected as \u201creprehensible political behaviour\u201d, the portrayal of the Government as \u201csomehow\u201d condoning the behaviour of X, Grok and of Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said Musk had turned X into a \u201cmachine\u201d for the mass production of child sexual abuse imagery and sexual imagery of women.<\/p>\n

He said \u201cthe Government\u2019s approach to big tech is \u2018see no evil, hear no evil\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Government did not want to do anything about the production of child abuse material because \u201cbig tech investment is more important\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach said he took exception to Murphy\u2019s \u201creprehensible\u201d and \u201cshocking\u201d remarks, insisting there is no tolerance of child abuse material on any platform and no attempt to protect proliferation of abuse material.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow dare you,\u201d the Taoiseach said. \u201cWho the hell do you think you are,\u201d he told Murphy, and that he thought \u201cyou have moral superiority over everyone else\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Dublin Southwest TD said the French prosecutors had raided X\u2019s offices in Paris and had summonsed Musk for questioning. He claimed Martin had scoffed at the idea those responsible in X would be arrested.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s capacity to remove clothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now anyone in Ireland can still create sexual abuse imagery through X using a VPN\u201d (virtual private network).<\/p>\n

He said the State could act against X without waiting for the European Commission and said the Government was \u201ckicking the can\u201d to the commission to deal with X.<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach said the Government did not interfere in Garda investigations. He said An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na 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 Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

All potential measures for dealing with social media are under review, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social media companies cannot guarantee that no harmful material will appear on their platforms, a senior executive at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22055,9,10,18,1647,5766,13,14,823,5066,6,19,17,9171,11,12,15,16,42224,1722,5765,5,4766,36103,42492,1150,7,8,2772,879],"class_list":{"0":"post-321158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-alan-kelly","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-european-commission","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-google","17":"tag-grok","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-labour-party","22":"tag-latest-news","23":"tag-latestnews","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-malcolm-byrne","27":"tag-meta","28":"tag-micheal-martin","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-oireachtas","31":"tag-patrick-o-donovan","32":"tag-taoiseach","33":"tag-tiktok","34":"tag-top-stories","35":"tag-topstories","36":"tag-twitter","37":"tag-x"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116016595939946683","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}