{"id":648461,"date":"2026-08-21T04:31:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T04:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/648461\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T04:31:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T04:31:23","slug":"tiktok-says-it-wont-appear-at-oireachtas-committee-over-car-theft-gang-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/648461\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok says it won’t appear at Oireachtas committee over car theft gang videos"},"content":{"rendered":"

TIKTOK WILL NOT be attending an Oireachtas committee meeting to discuss the role of their social media videos in a fatal crash involving a car driving the wrong way on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The social media giant was asked to a media committee meeting next month to answer questions about the safeguards it has in place to protect users from dangerous and harmful content.<\/p>\n

Five teenagers in a car driving the wrong way down the M9 were killed when their car hit a family driving to Dublin airport. Three women and a seven-year-old boy are still in hospital from their injuries.<\/p>\n

The incident has prompted questions about the role of social media in glorifying dangerous and illegal behaviour<\/a>, as a trend has emerged on social media, where accounts share videos and images of vehicles, garda pursuits, and reckless driving, including driving the wrong way down motorways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The garda commissioner Justin Kelly has condemned such \u201creckless behaviour\u201d, saying it is often done for \u201csocial media likes\u201d<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Labour TD and media committee chair Alan Kelly wrote to TikTok requesting their attendance at a meeting to discuss what he described as \u201ccontent that glorifies irresponsible or illegal activity\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, today, TikTok said that they would not be attending the meeting due to the ongoing inquires by\u00a0An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na and\u00a0Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

In a letter penned by TikTok\u2019s head of public policy Susan Moss, they said that this meant \u201cit would not be possible to appear before the committee in public session until this process is completed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same issues arise in relation to other social media platforms and messaging services where instances of the content complained of is present,\u201d the statement continued.<\/p>\n

However, those platforms have not been invited to appear before the committee at this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cTikTok does not consider it appropriate to be the sole representative of the video sharing industry in such circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tech company told The Journal\u00a0that\u00a0it had offered a private briefing to the committee instead.<\/p>\n

Kelly said that this development was a \u201cslap in the face to the Irish public\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Committee invited TikTok for a very clear reason. We want to understand the processes currently in place to protect users, particularly younger users, from content that glorifies dangerous, reckless or illegal behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cTikTok is one of the most influential social media platforms in Ireland and is the platform of choice for many young people. With that influence comes an enormous responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly said that the ongoing garda investigation being used as a reason to not attend is a \u201cred herring\u201d, and said he had \u201cno problem\u201d if the company wished other social media companies to be there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kelly is calling on TikTok to accept the invitation, and is also calling on Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n to encourage them to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enterprise Minister Peter Burke has commented on the issue of\u00a0\u201cvery extreme\u201d content which has \u201cbeen allowed to sit there for protracted periods of time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is so important to me that we handle this robustly. We give the social media company the opportunity, obviously, to appear before the Oireachtas, but critically they have in their purview, in their power, to take down these videos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see a lot of these social media companies shedding staff, shedding numbers, and yet this content seems to be ever-growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnecdotal evidence seems to be that it\u2019s very extreme and it\u2019s been allowed to sit there for protracted periods of time to gain likes and gain interactions from other peers in the community, and frankly, that\u2019s not good enough and we need to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media regulator Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n has sought a \u201cfull account\u201d of how TikTok is dealing with reports of illegal or harmful content on its platform, with the authority adding it is in \u201cclose contact\u201d with An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.<\/p>\n

The video-sharing platform says it has removed all the flagged content and banned accounts which violate its policies against criminal behaviour.<\/p>\n

It also said it removes content that glorifies violence and promotes crime that could harm others, while limiting the spread of material which encourages unsafe behaviour, including risky driving.<\/p>\n

Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook, has policies to restrict users under 18 from seeing imagery depicting real-life dangerous driving likely to cause injury, as well as prohibition of content promoting criminal or harmful activities such as high-risk viral challenges.<\/p>\n

Snap has also been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TIKTOK WILL NOT be attending an Oireachtas committee meeting to discuss the role of their social media videos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[1056,9,10,274189,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,271820,15,16,105825,5,557,166184,1150,7,8],"class_list":["post-648461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-big-tech","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-car-driving-wrong-way","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-m9-crash","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-media-committee","tag-news","tag-no-thanks","tag-oireachtas-committee","tag-tiktok","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117131626822659536","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648461","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=648461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}