A number of the top ten social media companies in the world have major offices in Dublin including Meta, X and TikTok.
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00:00The Irish government is to hold the executives of social media companies personally responsible
00:05when delays occur in removing hate and hostile content from digital platforms.
00:10There needs to be a responsibility on the social media companies to take some ownership
00:15or some accountability of what's on their platforms.
00:19Ultimately they're the host, they're generating profits from having this content up online
00:25so there needs to be some obligation on them to mind and monitor and manage what is hosted.
00:30Commission na mBan, the Irish Media Commission, is currently working on a Code of Ethics
00:34that aims to make social media companies more vigilant
00:37when it comes to removing harmful or defamatory online material.
00:41The Code is expected to be law in the coming months
00:44and could see companies face fines of many millions of euro for breaching the proposed ethics.
00:50A number of the top ten social media companies in the world have major offices in Dublin
00:55including Meta, X and TikTok.
00:58The Irish government says the time has come to clean up social media once and for all.
01:03So we're seeing patterns, we're seeing harmful behaviour, everything from suicide promotions
01:08to age inappropriate content, gratuitous finance, pornography.
01:12We're seeing attacks on elected officials, we're seeing attacks actually on civil servants, public officials
01:18and we're seeing I suppose a very low common denominator.
01:21Recent online threats against Irish government ministers and the Taoiseach or Prime Minister Simon Harris
01:26is believed to have created a sense of alarm to clamp down on social media companies
01:31who appear to attach no urgency in removing harmful content.
01:35Experts in the area of technology say proposals by the Irish media regulator
01:40to impose large financial fines on social media companies
01:43is likely to produce positive results in the years ahead.
01:47Most of the tech companies probably will honour this new code of conduct from Commissioner Mann
01:51because they will have to and it's backed up by the Digital Services Act
01:54which is an EU wide law with very large fines and most of the companies involved
01:59have an awful lot of revenue, it's global turnover that is hit.
02:03There are a few outliers which local politicians here in Ireland and across Europe
02:07up to and including European commissioners have taken aim at, the notable one is X.
02:13The Irish Media Commission here behind me in Dublin is sending out a very strong message
02:17to tech companies that have offices here in Ireland.
02:21That message is clean up your act and be careful what you publish or else you'll pay a very heavy price.
02:27This is Ken Murray for Euronews in Dublin.