X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is taking legal action against Coimisiún na Meán, the Irish regulator of online content, in the High Court in Dublin. The social media platform is alleging that Coimisiún na Meán’s online safety code has committed “regulatory overreach” by restricting the use of video content.
The case is ongoing and its merits will be decided by the High Court, but it points to a development that will have significant consequences for Ireland.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, is poised to have an outsized influence on the incoming Trump administration. Musk believes in minimal regulation of the technology sector, and in particular of the development of artificial intelligence. In this area Trump has signalled that his presidency will follow the Musk playbook.
The EU is taking a different approach. It has a very comprehensive set of regulations for technology, social media and artificial intelligence.
On a recent visit to Dublin, Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta – fined yesterday by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) for a 2018 data breach – said that the company’s future investment in Dublin was contingent on its ability to expand because of what he described as EU over-regulation. The former British deputy prime minister said that the EU was in danger of becoming a “museum continent” that was the “first to regulate and the last to innovate”.
If Clegg is correct and the EU is becoming over-regulated this will have obvious implications for jobs and investment in Ireland in the years ahead. The EU’s competitiveness is coming under intense scrutiny as the region risks falling into recession. A series of major reports, the most recent by former ECB president Mario Draghi, have looked at ways to tackle this, but many of the issues are contentious.
Regulation – including of social media – is one of them. Finding the correct balance, and – crucially – protecting users, is difficult and the companies themselves have failed at every turn to do enough. There have been tensions between Ireland and the EU on this issue and the State’s ability and willingness to regulate the sector. The Government has always denied accusations that it has gone easy on regulation to try to protect investment and jobs in Ireland.
As the European home of some of the biggest players in the tech industry, Ireland is in the spotlight here. The DPC and Coimisiún na Meán will be at the coalface of growing regulatory divergence between the US and the EU in what could be a fraught period for international economic relations.
It is essential that both agencies are sufficiently well resourced to discharge their duties. There is a lot riding on the outcome.
