Report from Silicon Republic
In Brief – Ireland’s media regulator, the Coimisiún na Meán (CnaM), has launched its first investigation under the country’s Online Safety Code, scrutinizing social media platform X for its compliance with requirements designed to protect children from adult content. The code, which came into effect last year, requires platforms that allow adult-only material, including pornography and realistic gore or violence, to use effective age-assurance measures, which can include AI-based age estimation and, under increasingly strict rules, photo-ID age verification. Allowing users to self-declare that they are adults is no longer considered an adequate barrier. Platforms accessible to children must also provide effective parental controls that are easy to find and highlighted to users when they sign up. The investigation will examine X’s age-assurance methods, whether its parental controls meet minimum requirements, and whether new users are directed to those controls.
Context – Ireland is home to the European headquarters of most of the largest US-based tech companies, and there was a time when Irish data security regulators were lambasted by privacy advocates for supposed business-friendly rulings under the GDPR’s One-Stop-Shop regime. Irish regulators were a big reason that method of streamlined regulatory compliance was largely jettisoned from subsequent EU digital laws, including the DSA, the DMA, and the AI Act, putting the Commission in the regulatory driver’s seat for the biggest platforms. That perception of Ireland as a regulatory haven is increasingly outdated. Last year, Ireland’s High Court rejected X’s legal argument that the CnaM did not have the authority to enforce the Irish Online Safety Code’s provisions on age checks and parental controls against it because X was regulated on similar matters by the European Commission under the DSA. The CnaM and the Commission are also both investigating X’s core content moderation practices, potentially the most politically sensitive European tech regulatory issue in the eyes of the Trump Administration.