EU tech bastion Ireland brings in new rules to crack down on X, TikTok

Ireland is gearing up to flex some muscles and ensure that video-sharing platforms — including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok, Elon Musk’s X and Google’s YouTube — protect their users from hate speech and harmful videos online.

The country’s new media and internet regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, on Monday published its long-awaited Online Safety Code, a set of binding rules that will soon apply to the many tech giants whose European headquarters are in Ireland.

The 10 designated platforms are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Udemy, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Tumblr and Reddit.

“The adoption of the Online Safety Code brings an end to the era of social media self-regulation,” Online Safety Commissioner Niamh Hodnett said in a statement.

It will also bring Ireland closer to full compliance with the European Union’s audiovisual law, which mandated such new policing and whose sluggish transposition by Dublin resulted in a €2.5 million fine from the EU’s top court in February.

Under the new code, which complements the EU’s content-moderation rulebook, platforms will have to ban the uploading and sharing of harmful content, ranging from videos promoting self-harm or eating disorders to inciting terrorism or racism.

They will also have to restrict minors’ access to adult content like pornography and gratuitous violence; police commercial content advertising cigarettes or alcohol; and introduce ways for users to report content that breaks the rules.

Protecting children online more stringently has become a top priority for policymakers across Europe.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to launch a bloc-wide inquiry into the effects of social media on the well-being of young people.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament’s internal market committee will work on this topic as part of one of their future reports, while governments are considering a minimum age for using social media or a crackdown on porn sites that don’t keep minors away with blanket blocks.

The rulebook “introduces real accountability for online video sharing platforms and requires them to take action to protect those that use their platforms, including by having robust complaints handling procedures and introducing effective age-verification,” Ireland’s Media Minister Catherine Martin said.

“It will make all of us, but particularly our children, safer online,” she added.

Platforms must comply with the general obligations by Nov. 19, while the more prescriptive rules — those that require platforms to tweak their internal systems — have a July 21, 2025 deadline.

In case of noncompliance, they face fines of up to €20 million or 10 percent of their annual turnover, whichever is greater.