Ireland’s media regulator, Coimsiún na Máin, has announced an investigation into both TikTok and LinkedIn for possible violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act. reuters Report. The investigation focuses on the illegal content reporting features of both platforms, which may not meet the DSA’s requirements.
The main issue appears to be how these platforms’ reporting tools are presented and implemented. Regulators found potentially “confusing interface design” in the content reporting features they investigated, which could actually make them less effective at removing illegal content. “The reporting mechanisms were liable to mislead or deceive people into reporting content as illegal content, which was in breach of the provider’s terms and conditions,” the regulator wrote in a press release announcing its investigation.
“At the heart of the DSA is the right of people to report content they suspect is illegal, and there is a need for providers to have a reporting mechanism that is easy to use and user-friendly to report content they believe to be illegal,” John Evans, DSA Commissioner for Caoimsían na Máin, said in the press release. “Providers are also obliged not to design, organize or operate their interfaces in a way that could deceive or manipulate people, or that distorts or impairs people’s ability to make informed decisions.”
Evans further stated that due to the threat of financial penalties, Caoimsían na Máin has already asked other providers to make “significant changes to their reporting mechanisms for illegal content”. Many tech companies are headquartered in Ireland, and if a platform provider is found to be in breach of the DSA, Irish regulators could respond by fining them up to six percent of their revenue.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is already conducting a separate investigation into social media platform X for allegedly training its Grok AI assistant on users’ posts. Doing so would be a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, and would allow Ireland to take a four percent cut of the company’s global revenues.
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