Dr. John Evans:

There are probably two aspects to the answer, the first of which is the European Commission’s role in respect of disinformation and misinformation. Parts of the DSA are aimed at addressing misinformation and disinformation. The platforms need to do risk assessments and apply mitigation measures where there are patterns of content that may lead to four areas of harm, including risk to public health and to the political process. The area of harm that the Deputy is getting at is the risk to fundamental rights, including freedom of expression. If a platform does not have the appropriate mitigation measures in place to protect freedom of expression as one of the fundamental rights, that will get picked up by the European Commission. That is at a systemic level and it takes some time for that process to work.

The second part of the answer is that, in a way, what the Deputy described is the system working as it is supposed to.

First, content gets taken down. The user is alerted and a reason is given. That can then be disputed and another decision can be made. In this case, it sounds like the matter was resolved.