Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 September 2025

Committee on European Union Affairs

Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán

2:00 am

Dr. John Evans:

I do not know how many people are employed on the policy teams of platforms. I have already discussed a little how systemic regulation is intended to work under the Digital Services Act if a platform's service presents a risk. There are four categories of risk. One is electoral integrity. The second is health. Fundamental rights is another, including free speech and so on. The last one is proliferation of illegal content online. If the measures platforms have in place are insufficient to mitigate the risks associated with those areas, then enforcement action can be taken.

We spoke earlier about misinformation and disinformation. The moderation teams, processes or a combination of teams and technology need to be sufficiently robust to mitigate the risks I spoke about. Some of these issues are the subject of active cases that the European Commission has open. X is involved in one that is addressing some of these issues specifically. That is the way you get at that. There is no perfect size. It depends on what kind of content the platform has, the features the service has and its reach. The higher the risk, the stronger the mitigation the platform is supposed to put in place. If it is not doing that, then it can be tackled under the DSA.

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