Murphy accuses government of letting Twitter off the hook

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy has accused the government of letting Twitter off the hook.

Speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday (February 4), the Dublin South-West TD noted that French authorities conducted a raid on Twitter’s offices in Paris, and have compelled owner Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino to appear before the French courts.

Despite Twitter’s European headquarters being located in Dublin, no such action has been taken against Twitter, and representatives from the company refused to appear before a Dáil committee on online safety.

Murphy said that Musk has turned Twitter into a machine for the “mass production of child sexual abuse imagery and image-based sexual abuse of women.”

“We know the horrific, traumatising impact this abuse has on victims. It is why image-based sexual abuse, including through the use of deepfakes, was made a criminal offence six years ago but the government’s approach to big tech appears to be see no evil, hear no evil.”

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that the Gardaí were dealing with up to 200 complaints and lines of inquiry, adding, “we do not interfere with prosecutors in this jurisdiction and do not interfere with the Gardaí.”

Murphy said that the government’s approach to Twitter was passive, relative to how British, French and Spanish governments were dealing with the social media platform.

“Is there a criminal investigation into Twitter or is the state simply kicking the can to the European Commission instead of launching criminal investigations against the app?”, he asked.

The Taoiseach replied, “I take offence at the Deputy’s very dishonest portrayal of the government’s position in respect of this and his deliberate conflation of a different series of events to give the impression that the government somehow condones the behaviour of Twitter, Grok or Elon Musk.”

“That is reprehensible political behaviour by him, but it is par for the course all the time to distort the actual truth,” he remarked.

Murphy said, “I am not saying the government condones the production of sexual abuse material. I am saying it does not want to do anything about it because it does not want to annoy or harm its relationship with big tech and big tech investment here is more important to the government than standing up to these people.”

The Taoiseach took offence to Murphy’s charges, calling them “reprehensible,” saying “the idea that we would give priority to not standing up to big tech over the generation and sharing of child abuse material is an absolutely shocking and reprehensible assertion. How dare you?”

“Who the hell do you think you are? Do you have some moral superiority over everybody else? You do not have moral superiority over anybody else in this House. Everybody in this House is at one in terms of going after anybody who would generate and disseminate child abuse material, and the legislation is there to do that. The state does not get involved in a Garda investigation,” he said in response to Murphy’s charges.