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Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee
The only platform that refused to cooperate and take down "vile" posts was Elon Musk's X, the justice minister said...
Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee has claimed that
most social media companies complied with the government's requests to take down posts during last week's Dublin riots. However, Elon Musk's X refused, the minister said on Wednesday.
The minister's statement follows
mass unrest that erupted in the republic's capital last Thursday over the arrest of a man who stabbed five people, including three children, outside a primary school. A five-year-old girl and a woman in her 30s are in critical condition. The man was later found to be an Irish citizen who had immigrated from Algeria.
During the unrest, angry rioters ended up setting fire to buses and police cars, looting shops, and clashing with law enforcement.
More than 30 people were arrested in the aftermath, with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris claiming that the unrest was the fault of "a complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology."
Taking questions in place of prime minister Leo Varadkar in the Irish parliament, McEntee was asked to comment on
police claims that "far-right ringleaders" had used "sophisticated communication online" to gather and organize troops during the riots.
She responded by stating that the country's security services were "actively engaging with
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, or X" to take down what she described as "vile messages."
While most platforms were cooperating, "X were not. They did engage. They did not fulfill their own customer standards," McEntee said.
Comment: Have the Russians just outed the spider at the center of this web?