X representatives 'not aware' of Séamas O'Reilly's account suspension

Access to Séamas O'Reilly's account was restored, but when asked about the case, representatives from X said that they were not aware of the specifics. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

Representatives of social media site X (formerly Twitter) told politicians that they were not aware of the case of Irish Examiner columnist Séamas O'Reilly, whose account was locked shortly after he criticised the platform.

Staff from the Elon Musk-owned social media site met with TDs and Senators from the Oireachtas Media Committee to discuss efforts being made to tackle misinformation. The company had declined an invitation to meet in public session before Christmas.

Sources said that the meeting was "entirely, deeply frustrating", with one saying that "very little had been learned" about the company's efforts. Alarm was expressed, however, at the number of human moderators employed by the site, which has dropped considerably over the last 18 months.

Mr O'Reilly said that he had received a notification which "claimed I’d been suspended for 'violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam'". He had written a week previously that a scam account on the website "had a blue check mark, meaning that, unlike me, it pays money every month to Elon Musk’s vastly indebted and unprofitable platform, a situation which would greatly disincentive his company taking proactive measures to weed them out".

In a subsequent column for this paper, he wrote:

"Immediately after I got the suspension notification, I clicked the little Appeal link on the ban notification, mildly gratified that, after a decade and a half of using Twitter, I had a new button to push, and one that didn’t seem to be just yet one more way of separating me from my cash.

I have heard nothing back and nor, at time of writing, have any of the news organisations currently asking whether an Irish-headquartered tech behemoth has really deleted the account of an Irish journalist for critiquing their operations in an Irish newspaper.

"The truth couldn’t be that mundane, surely? So cack-handedly obvious, so stultifyingly inane? I sincerely hope not."

Access to Mr O'Reilly's account was subsequently restored, but when asked about the case, representatives from X said that they were not aware of the specifics of the case.

Sources said that they were told that the company's algorithm now places more of an emphasis on likes and shares and not on previously trusted news sources, and that bots or automated accounts are highly active on the site.

However, the company assured members that it would abide by proposed hate speech laws here in Ireland. The legislation has faced opposition across the spectrum, notably from Mr Musk who has pledged to fund legal defences of those accused of breaching the law. However, representatives said that they would abide by any legal provisions laid out in the law.

The company told members that it had acted quickly on the night of the Dublin riots, taking down 1,230 pieces of content from November 24 to November 28.

Members said that they were unimpressed that the company's opening statement had only been received an hour or so before proceedings began and at the length of time used to present taken by X representatives.