Tiktok to tell politicians that responsibility for criminal acts ‘rests with the individual’

Senior Tiktok officials will tell the committee that the company removes content that promotes activities that 'could cause significant physical harm, including promoting risk driving'.

Tiktok will insist that it cannot address the underlying causes of criminal and dangerous behaviour when representatives appear before politicians on Wednesday.

The social media giant, which has 2.4m users in Ireland, is to be questioned on the measures online platforms are taking to prevent joyriding videos, which have featured teenagers travelling the wrong way down motorways, spreading online.

It comes after a number of high-profile cases in recent months, including a fatal crash on the M9 last month — in which five masked teenagers were killed after driving a BMW the wrong way down the motorway.

Three sisters and a seven-year-old boy travelling in another car were struck by the BMW and taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Tiktok representatives will tell the committee that online content is “only one part of a much wider picture”.

“While platforms have a responsibility to ensure they are not facilitating or amplifying criminal behaviour, responsibility for an act of criminality ultimately rests with the individual who chooses to commit it,” Tiktok representatives will say.

Senior Tiktok officials will tell the committee that the company removes content that promotes activities that “could cause significant physical harm, including promoting risk driving”.

They will say that the platform has systems designed to identify content that breaches their rules and blocks or removes it. It will be argued that thousands of videos were taken down in Ireland in the first half of the year, 99.6% of which were removed proactively before any user reported them.

They will say: “We recognise the very real concern about content which gloried or encourages dangerous and illegal behaviour, and the potential for such content to normalise these activities. The recent events on our roads have brought that concern into sharp focus.

“We understand the profound impact these events have had on those directly affected, and on the wider community.”

Meta, Google, and Coimisiún na Meán will also attend the meeting.

Committee chairman and Labour TD Alan Kelly said the meeting will focus on the responsibilities of social media platforms and the regulatory framework governing illegal content online,

He said ahead of the meeting: “We will also consider the important distinction identified by Coimisiún na Meán between content that depicts criminal activity and content that promotes or glorifies it.

• Elaine Loughlin is Political Editor.