Irish Examiner View: EU laws on social media a long time coming

The new EU rules on social media have been described as groundbreaking legislation.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has been warned that his company is not ready for the new rules. Picture:

It has long been a source of frustration and anger that the big social media companies appear to be uncontrollable when it comes to protecting children, preventing misogyny, stopping consumer fraud and hate speech, protecting democratic elections, and curbing disinformation.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) were agreed politically by member states last April, and the new rules imposed on social media companies came into force last month. The first obligation of these platforms and search engines, to publish user numbers, will come into force in February.