Irish Examiner view: Social media must play by the rules

Taoiseach and Tánaiste have added their voices to the growing clamour of warnings from security chiefs and rights campaigners about Twitter

The leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, have both spoken out about the Twitter social media platform, recently rebranded as 'X'. File picture: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews

It might be unusual for politicians to agree about much, but it has been welcome to see the social media behemoth X (formerly Twitter) being rounded upon for allowing abusive and hateful accounts remain active.

Both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have been united in their opinion that the Elon Musk-owned company has taken a step too far — by instructing staff not to suspend users who post racist, homophobic, and sexist content — with Leo Varadkar going as far as to describe the online platform as a “sewer”.