Social Media

New rules governing social media companies based in Ireland aim to be "robust" and equip a media commission with “significant enforcement powers”, the Department of Communications has said. It said that Minister Richard Bruton intends to bring a general scheme of the bill to the Gov

Social media giants including Facebook and Twitter are likely to face significant fines for misuse of personal data, Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon has warned. Ms Dixon made the comments at the Secure Computing Forum at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), the Irish Independent reports.

Social media giant Facebook has been asked to provide more information to the Data Protection Commission about its now-suspended practice of handing user audio clips to external contractors. Facebook is one of a number of Internet giants who have come under criticism for using contractors to review

Gardaí have referred nearly a dozen people for prosecution in relation to social media posts identifying the killers of schoolgirl Ana Kriégel, according to reports. The anonymity of the two 14-year-olds, who were found guilty of murder in June, is protected by both court orders and le

Lawyers for a man acquitted of rape last year have told a court that his legal entitlement to anonymity is being breached by Google search results of his name. Mícheál O'Higgins SC told Mr Justice Michael White that when his client's name is placed into the Google search engine the res

Facebook has been ordered to pay a record-breaking $5 billion penalty by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for privacy violations following an investigation into its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The FTC alleges that Facebook failed to safeguard user data from third parties and used t

US President Donald Trump is not allowed under the First Amendment of the US Constitution to block his critics on Twitter, judges have ruled. A court challenge was brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and seven people who had been blocked by the president's fam

According to Advocate General Szpunar, Facebook can be ordered to seek and identify all comments identical to a defamatory comment that has been found to be illegal, and equivalent comments in so far as the latter originate from the same user. In the present case, the EU law relied on does not regul

Facebook has lost an appeal against the decision to refer a complaint about EU-US data transfer to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling. Emphasising that there were significant limitations on the issues which could be considered on such an appeal, the Chief Justice, Mr

Ciaran O'Shiel, associate in IP, media and data disputes at A&L Goodbody in Belfast, considers the consequences of a recent judgment of the UK Supreme Court. “He tried to strangle me. What would those words convey to the ordinary reasonable reader of a Facebook post?” is how Lord Ker

Proposals backed by a senior European politician to ban anonymity on social media could have an adverse impact on people living under repressive regimes, media lawyers in Ireland have warned. German politician Manfred Weber, the frontrunner for next president of the European Commission, told a TV de

The UK Government has proposed the creation of an independent regulator as part of a series of measures to ensure social media companies and tech firms keep their users safe, including possible liability for individual members of senior management. The measures are set out in the Online Harms White

International law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has assisted a children's charity to develop proposals for the statutory regulation of social media companies. The NSPCC is campaigning in favour of a new "social media regulator" which could issue fines of up to £20 million to social media compan

A dissident republican political party has launched legal action against social media giant Facebook over allegations of "censorship". Saoradh, which was set up in 2016 with the support of prominent republican critics of the Northern Ireland peace process, claims that its members "have been banned f