The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) has criticised aspects of proposed new online safety legislation.
The Commission says the current approach in the draft Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill to defining harmful online content is vague and open-ended, and lacks legal certainty .
It also says it is concerned that the role and functions of the new Online Safety Commissioner lacks detail in the planned new law.
The comments were made in the Commission s submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Media, which is considering the general scheme of the bill. This draft law is seeking to tackle some of the most important challenges facing our society; from the moderation of online content by big tech to children s online safety, and broader issues of online harassment and tackling online hate, said Sinéad Gibney, IHREC Chief Commissioner.
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Slow adoption of law could delay Irish online safety commissioner until 2024 Independent.ie 11/03/2021 Adrian Weckler
Ireland’s online safety commissioner will not fully be in place until 2024, social media networks believe.
The delay could infuriate other EU countries, who are already angry at Ireland for what they see as being too lax in its approach to regulating Irish-based tech giants.
In a formal submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Media’s consultation on the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill (OSMR), Facebook says it does not expect the State to have the watchdog up and running for three years.
This is because of the slow passage of the bill through the Oireachtas and work yet to be done in selecting the Commission and defining the scope of its powers.