Left-wing activists involved in lobbying Big Tech to censor political content have admitted that they have lost their direct influence over Twitter’s European headquarters in Dublin as a consequence of Elon Musk’s takeover of the company last year—a move that undermines their ability to influence content moderation across the EU.
The comments were made by Niamh McDonald, Director of The Hope and Courage Collective, a state-funded civil advocacy group staffed by left-wing activists that specialises in lobbying American Big Tech companies based in Ireland, at a hearing of the Irish Parliament on March 5th.
Ireland is fast becoming the nerve centre of content moderation for all of Europe due to the presence of large multinationals in the country, with Tuesday’s parliamentary hearing dealing with the influence social media companies played in last November’s Dublin riots and the broader rise in nativist sentiment.
In her remarks before Irish parliamentarians, McDonald, herself a former activist for a Marxist-Leninist group in Ireland, stated that her organisation had lost its regular liaisons with Twitter European HQ in Dublin, partially influenced by cutbacks to content moderation teams and the libertarian management style of Elon Musk.
We had a professional relationship with Twitter with good engagement, but since the new ownership and the cutbacks, there has been no engagement. We actually don’t think it’s strategically a good use of our time to engage with Twitter. We feel that it’s better that we can go somewhere where we can get the impact that we need.
McDonald also informed the committee that TikTok is a lot more responsive to requests to remove content and that her NGO has been taking an active role in the rollout of the DSA, a new EU edict that regulates content across the EU.Twitter’s European headquarters has seen a major professional turnover in the past year in the wake of Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. The social media giant’s operation was previously staffed by former Irish officials and civil advocacy groups and has been repeatedly plagued by accusations of covertly cooperating with the Left in Ireland.
Musk’s corporate purge of the Left from the organisation prompted a high-profile legal case by former Dublin executives of the company, with the billionaire entrepreneur forcing new employees to sign a free speech pledge to continue working.
Social media platforms such as Twitter have played an instrumental role in the liberalisation of Irish society over the past decade, with abortion and gay marriage referenda. Musk has stated his intention to take on a legal challenge against prospective hate speech legislation in Ireland due to the impact it would have on Twitter’s ability to operate in Europe.
While Ireland is experiencing its own rise of right-wing populism over a worsening asylum crisis, it is set to become an increasingly large cog in global tech censorship, with clear evidence that content regulation outside of Twitter/X is already being penetrated by the far Left.
MacDonald and The Hope and Courage Collective did not reply to press inquiries at the time of publication.
