TikTok removed 42,000 dangerous videos, can't say view counts

You'd expect a company facing questions after a fatal crash to come prepared with hard numbers. TikTok didn't. Appearing before Ireland's Oireachtas Media committee alongside Google and Meta, the platform was unable to say how many wrong-way driving videos existed on its service in Ireland, or how many times they'd been watched despite direct questioning from committee members.

Five teenagers died when their car was driven the wrong way down the M9 in Co Kildare and collided with another vehicle, seriously injuring a child and three women from the same family. That crash, alongside other wrong-way driving incidents, pushed dangerous driving content on social media into sharp political focus.

Global head of trust and safety policy, Zachary Hecht, informed the committee that the social media platform had discovered 42,000 posts involving dangerous activities or challenges throughout the first six months of the year, ranging from dangerous driving to dangerous tool usage.

He added that 99.6% of the dangerous content had been removed through proactive measures, with 83.4% having not garnered any view prior to their removal. However, upon questioning by Senator Alison Comyn regarding the total number of watches on those 42,000 posts, Zachary Hecht had no answer to provide.

Chairman Alan Kelly didn't hold back, calling it "deeply concerning" that TikTok appeared without quantitative figures on how many times policy-violating videos were watched before removal.

Kelly said he'd personally seen dangerous content shown to him by his 16-year-old daughter, and argued TikTok's two billion euro annual safety budget wasn't being spent well.

Later given a second chance to provide the data, TikTok's Irish public policy head Susan Moss declined, saying the company didn't want to risk giving an inaccurate figure.

Hecht said TikTok had found 1,600 pieces of content tied to vehicle theft and risky driving in the month since the M9 crash, with under 2% fewer than 32 videos showing any indication of wrong-way driving specifically.

TD Peter "Chap" Cleere pushed back, saying he'd personally seen "way more than 30 videos" depicting the behaviour.

Jeremy Godfrey, who is the Coimisiún na Meán Executive Chairman, told the committee that the regulator itself had started six investigations into possible breaches by large tech companies, and four more in conjunction with the European Commission.

Joanna Byrne, Sinn Féin TD, disputed the idea of this "constituting taking action," citing delayed response on such matters as non-consensual AI-generated images.

Godfrey defended the regulator's actions, saying that the regulator works in a "very litigious environment," with nearly all investigations met with a judicial review straight away, but added that the regulator was not afraid to fight.