Business

Musk’s X cancels trust and safety contract with Irish firm

McGrath’s strong response to Ifac, plans for third Dublin Airport terminal on McEvaddy land, Amazon data centres objector and Meta sparks row between regulators

Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, has cancelled a trust and safety contract with Irish outsourcing company CPL. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Wire

Ellen O’Regan
Sun Dec 10 2023 - 11:51

Musk’s X cancels trust and safety contract with Irish firm

Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, has cancelled a trust and safety contract with Irish outsourcing company CPL.

The Sunday Business Post reports that CPL has made 72 workers redundant in recent weeks, as X cancelled a legal operations contract it held with the firm.

Impacted staff were in charge of monitoring content on X in France, Germany and South Korea. The Irish-based team will be replaced by an outsourcing company based in Lisbon, but it is unclear if the new team will have as many staff as the CPL division.

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Under Musk’s ownership, X has imposed sweeping changes to its trust and safety teams, receiving criticisms from regulators and researchers over the volume of hateful content now circulating on its platform.

McGrath strongly disagrees with Ifac claims

Minister for Finance Michael McGrath has strongly disagreed with claims from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) earlier this week that he had used “fiscal gimmickry” to dress up permanent spending measures as once-off in nature in October’s budget, one of the most significant rebuttals of the watchdog by a Government Minister since its establishment.

Writing in the Sunday Business Post, McGrath said that Ifac has an “important legal mandate to fulfil”, but he robustly defended the policies and measures in Budget 2024.

The Sunday Business Post writes that McGrath also rounded on high-profile economists including Thomas Piketty and Ashoka Mody this weekend, branding their criticism of Ireland’s corporate tax system as “misplaced, lazy caricature(s) of our corporation tax revenues”.

Plans to lodge application for third Dublin Airport terminal on McEvaddy lands

A group of private landowners led by businessman Ulick McEvaddy are “very close” to finalising a decision to lodge a planning application next year for a third terminal at Dublin Airport on a 105-hectare (261-acre) site they own which sits between Dublin Airport’s two runways.

The Sunday Independent reports that the group presented a high-level vision document to Fingal County Council planners for a third terminal, which would compete directly with DAAs existing two terminals.

While the land is currently for sale, the decision to apply for planning permission could be finalised next week, in which case the site would likely be removed from the market.

The council confirmed that CWPA, the planning and architecture consultancy firm representing the landowners, requested the meeting and said that it was preparing a sustainable aviation vision document in advance of a planning proposal in 2024.

Data Protection Commissioner frustrated with EU restrictions imposed on Meta

The Sunday Business Post also reports that Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is “hugely frustrated” with European regulators’ imposition of restrictions on Facebook parent company, Meta.

In late October, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) banned Meta from relying on certain legal clauses to process users’ information and serve them behavioural ads. Graham Doyle, the DPC’s deputy commissioner, said this was “hugely frustrating” as Meta had already announced it was moving away from the banned model of operating, to a subscription model that it claimed would seek user consent before targeting them with personalised ads.

Meta launched its subscription service on November 10th, nearly two weeks before the ban imposed by the EDPB came into effect – which the Irish DPC, as lead regulator, has to enforce.

Doyle said it was a “matter of real regret, and, indeed, real concern” to the DPC that the EDPB’s decision had meant it had to divert staff away from assessing Meta’s subscription model and towards dealing with the EDPB’s ban and the legal action that “inevitably followed”.

Ellen O'Regan

Ellen O’Regan

Ellen O’Regan is an Irish Times journalist.

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