New EDMO Ireland report examines if tech companies acted to protect Ireland's 2025 presidential election

EDMO Ireland has published the report Are Tech Companies Meeting Obligations to Protect Democratic Elections? Evidence from Ireland’s Presidential Election, authored by Aidan O'Brien and Dr Eileen Culloty. This work is part of a series of reports EDMO hubs have carried out in EU member states between 2025 and 2026.

The report analysed the effectiveness of the Rapid Response System, established by the EU Commission in 2024, especially considering the reliance on voluntary platforms' collaboration. Under this system, EDMO projects can flag election-related content to platforms, which are then supposed to review those flags as a priority, though participation remains entirely voluntary.

For Ireland's presidential election, EDMO Ireland sought to bring systematic rigour to the process by logging and flagging any content that appeared to breach platforms' own terms of service. This approach allowed researchers to assess whether platforms enforce their own rules and, at the very least, gain a clearer understanding of how they interpret those rules in practice.

Rather than providing a breakdown of disinformation during the election, the report highlights deeper structural issues in content moderation, including how platforms exempt public figures from their rules, fail to prevent banned users from creating new accounts, and struggle to apply their policies consistently.

Key findings

Response rates varied by platform. Instagram was the most likely to act, responding to 59 percent of reported items, followed by TikTok (54%), YouTube (48%), and Facebook (44%). LinkedIn was the least likely to act, taking no action on reported items.

Responses varied significantly by content type. Platforms removed or geolocked all illegal content but only acted on half of the AI-generated content. Only YouTube and TikTok acted on AI-generated content.

Platforms largely failed to act on electoral disinformation. Overall, platforms only acted on 13 of the 85 items flagged as electoral disinformation. Only Instagram and TikTok took action on these items.

Enforcement on harassment and abuse was inconsistent. Of the 13 items reported as harassment and abuse, platforms only acted on 9 items. These included videos of public figures and canvassers being abused and threatened on the street.

Response times varied widely. Reported items were generally addressed within 24 hours, but many remained active for days, which is surprising given the urgency of an election. TikTok had the fastest response time, averaging 6 hours.

Account enforcement was weak. In many cases, flagged content was associated with accounts that were monetised or had previously been banned. Some items were posted by figures already publicly known for propagating false claims or engaging in harassment.

Platform representatives appeared unfamiliar with the election context. There was little evidence of pro-active measures. While items were reported as potential breaches of platforms' own terms of service, platforms were repeatedly unable to explain inconsistencies in the application of their own rules. Signposting to authoritative sources, corrective information, and other proactive information integrity efforts was poor across all platforms.

Click below to read the full report.

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