TikTok has said that it is closely monitoring all online content in relation to the tragic deaths of five teenagers following the head on collision after their car had been driving the wrong way down the M9 motorway at around 3am on Sunday morning.
The company insisted that it removes all content which promotes or glorifies violence and crimes which could harm people's lives, including risky driving. It added that the platform is removing all videos and accounts which break the rules.
TikTok stated that between January and March this year, 99.1% of the content which was removed for violating its policies regarding violent and criminal behaviour, was taken down before it was reported to the social media platform.
This comes as Coimisiún na Meán had also announced that they had been in close contact with TikTok in order to obtain more information about the response to content relating to risky or reckless driving.
Elsewhere, Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, has said that anyone under the age of 18 are restricted from seeing certain content or harmful activities at people, property, business or animals.
Along with this, Sinn Féin TD, Matt Carthy, who is also the Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, has said that social media companies must be held to account on this issue.
"We need to tackle the growing problem of the glorification of these type of actions on social media," Mr Carthy said earlier today. "Social media companies need to be held to account for allowing these type of videos to remain on pages for prolonged periods of time".
"This is a broken system that needs to be addressed".
He continued: "Government need to take very seriously the ability of people to post what are grossly irresponsible illegal actions on social media and for them to remain on social media pages for a prolonged period of time.
"It is invariably and undoubtedly at this stage leading to copycat type of actions and in some instances, as we've seen over the weekend, with absolutely devastating consequences".
Mr Carthy went on to state that the Government must take immediate action to find solutions to this problem.
"This, in my view, is now a growing threat to public safety that requires urgent and coordinated action on the part of government, in collaboration with the gardaí," he said.
"It's not good enough for Government ministers to say that they're waiting for the gardaí to propose solutions to these issues", he said. "What's required is an urgent and immediate intervention and a coordinated set of actions that actually ensure that we have enough gardaí in respect of roads policing.
"We also need to ensure that gardaí have the training and the resources necessary to deal with these incidents," he added.
