Irish regulator probes X over age checks, with 10% of turnover at stake

Ireland’s media regulator has opened an investigation into whether X’s age assurance and parental controls meet the online safety code, with sanctions of up to EUR 20M or 10% of relevant turnover. X lost a High Court challenge to that code last July and was allowed to appeal it in January, so it is being investigated under rules it is still contesting.

Ireland’s media regulator has opened an investigation into X over its age checks and parental controls, Bloomberg reported. The platform carries adult content while admitting users under 16.

Coimisiun na Mean is examining what it calls the potentially ineffective implementation of age assurance on the service, and whether the parental controls it offers actually work.

“Platforms which allow users under the age of 16 must have parental controls which are under the control of parents and guardians,” said commissioner John Evans.

The regulator says X’s controls may not be effective, lack minimum requirements, are hard to locate and are not brought to users’ attention at sign-up.

A breach of the online safety code carries the greater of EUR 20M or 10% of relevant annual turnover. The code has bound video-sharing platforms since last year.

What makes this more than a national inquiry is that X sued to stop this code, and lost.

Mr Justice Conleth Bradley dismissed its judicial review on 29 July last year, holding that Part B sat within the audiovisual directive and the 2009 Act and did not conflict with the Digital Services Act, RTE reported.

X had argued regulatory overreach. In January it was permitted to appeal to the Court of Appeal, on what Bradley called points of law of public interest about how the two regimes interact.

Ireland has been here before. Its data protection commission went to court in 2024 over Grok training on European users’ data, and X agreed to pause it.

Ireland matters here because it is X’s home regulator. Under country-of-origin rules an Irish finding on video-sharing obligations reaches the whole single market, and most large platforms are established in Dublin.

Brussels has acted separately. The Commission fined X EUR 120M in December over its paid checkmark, its advertising repository and researcher data access, and Ofcom’s Grok investigation is still open.

X did not reply to a request for comment from Bloomberg. France legislated first in Europe on children and social media, after Australia’s ban began in December 2025.

The appeal decides more than X’s position. It asks whether a national safety code can require more than the directive it implements while the DSA runs alongside, and the answer binds every video platform established in Ireland.