Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen is expected to call for an independent review of the Data Protection Commission when she appears before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media today.
Ms Haugen is expected to tell TDs and Senators that tech companies based in Ireland have "got away with it" when it comes to enforcing data protection regulations and that the Government should learn from these criticisms when establishing a new online safety regime.
The Data Protection Commission has rejected the criticisms and has invited Ms Haugen to a meeting to discuss the commission's work.
At today's committee hearing, Ms Haugen is expected to accuse Facebook of fuelling ethnic violence in countries like Myanmar and Ethiopia and is expected to tell members that Ireland has a unique role to play in holding social media companies to account.
Ms Haugen left her job at Facebook last year claiming the company was guilty of harming children, stoking division and weakening democracies.
She also accused the social media giant of putting profit ahead of public safety.
Facebook's parent company Meta has denied the accusations.
"Contrary to claims about our company, we've always had the commercial incentive to remove harmful content from our platform," a Meta spokesperson said.
"While we have rules against harmful content and publish regular transparency reports, we don’t believe that businesses such as ours should be making these decisions on our own.
"We...
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