FOLLOWING Media Minister Patrick O’Donovan’s announcement this past week that he deleted his X account following reports of its Grok AI tool creating sexual content of women and children, one Limerick councillor has spoken out about the social media exodus many are making.
Minister O’Donovan made headlines when he first said that Grok, X’s AI technology, was not responsible for explicit images, including child sex abuse images, that were generated using the platform’s AI image generation tool, suggesting rather that it was the users generating the illicil materials that were to blame. However, within 24 hours he had deleted his X account over the digital undressing scandal that has engulfed the Elon Musk-owned platform.
Speaking to the Limerick Post this week, Social Democrats councillor Elisa O’Donovan said she was “very suspicious” of all the men leaving this site over concerns of sexual violence against women and children.
“The reality is that happens on all of the internet, even social media sites that are regulated, and a lot in our society also. It is not unique to one app. Let’s tackle the root cause please, which is misogyny, which is endemic across every community,” Cllr O’Donovan insisted.
Those that leave this app, she opined, are the ones that are privileged enough to have their voices heard and listened to wherever they go.
She suggested that “they also probably have never experienced the level of abuse and violence that many women experience everyday online for sharing their opinions and thoughts”.
“Women, and I would say especially women of colour, have experienced digital gender violence for the last decade. It happens across all platforms, even moderated ones like Reddit and YouTube. From my own experience, it is usually smear campaigns and  deeply personal and gendered harassment.”
According to the City West representative, the strategy in all of this is to “undermine women’s voices and our legitimacy”, and to make the abuse so intolerable that they will leave.
“However, what happens if women leave social media, especially political women? We will have no voice in the digital world and we don’t have the privilege of being a voice at so many important decision-making tables in our county and country. So unfortunately the digital world will continue to be a hostile space for women and Grok will be making nude images of us, but I refused to be bullied and abused out of a space that facilitates me to have voice on important issues like misogyny and gendered violence in our society,” she said.