Coimisiún na Meán opened its first-ever Digital Services Act investigation on November 12, 2025, targeting how X handles user complaints about content moderation decisions. Nine months later, the regulator has yet to reach a substantive finding — not because the underlying facts are unresolved, but because X has turned the investigation's every procedural step into a separate lawsuit. As of July 2026, X has lodged 12 judicial review actions against the Coimisiún since the investigation opened, including five new cases filed July 21–22 challenging individual complaint adjudications. The earliest of those new cases won't get a High Court hearing before November 2026 (Irish Examiner).
What the Regulator Is Actually Investigating
The underlying inquiry is narrower than the litigation around it suggests. Coimisiún na Meán, acting in its capacity as Ireland's Digital Services Coordinator under Part 8B of the Broadcasting Act 2009 as amended, is examining whether X complies with Article 20 of the DSA — the provision requiring platforms to give users an accessible internal system to appeal moderation decisions, and to properly notify them of outcomes (Coimisiún na Meán). The inquiry traces to complaints from the NGO HateAid and at least one individual user. If Coimisiún na Meán finds violations, it can impose a fine of up to 6% of X's turnover, though any sanction requires confirmation by the Circuit or High Court before it takes effect.
Steelmanning the Regulator
Coimisiún na Meán's underlying position is not unreasonable. The DSA's complaint-handling requirement exists because appeal mechanisms are often the only recourse an ordinary user has against an automated or opaque moderation call, and a regulator investigating whether that mechanism actually works is doing exactly what the statute contemplates. The Irish courts have also, at points, sided with the regulator on the merits of individual motions: on March 27, 2026, Mr Justice Cian Ferriter refused X a stay on the investigation and awarded costs against the company, finding X's lawyers had "overstated the extent to which the platform would be prejudiced" and had "understated the public interest in the 'orderly operation' of the complaints process" (RTÉ). That is a court, not the regulator, concluding X's harm claims didn't hold up.
Where the Case for X Gets Stronger
But the sheer structure of the dispute reveals something Coimisiún na Meán's design invites rather than resists. At a July 2, 2026 hearing, X's counsel argued the regulator was "kicking the can down the road" — passing complaints to an internal "supervisory team" that can leave them, in counsel's phrase, "undead," only to be "reanimated" later by an unnamed officer with no fixed timeline for resolution (Irish Times). Whatever one thinks of X's broader legal strategy, that specific complaint is hard to dismiss: an investigation process with no defined procedural timeline, run by a two-year-old regulator applying novel EU powers for the first time, is a process almost engineered to generate satellite litigation over process rather than substance. Twelve judicial reviews in nine months is not what an efficient enforcement regime looks like, whichever side is more at fault for it.
The Delay Is the Point — For Both Sides
The uncomfortable truth is that delay currently serves both parties' incentives simultaneously, which is precisely why it keeps compounding. X gains nine-plus months (and counting) without a finding against a company whose owner has separately clashed with EU regulators over speech and moderation policy. Coimisiún na Meán, meanwhile, faces no statutory clock forcing it to resolve individual complaint referrals quickly, so there is little institutional cost to the drift — even as it becomes the story instead of the underlying Article 20 question. Ireland regulates a disproportionate share of the EU's largest platforms simply because their European headquarters sit in Dublin, and that structural burden means procedural gaps here don't stay local — they become the template every other VLOP's counsel reads before deciding whether litigation is a viable strategy against the DSA anywhere in the bloc.
What Should Change
The fix is not less scrutiny of platform complaint-handling — Article 20 compliance is a legitimate, proportionate ask, and X's own moderation-appeal architecture is fair game for inquiry. The fix is procedural: Coimisiún na Meán should adopt, and publish, defined timelines for how long a complaint can sit with a "supervisory team" before an adjudication decision issues. A regulator that commits to its own clock removes the strongest part of X's argument and leaves only the substantive DSA question — the one actually worth deciding — in front of the court. Right now, both the platform and the public are stuck litigating the process instead of getting an answer.