Ireland has passed legislation known as Coco's Law, requiring social media platforms and internet service providers to remove intimate images shared without consent within two days of notification, or face fines of up to 20 million euros or four percent of global turnover. The law, named after Nicole Fox Fenlon who took her own life after intimate images of her were shared online, criminalises the non-consensual distribution of intimate images and creates an offence of threatening to share such material. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee stated the legislation closes a legal gap and provides victims with a clear and rapid takedown mechanism, with provisions also covering the creation and distribution of manipulated or AI-generated intimate imagery.
A two-day takedown obligation contains the spread of image-based abuse after publication but does not prevent the initial distribution or the coercive threat that precedes it. Sextortion and intimate-image abuse typically begin in private direct messages, where an offender solicits, manipulates or generates imagery and threatens disclosure to coerce compliance or payment. Guardii's anti-sextortion and AI-generated CSAM detection modules intercept the coercive exchange and the threat itself in real time, flagging the conversation to a parent, school safeguarding lead or platform moderator before the image circulates publicly, reducing the window in which a victim experiences the acute distress that contributed to tragedies such as Nicole Fox Fenlon's. Rapid takedown addresses harm reduction; real-time detection addresses harm prevention.
