A call has been made for Ireland’s media regulator to rectify its “big mistake” in removing measures to deal with “recommender algorithms” that continually feed toxic material to children, from its online safety code.
Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore made the call as she highlighted the Online Safety Monitor, a report by the Children’s Rights Alliance which warned about a lack of regulation online.
The Wicklow TD said “children are carrying around in their pockets probably the biggest threat they will face for many years”, their mobile phones. School mobile phone bans are widespread but the toxic content is there when children leave school and turn their phones on.
“One study has found it took just two minutes from setting up an account for teenage boys to be fed harmful content. The content was misogynistic, violent, extremist and racist,” she said.
David McWilliams: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this economic chaos. Buckle up’
My grandfather died by suicide. I work in the same Irish university where he taught history
Government plans to quickly remove citizenship from convicted terrorist
Contraceptive concerns: ‘When I came off the pill, everything became so much better’
“Within two hours and 32 minutes of setting up that account nearly 80 per cent of the content being recommended was harmful. The dangerous content is endless and relentless and is being deliberately funnelled into children’s accounts on a doom loop.”
The Netflix show Adolescence brought this danger into stark relief, showing “an extreme case of the tragic consequences of toxic online content. For parents, what the show demonstrated perfectly was the helplessness they often feel.
“Social media companies are making billions from feeding our children this toxic material and we as legislators are standing by and allowing it to happen.”
Raising the issue during Dáil Leaders’ Questions, she said the Children’s Rights Alliance report warned about the lack of regulation of “recommender algorithms”.
“These are the algorithms that continually feed this toxic material to children in this dangerous online bubble. There is no escape from this endless scrolling of harmful and toxic content in it.
“Initially, Coimisiún na Meán had included measures to address these poisonous algorithms in the online safety code and this was really welcomed at the time.
“However, for some reason those proposals were removed. According to the Children’s Rights Alliance this was a big mistake and their removal reduces safety for children online.”
“We need to stop this at the social media level,” she said as she asked Minister for Education Helen McEntee if she agreed it was “a mistake for Coimisiún na Meán to remove this regulation from the online safety code”.
Ms McEntee said Ireland was the first country in Europe to set up and establish an online safety commission “and the sole focus of that commission is to make sure we remove harmful and illegal content” and there were “hefty” fines of up to 10 per cent of turnover or up to €20 million for noncompliance. She said that as minister for justice she introduced “Coco’s law” which makes it illegal to share harmful content online.
“The Online Safety Commissioner needs to ensure – I know that she will – that our strategies and the commission’s strategies focus on what is actually happening here and that includes algorithms.”
She agreed that the algorithms need to be dealt with and the impact that “doom scrolling” is having on young people “is absolutely detrimental”.
The Minister for Communications will be meeting all the social-media companies in the weeks ahead, Ms McEntee said.
“We need to make sure that we are dealing with every element,” and making sure that social-media companies that are not taking down content or sticking to the codes of conduct “are either fined or that there are even greater repercussions”.
