Opinion: McGrath must take on giants of social media

Cork man and now EU Commissioner, Michael McGrath, could single-handedly save democracy by forcing social media companies to turn off their algorithms this autumn.

As Europe’s Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, it is McGrath’s job to introduce a ‘Democracy Shield’ in the autumn.

What he chooses to do, or not do, will have consequences for everyone from Cork to Copenhagen, and beyond.

Why is this important? Elections across Europe are on a knife edge between democracy and authoritarianism. The far-right Alternative For Germany party polls just 4% behind Germany’s leading party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s party is 11% ahead of its closest rival. In Poland, the far right PiS party recently won the presidential election.

While voters rejected far-right extremism in Ireland’s last general election, the country is not immune to this kind of political upheaval.

Neither is Cork. Just a few weeks ago a large rally outside City Hall heard one far right would-be political leader quote scripture and denounce “false gods”.

There are various reasons why authoritarianism is on the rise, but toxic social media is decisive at a moment of knife-edge elections. Tech companies such as YouTube, TikTok, and X promised to bring us closer together. Instead, they have feed us a personalised diet of sensationalism and outrage to keep us scrolling.

Or worse. The U.S State Department has made clear that it intends to boost authoritarians into power in Europe if it can, including Le Pen, Viktor Orban, Germany’s AfD, and other far-right parties by name.

Social media feeds driven by algorithms are now the primary source of information on political issues for Europeans under 30, according to the EU-wide Eurobarometer survey. Control over the tech firms and their algorithms empowers President Trump to boost Europe’s authoritarians into power.

Imagine two neighbours walking down Pana, both worried about the cost-of-living and housing crises. When they go home and open their phones, they’re shown entirely different worlds. One sees outrage about inaction by government. But the other is fed fear about people they’ve never met. Instead of uniting over shared concerns, they’re pitched against each other by an algorithm.

Hate and hysteria are amplified because they are highly engaging, and the more time we spend scrolling, the more revenue platforms take in from selling ads in our feeds.

The same logic pushes videos of self-harm and suicide at our kids, and amplifies hysteria and division that derails our politics.

Each person receives the perfect drop of poison for their individual ear, playing upon their worst instincts, and driving them to extreme opinions.

We have known this for a decade. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a series of secret research studies from inside Meta. As far back as 2016, Meta knew that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools... our recommendation systems grow the problem”.

Unfortunately, truth cannot prevail against the algorithm. Social media is not a town square where two sides debate. It is a rigged game in a casino where the house always wins. The algorithm is a tide that crushes everything. Until it is switched off, trying to communicate facts and debunk lies cannot work.

Nor can we delete or censor our way out of this problem. A second secret Meta study concluded that content moderation is impossible at large scale and the focus should be on avoiding algorithmic amplification of the content: “We are never going to remove everything harmful from a communications medium used by so many, but we can at least… stop magnifying harmful content by giving it unnatural distribution”.

Ending that “unnatural distribution” is precisely the solution. Without the artificial magnification of the algorithm, extreme material will be lost in the deluge of things posted by other people in that same instant. It will be unseen except by a tiny niche.

Michael McGrath’s Democracy Shield must include a shutdown of social media recommender algorithms, at least until they are proven safe for democracy. For most people, switching off the algorithm is a no-brainer. At the very least, these dangerous systems must not be on unless users consciously decide, in full knowledge, to choose to switch them on.

A national poll by Ireland Thinks showed 82% of the Irish public wants this. People want regulatory authorities to force the social media companies to stop building up intimate data about people’s sexual desires, political views, and health, and using that data to pick what videos are shown to each individual.

It is common sense that we, the people - not oligarchs’ algorithms - should have the freedom to decide what we say, see, and share online. No foreign oligarch should be able to algorithmically censor us and push their propaganda into our feed.

When unnatural distribution is switched off, extreme material will again have to compete with the torrent of cat videos and other things posted by people on digital platforms at that same instant. We will still have digital platforms, but extremism will again be niche rather than the norm.

Elon Musk’s posts will no longer be forced into the feeds of people who do not follow him. YouTube will no longer push extremism.

Michael McGrath was first elected for Fianna Fáil in Cork South Central in 2007 after being a member of Passage West Town Council from 1999 to 2007, and a member of Cork County Council for Carrigaline from 2004 to 2007.

Just two decades later, this former town councillor is in a historic position to determine whether Europe’s liberal democracy survives or collapses.

This is McGrath’s moment. We need him to deliver.