Social media recommendations should be accepted across government, minister says

Vivienne Clarke

The chair of the Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport Committee Alan Kelly has said that he hopes all the recommendations of the committee will be accepted across government.

“I don't think it's really a political issue, it should be more consensus that we can actually help and deal with these issues in the coming months, particularly during the EU Presidency,” he told Newstalk Breakfast with Anton Savage.

The Oireachtas Committee will meet this morning and publish a report on the impact of social media on the under-16s.

Not one of the submissions recommended a ban on social media for Under-16s, Kelly said.

“We took a range of submissions and went through them all, not one actually recommended that this is the approach we should take.

"Any of the expert witnesses that came in, those from a technological, those from a regulatory point of view, those from a cyber safe as regards to the protection of children, and indeed those who have concerns in relation to privacy, any of those, not one of them actually advocated for an under-16 ban," he said.

“And as a committee, obviously there would be different views, but by and large more or less nearly all the committee are of that view as well.”

The baseline was that social media companies wanted to make money.

“We have to be very clear about that. So, we have to regulate at a European level, hopefully across the board, working with like-minded countries.”

There was a range of recommendations in the report, he added. It had been compiled not just for children, but also for adults.

“Technology's moving at such a pace that the idea that you could bring in a ban, and that it could be unilateral, and it could be effective, and that it couldn't be got around, just nobody believed it, if I'm being frank.

“And furthermore, working with the AI committee, we will be looking at what is going on in other jurisdictions over the coming months as well, and looking at what's going on in particular in Australia.”

Kelly called for algorithms to be properly managed and regulated so that the default position was that they were turned off so people’s data could not be tracked.

“We also need a transparent, independent audited system in relation to how these are run. Ban infinite scrolling and continuous feed design. Ban on autoplay videos at continuous. Ban basically algorithms that basically keep pushing content continuously in relation to what they believe you want to see, even if it could be harmful or not.

“Our report is identifying the key principles and the key issues we feel need to be addressed. It would be great if it was done at European level. But if it's not done at European level, we're going to have to do it here.

“We have to try and make a change because if we don't, what's continuously going to happen is that you'll see that basically the harm that we all know about, we heard about many, many different formats, many different ways will continue."

Kelly added that with the EU presidency coming up, "we need to lead on this".

"I think this is the period where we could bring in some principles in relation to this.

"I'd love to see a lot of the recommendations that we're bringing forward in relation to disinformation, in relation to media literacy across Ireland, in relation to the powers of the regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, in relation to how we treat AI chatbots and how they are labelled so they can be labelled high risk, so people understand that the information coming from these is almost certainly not going to be accurate or true.

“There's a whole range of other recommendations, but I'd love to see it during the EU presidency that we could lead on this as regards all of these areas, but in particular, the whole issue of looking at these algorithms and how they are so powerful, that is absolutely critical.”