Ms Niamh Hodnett:

I thank the Senator. There is a lot to unpack there. The chilling effect on democracy is one of the concerns. In addition to the protection of minors, as a policy division, we have focused on different specific areas for 2024. Children and vulnerable adults are an area of focus, with Ms McAuley heading up our efforts as director of policy. We also have a director who is focused on democracy, elections and disinformation, because we are very conscious that this year there are so many elections, including local, European and national, and referendums.

From all the groups we met, including various groups that represent minorities, women and people originally from other countries, many of them did not want to go forward for election. We engaged with the task force on safe participation in political life because a lot of individuals did not want to go forward as candidates because they were concerned about the implications of incitement to hatred or violence or hate speech being directed towards them just for being who they are, and that has a chilling effect on democracy that we are concerned about. We do think the amplification of harmful content through recommender systems is yielding this chilling effect on democracy or is causing polarisation. The amplification of harmful content is also raising toxic beauty issues that can lead to, for example, eating or feeding disorders, while depressing content can lead to self-harm or suicide. That is why we have proposed in our supplementary measures to address the recommender systems through having a break in this amplification of negative content in some way with a recommender safety proposal or a recommender safety impact plan to be in place.

For the large platforms, under the Digital Services Act, there is already an obligation to mitigate the risks that are brought about by the amplification of harmful content through recommender systems and to have available an alternative recommender system that is based not on profiling but on, for example, a chronological feed.

In respect of bullying and self-esteem, a focus of our online safety code is to address cyberbullying. Again, eating and feeding disorders would be at the more extreme end and have an impact on self-esteem. The issues the Senator raised highlight that we are just one cog in the wheel. We are the regulator and we can enforce binding obligations, whether under parental controls, media literacy or dealing with complaints in a timely and diligent manner, but there is a whole-of-society role regarding online safety. This applies to education in our schools by teachers to children and also for us all as a society as a whole to think about. When we engage online, it should be done in a more empathetic and civil way and we should think about the impact on others of what we post. It cannot be addressed purely through our blunter tools of regulation, but we are here to move away from that era of self-regulation and to put effective regulation in place to ensure the obligations that are there are being complied with by the platforms.