Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 1 August 2018
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Moderation of Violent and Harmful Content on the Facebook Platform: Discussion
12:00 pm
Ms Niamh Sweeney:
Okay.
There was one other point which was made by Deputy Eamon Ryan. It was about the amount of time people spent on the platform and whether there was a case for having a new business model. We are funded by advertising. That is the reason it is free. There are people who could probably apply their minds better than me to come up with a different way to do it, but it is difficult to imagine how a platform such as ours could grow. It requires a huge investment to keep developing and providing the service and building the infrastructure needed. It costs a lot of money which must come from either advertising or some other source.
An announcement will be made later today that we have built new tools to help people to spend their time better online. It was probably announced while we have been sitting in this room. It is about investment in engineering resources to build a system, whereby if someone decides they want to spend only 20 or 30 minutes on our platform over the course of a single day, they can set a limit and will receive a reminder when they have hit that limit. We are trying to make it easier for people to control because I know that it can be difficult to self-regulate in that regard.
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