Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Sweeney and Ms Cummiskey and thank them for attending. They have always made themselves available to the joint committee and Members whenever they have raised issues. I have considerable sympathy for them in finding that they have to appear before the committee again to address issues of such a serious nature. While I accept that they also found the material deeply disturbing, I am not prepared to give the company the fool's pardon it may seek from us. While the material is deeply disturbing, it is material that was recognised and available to people within Facebook. If it had only been brought to its attention and that of others by the "Dispatches" programme, we might be able to accept the explanation. However, as it used was part of the training manual, it should not be disturbing to anybody within Facebook. What, in the first instance, should be disturbing is that the material formed part of a training manual.

I watched the programme again two nights ago. If I am not mistaken, I saw the Facebook logo on the slides used. The training manuals were used by CPL. Ms Sweeney has, to some extent, indicated that Facebook was remove from CPL. It is a well worn path taken by companies, when they seek to excuse themselves, to hit the subcontractor. However, was the material prepared by Facebook and, if so, within what department?

If it was instead prepared by CPL, what oversight did Facebook have of this training content? This is the only way for us to understand to what extent Facebook is culpable in allowing material like this to remain on its site.

According to Ms Sweeney, whenever failings are brought to Facebook's attention, it addresses them. If it is setting a standard based on training manuals with this kind of content, it will find that standard to be unacceptable when the matter is brought to its attention at a later stage. As such, I am trying to understand how or why people within Facebook were shocked by this.

Ms Sweeney referred to the CPL staff member on the programme and the suggestion that it was "in our interests to turn a blind eye to controversial or disturbing content on our platform". She stated: "This is categorically untrue." The Chairman referred to the memo from Mr. Andrew Bosworth. He stated:

So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good.

When Ms Sweeney appeared before us previously alongside her colleague from the US, I asked him about when Mr. Bosworth had left the company or, as with the people on the CPL programme, when had he got some time off. I suspect the answer is still the same, in that he has not been given time off or been removed from his position. Someone as senior as him has set out the clear policies at work within the witnesses' company. Even if material is ugly, disturbing, destructive, about death or the bullying of children, it is de facto good because it is effectively the cocaine that attracts users to this material.

Ms Sweeney suggested that this material would be off-putting to people and damaging to Facebook, but the opposite is the case. This is the kind of material that attracts lots of eyeballs and certainly outrages people, but in their outrage they copy, paste and share. Ms Sweeney stated: "unless they are shared to condemn the behaviour". That is the catch. Disturbing material evokes an unbelievable reaction in the minds of those who view it, they express outrage and they share it, meaning that millions more people get to see it. Facebook is not concerned about what they are seeing, only about them remaining on its platform for a number of minutes longer. It is about capturing attention with the cocaine of the business. It is attractive and interesting, holds people's attention and is addictive. More and more people get to see this material and, all the while, Facebook has a business model that is based around the couple of billion people who log in each month and view this kind of material.

Facebook has always said that its business is about connecting people, communities and so on. That is for sure, but we also saw some home truths the other day when the stock market was in play. Ripples went around the world when Facebook posted its latest earnings and viewership figures. The company saw a 20% write-off in its value in one day, not because of any reduction in users but because it did not meet its expected growth targets. That 20% ran to billions of dollars. As such, I am more inclined to believe Mr. Bosworth because, at the end of the day, this is about eyeballs, capturing people's attention and retaining them online. Facebook makes vast sums of money on the back of selling advertising. Ms Sweeney has tried to present this in a simplistic way by saying that Facebook does not position advertising beside this harmful material.

It is not always about positioning the advertisement beside the harmful material. It is about retaining the person, and the people with whom he or she will share the information, online long enough to allow Facebook to put something into their news feed that will attract their attention and thus generate profits for the company. I have much more to say but I will leave it at that for now.