Dr. Eileen Culloty:

One of the issues with social media platforms is that they have become integrated into our everyday lives. The children who spoke last week were clear about that. It is how we communicate with our families, friends and colleagues. It is also where small businesses operate. The platforms are private companies, though, and they are free to set the terms and conditions for participation on their platforms as they wish. This is something with which we are struggling to grapple. We treat them like they are a public space, but they are not. They are private commercial spaces.

One of the reasons we struggle to understand the extent of the phenomenon that we are concerned about is that the platforms do not provide access to data that would allow us to research it. In terms of the way they implement community standards, the research suggests it is inconsistent. We saw this in the wake of the riots at the US Capitol, where platforms wanted to take various actions. Some of them were in compliance with their community standards. Most of the time, they did not even reference their community standards or terms of service. They just took the actions they wanted to take. There is no pushback against that.

It is a larger, blue-sky academic question. I hope that something that comes out of the Future of Media Commission is a decision on what we want from these online public spaces and how citizen participation can be imbedded into them. In Ireland, there is a proposal for the development of social media councils involving various independent experts and citizens who would engage in discussions on what types of content and behaviour are suitable online and what we want from these spaces. Platforms might participate in those discussions.

All of these conversations are in their early days, but the question about the future is a major one and we cannot sleepwalk into more of these mistakes. Significant discussions need to be had.