Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The community of power in social media provides all citizens the ability to question, parse and analyse the actions of government, and this is exceptionally important. Much of the societal change we have seen internationally in the past decade or so has come about as a result of social media. We had a perfect example of that in Ireland when we were the first country in the world to vote for marriage equality, with a huge part of that campaign being developed and implemented through the use of social media. Perhaps I am coming at this from a different perspective. There is an inevitability in how we communicate as a species that social media would eventually have come into being in any event, whether it was through Mr. Zuckerberg or anybody else. We are now moving to the next stage of that evolution through the metaverse, as has been mentioned.

The question is presented to us as legislators with limited knowledge of the inner workings of social media companies. Right now, what is the most effective deterrent to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all the other social media companies or the most effective tool to force behavioural change from within these companies and perhaps return them to their initial ambition of providing for a greater degree of communicative power to all citizens? Social media is ultimately about empowering citizens. How do we make these companies go back to their founding principles? Is there a way of doing that?