Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Haugen for being with us. It is fantastic to have her and I thank her for all of the work she is doing in this space. Her bravery and insight have had ripple effects across the globe. Today is our chance here in Ireland, not just as a society or as legislators, but as a strategic location for the EU headquarters of many of the platforms in question, to use her industry experience and inside knowledge to make the online world a safer space.

Democracy is fragile and there need to be laws to protect it and citizens across the globe. This is true whether you are in Ireland or Myanmar or on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately, social media can become a weapon that threatens to destabilise democracy. Engagement-based ranking is dangerous - Mark Zuckerberg told us this – yet we are living in a metaverse where what we see on our social media platforms are the posts that will get a corporation the most engagement and the most money. He was right, in that it is proving dangerous to our values, our health – in particular, the mental health of our young people – and our democracy.

In Ireland, we used to look across the Atlantic at politics in the US and thank our lucky stars that our politics were not fuelled by money in the way it is there. Unbeknownst to us, though, platforms like Facebook were changing that under the radar. The sad reality is that someone can use money rather than messages to influence the national discourse and shape democratic decisions. That is not the kind of society in which I want to live.

Social media poses great opportunities, especially for keeping families and friends connected, and it would probably pose nothing but opportunities if it was not monetised and did not become a global multibillion euro company, but it did, and that has meant that the threats are getting bigger – threats to democracy and stability through how easily people can engage in the viral spreading of disinformation, and threats to our health, including our mental health, through the generation of patterns of online hate messaging.

I was struck by what Ms Haugen said about safeguarding children of 12, 13 or 14 years of age and how modern technology like facial recognition could be adopted to make a digital age of consent work. That is an interesting point because we in Ireland constantly struggle with the debate on how to get the digital age of consent to work without needing to share private data on children as proof of age.

I was interested in Ms Haugen's views on an individual complaints mechanism and how our new commission may end up drowning in complaints. That is something that we hear constantly. We want to strike the right balance between allowing people the ability to escalate their complaints without flooding the system to the point where it no longer works. Ms Haugen mentioned a class action of complaints. In Ireland, we have many great NGOs, for example, Webwise, CyberSafeKids, SpunOut and Bodywhys. Is Ms Haugen suggesting that people complain to them and, if those people wanted it, the NGOs could escalate the complaints to the commission or is she saying that we need to have a system where we hit these companies where it hurts, that is, with significant fines, when we see that they are systemically failing to protect users?

I will run through a couple of questions and then hand over the rest of my time to Ms Haugen. She is saying that the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill is overly focused on content. That seems to be a concern for her. I would like to hear more about that. Ms Haugen is saying that we need to look more at the root of the problem. How do we do that through legislation? My blunt question is whether the Bill as it stands is fit for purpose. Will it work? Will the EU's Bill work? Is it more important that the EU's Bill work and that the EU give Ireland the resources we need to ensure that we can manage online safety in terms of the social media companies that are based in Ireland but providing services throughout the EU?

My three main takeaways from Ms Haugen's exceptional testimony today are that the algorithm needs to revert to what it was pre 2018 so that reactions and engagements are no longer driving Facebook's metrics; investment needs to happen in AI around local languages and in moderating content so as to minimise the human cost of censorship; and we need mandatory risk assessments and the mandatory enforcement of transparency. How do we as legislators achieve that? What laws need to be introduced? What else do we need to do and what else do we need to incorporate in EU law or our Bill so that we can have a real and lasting positive impact?