Ms Frances Haugen:

The most important point I can leave the committee with is that the Digital Services Act, DSA, is amazing legislation. It has been thoroughly vetted, many people have spent a great deal of effort on it and it is very important for whatever Ireland passes to be aligned with the DSA. The DSA has considered the question of how to stay abreast of these platforms in an ongoing way. Members are right, in that the platforms are large and move very quickly.

Ongoing mandatory risk assessments – not just those done by the company, but ones where NGOs and other parties can chime in – are important.

Deputy Higgins asked about handling individual complaints. It is not that difficult to write software that could provide people with a way of making complaints and then forming classes from those. We could have a conversation about that another time, but there is a mechanism whereby there could be a broad range of complaints that would then be channelled to NGOs. This would highlight that 10,000 people were all complaining about the same issue, for example.

Look to Europe. In most industries, the polluter pays.

This is going to be a very expensive problem. Algorithmic specialists are rare; there are few of them in the world. They are incredibly well compensated. I will give the committee example. When I worked at Pinterest, myself and a team of three other engineers, were able to increase the total profits of the company by 6%. We increased it by tens of millions of dollars with a project that took us a few months. This is why algorithmic specialists are paid so much because we really can make these things radically more profitable. Ireland does not want to take responsibility for paying enough people to be able to have a robust enforcer. Taxing platforms to make sure that there is safe enforcement is the critical path forward. Look to Europe. The Digital Services Act is important. Focus on systems, ongoing risk and the polluter pays.