Ms Celene Craig:

Yes, as I said earlier, there is a clear need to anticipate the requirement for some of these skills. Regardless of whether these skills are available among the staff, there is a definite need for the regulatory authority, in the form of the media commission, to ensure there is an understanding of algorithmic activity on platforms and of the ways in which that can impact users and drive and push content to users. The BAI, as a regulator, has a good appreciation of some of these regulatory implications. It is critical that the media commission will also have such an understanding of the implications for regulations in respect of the way platforms use algorithms and how that drives the kinds of content received by users.

We found it helpful in recent years to broaden our understanding and knowledge in this field. We had extensive engagement with academics across Europe and beyond and that has been very helpful in broadening our understanding of this issue. The regulatory and compliance and enforcement framework which will flow from the legislation and that will impact platforms has the potential to address, by way of risk assessments, for example, the accountability of platforms regarding the way they deploy algorithms.