Mr. Ryan Meade:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the joint committee for inviting us to speak on the topics of online safety, disinformation and media literacy. I work with Google as government affairs and public policy manager in Ireland. I am joined by my colleague, Ollie Irwin, from our trust and safety team, who leads our Google safety engineering centre in Dublin. Our mission at Google is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Information quality and online safety are integral to this mission and a critical part of our responsibility to our users. We want to contribute to a more responsible, more innovative, and more helpful Internet. The products we have built have been a force for creativity, learning, culture and discovery. Products such as Google search have helped educate billions of people around the world by opening up their access to information from across the web. Our video-sharing platform, YouTube, allows users to watch and upload original video content and share this with others.

Our strategy for tackling illegal and harmful content is tailored to each of our products, based on the nature of the service, how it is used, and the specific risks which may arise. We recognise that our products can only be as helpful as they are safe. We are constantly innovating and exploring new ways to keep users of our platforms safe online, including as new AI technology continues to advance.

At Google we are proud to play a part in connecting users to diverse sources of media and news. In line with our mission, Google facilitates access to information and contributes to media plurality by reducing barriers, increasing choice for consumers, contributing to a diverse news landscape, and promoting independent news outlets. We are committed to fighting the spread of misinformation online, because helping people sort facts from fiction has never been more important, something we saw most recently during the disturbing events in Dublin. During incidents such as these, we focus not only on tackling harmful or illegal content, but also ensuring our systems prioritise connecting users with high-quality news from authoritative sources. We also empower users with more information and context, which can help them better evaluate the content they encounter online. When you search on Google, for example, our "about this result” tool allows you to see more information about any result, such as who is behind the information or when Google first indexed the page.

Media literacy is crucial in tackling disinformation and improving online safety, and it is clear there is an unmet demand. According to a report by Ipsos, fewer than one in ten Europeans have participated in any form of online media literacy training, while 60% of Europeans say they are interested in learning more. Since 2018, Google.orghas supported more than 75 organisations creating positive online experiences, including many that provide media literacy and online safety programmes for children. In Ireland this includes Barnardos’ online safety programme for schools, which includes Google’s open-sourced Be Internet Legends curriculum. This flagship programme has been updated to add lessons on the new challenges around AI in easy to understand language. Since 2019, it has reached more than 150,000 primary school children aged between eight and 12. As a member of Media Literacy Ireland, we support the Be Media Smart campaign, which is currently running across a variety of platforms, encouraging people to stop, think and check that the information they are getting from whatever source is accurate and reliable.

In March 2021, Google contributed €25 million to help launch the European Media and Information Fund to strengthen media literacy skills, fight misinformation and support fact checking. The objective of this fund, which is independently run, is to help strengthen the media literacy skills of adults and young people, support and scale the critical work of fact checkers, and strengthen the expertise, research and resources to tackle misinformation. At the last count, more than 70 projects have benefited from €11.2 million since applications first opened, including Uisce Faoi Thalamh, a recent report on online disinformation in Ireland from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.