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

I thank each of the witnesses for being here and having the trust and confidence in their systems to allow them to be scrutinised in the public domain, something that people in X, or Twitter, are obviously not happy to do. I am sure the public policy team from X is watching these proceedings as we speak. I invite them to come before us, a public committee, in a fully transparent manner. I invite them to drop an email to the owner suggesting he desist from commenting on affairs within Ireland, which he patently knows nothing about. He has personally served to stoke hatred and conflict in recent times in Ireland and he should be deeply ashamed of those actions.

I may be somewhat unusual in believing social media in general is a force for good. As a species, we have been seeking to communicate with one another since time began, using whatever means were available to us at the time. Mr. Gutenberg was berated for doing something so rebellious as to put the spoken word into a book, and the mobile phone is the recent expression of our desire to communicate with one another in an exceptionally sophisticated and technologically advanced manner. If what happened in O'Connell Street had happened 40 years ago or even 30 years ago, which it could have done, and had been organised by people ringing one another to tell them to get to O'Connell Street because something was going down, we would not have had representatives from Eircom before the committee to ask them how that had happened.

It was simply the devices that were available at a time to communicate and mobilise for whatever reason they saw fit. That needs to be said. It is also the responsibility of all of us to ensure whatever kind of social interaction happens in this country and indeed globally is done in a respectful manner and with respect for people in all their shapes, forms and expressions and does not serve to stoke hatred or disharmony. These are things that are unfortunately becoming more common in modern society. I thank the company representatives for being here, for listening and for engaging. We may be somewhat misguided in seeking to constantly call out social media companies in their willingness to remove content and remove it in a quick efficient manner. The real nub of the matter, which was referred earlier by Senator Sherlock, is how social media chooses to share posts with users, be it TikTok, Facebook or Twitter. Frances Haugen, a former employee of Facebook, appeared before this committee last year. She outlined to us what she felt was a very sinister policy deep within Facebook or Meta that essentially saw the development of a multiplicity of algorithms to share content the company felt would drive engagement to the greatest possible extent. That is where we really need to look when we are looking under the bonnet of all social media companies.

I have a question to begin with for TikTok and perhaps Meta. When a user initially signs up to use the platform, they are given the choice at that time - as far as I am aware and perhaps the witnesses can clarify it for me - about whether they are served content recommended by an algorithm or simply content emanating from the people they choose to follow or engage with on the platform. Is that the case? Is that option given to people at the very beginning of their engagement? If so, do the companies think it would be a good idea to regularly remind people they have the option to remove themselves from that algorithmically-engineered world and simply engage with the people they have chosen to engage with through becoming friends or whatever the equivalent is on TikTok?