Ms Niamh McDonald:

Yes, there has been a massive deterioration. The recommender system takes sensitive data such as who you are, your gender, your age, where you live, your profile and all of that kind of detail. That is covered by the general data protection regulation, GDPR, as well. It takes the sensitive data and looks at what kind of salacious content it could drive to the person, for example, if they are a young man or a young woman, and how they can drive that content and just land it in your feed. The way I describe it then is that you are in this river of hate that you cannot get out of because you are in the algorithm.

We find that if we turn off the recommender system and prevent it from using those sensitive data, it cannot be delivered to your feed without you looking for it first. What happens is that as soon as you engage with it, there is automatically a flood of content. That is why we are seeing this increase in the use of certain language and of the violence, especially such language as "men of military age" and "Ireland is full", which is seeping in and becoming normalised across Irish society.