Dr. Eileen Culloty:

Sometimes, there is a lot of confusion about the concept of algorithms because every company has lots of different algorithms. The value of thinking about the economics and the business models is that is generally why things are set up. They are set up to make money and they make money by getting attention. We can assume this is what drives a lot of these things. The long-standing issue with technology companies is they have not been very forthcoming with what is called algorithmic transparency and algorithmic accountability. One of the virtues of the DSA is supposed to be that we will now have mechanisms in place to actually find out whether these algorithms are causing harm or not. However, that is going to take a long time to get through.

As for specific companies, the experiment Global Witness did on political advertising ahead of the elections was very interesting. Twitter actually did not feature any of the advertisements which contravened the rules, but TikTok did. YouTube featured one or two advertisements. Maybe we need more of that type of stuff which tests these platforms and points out when they breach their rules. The Senator may be aware there is a code of practice on disinformation through the BAI, the precursor of Coimisiún na Meán. In DCU, we have done a lot of work on that. Platforms can write reports and say they are doing X, Y and Z. They are asked to be transparent about their algorithms but we do not have good reasons to believe them until we do that type of testing.