Ms Sue Duke:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss how we can ensure the best social media experience for everybody and how we can work with the committee on this important issue.

I work on public policy at Google in Dublin. I am accompanied by Ms Sabine Frank from our Berlin office, who is our expert on digital literacy. We have divided our presentation into three main parts, the first being the benefits of the Internet and social media platforms. I will then give a brief overview of what YouTube is doing to ensure people stay safe and secure online and I will offer a couple of thoughts on where we think we can all work together in this area.

Before I begin, I will give the committee a quick introduction to Google Ireland. Google celebrates ten years in Ireland this year. During the course of that time we have grown from five Googlers in 2003 to more than 2,500 Googlers today. Our recent investment of almost €300 million in our headquarter buildings just down the road in Barrow Street as well as our new data centre in west Dublin has consolidated our long-term commitment to Ireland and will be the basis for future growth and expansion. Much of the work we do from Dublin focuses on helping companies, big and small, to get the most out of the new business models and new opportunities presented by the Internet. I will detail precisely what those new values are.

In the past decade the innovations brought about by the Internet have revolutionised communications and the spread of information across the globe. The Internet has been a phenomenal force for good, promoting culture, boosting economic growth and advancing free expression. Social media platforms such as YouTube have been at the heart of the Internet's success in generating economic value, creating employment and fostering innovation and creativity.

What is YouTube? For those who are not familiar with it, YouTube is our user-generated video-sharing platform, around which users debate, form communities, interact with and inspire one another. YouTube began in our founder Chad Hurley's garage in California in 2005, when he posted the very first video of his friends at the zoo. The following year, Google acquired YouTube, and since then the platform has enjoyed enormous success, becoming the world's biggest video-sharing platform today. The slide on the screen will give the committee a quick snapshot of the story of YouTube and some sense of the scale of content we are dealing with. Seventy-two hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and there are 4 billion views on YouTube every day. In 2011, we had more than a trillion views on the platform, which equates to about 140 views for every person on the planet. YouTube has enabled creativity and collaboration on an unprecedented scale, allowing the young, the young at heart and the old to engage with communities both locally and globally, to express themselves and to get involved in society. For example, on YouTube today one can submit an idea for a science experiment to Stephen Hawking. One can launch one's music career, as Justin Bieber did, or start a business from one's bedroom. Cork man Jason Sullivan began uploading cartoons last year to YouTube and after phenomenal success on the platform, Sminky Animation, as shown on the screen, has gone on to sign a contract with United Agents in London. The Khan Academy, with which many members may be familiar, has pulled together more than 3,000 educational videos on YouTube, with students around the world viewing up to 200,000 videos every day on topics ranging from calculus to arithmetic and from prehistoric Africa to the Second World War. During the past weekend, members may have seen how RTE used the platform to promote Ireland at home and abroad. It live-streamed two main events: the full St. Patrick's Day parade, and, as part of The Gathering, a one-hour music stream from Áras an Uachtaráin, which showcased a host of Irish talent from Christy Moore to the Frames to the Script.

As with any means of communication, there can be challenges. I am aware that the committee has discussed at recent hearings how social media platforms reflect older and larger societal problems with regard to how we treat one another. In order to address these societal problems we believe we need societal solutions, but we also believe that technology and technology companies have a role to play in ensuring they keep their users safe online.

I turn now to how YouTube is playing its part. There are three pillars to our approach to user safety at YouTube and, more generally, at Google - education, empowerment and protection. At YouTube we are deeply committed to educating young people about how to use the Internet safely and responsibly and to raising awareness about digital citizenship and digital literacy. I shall take members through a couple of the campaigns that are particularly relevant to the committee's current work. The first is the digital citizenship curriculum. We launched an online curriculum for YouTube last year aimed at supporting teachers of second-level students by providing online teaching plans and lesson plans. The curriculum educates students on YouTube's policies, how to keep themselves safe online and how to report abusive content, in order that they can develop a holistic understanding of how to be a responsible digital citizen. The curriculum was first tested in the Ursuline convent in Waterford, where our local YouTube team walked through the lesson plans with four transition year students and their teachers and used their feedback to improve and adapt the programme. Since then the digital citizenship curriculum has been launched globally.

The second project, It Gets Better, was created to show young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teenagers how successful, fulfilled and happy their lives will be if they can get through their difficult teenage years and to show them they are not alone during those years.

YouTube has worked closely with It Gets Better to highlight issues of bullying facing young LGBT teenagers and provide them with messages of support and encouragement. It Gets Better has become a worldwide movement, with more than 10,000 uplifting personal videos from celebrities, world leaders and everyday people. In the current slide, President Obama is seen in a photograph addressing a young gay soldier in Iraq. Messages have also been posted from young out people up and down the country. These videos provide a message of support and solidarity to young LGBT teenagers and are a further example of how our platform is being used for good.

Google has been a significant supporter of the Family Online Safety Institute, or FOSI, a project of A Platform for Good which is designed to help parents, teachers and students to connect, share and do good online. FOSI is an international not-for-profit organisation that convenes leaders in government, industry and the NGO sector to formulate new solutions and policies in online safety. We will launch FOSI's European chapter at our Dublin headquarters on Barrow Street in May and would be delighted to have members of the committee attend to learn more about the work FOSI is doing and its plans for Europe.

In addition to education and awareness-raising on responsible digital citizenship, YouTube has a responsibility to ensure its users have the tools they need to stay safe online. The second pillar of our approach is empowerment. I mentioned at the outset that YouTube is a video-sharing platform made up of and for our users. As it is a community, we have developed community guidelines which set out the rules for being on YouTube. The community guidelines set out what behaviours are not allowed on YouTube, including bullying, harassment and hate speech.

There are two processes that are most relevant to the issue currently being considered by the committee. I said earlier that 72 hours of video are uploaded to the platform every minute. This amounts to hundreds of thousands of videos every day. To manage that much content, we have developed a community policing system which involves our users helping us to enforce the rules on YouTube. The way this works is that the community flags content that is believed to break the rules. Every day, thousands of YouTube users flag potential violations in this way. The mechanism is straightforward and easily navigable by users of all ages. I will talk the committee through what happens when a user sees someone being bullied on YouTube. On the slide being shown now, members will see that there is a flag under every video on YouTube. If I want to report a video, I hit the flag, which triggers a drop-down menu of options. I select "Hateful or abusive content", click "Bullying", and my report is sent to the YouTube policy enforcement team for review. There are a number of other categories in the drop-down menu which help users to identify the behaviours that are banned on the platform. There is also an option to include additional information about a video, including what is in it, who is involved and a time stamp. Reported videos are notified to the policy enforcement team and promptly reviewed to establish whether they break our rules. There are sanctions where rules are broken. Users who repeatedly violate our terms of service will have their accounts terminated, while those who upload particularly egregious content will have their accounts terminated immediately.

The flagging mechanism is also a great way for us to listen to users to enable us to continuously improve our products and services. On the basis of recent user feedback, we have added a flag that allows users to highlight threats of suicide or self-injury. If we receive such a video, we immediately escalate it to law enforcement where the threat is actionable or we believe there is a potential for immediate harm. If a threat is too vague to escalate to law enforcement, we can get in touch with the person who uploaded the video to provide him or her with resources on suicide and self-injury prevention to help the person to start to get the help he or she needs. In addition to the flagging options, we have an easy-to-use reporting tool at youtube.ie/reportabuseto report comments and videos more generally.

A second way we empower users is by providing them with the tools to control how and with whom they interact online. We provide our users with full control over their videos and the comments made on them. As a user, one has a number of options available. The first option is private sharing. If a user wants to limit the exposure of a video, he or she sets it to private. When a video is set to private, only the person who posts the video and those he or she invites can see it. The video does not turn up in search results or on playlists. A further option is to block a specific user. If one chooses to block a specific user, that user cannot comment on a video or contact one privately in any way. One can also control the comments made on one's videos. There are three main options in this regard. One is to approve all comments automatically and allow them to appear below the video; another is to allow comments only after approval; and the last is to disable comments altogether so that no comments appear below a video. The person who posts a video has ultimate control over the video, the comments made and who gets to see it in the first place.

The last strand of our approach is protection. Google has invested heavily in technologies that protect users against bad actors on the Internet. We have a dedicated website, google.ie/goodtoknow/, which educates all users about protecting themselves online. The Good to Know website provides families with helpful tips and advice on how users can protect themselves against identity theft, malware, fraudsters and online scams. People can also learn about securing computers and mobile devices as well as how to get the most out of the Internet. We used Safer Internet Day last month to drive awareness about these online resources by including a link to the Good to Know portal on our search homepage google.ie. In addition to using technologies that provide an extra layer of protection for users, we have also formed partnerships. Google is a member of a number of organisations which work directly with companies to help them to improve safety and security for users. We collaborate with European Schoolnet and anti-bullying groups. We recently supported European Schoolnet's The Web We Wantbooklet, which is an educational document designed with the needs and preferences of young people in mind. The Web We Wantaims to start getting young people to think about how to manage their digital reputations and advises them on their rights and responsibilities online. The booklet was designed to be used in the classroom and for peer-to-peer learning.

Finally, I offer a few thoughts on where industry, governments and other stakeholders can work together better in this area. We believe it is critical to listen to and work with experts and organisations in this area, including those people who have their ear to the ground with regard to the technologies families are using and the challenges they face along the way. We collaborate extensively with experts and draw heavily on their advice and feedback to constantly review and improve our systems. A recommendation that has been made strongly to us is to focus more on peer-to-peer learning.

Based on that advice we recently launched the web rangers project in Israel which brought together over 200 children up and down the country to design and run their own safety campaigns. It was a huge success, with the participants producing 82 safety campaigns that ultimately reached over 20,000 children. The campaigns worked well because they addressed children's issues and spoke to them in their own language. Likewise BeatBullying, the largest bullying prevention charity in the United Kingdom, has a cyber mentoring scheme in which young people mentor their peers. This project has been very successful in reaching vulnerable children. We strongly recommend providing more support for such peer-to-peer learning projects and would be happy to work with the Government in taking the lead on such projects.

I have mentioned that as a platform provider, we have a duty to make sure we give our users the tools they need to stay safe online, but we also believe the Government has a role to make sure parents, teachers and students acquire the digital skills they need to keep themselves safe online. Learning to use the Internet is as important a lifeskill today as the safe cross code. Digital literacy, for example, how to verify online sources, protect information and where to go for help, should be a vital part of every child's education. We believe a coherent digital literacy curriculum in schools would dramatically improve children's safety and would be happy to work with the Department of Education and Skills on any effort in this area. We recently made a submission to the New Zealand Government setting out in detail what such a curriculum might look like. I have brought a copy of that submission for the committee in order that members can read it in detail. If questions arise, we would be happy to respond at a later date.

I hope the committee can see just how seriously we take the safety of our users. We have worked long and hard and invested heavily in ensuring our users have a safe and positive experience online. We are constantly innovating and improving our products. Ms Frank and I look forward to answering questions the committee may have and working with it in the coming weeks in this important area.