Mr. Mark Little:

I have a personal perspective but also a professional one. Personally, I believe we should see misinformation and disinformation around the vaccines as part of an infodemic that parallels the spread of the pandemic. To that extent, we should focus on how we flatten the curve. How do we detect and intervene early? How do we help the essential workers, as I describe them, in those platforms - the trust and safety teams and the content moderators - to detect things that are global in their source? All misinformation is global even as it washes up to our shores. We need to watch out for the local accents and be able to give the platforms a sense of whether to intervene now, or wait and watch. That is one of the roles that we play in our company, Kinzen.

In a broader policy framework, as Professor MacCraith indicates, having a strong public service media, and I mean that in the broader sense, is absolutely the first step in fighting back against disinformation and misinformation. We need to paint our broader project here in that context. The commission is focused on looking at the ways in which international policy is starting to align - or, in some cases, to misalign - in how we tackle ongoing resilience around the ecosystem.

The proposed digital services Act, DSA, is a great place to start. We are way ahead of the Americans with the regulation we currently have in process, particularly as it relates to the role of trusted flaggers, which is how the company that I run is described. We are waiting to see exactly how the code of practice on disinformation will translate into the online harm legislation, an area on which the committee's work will be key. The code of practice is lagging behind. Right now, the DSA defines illegal disinformation. It does not address the threat coming from things that are still legal.

We are also watching how the European Digital Media Observatory starts to get rolled out locally in countries such as Ireland. Work on that is ongoing. Regarding media literacy, how do we train ordinary citizens to be able to see the telltale signs of things that are designed to reduce our faith in public health?

The Senator addressed the key question. Regulation banning disinformation will not be the silver bullet. He is right in saying that we need closer oversight of how the algorithms work in these recommendation systems. We need to allow independent researchers to have access to the data sets these platforms are using. Work remains to be done on how the DSA will address that bigger issue. I am confident that we in Europe have a head start on the US. Due to historical factors relating to the development of cutting-edge information economic companies like ours, we have an edge here in Ireland. That is very much to the front of our mind. It will require a partnership between policy and the practical everyday work of fighting back against this infodemic.