Ms Niamh McDonald:

Between 25% and 85% of trust and safety teams have been cut. The Communication Workers Union in the UK announced this week that TikTok is to cut 25% of its 500 UK jobs. We do not know about the levels in Ireland but we have the US figures from across the companies. Twitter cut 43% of its trust and safety teams in 2023.

Twitter also effectively disbanded its ethical AI team last November and laid off all but one of its members. It talks about ethical AI but removed that ethical AI team. It says it is relying on AI to moderate but has removed the ethical AI team. In February Google cut one third of a unit that aims to protect society. We go back to what is happening on YouTube where, whether you are aged 30 or 13, you see the same content. In 2022, Meta reported ending the contracts of approximately 200 content moderators in early January, as well as at least 16 members of Instagram's well-being group. Amazon and Microsoft have also downsized their AI teams, so it is right across the board.

As I stated, trust and safety is one arm of it. We have got amplification. There is trust and safety, but the content is already up. We have seen numerous politicians talk about dangerous content being left up for a long time and not being removed.

I go back to the context of working in different localities, whether Ireland, the UK or Europe, and understanding that at different points in time different issues could become volatile. We had the local and European elections. We had the riots. A lot of that disinformation begins and gets amplified online. We do not have trust that content is being removed right now, whether by the Garda or by the Taoiseach or small organisations like us calling for it.