Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy Lawless, on introducing the Bill. Its purpose is to provide for transparency in the disclosure of information in online political advertising and to provide for related matters. There have been many changes in the House today. As W.B. Yeats wrote: "All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born." Many things are currently changing. Online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google allow users to pay for adverts which appear in people’s newsfeeds. The posts are marked as sponsored to make it clear they are advertisements. Such advertising has been heavily relied upon in political campaigns in recent years. One reason for that is that the potential now exists to target advertising at very specific groups. Certain firms now specialise in analysing data in order to build up profiles of individual social media users, determine how they may be persuaded to vote and specifically target advertising at them.Such companies were reportedly instrumental in the victory of US President Donald Trump in the 2016 US election and that of the Vote Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum.

There are serious issues with regard to the transparency surrounding that method of advertising. For example, a Facebook user can only see an ad if it has been specifically targeted at him or her. He or she does not know what other ads the advertiser may be running and targeting at other people. It is therefore possible that one advertiser or campaign may send contradictory messages to different groups of people but that is not open to scrutiny. In September 2017, Facebook announced that it was taking steps to combat the problem. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said:

Going forward - and perhaps the most important step we’re taking - we’re going to make political advertising more transparent... Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook.

It is crucial that we introduce legislation to prevent that happening in Ireland. As a nation, we fought for too long to gain political autonomy to jeopardise it in this manner.

The Bill also updates existing electoral legislation to reflect the increased use of online advertising, the need for which is self-evident. Through the various electoral acts, the Standards in Public Office Commission, broadcasting guidelines, and the lobbying Acts, Ireland has a strong regulatory framework around our political process. That is crucial because no democracy can function without transparency and accountability. Given the increasing importance of online media to political debate, the values that have served us since the establishment of the State urgently need to be applied to online media as they do to traditional media. Given that it only applies to paid political advertising, the Bill will have no impact on ordinary citizens and social media users, who will remain free to post any type of political content on their personal pages - all Members have experienced that - with or without displaying the source of the content.

As regards paid political advertising, the Bill does not in any way censor or dictate what counts as permissible political advertising. Instead, it applies the same principles of transparency required of print and traditional media to political messages circulated online. In no way does it impinge on free speech.

Under current legislation, any poster or advertisement for an election candidate must clearly display the publisher and financial backer of the advertisement.

The legislation also addresses the proliferation of bots, which are fraudulent social media accounts created to look like many different personal accounts but which are the work of just one person or organisation. Like many of my colleagues, I have been targeted by these. These accounts are then used to flood social media platforms with particular political messaging. Due to the algorithms used on social media, this can lend considerable legitimacy and prominence to content that is in fact fabricated by one malicious actor.

I will hand over to my colleague, Deputy Byrne.

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