Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Finally, we are getting to the crux of the matter of online safety. None of us has not encountered to some degree the phenomenon of online bullying, which is consistent and constant. Never could anyone make an argument - at least, a legitimate one - against an online safety commissioner.

We all know that, to a degree, there is an element here of legislation trying to catch up with where technology is. We are talking about some of the super-companies if we are talking about the likes of Facebook, although it did not work out too well for Mark Zuckerberg when he renamed that entire entity Meta. It impacted how much he is worth but he will be all right and more able than others to withstand the difficulties people will be going through as regards the cost-of-living crisis we are in. We look at these colossuses, accepting that when these companies were formed nobody saw where they were going to go, but we know the particular issues that there are online and the difficulties we really have to deal with.

There is an opportunity at this point in time to deal with the issue of the algorithms, particularly if we look at the likes of Facebook and the information we now know from the likes of Frances Haugen. The fact is that, with Google and its search engine, we can get some information as to how it works. We know how the page rank algorithm works and we know about the results. In fairness, Google will provide information if it is sought, but probably the only way we can tell how the Facebook algorithm works - and it is the same for other social media platforms - is on the basis of how it works for the individual user, that is, with determinations made from multiple sources of information. That is accepting that that is all information we have provided to Facebook. We have to be very careful because we have seen where this has been weaponised in some cases by state actors and non-state actors. We know about the issues that may have arisen in Myanmar. We know that rogue states spend huge effort on online presence. We really need to make sure we get a handle on this, while also dealing with the regular issues that are often voiced in here as to how the Facebook algorithm, for example, provided financial benefits in respect of certain content which was not particularly good for people's mental health. I am talking about people who had issues with food and eating disorders.

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