Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill. This is one of the regulatory challenges of our generation. We are starting on a crucial but difficult journey of coming to terms with the impact of the digital world on the way we live our lives. This really is different from anything we are used to as legislators. Platforms have generated a massive range of data on every one of us, they know how to amplify messages and how to find influential hooks to bring influence to bear on us. Of course it is true, as the Digital Services Bill states, that this has transformed the marketplace - that is, if one looks at it purely as a marketplace. The potential for undermining competition rules and consumer protection, as well as the potential for legitimising illegal products and distorting information that people are presented with can completely upturn the way in which markets work. In that context, this legislation is really crucial. However, it comes very much from a market regulation perspective and while that is really important, it is not complete. We live in a political environment which is much broader than the marketplace and the tools that come from thinking about the digital market as a marketplace may be inadequate to really confront the scale of the challenge presented. Not only have huge amounts of information about us been collected, there is a complete asymmetry between the pace with which initial false information can spread compared with the opportunities to put the genie back into the bottle when it has spread so widely. There is no comparison between the two.

Equally, there is a complete inequality of the capacity of regulators, however well intentioned, to keep up with the inventiveness of the companies that are creating these algorithms which are driving the choices we make. Now we have moved on to a situation where this is recursive. It is not humans who are designing the algorithms but artificial intelligence. The latter is remodelling the algorithms so often that no one actually knows the principles that are being applied because they have evolved themselves beyond what was intended by the individuals who designed them. This creates a real challenge. I take my hat off to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European institutions for coming up with a lot of innovation in this area. There is a lot there to be welcomed including putting an obligation on particularly large platforms to conduct risk assessments and where they identify riskiness, they have a mitigation strategy. There is also an obligation to conduct an audit and that is really important because a lot of these particularly big platforms have huge international reputations to protect and putting that obligation on them can be important. The idea of having trusted flaggers is really worthwhile. It means there are groups that will be recognised and that will have a standing in challenging material that goes up. The penalties are substantial, and at 6% of turnover are quite eye-watering when it comes to some of these companies. The legislation is innovative as well in looking for transparency in the origin of what is put up. Bringing in a crisis management mechanism and banning the profiling of minors are also really progressive changes.

As politicians, when we look at social media we need to look beyond the marketplace. The hope originally was that social media would create this fantastic, democratic forum where everyone would be listening to one another, there would be a great exchange of views and wisdom would emerge from it. Instead, the debate has lapsed into capsules that are often just listening to their own points of view and which become increasingly intolerant of those who hold different views. We need to protect the value of democracy that is so important to our institutions, including the freedom of expression but also an understanding of the balance between the rights and the duties that are there as well. There is no doubt that when we look at the autocratic despots with whom democracy, as we know it, competes, we see that they have no compunction or no sense of obligation to protect the balance between freedom of expression and privacy, among other things. They see this not only as a tool for control of their own people but also for the manipulation of those in democratic states like our own who seek to maintain the open and free societies that we have maintained.

I really welcome this Bill but believe we have a good deal further to go in understanding how the explosion of digital communication and the growth of artificial intelligence will change the way we work. The danger, as always, is that regulators will arrive breathless and late, as they say. We need to take stock of how these platforms are impacting on our society. Recently we saw that many of the political protections we would like to have like the registration of political parties and the controlling of their expenditure are completely blown asunder when there is influence coming from outside which is regulated nowhere and which can use the media to have a huge impact on the opinions of people who are open to being manipulated.

I congratulate the Minister on the work done so far. There is a lot that is good here but we will have to substantially strengthen our capacity to understand and legislate in this area in the coming decades.

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