Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

If we want to tackle gender-based violence, then we have to call a halt to the tidal wave of misogyny coming at young men on social media every day. It is disgusting that the big social media corporations - the so-called big tech "broligarchy" of Zuckerberg and Musk - are profiting from pushing misogynistic, sexist content at teenage boys and men. Rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tait, now embraced with open arms by Donald Trump and effectively freed by Donald Trump, is only the most notorious of the influencers in a growing manosphere. This is not about censorship. It is about stopping billionaires such as Elon Musk from enriching themselves even further by pushing misogynistic content aimed at young men. All they care about is getting people to keep watching them for longer and longer in order to make money out of them.

Researchers at DCU set up blank male-identified social media accounts on TikTok and YouTube. Within 23 minutes, they were served up antifeminist and toxically masculine content regardless of whether they looked for it. After two to three hours of running these accounts, three quarters of the recommended content to these male accounts was toxic. Meta's own internal research has found that 64% of all extremist group joins are due to its recommendation tools. It found that Meta's own recommendation systems grow the problem. A leaked internal Meta document states that effective content moderation is practically impossible but that it can, at least, stop magnifying harmful content by giving it unnatural distribution. It can, but it does not do so because recommending misogynistic content makes it rich, so it does not care that it is fuelling gender-based violence and a growing gender divide around the world.

The conclusion reached by the researchers was to turn off recommender algorithms by default. Coimisiún na Meán also recommended this in its draft online safety code until the tech companies got to it, and the final version omits any reference to these recommender algorithms. Ireland is in a uniquely powerful position on this. Many of the biggest social media corporations are headquartered here. We have to make them turn off these toxic algorithms for good. This is one of the many reasons people should be on the streets against gender-based violence this International Women's Day, starting in Dublin at 1 p.m. at Dublin City Hall on Saturday.

See this speech in context