Senator John McGahon- speech from 22 Feb 2022

Thank you very much, Lasky Herlock. And Minister, first of all, I'd just like to give my apologies to Senator Micheál Carraghy. He's worked very hard on this committee with colleagues over the last year and a half, and unfortunately he can't make it today. So I'm very happy to fill in for him, and I suppose I'm happy to fill in for him because this is an issue that I've been taking a personal interest in over the last 18 months when we look at big tech, when we look at the algorithms that we've used. I listened to Frances Haas' testimony before the United States Congress, before the European Parliament, and before the House of Commons, and I think what she... ...and big tech has been really, really beneficial, and the fact that she is going around the world giving personal testimony to parliaments shows how important it is. I suppose the first thing to talk about really is to give the context of why we are introducing legislation like this today. And the context of it goes back to the United States, it goes back to 1996, and it goes back to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That was one of the very first internet acts the world has ever seen, and the reason why it came along was it was to provide news websites who had comments, comments sections, it was to provide them immunity against libelous comments, it was to provide them protection. And it made sense at the time because it was a new era, we didn't know what it was. But now what happens with that same section is, that is the section that big tech companies like Twitter, like Facebook, like YouTube, use to hide behind. And they use to hide it behind because they can call themselves platforms and not publishers. And here is in the definition, when they aren't treated as publishers, they are not responsible for it. The minute social media and big tech companies become responsible for the content that's on their platforms, the sooner they will take greater care towards it. So the reason we're having to come in with legislation like this today is because they have failed to self regulate themselves. No matter how many times how many pleasers say we're doing this, we're doing that, like it doesn't make sense for these guys to self regulate themselves because it fundamentally alters their business. business model. And their business model like any business is to try and make a profit. So why on earth would Mark Zuckerberg or other people in big tech turn around and say, actually, we're going to alter our algorithms to make it safer for people, but we're going to lose more money in the process like that, that is just not going to happen. And that is why it isn't so important for governments to now step in and legislate. And that is what the Irish government is doing today. That's what the European Union is doing with the DSA. Even in the United States under President Trump and Democrats, it was the one thing that could both agree on, which was trying to repeal and remove the section 230 of that act that I mentioned earlier on. And there's movements now in the United States Congress to also do that. And I think that would make a real decent approach. So that is the context of where we are today. The other thing about it is which we have to understand and acknowledge is that big tech moves at lightning speed, literally lightning speed. It's changing every week. And it is so difficult for governments of any, you know, democracy to try and keep to the pace of that. It is very, very difficult. today. But it is going to be so important that we have mechanisms built up, built in within this commission, within this legislation, that we are reviewing it every year. There's no point just passing all this and just putting it in the statute books and then forgetting about it for four or five years. Because big tech is such an ever evolving system, it is something that is going to have to be monitored rigorously and continuously. And it's exactly like my colleague Senator Casales had said, referencing Francis Hong on RT over the weekend. We have to have people in that commission who are absolute experts in algorithms, who are experts in algorithms, who are experts in algorithms, who are experts in algorithms, who are experts in how big tech works. There's no point just hiring people. We actually need to actually go after employees of it and to say, come and work for us, help us shine a light and show us what these guys are doing. We have to have the highest quality of the quality to come into this commission. Otherwise, my fear would be that it may not be as successful as it could be. When we look around at a couple of other aspects, I really welcome the comments you had about the individual complaints mechanism, the fact that you're going to come back to us after 90 days from the 31st of January. I think one of the reasons why this is important, to be quite clear, I understand why some people may balk at the concept of an individual complaints commission, because then anyone who, you know, if I fell out with Fintan Warfield or if I fell out with Sharon Keoghan can report a comment and this and that. It's not going to work if it's been abused just when people are using it because they don't like what so-and-so said or somebody else said. But what it needs to happen is where someone can come along with clear evidence over a clear amount of time of sustained harassment or sustained abuse, that that is where action can be taken. Because at the minute, if you are an individual in society, in any society that's been harangued, abused, harassed online, what can you do? You can go to the guards, you can take people through a legal process, you know, it's costly, it's time consuming, it's a very laborious process. Whereas if someone is able to make a direct complaint to this commission to say, here is an individual who is clearly targeting a certain section of society or something like that, that that person can then be completely removed, completely blocked, or, you know, that sanctions of some sort can happen. And I think it would provide people with a lot of reassurance that there is an avenue to make those type of complaints and that they have a level of backing up and I think that would be really important as well. A couple of the other points that I wanted to make is when we talk about misinformation, I saw, I was reading a really good article in The Economist there last week about big tech and misinformation and I saw it had a really good cartoon with it. And the cartoon was the four horsemen of the apocalypse who are traditionally famine, death, war, and conquest. Now, three of those things were stuff that previous societies had to always contend with. But perhaps the fifth horseman of the apocalypse, which the 21st century has to contend with is misinformation. And that misinformation is being used right around the world to try and destabilize economies, to try and destabilize democracies, to undermine democracies, to undermine stuff like vaccines, to undermine stuff like COVID. And it's been allowed to run amok online. And it was a It was all shown a couple of years ago, where Facebook algorithms were like going down a rabbit hole, that if you search for a certain thing, it would produce another level of that content, and then it would produce another level of that content, and you would go further and further down what's called the rabbit hole. And there is an excellent podcast from The New York Times called The Rabbit Hole, which details exactly how those algorithms worked. And then all of a sudden, Facebook only turned around and said, oh, well, we need to do something about it now because the lid was blown on it. So that is exactly why we cannot trust big tech companies whatsoever. Now, I was going off on a slight tangent there. But to go back to the misinformation point of it, one thing that I think is really good, which is something that I think the Department of Education and even perhaps this commission could look at in the future, is what they've been doing in Finland since 2014. So in Finland in 2014, Finland came under a huge cyber attack from Russia over perceived grievances towards Russia. And as a result, what Finland did in their Department, in their Department of Education, is they introduced misinformation classes, where they actually showed primary school children what online misinformation is, how to identify online information, and then how to react to it. And I think if we started doing something like that with Irish children today, to prepare them for the online world, because it's extremely different when I was younger and other people were younger, to prepare them for the online world, I think that would go a very long way as well. And I suppose just in my final minute to try and conclude and wrap up what I want to try and say in a nutshell is, like I said at the start, the outcome of this speech, the reason we are actually having to do this is because we cannot, and it would be absolutely insane for us to rely on big tech to regulate themselves. It won't happen. It won't happen. It will never happen. They have tried to do it. And I, do you know what, to be honest with you, I don't really think they've even tried to do it. I think they've tried to do it once the lid has been blown on some of the practices that they've been up to. It's then mealy-mouthed responses about what they're trying to do. But until the business model of big tech has changed, which it never will, because they're not going to change it themselves, governments are going to have to step in and regulate. And I just think this legislation will be the first piece of legislation that could be introduced and will be followed by other democracies around the world. But the final point about it is, it is so important that we keep looking at this every year, that we keep reviewing it. Because if we don't do that, we will not be able to keep up with the lightning speed level that big tech evolves on. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.