Government urged to support bill forcing social media firms to turn off 'addictive' algorithms for children
The Irish Council of Civil Liberties is calling on politicians to support a new bill which would force social media companies to turn off their 'addictive' recommender algorithms for children.
Last year a study from Dublin City University's Anti-Bullying Centre showed that the recommender algorithms used by social media platforms are rapidly amplifying misogynistic and male supremacist content.
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The study tracked, recorded and coded the content recommended to ten experimental or 'sockpuppet' accounts on ten blank smartphones - five on YouTube Shorts and five on TikTok.
The researchers found that all of the male-identified accounts were fed masculinist, anti-feminist and other extremist content, irrespective of whether they sought out general or male supremacist-related content, and that they all received this content within the first 23 minutes of the experiment.
A new bill being put forward by People Before Profit is advocating for a situation where social media companies would have to automatically turn off their 'recommender' algorithms for children.
The bill also states that any algorithms based on profiling or sensitive personal data should have to be actively turned on by adult users.
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Senior fellow at the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, Dr Johnny Ryan, told Newstalk Breakfast that he would urge every political party to row behind this bill.
'These systems are dangerous, Meta, YouTube, Instagram, X, TikTok, you name it.
'Each of them has a system that analyses how a child responds to everything that they see and then uses that insight to push into that child's feed things that will addict them.
'For too often, what this results in is a personalised diet of self-loathing, self-harm, and suicide, into the social feed of a child.
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As we know, for adults, this also delivers the perfect drop of poison into each person's ear.'
Dr Ryan said that Facebook whistleblowers have indicated that internal studies at Meta showed that 64% of individuals who joined extremist groups on the platform did so arising out of recommendation tools on Facebook.
'The good news is, although Government doesn't seem to share this view, when we polled people across Ireland last year in January with Uplift, we found that 82 per cent of the Irish public supports a binding rule to switch [algorithms] off.
'It's exactly about engagement – the longer you spend glued to your screen, the more space there is for ads, which they can then sell to you or at you and that's what makes the money.
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'The problem for them is, I don't think anyone really believes what these companies say anymore.'
Dr Ryan said that while GDPR technically prohibits personalised data being used by these algorithms, the regulations are not enforced on large tech companies.
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He believes that that with re election of Donald Trump in the States it is the time for the EU to step up.
'Trump is now in charge, and he has his fingers on the scales for all of these companies.
'So, across Europe, as we wrote in the Guardian last week, Europe now faces the likelihood, I think, of an intional algorithmic assault to boost authoritarians into power.
'We've allowed a situation where Trump is able to hold the hidden levers of Europe's internal political debate, and that is wrong.'
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Some angry Scottish nationalists on social media are asking why he isn't holding a summit on independence, instead, which gives an indication of their (lack of) interest in the wellbeing of Scots. A summit is normally understood as a meeting of world leaders on a pressing issue of international concern. Using it to describe the deliberations of a devolved authority on a serious internal problem is to indulge in delusions of grandeur. Par for the SNP course. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh. Organising NHS staff properly IAIN McNicol's letter (June 9) gives a glowing review of his NHS treatment and he suggests that taxes should be increased to improve funding of this enormous organisation. Not everyone has been so well treated and many have to wait a very long time for treatment. I speak from some experience. Television is full of programmes about hospitals, emergency services, ambulances. et cetera. Even for a minor accident it is not unusual to have a couple of ambulances, a fast response paramedic, the Hazardous Area Response Team, the fire service, a couple of police cars and a JRU (Joint Response Unit). In many cases a helicopter is called in to add to the mayhem and sometimes sent away again as not needed. The scene is a sea of blue lights and all colours of high-vis jackets. What does all that cost and could it not be more economically organised? Then the scene switches back to the A&E department and here you can see a large number of staff milling around, sitting at computers. I don't think funding is the problem. I think it has more do with actual organisation, but with an enormous unionised workforce it will never be sorted out. David Gilchrist, Paisley. Child Payment has been a success THERE can be little doubt that the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) is one of the most progressive initiatives delivered by either the UK government or any of the devolved ones during the last 10-15 years. Author, political commentator and Oxford University Professor Danny Dorling acknowledged this at the weekend when he said the SCP had significantly helped tackle child poverty in Scotland while remaining almost entirely ignored by politicians in England, whom he accused of wearing 'unbelievable blinkers'. He added that for an eligible family, 'If you've got three kids that's about £4,000 a year extra – that means that your children can eat and eat well, I mean healthily'. Figures published in March indicated that 31% of children across the UK were in relative poverty compared with 30% a year earlier. In Scotland the rate was 22% compared with 26% for the previous year. 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As a Labour voter I was very proud. John Swinney, a nice man, demonstrated the pressures he had been under the whole week-end, and was understandably crestfallen. I am sure that I was not alone in being hugely impressed by the interview with Dame Jackie Baillie as the votes were being counted. Emotionally drained, she gave the honest answer that at that point the result was too close to call. It came as no surprise when we saw the Herald's picture of Dame Jackie in tears. As a Labour voter I thought that, not for the first time, she is the kind of person who gives politics a good name. Sir Tom Clarke, Former Labour MP for Coatbridge. Election count? IT would appear that the First Minister does not even have a basic grasp of maths – pretty essential, may I suggest, for this role. He claimed that the Labour vote at Hamilton 'collapsed by 20% from 50% to 30%'; this is a reduction of 20% points, the actual percentage reduction is an entirely different figure . Perhaps the Cabinet Secretary for Education could put him right? Mike Flinn, West Kilbride.
