Government urged to support bill forcing social media firms to turn off 'addictive' algorithms for children

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 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.

A study from Dublin City University’s Anti-Bullying Centre last year showed the recommender algorithms used by social media platforms were rapidly amplifying misogynistic and male supremacist content.

The study tracked, recorded and coded the content recommended to 10 experimental or ‘sockpuppet’ accounts on 10 blank smartphones — five on YouTube Shorts and five on TikTok.

The researchers found 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 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 any algorithms based on profiling or sensitive personal data should have to be actively turned on by adult users.

Senior fellow at the Irish Council of Civil Liberties Dr Johnny Ryan told Newstalk Breakfast he would urge every political party to row in 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.

“Far too often, what this results in is a personalised diet of self-loathing, self-harm, suicide, into the social feed of a child.

As we know, for adults, this also delivers the perfect drop of poison into each person’s ear.”

Dr Ryan said Facebook whistleblowers had indicated internal studies at Meta showed 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% 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.

“The problem for them is, I don’t think anyone really believes what these companies say anymore.” 

Dr Ryan said while GDPR technically prohibited personalised data being used by these algorithms, the regulations were not enforced on large tech companies.

He believes with re election of Donald Trump in the US, 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.

“Europe now faces the likelihood, I think, of an 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.”