YOUR TIME IS UP, FACEBOOK
Oireachtas committee savages tech giant at hearing and vows it will now lead the fight to appoint a social media watchdog
FACEBOOK was castigated by TDs and senators yesterday who told the social media giant it was ‘incapable of self regulation’. The powerful Oireachtas Communications Committee insisted that Facebook’s most vile excesses must now be curbed by a Digital Safety Commissioner. And committee members shot down
attempts by Faceboook executives to explain the shocking revelations of the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary that showed moderators allowing violent and disturbing content online.
TDs and senators pulled no punches in saying why it is now time to legislate, adding that the social media giant has shown it is ‘either incapable or unwilling’ to self-regulate and prevent violent and harmful content from appearing on the site.
The committee’s chair, Hildegarde Naughton TD, said it was ‘not happy’ with Facebook simply turning up and apologising.
The committee will now write to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Communications Minister Denis Naughten, urging them to press ahead with legislation to introduce a Digital Safety Commissioner as soon as the Dáil resumes in September.
‘It is the view of the committee that the time for apologies and remedial action is past. Social media platforms have shown themselves incapable of self-regulation. If they won’t regulate themselves, we must do it for them,’ chair and Fine Gael’s Ms Naughton told reporters after the meeting.
Asked if they were satisfied by the explanations they had received, she replied: ‘They apologised. This was the second time we’ve had Facebook before our committee. Earlier in the year it was in relation to the Cambridge Analytica debacle. So we’re not happy.’
The undercover documentary in their Dublin HQ exposed moderators being trained not to remove violent content – including a video of a man violently attacking a young child.
Facebook claimed much of what had been secretly recorded by Channel 4 ‘did not accurately reflect Facebook’s policies or values’ and tried to place much of the blame of the CPL, a company subcontracted to train those checking for harmful uploads on Facebook.
An unimpressed Ms Naughton said after hearing Facebook’s apologies yesterday: ‘They have outlined a number of areas that they are going ahead with – for example investigations, reviews – in relation to their practices. We’ve asked them to come back to us in relation to how that has progressed. But the clear signal here today was that we need regulation.’
She added: ‘The reason they were here before us today is because of illegal and abusive content that was put up online that Facebook allowed to remain there in order to generate revenue. And there was clear breaches of their own standards.’
Ms Naughton said that Ireland, as the designated European headquarters for Facebook and numerous other tech giants, must lead the way in online regulation.
But she said this was a task we could not do alone, saying they would reach out to the EU, the European Commission and elected representatives in other member states to discuss the need for continent-wide regulations.
‘Unless we start this regulation through legislation, we’re going to be back here again with more issues, like we’ve been here before over the last couple of months,’ she warned.
Niamh Sweeney, head of public policy at Facebook Ireland, told the committee an investigation is now underway to determine how ‘these gaps between our policies and values and the training given by CPL staff came about’.
‘This is being led by Facebook, rather than by CPL, due to the extremely high priority we attach to this,’ she added.
But claims that the training material had been altered by CPL without Facebook’s knowledge were rejected by the committee, and Ms Sweeney admitted she could not confirm that no one at the company was aware of how CPL was training its online moderators.
Fianna Fáil communications spokesman Timmy Dooley blasted suggestions that it was not in Facebook’s interest to have violent or upsetting content on the site.
Describing offensive material as ‘the cocaine of the business’, he said: ‘You have suggested that that material would be off-putting to people and would be damaging to you? I put it to you that it’s quite the opposite.
‘That this is the kind of material which attracts lots of eyeballs – makes people, for sure, outraged. But in that outrage they copy, they paste and they share,’ Mr Dooley said.
The executives had earlier stated that such material was always removed, unless a user had shared it to ‘condemn’ the behaviour.
‘So that’s it, that’s the catch,’ Mr Dooley said. ‘You have this disturbing material, it provokes an unbelievable reaction in the minds of those who watch it, they express outrage and they share it.
‘And millions of more people get to see it. You’re not really concerned at what they’re actually seeing, it’s that they’re remaining on your platform.’
Sinn Féin communication spokesman Brian Stanley accused Facebook of using CPL employees – suspended from work after the documentary aired – as ‘sacrificial lambs’.
‘So you’re able to come in here today and say that these people have been given time off to show how seriously you’re taking the matter? When in actual fact the responsibility goes further up the chain in your company,’ he said.
Siobhán Cummiskey, Facebook’s public policy manager, said that in cases related to child physical abuse ‘in the vast majority of circumstances’ such content was deleted. She added: ‘In a very narrow and limited set of circumstances, we will allow that content where the child is still at risk and there’s a possibility of that child being brought to safety. In that circumstance we will take two actions.
‘We will firstly “age-gate” and put a warning screen on that content. And we will also provide that content to our internal law enforcement response team, to see if they can locate where it has come from and if we can contact local law enforcement.’
But this explanation was rejected by committee chair Hildegarde Naughton, who said such incidents
should be removed immediately and notified to gardaí or Interpol.
Mr Stanley also raised the case of a child abuse video in Malaysia that was uncovered by the Dispatches programme, in which the child had been rescued in 2012, but the video remained online for another six years. Ms Sweeney responded: ‘I think what you’ve hit on there is one of the major gaps which we’ve since identified, where we weren’t closing the loop effectively enough in cases where the video was left up with a view to raising awareness so a child could be rescued.’
But when challenged by Mr Stanley that she ‘wasn’t explaining this away’, Ms Sweeney replied: ‘You’re right. I can’t defend that and I won’t defend that. It shouldn’t have been six years.’
Facebook has met recently with An Garda Síochána to discuss safety procedures, and has also contacted the child protection agency, Tusla, to arrange a similar meeting.
Tipperary TD Michael Lowry told the social media executives that the ‘trust and confidence of the public in your efforts to self-regulate has been shattered’.
Mr Lowry also said: ‘And what is an ingenious way of communicating is now… in danger of running out of control’.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said the addictive power of Facebook works ‘more on material that induces anger’ and that online regulation is now needed.