Ireland can lead battle for online safety, says Aussie czar
IRELAND could be the European leader on social media regulation, and work with tech giants to remove harmful material online, the Australian digital watchdog has said.
Australia’s e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant told the Irish Daily Mail that our Government should use the fact that tech giants are domiciled here as leverage to take them to task over harmful material online.
The digital czar has the power to set fines of Aus$18,000 (€11,000) every 24 hours in Australia, if a social media firm refuses to remove offensive posts – and she believes the appointment of a digital safety commissioner is the way forward.
Her office in Australia provides a complaints service for young people who have suffered serious cyber-bullying or abuse online, and has powers to order companies to take down content which breaches its rules or standards – or is deemed to be seriously abusive. She believes there is a ‘really important leadership role Ireland can play in Europe’, in terms of regulating social media platforms, as there are ‘so many of the companies domiciled’ here.
Legislation to create an office of Digital Safety Commissioner is before the Oireachtas and Ms Inman Grant said she would welcome TDs here taking a look at the laws in Australia.
While the Mail is campaigning tirelessly for greater powers to save our children from the dangers of online grooming and manipulation, some TDs have argued that, being just one country, we cannot regulate the web.
But Ms Inman Grant said the fact that Ireland is the European base for a number of digital giants makes us ‘really, really well-placed to lead Europe’.
She believes regulation will happen ‘elsewhere’ anyway, but that legislators are in a better position if these companies ‘actually help to shape what the legislation looks like’.
Asked if she had any advice for our Oireachtas members, she said she believes ‘technology use is only going to be more prolific, it already really is ingrained in our everyday lives’, so the Government can ‘get ahead of the issues’ by working ‘cooperatively with industry to achieve the right safety outcomes for your citizens’.
She added: ‘I think that is a really important leadership role that Ireland can play in Europe. You can easily engage in those discussions because you have so many of the companies domiciled there.
‘This doesn’t have to be something that is done to them. It can be something that is done with them.
‘This is actually a great insurance policy for the companies too, that people don’t just shut down and shut off.’
Ms Inman Grant believes an online regulator or legislation in this realm is ‘the way forward’, in order to get on top of, or ahead of, potential issues – as ‘self-regulation hasn’t proven to work’. She told the Mail: ‘What we are trying to achieve is harm minimisation. So you know, the longer the image-based abuse or the cyber-bullying content is up online, the more damage it can do to the potential target.’
She said the power to take down material is ‘so important’ to this work because when a ‘young person, in particular, is being cyber-bullied and that content stays online, that’s an amplification of the humiliation and that is where situations can escalate’.
That process begins when someone reports what they believe to be illegal content.
This is examined by members of the investigative division who look at the material and also assess if the person involved is at a ‘heightened state of mental health risk’.
They then ask the complainant for more details, before going on to notify the company if the image is in breach of rules and regulations or minimum standards, and if it needs to be taken down.
‘We have a cyber-bullying complaints scheme for young people up to the age of 18 to report serious cyber-bullying,’ she said.
‘We have an image-based abuse reporting service for Australians who have had... sexual videos or images shared without their consent.
‘And then we have a cyber- report service where citizens can anonymously report all forms of illegal content.
‘But we prioritise child sexual abuse material. And just this past year, we have had about 11,000 complaints and we have launched about 7,000 investigations into online child sexual exploitation,’ she added. emmajane.hade@dailymail.ie
‘A really important leadership role’ ‘Amplification of the humiliation’