Social media companies must automatically turn off their “recommender” algorithms for children, according to a new bill being put forward by People Before Profit.

The bill also states that 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 Doctor Johnny Ryan told Newstalk Breakfast that he would urge every political party to support this action.

“These systems are dangerous, Meta, YouTube, Instagram, X, TikTok, you name it,” he said.

“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, 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.”

Teenager girl victim of online stalker suffering from cyberbullying abuse feeling lonely and hopeless sitting on stairs with dark light, 20-03-2019. Image: Samuel wordley / Alamy

Dr Ryan said that, according to Facebook whistleblowers, internal studies at Meta showed that 64% of those who joined extremist groups on the platform did so due to Facebook’s recommendation tools.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

GDPR regulations

According to Dr Ryan, while GDPR technically prohibits personalised data being used by these algorithms, the regulations are not enforced on large tech companies.

However, with the re-election of Donald Trump in America, he said now 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,” Dr Ryan said.

“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.”

Dr Ryan said we should have the freedom to communicate with each other without foreign censorship and interference.

Main image: File photo dated 21/08/14 of a child using a laptop computer. Time spent online and mobile phone ownership have increased among children during lockdown as many search for new ways to communicate and be entertained, new research suggests. Issue date: Thursday January 28, 2021.