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LAST UPDATE | 19 Sep 2024
TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS said the Online Safety Summit held today “will ensure a collective focus across Government on effective implementation of the new Online Safety Code”.
Coimisiún na Meán is responsible for the Online Safety Framework, which aims to make digital services accountable for how they protect people, especially children, from harm online.
The framework will be adpoted next month.
Harris and various ministers were briefed today by the Digital Regulators’ Group, which includes Coimisiún na Meán, the Data Protection Commission, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, and ComReg.
They were also briefed by An Garda Síochána on progress today, implementation plans in the future, and how the Government can support their work in Ireland and at EU level.
Speaking after the summit, Harris described the summit as “productive” and said the Online Safety Code is a “significant tool in ensuring a safe online environment”.
He added that Ireland is now at a “crucial point” in regulating the digital world and that Government today “re-iterated our strong commitment to ensuring our regulators are supported and enabled to carry out this work effectively”.
“I want to ensure that all citizens are aware of their rights and the obligations on platforms under this new online safety framework,” said Harris
He added that there is now an “opportunity” to “ensure we get this right for more vulnerable users such as children and young people”.
Harris also said that the “online world does not operate in some sort of parallel universe” and “the obligations that apply offline in terms of abiding by the laws of the land also need to apply online”.
He added that the Government has “significant tools at our disposal” with the the upcoming Online Safety Code and the Digital Services Act.
Meanwhile, Culture and Media Minister Catherine Martin noted that Coimisiún na Meán has a “central role in developing and enforcing a new Online Safety Framework, including a new Online Safety Code, which it plans to adopt next month”.
She described this as an “important milestone in addressing illegal and harmful online content and behaviour, including the exposure of children to harmful content”.
“This new Framework enables us to address some of the root causes of harm online, and today’s Summit highlights the focus and priority across Government on ensuring its effective implementation,” said Martin.
The final code will set binding rules that will apply to video-sharing platforms who have their EU Headquarters in Ireland.
Speaking in May, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said it was “disappointed that measures to address toxic algorithms have been removed from the Online Safety Code” and noted that a previous draft included requirements to turn off recommender systems.
The recommender system is an algorithm that uses data to suggest items that a social media user might be interested in.
An ICCL spokesperson said recommender systems “push hate and extremism into people’s feeds and inject content that glorifies self-harm and suicide into children’s feeds”.
CyberSafeKids also expressed concern at “the fact this code does not address the recommender system”.
A spokesperson for CyberSafeKids, an Irish charity which works to help children, parents and teachers navigate the online world, said in May that a lot of “harmful content coming through a child’s feed originates from this algorithm”.
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They want to wreck the country and they don’t want you to be able to complain about it.
@common sense: Protecting children from harm will wreck the country?
@Brendan O’Brien: You are truly a special kind of thick. I actually feel sorry for you, really.
@Brendan O’Brien: Nerrrrrdddd
We have both an ongoing housing crisis and cost of living crisis, but rather than focusing their full attention on addressing and rectifying those issues, the government is focused on censorship of the internet for everyone, to allegedly protect children and vulnerable people and the so called media plays along…
If parents are concerned about or have evidence of their children accessing illegal or harmful content, or if they are for example using their phones at night rather than sleeping, take their phones off of them at night, or entirely, that’s called parenting.
Once you are happy they have got the message about what is or isn’t acceptable, you can return their phone privileges, but on your terms.
It’s not a function of government to parent children.
@Dvsespaña: There are parent controls on all media devices. Take charge of your kids’ Internet use.
Yes, this is a distraction away from real issues.
Waste of time , would be better for them to try and ensure kids privacy, stopping profiling and tracking.
We will see no body takes Harris seriously he good for a laugh ha haha
My child is a Bully – Blame the government and teacher’s
My child is Obese – Blame the government and teacher’s
My child is always on their mobile phone
Blame the government and teacher’s
Does anyone see a recurring theme in the above scenarios
@Chaotic State: Yes, there’s a recurring theme.
But that’s not what is happening in this instance. The government trying to impose control over Internet platforms to give themselves blanket censorship powers.
They are parroting the same protecting children drivel that is used globally to silence all objections to draconian controls online.
The majority of people have not, and are not demanding that the government introduces censorship online or the banning of platforms, in fact there isn’t even a reasonably sized minority.
Yet, the government highlights an issue that isn’t, to justify the implementation of legislation they want to for another purpose, i.e. silencing dissent and banning platforms that allow dissent to be published because they support the premise of free speech
We will arbitrate on what is harmful and what is not, we will arbitrate on what is truth and what is not. Does anyone see the government as an honest broker. If they are seriously concerned about children being exposed to inappropriate material, and I don’t think they are, they should be denied access to the internet!
Stopping the objectification of women and men clowning as women would be protecting the minds of boys and men and consequently protecting women and children.
Hail a favourable taxpayer budget for a change.
Children are the future and need to be minded but honestly ffg
The measures discussed in the article are not censorship but the beginnings of a mechanism to make the platforms accountable for the online environments they create. These environments are not free speech utopias but engagement driven outrage machines that ironically prevent us from talking to each other and instead further polarise societies. Currently we can’t even agree on what the problems facing us are never mind on how to solve them. Government regulation of profit driven algorithms designed and overseen by billionaires who make billions from it is the only defence available to societies at this point.
What defines a successful summit – coffee and chocolate biscuits?
Why are NATO playing war games in the sea of a neutral country ?
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