Government set to introduce laws to make internet safer to use

Richard Burton, Minister for Communications, has today announced policy plans for new internet safety laws. These laws would see the appointment of an Online Safety Commissioner with powers to prosecute and fine companies who break the rules.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Bruton said the act will establish a new regime with clear expectations for companies to keep their users safe.

He said parents cannot keep up with the rapid changes online and it was not sufficient to expect companies to self regulate.

The new Online Safety Act would also give the new regulator powers to order internet and social media firms to take down content that breaches agreed codes of conduct.

Under existing laws, online platforms must remove material which is a criminal offence to disseminate.

Writing about this move, Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said:

“This is a tentative first step. Unfortunately, however, there is nothing in what the Minister has said which suggests that he has remotely got to grips with the true scale of the problem. Clearly cyber-bullying of children is grievously wrong and it is an issue that cannot be ignored – so potential progress on eliminating that is a good thing. But cyber-bullying is a small symptom of a much deeper malaise, when viewed alongside the complete undermining of the democratic process which has been enabled and – in certain crucial ways – actively encouraged by social media platforms and other tech giants.

“The typical reaction from internet-based companies in the past ran along the lines of get-out clausess like: ‘All we are doing is reflecting what is already out there in society'. That might have applied to the poisonous rantings of the kind of keyboard warriors who stuck noxious comments underneath videos or articles or contributed to forums in the past.

“Even then, of course, the tech response was a cop-out, since the internet giants were monetising this festival of hatred and bile, and knowingly let it happen whether what was being said was utterly untrue and potentially horrendously libellous or not. But things have since moved onto a different level completely. Sinister, and consciously anti-democratic, forces – including nation states engaged in cyber terrorism and wealthy fascists with twisted individual agendas alike – have worked out how to use the internet, and search engines and social media in particular, to foment hatred and to attack democratic structures. And they do this by paying money to the internet giants to run deliberately mendacious advertising, the aim of which is to promote political agendas that are designed to oppose or to fracture the painfully pieced together, and still fragile, global consensus on human rights and equality.

“The effect of the untrammelled license which was given to tech companies is that the more unscrupulous and sensationalist you are in what you say and do – and pay to have published – online, the more effective you are likely to be.

"Democracy is based on the assumption of general access to reliable, truthful information. While that is a Utopian ideal which can never be fully attained, in the world of the internet, channels have been fabricated whereby people are being fed with specifically tailored lies and distortions that are designed to manipulate and exploit the particular weaknesses, paranoias and pathologies of individuals and groups. It is imperative therefore that regulation of the internet should address what is has demonstrably become a fundamental threat to the democracy itself and to the democratic process.

“Obviously, it is difficult for the Irish government, or Irish legislators, to address something of this magnitude alone – but it must be addressed. And fundamental to that process is that it must be recognised finally that, to take just one example, social media platforms are editorial contrivances; and that these tech companies are in fact media companies, engaged in the business of publishing – part of which involves taking ads from clients and charging them for disseminating the content of these ads.

"Previous assumptions about some kind of essential difference between the functions of traditional publishers and social media companies make no sense whatsoever now. The reality is that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other tech publishing businesses must be as accountable for what they publish as The New York Times, The Guardian, RTÉ or the Sunday Business Post.

"Anything else enables malign forces in their quest to undermine democracy, to pursue vendettas and to foment hatred. But it is also, as it happens, clearly anti-competitive, because one group of publishers can disseminate, and get paid for, ads that are full of lies, while others are expected to abide by standards of accuracy and accountability. It is a travesty that this has been allowed to happen. But there is no reason to allow it to go on."

According to today, later today, Minister Bruton will announce a six-week consultation period for the plans, before bringing draft proposals to cabinet.