Sharon Keogan: Demands Answers on Rage Baiting and Online Safety
Sharon Keogan pressed technology company representatives on rage-baiting, algorithmic incentives and the online safety of children. She cited the BBC programme Inside the Rage Machine and asked how platforms would respond to claims that outrage fuels engagement and harmful content.
Sharon Keogan asked why internal research cited by whistleblowers appears to show Meta and TikTok allowing more harmful content because outrage fuels engagement. She sought a direct answer on how the public can be assured platforms are taking child safety seriously in light of those claims.
Keogan raised the issue of illegal websites accessible in Ireland, asking what responsibility platforms have to remove content or sites that offer services illegal in this country. Representatives replied that content hosted on their products that violates policies or is illegal would be removed and outlined reporting mechanisms, while also noting limits when they do not host a site directly.
Keogan referred to a specific example - a website allegedly listing women who may have been trafficked - and pressed how children accessing such material are being protected. She requested further correspondence after the session on particular cases and pushed for clarity on where platform responsibility ends and government action begins.
Main question
Sharon Keogan asked why internal research cited by whistleblowers appears to show Meta and TikTok allowing more harmful content because outrage fuels engagement. She sought a direct answer on how the public can be assured platforms are taking child safety seriously in light of those claims.
Platform responsibility
Keogan raised the issue of illegal websites accessible in Ireland, asking what responsibility platforms have to remove content or sites that offer services illegal in this country. Representatives replied that content hosted on their products that violates policies or is illegal would be removed and outlined reporting mechanisms, while also noting limits when they do not host a site directly.
Local impact and follow-up
Keogan referred to a specific example - a website allegedly listing women who may have been trafficked - and pressed how children accessing such material are being protected. She requested further correspondence after the session on particular cases and pushed for clarity on where platform responsibility ends and government action begins.
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Transcript
Thank you for answering all our questions. You are responsible for our children when it comes to the time that they spend online but a lot of parents, there's parental responsibility there and a lot of parents out there are using digital devices to parent their children and parents are buying their children, whether it be laptops or tablets or mobile phones, younger and younger these days. But I want to talk to you about rage baiting and there was a programme on in the BBC called Inside the Rage Machine there in March where whistleblowers state how the company's meta and TikTok in particular were allowing more harmful content on people's feeds due to the internal research revealing outraged fuel engagement. So have you any counter to these claims and how can the public be assured that you're taking the online safety of children seriously when these claims emerge? Also when it comes to websites and illegal websites in this country, what is your responsibility to taking those websites down? Particularly when it's in relation to pornographic material, child trafficking in some cases, what is your responsibility in that or do you rely on the government to take action to tell you to take it down? And I'm referring basically to Escorts Ireland, where many young people would maybe... Sandra Keoghan, please don't mention businesses that aren't here. All right, okay, I'm referring to a website that would have a number of women on those websites that may have been trafficked into this country. What is your responsibility? Google, yes. So you're referring specifically to websites that may be illegal or have illegal content, not websites that are... Websites, websites that are offering a service that is illegal in the country. What is your responsibility? Well, as you'd appreciate, if we don't host those websites, we can't take them down. But if they attempt to post content on our hosted products that is either in violation of our guidelines or is illegal, we will remove that and we have reporting mechanisms to remove that. But it hasn't been removed. I'm not sure, are you specifically referring to a specific... I am specifically referring to a particular website offering a service that is illegal in this country. But are you referring to a specific Google product? Sandra Keoghan, I don't know if this is relevant to... Well, I mean, children do access these websites as well. So you have to be... Children can access this service and these websites and they're there to be seen. It doesn't matter whether you look up sex for sale, whatever you want as a minor. Perhaps we could, if you have a specific case in mind, I'd be happy to correspond with you after the session. Right, okay. And in relation to the rage baiting, if you can come in quickly on that, TikTok, TikTok, please. So we would dispute the findings in that particular study, but generally speaking, we implement a safety by design approach at TikTok and that ensures that we're building protection for our younger users into every element of our product. So videos that don't pass our rigorous content moderation policies are really not eligible for recommendation in the free feed.