The Government is to confirm its intention to introduce age restrictions on the use of social media.<\/p>\n
This will form part of a new Digital and AI Strategy that will be considered by the Cabinet.<\/p>\n
The plan will place a strong focus on online safety and it will confirm that legislation is on the way to restrict social media for under-16s.<\/p>\n
This is set to be priority for Ireland’s EU presidency and while the Government’s preference is to move at a European level, Ireland will take action regardless.<\/p>\n
The first step is a pilot run of an age verification tool which will see young people involved in a trial to assess how it will work in practice.<\/p>\n
The strategy will also emphasise the need to keep legislation under review to address certain AI technologies which act as tools to intimidate and harass.<\/p>\n
The Government will engage with European Commission to ensure the list of prohibited practices under Article 5 of the EU AI Act remains fit for purpose amid the growing power of AI.<\/p>\n
‘Lack of joined-up thinking’ with Govt plan – Digital Rights Ireland<\/p>\n
Digital Rights Ireland chairperson TJ McIntyre said that the Government is viewing the introduction of age restrictions on social media for under-16s as a “silver bullet”, something he feels represents a “lack of joined-up thinking”.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Mr McIntyre said: “There is, I think, a lack of joined-up thinking in this space.<\/p>\n
“I think, to a certain extent, the Government has latched on to the idea of age verification as a silver bullet rather than thinking about doing maybe somewhat harder, more difficult work on regulating social media generally.”<\/p>\n
Mr McIntyre described the Government\u2019s plans for age restrictions on social media as “worrying”.<\/p>\n
He said that there had been a lack of consultation on the matter, as well as no examination of it by the Oireachtas.<\/p>\n
“I think this is a bit worrying as a policy development because we haven’t had any hearings on this. There’s no evidence base. There’s been no consultation. There have been no examinations of this issue by the Oireachtas,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This is something that has gone off on what is essentially the whim of the executive without any prior consultation. I would be very concerned that the whole thing is starting off or rather half-cocked.<\/p>\n
“We shouldn’t be legislating first and looking for evidence later. We should be doing it the other way around,” Mr McIntyre said.<\/p>\n
Mr McIntyre, who is also an Assistant Professor at UCD School of Law, said that age restrictions for under-16s would be very difficult to legislate for, particularly if a form of Government identification would be required for social media access. <\/p>\n
“The talk of doing this unilaterally is already, I think, very unrealistic. This is something that can be done, if at all, only at an EU level,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The difficulty with that is that the Data Protection Commission has already determined on two separate occasions that aspects of the Public Services Card scheme are illegal.<\/p>\n
“It’s very difficult to imagine how they could legislate for that, particularly if you think about this from an international perspective, because this isn’t something that is limited to Ireland.<\/p>\n
“There doesn’t seem to have been any thought given to the actual practicalities of age verification in this context,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government is to confirm its intention to introduce age restrictions on the use of social media. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-303971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}