Thread by @johnnyryan

My op-ed this morning in @IrishTimes:
Ireland blew its chance to lead EU in online safety.
#DigitalServicesAct #DSA

There are stories within this story...

The first story is about the Digital Services Act, which is weak on the algorithmic recommender systems that promote hate. Facebook’s internal studies found that these systems amplify unlawful material at enormous scale, and pushed people toward extremism. wsj.com/articles/faceb…

When an algorithm is designed to probe your darkest instincts and serve you a diet of poison, it should not come preinstalled and switched on by default.
See image: the DSA could have switched them off by default. That would have instantly slowed the torrent of unlawful material.

It should not be all criticism. There is much that is positive in the DSA.

The second story is a national one:
Ireland blew its chance to be super enforcer for online content across EU. This would have added to Ireland’s pre-eminence as a location for business in the EU.

The new DSA initially contemplated a mechanism fairly similar to the GDPR, giving Ireland enforcement powers across the EU for all online content on Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft etc.

That would have solidified Dublin’s place as the capital of Europe’s digital market.

But this plan was abandoned.
Other EU capitals were uncomfortable with the idea of handing additional powers to Ireland, which has failed to robustly enforce the GDPR against Big Tech. See tweet from France's digital minister @cedric_o last September.

https://twitter.com/cedric_o/status/1437706519445970945?s=20&t=RatjArDTBOUSGqksxQsCUQ

The European Parliament has just signalled it wants to take the same approach with the forthcoming Artificial Intelligence Act, too.

So Ireland may blow it again.

See IMCO & LIBE text, amendments 259 onward
europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document…

Unless Ireland shows it is serious about enforcing EU digital law, it has little hope of becoming a key digital centre not only for online content, but for artificial intelligence, too.
@ICCLtweet warned the Government about this 1+ year ago.
iccl.ie/digital-data/e…

The third story is about enforcement of EU digital law.

The European Commission is has not acted to ensure the GDPR is enforced by Ireland.

See thread for @ICCLtweet complaint to @EUombudsman and her letter to @vonderleyen.

https://twitter.com/johnnyryan/status/1491709381393752064?s=20&t=VuxvRtzkLn70pXIFeXkAuQ

The Commission shows little interest in seeing the GDPR robustly enforced against Big Tech.
There is little reason to assume that giving it direct supervisory powers over Big Tech (under the DSA) will solve the enforcement problem we see under the GDPR.