A People Before Profit Bill to turn off social media algorithms “wraps censorship in the language of child protection,” a TD has said.
Independent Ireland TD Ken O’Flynn criticised the Bill, saying it is not about safety but about power and “deciding what people are allowed to see.”
People Before Profit have said the Bill to turn off algorithms would combat “anti-feminist” and other “extremist” content online. The left-wing party introduced the Bill to the Dáil on Thursday.
The Online Safety (Recommender Algorithms) Bill 2025 would amend the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022, to regulate the use of recommender algorithms by video-sharing platform services. The Bill also directs the Minister for Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport to instruct Coimisiun na Meain to amend the Online Safety Code.
It comes after a Joint Oireachtas Committee heard that the State could “nationalise” social media platforms and use them to promote whatever politicians want.
Commenting on the Bill, Ken O’Flynn TD told Gript: “Wrapping censorship in the language of child protection is a tactic as old as authoritarianism itself. Nobody opposes protecting children. What I oppose is using children as a moral shield to justify the State taking control of information, ideas, and speech.
“Let’s be honest about what this is. This is not about safety. This is about power. It is about deciding what people are allowed to see, what opinions are amplified, and which voices are quietly buried. That is not safeguarding. That is control.”
‘A FREE SOCIETY TRUSTS ITS CITIZENS’
Mr O’Flynn added: “Every regime that restricts speech starts the same way. It never says ‘we are censoring you’. It says ‘this is for your own good’. We have watched this play out in China, Iran, and Russia. The State decides what is harmful. The internet is throttled. Dissent becomes dangerous. And free thinking disappears.
“Once politicians or regulators are given the authority to label speech as ‘toxic’, that definition will expand. It always does. Power over speech is never temporary and never narrowly applied.
“A free society does not need the State to curate thought. It trusts its citizens. It defends the right to speak, to challenge, to offend, and to think freely. If you hand control of information to the State, you no longer have free speech. You have permission-based speech.
“This proposal crosses a fundamental line. I will oppose any move that drags Ireland, even one step, down that road.”
Social Democrats TD Sinead Gibney, the party’s spokesperson on communications, recently said she felt it was a “low ambition” to simply turn off social media algorithms, and that they should instead be utilised by the State.
“I used the phrase nationalisation of online platforms,” said Gibney. “An algorithm is a maths equation, and as you said, they are used to keep our eyes on the screen for the profit of the platforms that control them,” Gibney said.
“But my point is, if we had an ability to exert public interest on those algorithms, we could absolutely flip the entire online space on its head. We could have it designed to support social cohesion, to support lifelong learning, whatever we choose to do, mental health wellbeing – and then allow the tech companies to work within that framework.”
The Bill introduced by Paul Murphy and Ruth Coppinger, would force video-sharing platforms to turn off recommender algorithms for under-18s, and stop profiling-based algorithms for adults unless users opt in.
Supporting the Bill is the Hope and Courage Collective, formerly known as the Far Right Observatory. The taxpayer-supported group has lobbied for social media regulation, previously claiming that social media has propagated far-right ideologies. The NGO previously gave a presentation to TDs in November 2023 in which it claimed “extremists” were “fermenting anti-migrant protests.”