For too long, the people of Ireland have been waiting for our political leaders to set and enforce strict rules for big tech corporations like Meta, Google, TikTok and X — but instead they’ve given these corporations free rein to harvest our most personal data, decide what we’re sold based on who we are, and censor what we see online. This government has failed to stand up to Big Tech — so we, the people, are taking matters into our own hands.

On 22nd October, Uplift launched the People’s Inquiry on Big Tech Harms. Over the course of one day, a panel of experts heard testimony from a range of people about the ways they, their communities, our planet, and our democracy, are being harmed by Big Tech.

This was just the start. Based on what they heard at the People’s Inquiry on Big Tech Harms, the expert panel (Noeline Blackwell, Ian Power, Ebun Joseph, Liz Carolan and Tanya O’Carroll) will work with the Inquiry rapporteur Joe Westby to put together a report for the next government. This report will outline the harm Big Tech is doing to people across Ireland, and it will also outline what needs to be done to fix our broken internet.

The People’s Inquiry on Big Tech Harms marks the start of a movement. Join us, and together, we’ll take back the internet.

Four people submitted testimony to the People’s Inquiry on the themes of health and mental health. Below is an excerpt from each of their submissions.

Dr Mimi Tatlow Golden, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies of Childhood at the Open University, told the inquiry about the ways unhealthy foods are advertised to children online, and the impact this is having on children’s health and wellbeing.

 “…This whole business is about sucking up our personal details and our attention — so our time — and using that to fuel an advertising economy that’s not good for us in terms of, I would argue, our hearts, our minds, or our bodies.” 

Tate Minish, a college student, told the Inquiry about the impact social media had on his mental health. He explained how this ultimately led him to quit most social media platforms. 

“When I was a regular user of social media, I experienced a range of negative mental health effects. These predominantly came in the form of internal judgement and comparing myself to others on social media… It often felt like Big Tech didn’t want me to be a functioning person.” 

Molly Hickey, a non-binary youth advocate, told the People’s Inquiry about the harms they’ve experienced online as a non-binary person. They spoke about the harm social media has caused to their mental and physical health.

“As a non-binary person, when I use the online world, I’m already excluded on so many apps because they don’t even add the pronoun option… We have to receive so many death threats, but anytime that we challenge this, a lot of times we are told to just maybe delete the video or take down the post if that upsets you. It’s never that the person is being discriminatory — it’s always our fault, and that is a big issue with Big Tech.” 

Alex Cooney, CEO of CyberSafeKids, spoke about the wide-ranging consequences that we’re seeing as a result of children being exposed to harmful content online. 

“Unless we make children’s safety a central part of the design consideration of online environments they will continue to face risk and harm. These harms include cyber-bullying, lack of sleep, online grooming and sexual extortion, and exposure to inappropriate content such as pornography, horror, torture, disordered eating, self-harm, suicide.” 

Four people gave testimony to the Inquiry under the theme of Online Hate and Minoritised Communities. A summary of their testimony is below.

Ali Ryan spoke to the Inquiry about her own experience of having intimate images shared of herself online without her consent. She spoke about the need for tighter regulation online to prevent things like this from happening to other people. 

“There are ways in this country to track people down, but it’s only used for certain things… So obviously with child pornography it’s extremely important and they can track down the IP address. With death threats they can’t, so I find that very odd. And I don’t have the statistics, but I’m sure if you looked it up it is mainly women who are getting death threats.”

Edel McGinley, director of the Hope & Courage Collective, told the Inquiry about the rapid rise of hate online that’s occurred in recent years, and how this has led to real-world violence and aggression. 

“Since 2019 what we’ve seen is a rapid growth of online hate and extremism. Since 2022 the amplification of violence on social media and the incitement to hatred has intensified, leading to real-world harms in our communities… What extreme event has to happen for politicians to actually take the impact of the recommender system seriously?”

Sharon Mpofu told the Inquiry about the harm that’s being caused to people from migrant communities by big tech harms, such as increased hostility, abuse and bullying. 

“Social media bullying and abuse is a really big thing in the migrant society as of late, because now it’s like we are the victims, the fall guys, for any bad thing that is happening… The power of social media is really destroying a lot of people in the migrant community, especially our youth.”

Jacob Sosinsky spoke about his experience online as a trans man, telling the Inquiry that his own mental health was negatively affected by the rise of transphobia on social media.

“As a trans man myself, I needed to delete my social media accounts because hate was flowing my direction for just existing. It was really affecting my mental health, and not only my mental health, but my family’s mental health – my partner’s mental health, my sister, my nephews, everyone was affected… Anytime I reported this harassment, everything was saying ‘there’s no violation’.”

Three people gave testimony to the People’s Inquiry about Data Misuse & the Environment. Summaries and quotes from their testimony is below.

Professor Jennie C Stephens, professor of climate justice at Maynooth University, has spent 30 years conducting research to understand why the societal response to the climate crisis has been so inadequate. She told the Inquiry about the harms caused by data centres.

“The ballooning electricity demand associated with big tech is making fossil fuel phase out much harder. Emissions from data centres are massive and growing, and artificial intelligence, blockchain, and other tech developments all require energy intensive data processing… Here in Ireland, the expansion of data centres is causing huge social and ecological harms with minimal benefit to the Irish people and to Irish communities.”

Sorcha Tunney, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, told the Inquiry that Ireland’s energy is being hoovered up by big tech’s data centres.

“If you look around us, we have data centres from Google, Amazon, Meta, all the big names… Data centres will be 30% of our energy consumption by 2030. The European norm is 2%, and the Netherlands is second closest to Ireland at 5%, so we really are a European outlier. What we’ve been calling ourselves is the data dumping ground of Europe, because that’s basically what’s happening.” 

Eoin Brady, a solicitor FP Logue Legal, spoke about the role of the law when it comes to data centres and energy use – and about the ways it’s currently failing to protect the environment and communities.

“The actual fact of the matter is that the growth in data centres has far outstripped the growth in clean energy production. It’s cancelled out all potential emissions reductions from renewable energy growth.” 

Three people gave testimony to the People’s Inquiry about Data Misuse & the Environment. Summaries and quotes from their testimony is below.

Jennifer Waters, political researcher at UCD, told the Inquiry about the ways political parties are advertising on social media and the lack of transparency in this area. 

“[For] Political ad accounts on Meta, multiple credit cards or payment methods can be attached to the same ad account, and none of those credit cards need to be verified, so any credit card can be attached to a political ad account… Public information says ‘x politician paid for this ad’, but any credit card could have been attached to the ad account, and that opens up the argument of foreign interference… I’m not saying that these are things that are happening, but I can’t refute people saying that they are.” 

Senator Eileen Flynn told the People’s Inquiry about the challenges people from the Travelling community and other ethnic minority backgrounds face in politics due to hate and discrimination. 

“While we’re moving very slowly in a more positive direction, we’re also in a very dangerous time. Misinformation, our parliament not supporting us — because we’re a very diverse country now and that representation is not there… We have little or no representation of our people in our parliament and that needs to change, but it will not change unless people feel safe to be able to put themselves [forward].” 

Taysir Mathlouthi, EU Advocacy Officer at 7amleh, spoke about the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices and content on social media platforms.

“When it comes to the EU for example, we’ve seen that social media platforms have been censoring pro-Palestinian voices in countries such as Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, because they were following the political agenda of those member states, but they were also following their own policies that were discriminatory against Palestinians.” 

Aaron Rodericks, head of safety and trust at Bluesky, told the People’s Inquiry about the challenges of protecting democracy on social media.

“The level of effort on correcting the record for election misinformation and disinformation in this year of so many elections is lower than at any time I’ve experienced in the past five years, which is astounding. In the US, you can get called before a congressional hearing, but you can also have the US president holding up your picture on a broadcast calling for retribution, so the stakes have increased significantly.”

The first step of the People’s Inquiry was our launch on 22nd October 2024, where experts heard testimony from people across a wide spectrum about the harm Big Tech is causing in people’s lives.

Next, we’ll seek to put questions from our experts to executives at leading Big Tech companies. We’ll also be publishing a report, and once the next government is formed, we’ll make sure this gets in front of the relevant ministers. They’ll be presented with a series of recommendations, and we’ll do everything in our power to make sure they can’t ignore us.