Onus is on Government to prevent spread of hate online, committee hears
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube are systematically failing to enforce their own community standards, including ignoring reported harmful content, she told the the joint committee on children, equality, disability and youth
Government must put urgent pressure on social media companies to prevent the spread of hate and disinformation online which is now sowing division, allowing the far right to grow, and unravelling the fabric of our communities, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
Digital platforms are now the key mechanism driving hate, disinformation, and manipulation, and politicians must put pressure on these companies to stop it, Niamh McDonald of the Far Right Observatory (FRO) said.
Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube are systematically failing to enforce their own community standards, including ignoring reported harmful content, she told the the joint committee on children, equality, disability and youth.
She also said that YouTube is assisting in the monetisation of protests, with the FRO having documented far-right entities using payment platforms including PayPal, Stripe, and GoFundMe to raise funds.
“The first thing we need is for algorithms to be changed,” said Ms McDonald, adding that this “needs real political will”.
“We’re talking about real-world harms. The most vulnerable people in our communities are being affected by this, and we have the head of social media companies 2km down the road. Government has a responsibility to put pressure on them to keep us safe.”
Ms McDonald said that social media companies often have adequate policies and community standards, but they are not adequately enforced.
She said that the far right are “the haters, the dividers, the fascists”, and they are dividing our communities.
But solidarity within communities inoculates that hate, she said.
Government must now equip local communities to respond effectively; recognising community engagement and community development as core to a prevention strategy and forming part of a broader accommodation response for refugees and people seeking asylum, she said.
Gary Daly of Daly Kurshid Solicitors and representing Le Chéile — an alliance for inclusion and social justice that challenges the far right — said public discourse and dispelling misinformation that proliferates online are key to humanising the people who are coming into Ireland seeking refuge.
One pregnant client of his was so frightened by the protests outside her bedroom window in a direct provision centre, that she feared for the life of her unborn child, he said.
He added that an “enormous amount of misinformation is being circulated”, which includes a narrative of "unvetted males" arriving into the country, even though each asylum seeker must go through a detailed vetting process.
He said that another dangerous trope — that Georgia was an entirely safe country — was also untrue, as the country is partially occupied by the Russian army in an ongoing land grab, leading to violence and war.
Niamh Ní Chonchubhair of Ballymun community resource centre Axis, and a representative of Ballymun for All, said that sharing information with communities was key to stamping out the fear and closing the information vacuum that has created space for the far right to manipulate people's insecurities and gain ground.
