Following the meeting of the Dail Committee with Facebook this week, Sinn Fein’s spokesperson on Communications Brian Stanley TD said, “allowing violence, offensive images, abuse of vulnerable people online must not be left to a corporate entity like Facebook to decide”.
“Legislative protection for people needs to be put in place which the Sinn Féin Digital Safety Bill will do,” he said.
“Senior Facebook officials were before the Committee answering questions in the aftermath of the alarming ‘Dispatches’ Programme.
“The processes exposed in Channel 4’s Programme, showed how Facebook deal with offensive and violent images. Examples of these in the programme were a 3-year-old boy being seriously assaulted, people self-harming and racist abuse.
“This demonstrates clearly that we cannot and must not leave a giant corporate body unregulated. Constituents have contacted me in the past couple of weeks to express their horror at what Facebook had on line.
“Facebook told the committee what ‘should’ have been done, that ‘guidance given was incorrect’ and posts were left up in ‘error’.
“I questioned the credibility of this with them at the Committee. Their statements which acknowledge failure on the part of senior staff to have contents of illegal activity removed, highlights the clear need for legislation to be put in place.
“As members of the Dail there is an obligation on us to put in place legislation. This is exactly what Sinn Féin had done putting forward the Digital Safety Commissioner Bill 2017, which the Government state they are not opposing.
“This Bill which all parties claim they support now needs to progress through the Dáil as soon as possible and create a safe environment online.”
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