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BLOCKING SOCIAL MEDIA companies such as X is “not the space that I’m in”, according to Taoiseach Simon Harris.
Speaking to reporters at Government Buildings today, the Taoiseach was asked for his reaction to the news that a Brazilian Supreme Court panel has upheld the decision to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform nationwide.
Asked whether the move gave him any food for thought in terms lengths the government would ever consider and whether he was surprised by the decision, he said:
“So look, that’s not the space that I’m in. I use social media. I use X. I see the value in social media. I actually think when social media is used correctly, it can be good.”
However, he said there has to be clarity in relation to the application of laws, and the responsibility of social media companies.
He said social media platforms are publishers as they are publishing content.
“So I would much rather see a structure put in place where everybody is very clear on the rules of engagement,” he added.
Harris said he is “satisfied” where Ireland is in terms of putting binding codes in place, stating that significant financial penalties will be imposed on social media companies that don’t abide by those binding codes.
Earlier this month, Harris said social media companies “dining out” on the idea that Ireland will not be robust in relation to online safety are about to find out how “extraordinarily wrong” they are.
He vowed to hit social media companies where it hurts – in their pockets – if they fail to comply with their obligations around online safety.
“Ireland submitted its draft code to the European Commission in May, and subject to that being approved, I expect us to be in a position to have that code in place this year,” he added.
The Taoiseach plans to hold two online safety summits in Government Buildings this month, he confirmed.
The first summit will involve the new regulator, all relevant social media companies, departments and state agencies.
Harris said he wants to hear the perspective of the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the Department of Enterprise and others, as well as the new media commissioner.
A second summit will then be held with groups that advocate for children, such as the Children’s Rights Alliance and the National Parents Council, the ISPCC and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
“What I really want to do with those two meetings is, in a sense, check that the course we’re on is the correct one. But I do believe we’re going to see a situation where we’ll have left the era of self regulation behind, and we’ll have binding codes in place by the end of
the year,” he said.
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X is great for seeing things you won’t see on RTE News
@common sense: such as?
@common sense: It’s great for seeing things you’ll hear on RTE News about two weeks later like Israel transporting weapons through Irish air space.
@common sense: because half of the stories are idiots making things up about children being abducted by foreigners
@common sense: as in made up lies
@Jeff Regan: what exactly did she say? Not paraphrasing. And btw, what I find chilling is the abuse that Kitty Holland received online after she reported on an attack at a migrant camp in west dublin
@SYaxJ2Ts: Anything that runs contrary to the narrative!
@common sense: Because the media are obliged to follow rules and guidelines as opposed to what you see on X.
X will have to be banned eventually if it isint correctly regulated.
@Brian Hunt: that’s the TRINITY ( ker-brendan ob-offside) for you… predictable as rain
@Neil Ferriter: Rules and guidelines when telling thr truth? You have it backwards chap. The are regulated to control what truths are given to the plebs. They can’t control X so they are trying all this bs, wasn’t a problem when a globohomo owned it seems to be now. X/twitter hasn’t changed under either only by name. Still the same grifters left and right side of the divide. RTE are ‘public relations’ extension if the government. A.k.a. propagandist half truth gaslighters
@common sense: I deleted my account when Musk took over. I made a fresh throwaway account yesterday to get ahold of support for something, and I was immediately greeted by Donald Dump posts amongst other far-right accounts and bots.
I don’t condone censorship on the internet. But on the flip side, I absolutely condone having Musk’s misinformation and bot factory censored. And while they’re at it, preferably Meta too.
@Tom L: Firstly there’s no comparison between the media that have to follow strick laws with a platform that is unregulated and a free for all.
A platform that can manipulate public opinion based on unsubstantiated comments.
The media do not whip up public outrage and create situations where people get hurt.
So yes unless it is regulated or if the hate speech bill is passed then X may have to be blocked.
@Buster Lawless: nothing of substance to add to the conversation?
@Jeff Regan: Absolutely, the Far left are the problem.
@SYaxJ2Ts: loads, something the TRINITY definitely wouldn’t be familiar with, lol
@Buster Lawless: right, not much evidence of either assertion on this thread
@SYaxJ2Ts: haha, the TRINITY……. s’funny but since I UNMUTED ye I notice any comment one of the accounts makes gets 3 thumbs ups immediately, it uncanny, lol
@Buster Lawless: really? My most recent one has 1 thumbs up
@SYaxJ2Ts: EXACTLY!!!! Sure you control the TRINITY, exposed once again!!!!! Lol
@SYaxJ2Ts: he seems to be getting desperate for attention now, might even be losing it altogether the poor chap !
@offside again: heyhey, c’mon kev, use the Brendan account now…. keep the TRINITY united,lol
@Rochelle Hart: Sure Pro-Palestine activists occupied the Department of Transport in Dublin demanding no weapons for Israel pass through Shannon Airport 10 months ago.
@Daniel Skelton: I’d fully support a ban on X. It’s a toxic platform run by a megalomaniac who believes he is above the law and can propagate whatever lies he wants to without being held accountable.
@Jonny Dun: It’s a cesspool of toxicity. Really bad
With words even changing their meaning and meaning different things to different people with the fear of being cancelled if you express sincerely held beliefs that don’t pass MSM scrutiny we are already in Orwell’s 1948 land.
@thomas molloy: Would be worse if it was his 1984 vision but actually you’re not entirely wrong.
@thomas molloy: In that case, there’ll probably be a knock on your door at any moment, and you’ll be dragged away?
@thomas molloy: Words have been changing their meaning depending on the context in which they are used forever. Slang is often based on using common words but with a totally different meaning to the dictionary definition. Language has always been malleable and hard to pin down.
‘the fear of being cancelled if you express sincerely held beliefs that don’t pass MSM scrutiny’
There’s some truth in here in terms of people being ostracised for holding certain views but the glaring issue is that both sides are equally convinced they are the victim of a negative and dominant narrative. In a funny way being cancelled is simply a massive leg up to hero status within the ranks of people who agree with you. We’ve definitely lost some of our ability to debate and maybe concede a few things in a world where things are rarely as black and white as our brains would like them to be.
@SerotoninWars: Science can try and fail and try again, get it wrong keep trying and eventually have an outcome. Debate that would help Social development is being stifled by fear of bankrupting litigation and media cancelling. Our current complex society needs to come up with a remedy.
@thomas molloy: what are your sincerely held beliefs that don’t pass scrutiny?
@thomas molloy: Are there specific examples you are thinking of litigation wise? We’ve had some pretty brutal libel laws in this country for a long time. It’s just a reminder that this isn’t a wholly new area of contention. Is it the area of human rights you are referring to? That’s always going to be extremely difficult to find consensus on. And again it’s not new. There are many things we take for granted now that were opposed with gusto at the time. It’s a tricky one balancing people’s right to voice their opinion with our responsibility as a supposedly decent humane society to protect vulnerable groups and individuals on the receiving end of hate. One persons right to free speech is another’s bullying and othering.
Not the space he’s in? What space is he in? Does he have a space?
@David O Brien: No way he will shut it down, sure all angry Simon does is give out about the state of the place with the rest of us, problem is he’s “in charge”. Bluffer
@Eddie Garvey: We still haven’t found out what space he’s been in yet though.
It is not compulsory to watch “x”, if you don’t like it, watch something else.
I don’t like Brussel sprouts, so I don’t eat them every day!
@Brian Hunt: But if you did, they wouldn’t poison you.
Nobody cares about the Uklownians, they’re the Karen’s of the world
@Yllems Yags: Karens*
@Yllems Yags: 1y under your username, yet I’ve never seen you here before. Anyways, poor trolling effort, you even corrected yourself haha ! Have a good day.
@offside again: hahaha, one third of the ‘TRINITY’ ( Kevin ker, offside & Brendan ob) critiquing a posters trolling…. You couldn’t make this stuff up,lol
@offside again: Do you do special storytime in public libraries for much younger people by any chance? XD
@Buster Lawless: ah Buster turns up … quelle surprise !
@Yllems Yags: troll gets caught out, ressorts to sick lies and insults to get the thread shut down. Standard stuff.
@journal.ie : please keep this thread up, no matter what the troll says.
@offside again: just skimmed through the comments….. As usual, ALL the TRINITY having a go, QUELLE SUPRISE
@Buster Lawless: yawn, you’re boring now. You need new material. What happened to the oul’ juggernaut ?
@offside again: in fairness, the TRINITY is more like Taylor swift & usually ‘ shakes it up’, lol, shouldn’t it be the sick puppy, Kevin ker replying????
@Buster Lawless: Pots calling kettles black, hilarious!
@Brian Hunt: can’t say I approve of veiled racist undertones, but I agree, the trolling from the TRINITY can be humourous, my favourite is when the accounts actually contradict each other, lol
@Buster Lawless: zzzzzzzz……
@offside again: night kev
As much as it can be complete poison and a gigantic notice board for abject nonsense, banning it is a terrible idea. It will simply feed the more conspiracy minded and make martyrs out of fools. It will simply prove that ‘they’ really are out to get you and give a free pass to lots of the gibberish posted there. There’s nothing like the feeling of being an underdog or part of a cause/movement to spur people into more extreme beliefs and actions. Religion has been at it forever.
@SerotoninWars: Brazil banned it for a specific reason, though. Social media companies shouldn’t be above the law.
@Brendan O’Brien: I agree. It’s a no-win situation though. The act of banning something like X, simply acts as ‘proof’ that there really is a huge conspiracy to silence dissenting voices and fuels a tonne of other theories and ideas that are erroneously lumped in with one specific action and situation. The legalities won’t matter as we’ve moved beyond a broad consensus on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour. Obvious examples being Trump, Jan 06th and so on.
@SerotoninWars: Yes. Really social media companies should accept the need to behave responsibly and remove dangerous or inflammatory content, but when people like Musk are in charge …. Anyway, consensus won’t be coming back anytime soon.
@Brendan O’Brien: I agree – it comes with so many negative aspects, fuels and promotes the blind acceptance of so much disinformation. Facts are often the victims of the factions. Your ‘team’ matters more than real objectivity. They have moved far beyond being somewhere to share. There are real political ramifications. But how you go about managing this is so tricky. It’s whack-a-mole stuff. Clamp down on one and another will pop up somewhere else. Many end up moving to complete echo chambers with no pushback whatsoever like Truth Social.
Yes, unfortunately, we’ve lost any sort of baseline for civility. The things people are willing to give a free pass never cease to amaze. It’s not that long ago that it was only the unhinged fringe that would condone many things that are now shrugged off, or lumped under conspiracy and witch hunt, even when the evidence is overwhelming.
@SerotoninWars: also VPNs are very easy and cheap to use on your phone these days, so things are basically impossible to ban unless maybe they are banned internationally.
@John Murphy: Absolutely. It’s preferable to find ways of making the existing platforms a little less like the Wild West of information. On one hand I believe in free speech but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that endless lies and misinformation, propagandists and bad actors remove so many of the positive aspects of everyone getting to have their say. It’s not fair and balanced with truth and insight being the main aims. It is for some but is now so corrupted it’s impossible to ignore the disastrous ramifications of the endless lies and falsehoods becoming accepted truths, through sheer repetition. The mistrust runs so deep that people won’t even accept the findings of many of our best people, institutions and tools for finding the truth. We’ve ended up with tribal realities with actual reality, the verifiable and provable stuff lost to hunches, biases, jingoism and hatred for the other side. It’s hard to see any mass consensus or meeting in the middle anymore.
Like Simon Harris or not—– that IS a good PUN
Thats a shame, Twitter is a pit of hate and missinformation.
It’s not that long ago that if you read something in a paper and you retold what you read, you were told not to believe everything you read in the paper . It’s the same advice with social media. It’s good advice.
Coming next. X to be renamed 4chan to complete the transition.
Congratulations Musk. 44 billion to create a website that already existed. At least for his sake it was other people’s money. His money is safe.
@Ronan Mc: 4+ Chan.
The lines of the 4 can then be rearranged around the + to make the symbol it truly represents.
Block it
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