Chu: We Must Stop The Spread Of Disinformation and Threats On Public Representatives

At today’s Green Party Think-In Green Party Leader Deputy Roderic O’Gorman and Councillor Hazel Chu, Spokesperson for Expenditure, Digitalisation and Media spoke on the need to tackle the stream of misinformation online that are causing activists and public representatives to be targeted.

Cllr Chu said: "We cannot continue with inaction from this Government, we need real action to tackle misinformation online. If this Government is serious about misinformation, then it needs to take action to turn off automatic recommender systems by default - they are handing a megaphone to those who want to spread poison through social media. They are the engine driving the problem and ultimately undermining our democracy."

Automatic recommender systems are the algorithms that control what you see on social media. They feed the user constant manipulation to drive the companies' profits and have been shown time and time again to be the cause of significant harm and to drive misinformation.

Addressing the media earlier, Party Leader Roderic O’Gorman TD said:

“Violence is seeping into democratic politics more and more. The time to do something is now. Recommender algorithms magnify fringe, hateful, violent and typically completely deluded views into the mainstream and give them a weight and presence in online discourse that is totally unrepresentative of real life. As Hazel said, when bad faith actors manipulate this to spread lies and violent rhetoric about democratic representatives, it creates a horrific environment. We’re seeing the real-world consequences of this in Ireland, with the recent outrageous targeting of the Tánaiste and his family. It’s past time to take real measures to stop it.”