Man without Twitter or Facebook account to advise Dail Committee on Social Media.

clohamon

Pat Rabbitte, who told Adrian Weckler that he purposely does not have a Twitter or Facebook account, will be advising committee members on Social Media or more precisely "How the challenges facing individuals, families and communities through the irresponsible use of social media channels might be addressed."

This latest episode of 'Blind leading Blind' will take place in Committee Room 3 at 9:30 tomorrow. (watch here)

Perhaps the Minister can tell them how to avoid the pitfalls of the internet altogether by moving to one of Ireland's extensive narrowband reservations.

watty

Possibly the only worse advice would be from a Facer/Twitbook Evangelist, or from Google.

Pat probably understands the concepts of Privacy better?

When are people going to realise that Twitter, Google +, Facebook are superfluous "walled gardens" intended to Monetise you and spy on you in a way the CIA and KGB could only dream of?

Do people really not know how to use ordinary Websites and PRIVATE email and PRIVATE peer to peer text messaging (with optional audio/video) for their REAL contacts, work mates, relations etc?

Unlike Pat I do have a Twitter & Facebook account. But I think the way BBC, RTE and other promote these is sickening and I certainly don't post anything personal or important on them. So while in many cases his department is barking mad, I'd only comment in this case on the basis of what he actually says...

hfallada

One of the advisors is suggesting you give you passport number when applying for a IP address(something which a lot of people don't have). Or a credit card(then again something a lot of people don't have) or even better you wont have to pay to comment on something online.

Its almost like they don't want us to have any anonymity online something which the Chinese government are doing on their version of twitter.

oscarBravo

hfallada wrote: »

One of the advisors is suggesting you give you passport number when applying for a IP address...

Who applies for an IP address?

Solair

Two little points on this:

1) Ireland's a tiny country and the vast majority of these sites are completely beyond the reach of our legislation anyway. So, it's a bit like trying to legislate to get American TV shows to comply with some daft law we come up with. They'll just either ignore us entirely, it will be utterly unenforcible or worse, they might just block access to Irish users entirely.

2) and this is a really big one...
Ireland is very dependent on the IT sector and social media companies for jobs. We have been lucky enough to attract Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and quite a lot of other companies that operate huge data networks and social networking / cloud computing type services.

If Ireland starts to 'innovate' by bringing in legislation that makes it difficult for those companies to operate, we could be waiving bye-bye to a hell of a lot of IT investment through a knee-jerk reaction to cyber bullying.

Even the mere whiff that Ireland's going to do something to 'crack down on social media' will send investment elsewhere.

The previous Irish Government did immense damage to our international reputation as a place with freedom of speech by forcing through the introduction of a blasphemy law. While in reality this had almost zero impact o anything, it sent out a message around the world that Ireland was backward place and that is not easy to shift as many people suspect that Ireland's extremely conservative anyway. So, it just confirmed a lot of prejudices.

I really think we need to be VERY careful that we are not having a debate about something we've no control over anyway which results in doing untold damage to our ability to attract IT companies to locate here.

It will also stifle innovation by Irish companies if they're put under onerous legislative requirements for social media and it will just result in more Irish start ups going off to the UK or California.

The Government really needs to be VERY careful. We do not need to be innovating in this kind of law. Leave this up to countries like the UK or France etc..

Litterally tens of thousands of jobs in Ireland depend on these kinds of technologies!

Choice here is :

1) Be IT innovation friendly and welcome social media investors.
2) Start doing our reactive, nanny state, throw back to the 1950s and scare media and IT investors out of the country.

I would also add that Ireland has an absolutely horrendous history of censorship. It's only in very recent years we've snapped out of that.