Sir, – I welcome the establishment of an Oireachtas Committee to examine the role of social media in public debate, particularly given concerns about how social media may have played a part in some very sad events recently (“Oireachtas committee to report to Rabbitte on abuse of social media”, Home News, December 28th).
Clearly, there is now a significant amount of personal resentment, anger, aggression, and general emotional ugliness expressed by Irish users on social media channels, expressed anonymously or otherwise and aimed at a range of targets.
There do, however, exist laws to deal with threats and defamation.
Might I therefore suggest that the committee add further value by discussing the engagement of social media abusers on their own terms in a humane and constructive way?
An exploration of how to identify those social media abusers in need of early mental health counselling or those at risk of legal investigation, and to then provide them proactively with advice, would be preferable before the medical or law enforcement professional are actually called upon. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – What about a system to protect the public from politicians and their spinning machines? Every major political party has teams of bloggers, many of whom who are paid to troll social media sites, and attack the character and reputation of private citizens, as well as other politicians.
Who is regulating them? – Yours, etc,