Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was in respect of staffing, in particular, that Deputy Connolly raised the issue.

I am concerned about notification and the strong emphasis placed on the e-commerce directive and the terms "suitably notified" and "appropriately notified". It has been pointed out time and again that the e-commerce directive is wildly out of date. In many cases, individuals are not in a position to notify because they may not be aware of the offensive or harmful content related to them. I want to focus a little on the facilities associated with the targeting of information. If I do not see abusive content about me, I am not in a position to notify the relevant organisation about it. This leads to the question of the targeting of information.

Twitter has a policy whereby it can block content but it tries to support a person's experience on the site. I may not be simply concerned about my experience on the site but about abusive content about me. As I understand it, Twitter changed its rules, and perhaps there has been a further change, whereby if I block somebody and assume that person no longer has access to my information, that person can still see me and speak about me but I do not see what he or she is saying. That change in the blocking provision is a very serious concern and relates to stalking, harassment and so forth. It is not just my experience but misinformation.

Ms White indicated that Twitter never automatically suspends accounts. I have spoken to people who have been the subject of very targeted campaigns of harassment and a person who has been suspended as a consequence immediately created a new account and resumed the harassment. This is a real concern. When the Rape Crisis Network Ireland, RCNI, spoke to this committee it emphasised that this should not apply only to repeated activity but a single incident should be enough. Stalking is one of the concerns that may be included in this Bill. Someone can repeatedly re-register on new accounts but Twitter will wait until that person does something offensive or dangerous. That approach creates a very chilling fear for a person. I will not bring the people involved into committee testimony but I know there are people who have been repeatedly targeted by accounts which effectively threatened them and when those accounts were suspended a new one immediately appeared. How can Twitter improve its blocking mechanisms to address those concerns?