Dr. Mary Aiken:

We are talking about points of law but we are almost using Stone Age tools to deal with a highly sophisticated problem. It is a technology problem, aided and abated algorithmically in terms of how negative content is spread and disseminated. When we look to create laws in this area we are going to have to look at sophisticated machine-intelligent solutions that will actually automate the data collection and prosecution processes to create packets for the Garda so that it can prosecute. That brings us into the area of surveillance. However, if there is a criminal act, then maybe that is something that we can consider.

I will offer an example. The largest social media company in this country has approximately 2.5 million users. If 10% of them decide over any given weekend that they have been harassed or bullied and want to bring it to the Garda, that involves 250,000 people turning up. If the number were 1%, that is 25,000 people at the Garda station on a Monday morning. It the number was 0.1%, that would be 2,500 people. The Garda simply will not be able to cope with the volume. We can decide to run up the white flag and do nothing because it is such a big problem or we can decide to come up with sophisticated solutions to what are effectively network-science-type problems.