Professor James O'Higgins Norman:

The Deputy has painted a picture that represents the situation online very well. It goes to the heart of human nature and the way human beings behave when they are not educated to appreciate kindness, inclusivity, diversity and equality. One analogy is the time in history when schools were first established. Bullying happened in classrooms and teachers did not see it as a problem. They saw it as boys being boys. They thought it was just how kids behaved, and as long as it did not get too far out of hand, teachers did not see a need to step in. Educators later realised the damage this caused to individuals and we realised that education has a very important role in helping human beings to overcome the inclination to dominate or be aggressive towards others.

Perhaps something similar needs to happen in the new parallel society online and some kind of duty of care should emerge. If I own a coffee shop and two people are having an argument in it, am I responsible for that argument? Probably not, but I have a duty of care if the argument gets out of hand and I might need to step in and ask them to take their argument somewhere else. I would be obliged to uphold a standard of behaviour in the coffee shop. Something should be done to make that duty of care very clear to social media companies and other platforms. It must be clear that certain standards of behaviour are not acceptable in this space. I do not know how that can be realised technologically. In the past, people joined clubs that had rules. When people joined the club they signed up to behave in a certain way, knowing that if they did not do so they would be shown the door. This is not a new problem but we need to deal with it in a new place, that is, online.