Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 November 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

Session 1: The Evidence

Mr. Amrin Amin:

I will touch on the point of business models that was mentioned by many members of the panel. I direct my question to Mr. Roger McNamee. The underlying issue is the business model. Mr. McNamee spoke about surveillance capitalism. If we dig deeper, the issue is that the more engagement, the better sensational news sells. Mr. McNamee spoke about stuff that triggers a fight or flight reaction as well as hate speech, conspiracies and disinformation. Given the various technological solutions at hand, there is little or no incentive for social media companies such as Facebook to prevent these harms as it would affect their bottom line. Is that correct?

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