Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 7 November 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Session 2: Industry Perspective
Dr. Janil Puthucheary:
I understand. This is my final question. Dr. Bickert's comments and assessments do not address any of the issues that are happening in end-to-end encrypted platforms such as WhatsApp and perhaps what is being proposed for other messaging services. They centre on Facebook's newsfeed-based products. In places like India and Brazil, there is good evidence that WhatsApp has been compromised, weaponised and exploited for the purposes of disinformation as well as affecting elections. Have any Facebook employees in its safety team or otherwise expressed serious concern about the weaponisation and use of WhatsApp and other closed platforms for this purpose? Does Facebook have plans to address some of our concerns, as legislators and regulators, that these closed platforms would be used for these purposes?
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