Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 30 March 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

^ General Scheme of Electoral Reform Bill 2020: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Ronan Costello:

There are two things I would say to that. One of the benefits of Twitter being a public platform is that rebuttal can be done as publicly as the sharing of disinformation. Someone can quote-Tweet in respect of a piece of disinformation that the person believes to be disinformation and say it is entirely wrong and include a link to the correct source, whether the Electoral Commission or a news organisation like Reuters or AP. If that rebuttal is done using an account of a journalist who is verified and who has 20,000 followers, it will have a larger impact on correcting the record than an pseudonymous account that is part of a low-scale co-ordination network that may only have 50 or 100 followers.

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