Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 26 May 2021

Joint Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht

General Scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2020: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Liam Herrick:

We agree 100% with all of what has just been said. It is a clear illustration of the very different nature and texture of the very necessary task of regulating and aggressively going after materials such as child sexual abuse material. This is clearly defined in law as being illegal and has an obvious social harm. Already, the technology companies are developing and investing quite a lot in artificial intelligence and machine learning methods of countering that. However, this concept is so vague, open and encompasses legitimate political expression. It is almost impossible to separate it from legitimate and important political expression. I would put in the same category questions such as disinformation and misinformation, which are also notoriously difficult to define. Therefore, I think this is the wrong way of trying to deal with a very understandable social problem.

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