Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

So I hear. That can happen. There are other players, however, that are less benign. They may be state actors or non-state actors. They may be absolutely disorganised but there may be many of them. That is a problem. The engagement of an coimisiún regarding how the algorithms work is of importance. We are all aware of the issue of reinforcement. When a person sees a particular issue online, he or she suddenly gets tonnes of the same content. Watching a Donald Trump video will bring you straight to Ben Shapiro and whatever else and you will end up in a particular place. Some of it is disturbing.

There are facts that are facts, and that is easy. If I say the wall is red when it is obviously not red, that can easily be dealt with, but there is an awful lot of political messaging and whatever that is not as clear-cut as that. Much of this relates to Coimisiún na Meán. It is getting into the area of flaggers and the fact that what one person considers disinformation, another person may consider freedom of speech. We know there are varying political opinions. That does not impact on An Coimisiún Toghcháin, but it is a significant body of work. We have all seen the impact. Mr. O'Leary referred to the percentages relating to misinformation and disinformation that is used and abused in elections. It is about creating an infrastructure that is able to deal with this. Mr. O'Leary made the best point, which is that everybody should carry out their own analysis, remove all unnecessary context and whatever else, deal with every issue and look at it in a completely comprehensive way. That does not always happen, however. People have a particular view and, in this day and age, what they look for and get is reinforcement of that view, be it right, wrong or absolutely crazy. It is very difficult to deal with that. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong in terms of information, but there is a lot that falls outside that.