Results 321-340 of 2,396 for speaker:Barry Ward
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: That is okay. We will blame Senator Mullen entirely.
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: When was the candidate pack put out?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: How many social media platforms are there?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: Okay. So, with regard to the ones in Ireland, if there are at least 135, am I right in saying that you do not actually know exactly how many there are?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: I agree with the members who have acknowledged just what a mammoth task the commission has, but how can the commission regulate an entity if it does not know if it is there or not?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: In answering another question earlier, the witness said he did not know how many content moderators there are, or were before they were reduced. How can the commission be satisfied? I accept what the witness said that it is not the commission's job necessarily to moderate all the content and that the providers have a role, and I welcome that. How can the commission be satisfied that each...
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: Okay. If I set up a social media platform in a country outside the European Union and I call it - let us pick a name - Verity Social, and if I start to do things that the commission agrees are unreasonable, illegal, unfair or whatever term you want to use, how does the commission shut me down?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: So does the commission just block it?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: That is reasonable but if at the end of the day they are rogue, they are not engaging, they are not accepting what the commission is saying and they are pushing on with misinformation, or whatever it is, can they be blocked?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: Can it pop up under some other name very quickly? If it does, do the commission or the regulator have to go through the same rigmarole?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: Yes.
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: I know I am over time, but I ask the members to indulge me. We have kind of disregarded the time limits in some respects. I have two issues in relation to the larger entities. First, all of us will have the experience of reporting comments, replies or whatever they might be that are absolutely out of bounds, only to have the platform find that they do not breach its community guidelines...
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: The second issue is the algorithms and how and why they push material towards certain users. How much information or insight into the algorithms does Coimisiún na Meán have?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: Coimisiún na Meán cannot direct the companies to give them access because the algorithms change all the time, do they not? If Coimisiún na Meán is testing them today, how will it know they are not changing tomorrow to do something similar or worse?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: I will come back.
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: The question has been asked now.
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: It is asked now; I am going to ask the witness to respond.
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: I call Deputy Ó Murchú, who is not going to repeat everything he said earlier.
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: I want to ask about access to social media platforms for under-16s. Assuming that becomes policy, is there a difficulty from the witnesses' side? We have talked about age verification and age assurance. Do the witnesses see any practical difficulty in implementing a rule that would restrict access to social media to over-16s or over-18s?
- Committee on European Union Affairs: Engagement with Coimisiún na Meán (17 Sep 2025)
Barry Ward: I want to talk about the downloading of apps. We all download apps for all kinds of purpose. When we do, we are often asked to sign up to terms and conditions. I am a lawyer - a senior counsel - and I have been at it for a long time. I do not read the terms and conditions; they are muck to me. I do not understand them and certainly do not have several hours to sit down, go through them...