Ray Butler (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to talk about President Trump and fake news, and our fake news when it comes to Facebook and the way it is run. I am sure many Senators have noticed that there are many trolls on Facebook who may be giving grief, who run out of ammunition after a period and who have to go elsewhere to get more ammunition. What they do in this regard is set up community pages. There could be the Lucan community page, the Trim community page or the Balbriggan community page. It makes them look respectable. They run these pages and the people who visit them, thinking that they relate to their communities, tend to join. Over a period, these trolls build up a serious number of friends. They then start working on the news themselves and putting in their own news and take away people's credibility by putting in false news. Before that, they cry wolf and people stop listening, so they go under this new fake news. I am calling for accountability in respect of these pages. If one contacts Facebook or Twitter or whatever Internet company is hosting such pages, they cannot be found. Many people have been badly hurt and their credibility has been taken away.