Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was taking my lead from the title on the television when I was in the anteroom. I welcome the Minister to the House. As he will be aware, we are in the full swing of a referendum campaign. This referendum in particular has taken a turn that is unprecedented.

The use of social media has been a growing campaigning platform for the past ten years or so. Unlike other platforms, it has a distinct ability to be financed and co-ordinated online from foreign sources. This was highlighted by potential Russian influence in the US presidential elections and subversive alt-right campaigns during the Brexit referendum.

We are only two weeks into the referendum, yet extensive investigative journalism has shown that the use of websites and paid advertising from the "No" campaign has been used at a cost of six figures per day. Some of the videos are presenting themselves as being RTÉ news bulletins and other websites appearing to be fact-based and objective have been targeted at people's online profiles.

Undecided8.orgpurported to be unbiased and targeted Facebook users with what seemed to be an unending war chest. It is linked to the Protect the 8th campaign and it has been sourced, run and funded by a US PR firm linked to Cambridge Analytica. Undecided8.orgused Facebook and Google trackers with the intention of helping with future retargeting, including of people who had clicked on the advertisements before. The users' data is then vulnerable for future guerilla targeting, as are users of a similar demographic. Undecided8.orghas been shut down thanks to stellar investigation work by technology journalist Gavin Sheridan.

However, this is only the start. Numerous Facebook pages with few followers have suddenly poured resources into paid advertising targeting voters. These advertisements are dishonest and subversive, and are intended to scaremonger voters who seek to establish their own views. Referendums have always been subject to differences of opinion and interpretations of proposals. However, these advertisements are blatantly ignorant of the facts and seek to undermine our democracy. While I believe the State should never seek to censor campaigns that aim to present their views to the voting public, it also has a responsibility when the voting public has been targeted by a foreign source seeking to deceive undecided voters with resources that eclipse those of the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, and the Referendum Commission and completely undermine their work.

In an unprecedented move, Facebook has written to the Government and SIPO on the topic, the first time Facebook has reached out to any state government in regard to fake news during a public vote. As of the past hour, Facebook has announced that it is suspending all referendum based adverts from sources outside the State. This is a most welcome move and it should act as a call to action for Google and, more important, the State.

We are now in a space where a private entity has done more to uphold democracy in the State than the State itself. We are also failing to deal with the issue of hundreds of thousands of euro per day from foreign sources being spent by a campaign. We are failing to uphold any notion of fear and even playing fields. We are failing to deliver any resources which allow SIPO to effectively investigate whether campaigns receive donations from international sources and are failing to update our electoral legislation to deal with online campaigning as a platform.

I welcome that the Government has agreed to progress the Online Advertising and Social Media (Transparency) Bill. Sinn Féin would amend the Bill and its objectives are timely. It will make the sources of fake news transparent, but we still do not have regulation from a State level of what comes after. SIPO needs effective resources and powers here and now. We are 17 days away from a public vote, and all of the Government responses seem to be after the fact.Like the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election, I fear we will look back on the referendum in late May and say it was influenced by false reports online, and we will be left to deal with the consequences of that.