Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I raise the issue of Palestine again today because what we have been witnessing in recent days is barbarism of the highest order. I do not use this word lightly. It is genocide and the most brutal collective punishment of a civilian population that I think the world has witnessed. Nobody should be doing business with Israel now. It should be boycotted and shunned as a rogue nation where human life holds no value whatsoever. Israel is chasing Palestinian people down from block to block and now telling them to go and live in a wasteland where there is no water, no toilets, nothing, no facilities whatsoever. This is barbarism, and it needs to be called out and the world needs to stand up and just stop doing business with Israel.

I particularly wish to focus on a briefing I held yesterday in the AV room on the role of the social media platforms in this conflict. These companies are silencing the voices of Palestinians on their platforms. Meta is engaging in shadowbanning. Those who have a high profile with millions of followers and who speak publicly about being pro-Palestine are having their posts reduced. They are not being circulated. The algorithms are working against them. This has been proven by independent audits of the platforms. The same moderator standards are also not being used for posts in Hebrew. Until recently, Meta did not have a single Hebrew moderator in the company. Not one. No matter what anyone said about Palestine in Hebrew, then, it went through. This includes comments such as "kill all Palestinians", "murder them all" and "they are animals". All this went through as not violating the rules of the platform because there was nobody moderating the posts in Hebrew.

It is likewise for the AI systems existing. If the words "Palestinian child" are typed into some of the AI programmes, a post of a child with a gun will be returned.