General Irish politics discussion thread

No it's not its simply holding social media companies to the same standards as TV stations or radio etc. If a TV station or a newspaper was to broadcast/publish hate speech and incitement to hatred, racist tropes etc they would be sued into oblivion. Social media companies should be held to the same standards.

Easier said than done given that social media platforms are not broadcasters in the way TV & radio are.

They may not be "broadcasters in the way that TV and radio are", but they certainly are broadcasters; they take something said by one person and disseminate it indiscriminately to millions, which is pretty much what "broadcast" means. Two points about this:

First, it's mostly a commercial operation; social media platforms do what they do for profit.

Secondly, if a statement is harmful, it's largely the repetition of the statement to millions that causes the harm.

So, we have a problem here. Social media organisations have a financial incentive to broadcast statements as widely as possible, but any harm caused by that broadcasting mostly falls on other people, not on them, so they have no incentive to minimise or avoid that harm. Which means that their profits come at the expense of other people's rights and interests.

This is generally a bad setup. In general, we should arrange matters so that whoever profits from a particular activity should also bear the downside risks of that activity. For example, if you sell a product that turns out to be defective, you have to compensate people for the loss they incur from using the defective product. Or, if you drive a motor vehicle in public, you have to insure yourself so that, if people are injured by your driving, they'll be compensated. Etc, etc.

So, there's a real problem here. On the one had, free speech. On the other hand, free speech isn't really free; there's a big cost associated with it, especially when it's defamatory, dishonest, false, misleading or Trumpian. Who should bear that cost? And how do we arrange matters so that nobody has a profit-driven incentive to broadcast defamatory, dishonest, false, misleading or Trumpian material?

There have been a number of opinion polls now showing a drop in support for Sinn Fein. They have mostly been within the margin of error so can't be taken as significant yet. However, the consistency across polls is something to notice and the next two or three polls will show whether this is a trend.

Any chance she can take Roderic with her?

Give it a rest.

As I mentioned just up, it would suggest that at least some of SF's support is coming from right wing voters who are under the (mistaken) impression that SF is an anti-establishment right wing party (perhaps because of the party's strong presence in working class areas).

There's not a hope in hell that SF will move in their direction to accommodate them. They have been a traditionally left wing party and have always embraced the ideas of the left. If those voters want an anti-immigration party to vote for at the next election, they'll have to find another one.

Not news, and presumably SF are well aware of it

I agree, the party to watch is the recent one formed by two rural independents. Likely to be conservative on social issues and anti-immigration. If it could attract a few urban personalities, it could form the basis of a right-wing party.

Agree about immigration being bad news for Sinn Fein, a lot of the anger out there is unfocussed as people are angry but not sure what they are angry about. If that coalesces around an issue - immigration - where Sinn Fein differ from the mob, they could lose votes.

With FG forced into saying it is time to curb immigration it may be an issue for those who have let immigration become an issue, i.e. the sitting government.

It is they who will be held to account or should be for allowing it to be hijacked by the far right.

One thing that goes against the right wingers is that Ireland has never been what we could call a right wing country. Yes, FF dominated the political landscape for 50 years, but theirs was a very peculiar form of right wing rural Catholic conservatism, steeped in deference to the Church, rather than what we would normally associate with right wing or far right politics.