…Especially Senator Eamon Coghlan
The following article in this post is from this Irish Examiner article
An Oireachtas Committee has heard that getting people to pay to post on social media websites or register their passport numbers for IP addresses could help tackle the issue of anonymity of the internet.
Senator Eamon Coghlan made the suggestions as the committee examined the link between social media and cyber bullying.
He raised the issue of anonymous posts, and had a number of suggestions for tackling the issue, including paying to post and registering your passport number:
Speaking at the same Committee, the Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte said he has difficulties with the take-down policies of companies like Facebook.
Mr Rabbitte said: “These are reputable companies (and) major corporations. Good corporate citizenship should mean, it seems to me, that they should be prepared in the host country to enter into sensible protocols about take-down policy.”
The Oireachtas Communications Committee is embarking on a series of meetings with companies, like Facebook and Twitter, to examine the links between social media and cyber bullying.
Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte told the Committee that his department is examining any gaps in legislation when it comes to posting defamatory material online.
He also raised concerns about the policies used by social media companies when it comes to taking down offensive posts.
Senator Fidelma Healy Eames raised the issue of when someone’s Facebook account is changed by someone else, and said teenagers are literally living in a parallel universe.
She said: “Where a youngster has their status opened and another person puts a message on there, as if they wrote it, and that message could be, for example sexual. This type of thing has to stop.
“There has to be some controls put here. What about sexting, where they are texting sexual images?”
The Committee will continue its hearings on the issue for a number of days before making a series of recommendations.
Hang on a second here…Paying to post on Facebook? I know Facebook has a thing where you can pay Mark Zuckerburg $100 to send him a message but THIS…this is ridiculous.
“Pay to post on social media websites or register their passport numbers for IP addresses could help tackle the issue of anonymity of the internet.”
This is by far the biggest load of bullshit that I have heard from the Irish Government in a while (Last time, it was the whole Sean Sherlock’s SOPA Bullshit-ery). This is going to stop cyber bullying?! No it won’t. How would it? How can you monitor this? You can’t! You just can’t. This is just another way of saying “You are not allowed to be anonymous on the internet”. This is literally taxing free speech away from the people! I (Padraig Fahy) have a right on what I want to say on the internet. I should not have to pay to say what I want!
I don’t want to pay €5 to post to my own blog! I don’t want to pay €0.50c for a Facebook comment and I don’t want a Pay As You Go system for Tweeting. NO!
Cyber Bullying is going to happen! Why? The parents are letting them! Children under the age of 18 are not being monitored while they are online. (To be honest, if you are 15 years or older, you should know better). But this is the parent’s problem. They think that it will keep them quiet being on the internet, but it is not.
Who in their right mind would pay this “tax”? Is the government really running out of ideas or are they bored and that they don’t want to fix the country? Are they high on drugs or something?!
No..wait…something just occurred to me….
It’s happening again! Old people who don’t know how the internet works is trying to take it over because they can’t easily tax it in Ireland! Fucking hell!
I have said this on Twitter, but the Irish Government is getting more retarted by the day.
Cyber Bullying and Sexual content on the internet will never be rid of. No government can change that! Only the sites (Facebook, Twitter etc) should have the policies in place to remove the content!
Everyone in the government should just fuck off and leave the internet alone…again! You keep trying to take it away from us but you are just spewing garbage at us day in, day out and it’s not making one bit of sense.
Oireachtas Committee, You can fuck right off!
PS. If they do introduce this, I will be writing an angry letter to the government and it would have some swear words in it :O
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Email me: padraig@padraigfahy.com
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