Regulating online speech a slippery slope, says boss of Twitter Ireland

The managing director of Twitter Ireland has said the online giant is committed to tackling so-called fake news — but has warned that legislative means to regulate online speech “is a slippery slope”.

Sinéad McSweeney was speaking following the monthly Cork Chamber business breakfast, where she was the October guest speaker.

The Cork native, who is also Twitter’s director of public policy and communications for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, said it was a misconception that “fake news” was a modern phenomenon.

“The term fake news covers a multitude of problems — everything from spam and clickbait and advertisers trying to push products to propaganda, lies, or even mistakes, and the rush to be first with news. You have to isolate each of those fragments and address them. We’re addressing spam, automated content, and all of those things head-on,” she said.

Ms McSweeney said that Twitter had an advantage over other social media platforms in the fight to dispel fake news in that rebuttals usually came immediately from other users.

Twitter also tries to partner with journalists and other verified news sources to provide accurate content, she said.

“The scale of this may be much bigger than what we’ve experienced in the past but this is not a new phenomenon. We just need more innovative solutions.”

Ms McSweeney said that Irish politicians regulating speech online could provide more problems than solutions.

“It’s unfortunate if we have to go the legislative route to regulate speech because that is a slippery slope. That said, it is important all platforms have rules and we do have rules about what content is allowed on the platform and what is not. We’ve put a lot of resources into that.

“There’s a lot of work to be done offline to engage with the argument rather than the person. An incivility has crept into civil discourse and that is bigger than the companies, and something we need to address as a society,” she said.

During her business breakfast speech, Ms McSweeney warned millennial employees that long hours are totally counterproductive to a stable working and family life.

The former director of communications for the gardaí and the Police Service of Northern Ireland said trends of younger workers getting used to 10 hours-plus days are not sustainable.

“Young people are normalising a work day that is too long. I’ve done it myself, stretching six hours into 10. I say to them that they are single now, but that it can’t be done when they have families,” she said.

Cork Chamber president Bill O’Connell announced Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will be the guest at a post-budget breakfast briefing next Friday in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Mr O’Connell said top of the wishlist of Cork business ahead of the budget is the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick, as well as the M28 to Ringa-skiddy.

“The M28 would open the port down there and the current Port of Cork for housing and commercial development,” he said.

Mr O’Connell said tourism had been put under pressure after the Brexit vote and that Cork Chamber supported the call by tourism bodies for a €12m Brexit fund to assist businesses affected and to market Ireland and Cork as a region for overseas visitors.