GAA tweeters hit back over internet guidelines

THE GAA’s plan to issue guidelines to players and officials regarding the use of social networks became the subject of massive criticism yesterday on Twitter.

Mindful of the pitfalls presented by sports stars’ use of social media, GAA director of communications Lisa Clancy announced that the association is working on guidelines for tweets and posts to Facebook.

“Any social media that’s there; people have to realise once they publish on it, it’s for public knowledge,” she said.

“We’ll be issuing overall social media guidelines for everybody — players and officials — just to give them a guide to make them aware of the responsibilities they will have if they’re going on Twitter (for example). But everybody’s personal Twitter is up to themselves.”

The announcement prompted an interesting reaction on Twitter.

Former All Star, Mayo’s Alan Dillon, posted: “Gaa guidelines for FB & twitter...come off it.. Should be fun reading in this amateur era...fines and suspensions I expect.”

Many other users tweeted their opinion of what the GAA’s guidelines might eventually look like starting a trending topic #GAATwitterGuidelines.

However, the GAA confirmed last night that it was not going to regulate members’ use of social media, just make them aware of what the pitfalls could be.