Real action needs to be taken to deal with misinformation being pushed online after last weekend’s shooting in Carlow.
That’s according to green party councillor Hazel Chu who says rumours were allowed to spread immediately after Sunday’s incident at the Fairgreen Shopping Centre.
The former Lord Mayor of Dublin says tech companies need to be tackled and automatic recommender systems, which push certain content on feeds, turned off, noting; “What the recommender systems do is they tend to push content that would engage a user, outrage a user becuase what will happen is the user will stay on the platform for longer, increasing advertising opportunities for the platform”.
She adds; “What generally happens is a lot of misinformation, hate, distorted views are what gets pushed and this is particularly damaging for children because a lot of toxic content gets pushed to our kids”.
