From top: Sinn Féin’s chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Brian Stanley TD; Solicitor Simon McGarr

This morning/afternoon.

Further to controversy caused by tweets from a Sinn Féin TD celebrating a 1979 IRA attack and poking fun at Tanaiste Leo Varadkar’s sexuality…

…Solicitor Simon McGarr writes:

Twitter is a reflection of real life- just as a golf clubhouse, a GAA clubhouse and a nightclub are each different reflections of real life. They give expression to an aspect of public opinion. But Twitter has also become a broadcast system for official actors.

Politicians are used to broadcast media- that’s what most of them have trained to use for decades.

But a broadcast medium that is also an archive of all the dumb things we’ve ever said in passing and a two-way communications system? As [Sinn Féin TD and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee] Brian Stanley realised as he deleted his account, “we’re not as good at it.”

Meanwhile, the Government moves forward on laws to regulate citizen’s use of the internet and creating a crime of making an internet post that “causes alarm or distress to the other person”.

This points to a crunch happening from the middle of next year, when people who are self-confessedly bad at understanding and using the communication elements of social media will try to draw up rules that will restrict a good chunk of the world’s usage of it.

Ireland’s biggest Twitter-storm is yet to land.’ [More at link below]

The Gist: Storms in a Tweetcup (Simon McGarr)

Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill (Gov.ie)