Citywest riot raises questions for social media giants – The Irish Times
This is a huge, huge social problem. People are being paid to hate -- regulation is desperately needed to deal with this:
This week’s violence has raised serious questions for some of the main social media platforms. Livestream content depicting violence outside Citywest was broadcast on YouTube, TikTok and Twitch, with streamers rewarded by viewer donations, as they captured protesters shouting racist expletives towards Citywest.
In one eight-minute segment of an hour-long livestream I watched on YouTube that night, the user broadcast the burning of the Garda van, referred to migrants in horrific terms and proclaimed they were there to show people “the real truth”. During the video, they received the equivalent of €56 in donations from viewers around the world. The notion that violence can be monetised on social media illustrates a glaring failure of platforms to adequately enforce their own community guidelines around violence.
Individuals from the UK and Canada travelled to Ireland specifically to attend and create content from the protest. Other international agitators followed events online. [...]
In recent years we have witnessed the mainstreaming of anti-migrant hate and extremism in this country. That has been facilitated, in part, by platforms failing to enforce their own community guidelines. Amid the anger and outrage that follows an alleged sexual assault, it is now a recurring pattern that online platforms will play host to attempts to publish and promote incitement towards hatred and violence.
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