Simon Harris says ‘ability to spread disinformation’ on social media is ‘very serious issue’.

Serious for whom? Society? The purveyors of propaganda? The gubmint?

First of all there is a question as to what “disinformation” actually is. I suspect it is any information that contradicts the Establishment’s narrative. It may be misinformation – a person’s genuine belief which is false – or it may be just an opinion. It is rarely information which is knowingly false. We’ll leave the latter to the propagandists. There again it may in fact be true information.

In the aftermath of last week’s riots in Dublin there is much talk about far-right elements causing the trouble. Once again, there is no explanation as to what the “far-right” constitutes. The riots were caused simply by trouble makers who saw an opportunity to have a go at the Law and to smash and grab some freebies in a spot of looting – the gurrier’s equivalent of “a bit of craic”. The anti-immigration crowd had nothing whatsoever to gain from stealing runners, hoodies or boxes of cigarettes.

Taking anti-immigration as an example, the gubmint are bending over backwards to inform everyone [and especially their pals in the EU] how welcoming the Irish are for any immigrant who wishes to come. What they don’t advertise too widely is that the homeless crisis here is getting worse by the month, that accommodation for immigrants is at capacity and that arrivals are being shunted into tents [coming into winter].

The immigrant situation has led to a lot of problems. There are people who say we should put a pause on immigration until the mess is sorted [my stance]. There are many individual areas protesting that their villages and towns are beyond capacity and that their resources are stretched to the limit. There are regular serious crimes, mainly murders, where the perpetrator is an immigrant. All of this is leading to a groundswell of xenophobia in sections of the community resulting in attacks on on foreigners who are already resident for some years.

The riot’s root cause was a random knife attack by a person who was patently not of Irish descent [i.e. black] who randomly picked on a group of very young children. This of course inflamed the anti-immigration mob who started a street protest. The xenophobes got in on the act and started calling for trouble and the whole situation boiled over into a riot that was a mixture of xenophobia and just plain vandalism.

To get back to Harris [a very irritating little gobshite if ever there was one] what exactly is he proposing? I presume he wants to censor the Web somehow, in spite of it being impossible. The rallying for the riots in Dublin took place very quickly – a matter of an hour or two – giving censorship an almost impossible task as the censors would have no time to react. Censorship cannot work on keywords as that would impact on perfectly normal conversations. It would not only limit free speech, it would actually limit any speech. This little brainfart would never pass, for example but it is neither “disinformation” nor “far-right sentiment”, just the view from my perch on the mountainside.

However the riots were a godsend for the gubmint.

They are a perfect excuse to introduce police body-cams, facial recognition technology and censorship.

All are now on the cards.