Popular Irish Twitter accounts are being monitored by the Government
Popular Irish Twitter accounts are being monitored by the Government
Tweets from Blindboy and Mango have been included in a report that The Irish Examiner accessed through the Freedom of Information Requests.
According to The Irish Examiner, Government departments have been monitoring the Twitter accounts of high profile Irish artists, influencers and journalists. The report today revealed that the various departments kept detailed accounts of interactions criticising the Government during the pandemic this year.
Exercising their right to access the relevant information through Freedom of Information requests, the Irish Examiner noted the department of education and health both kept monthly logs of interactions on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms.
Tweets flagged are often those with huge numbers of interactions and according to the Department of Health they”did not pick out specific people”, however, it was noted that some tweets had less than 30 interactions.
Included in the reports are Tweets from Blindboy of the Rubberbandits and rapper Mango.
Blindboy has since reacted on Twitter to the news.
Though the report contains hundreds of pages of information and analysis The Irish Examiner noted that “only two are dedicated to misinformation”
Issues included in the report relate to the activity of journalists, anecdotal stories about the effect of COVID-19 on day-to-day living and topics such as COVID outbreaks in Direct Provision centres.
The Irish Examiner also noted that popular anonymous Twitter accounts like ‘Dublin Girlo’, ‘Care2Much18’, and ‘Jurassic Arse’ had their tweets included in the report.
You can read The Irish Examiner’s original coverage here.
