TV3 presenter exposes her Facebook experience

SHANNON TV star Aisling O’Loughlin has said that she won’t be going to the gardaí in relation to a Facebook page, which urged people to support a campaign to have her removed from her position on TV3’s Xposé.
“It seems to be gone now and once it’s gone, I don’t care about it. The main thing was to get it off the internet,” she told The Clare Champion.
Ms O’Loughlin said she was disappointed that Facebook hadn’t moved quickly to remove the page, which she said showed a tacit endorsement of putting up hate-filled pages.
She said she has her own Facebook account but will be deactivating it now. “I’m getting out of it, I’m closing it down. It was an experiment, I wanted to see why everyone was on it. Now I’ve done it and I realised that it’s really a bit of a waste of time. I have an email address and I don’t particularly want to share my pictures with everyone,” she said.
There had been an absence of protection for people’s good name she felt, and virtual friendships are a poor substitute for meaningful human interaction. “There is so much regulation needed and I won’t be going near it again until that’s in place. People need to be protected and there is a need for privacy. It’s all great on paper, but I have real friends. I have around 400 friends on Facebook but what does that really give you? You can’t beat face-to-face contact.”
Through her stance against the Facebook page, she has attracted a lot of attention and comment, not all of it positive. However, she doesn’t regret it. “Sometimes, you have to look at the principle, take a stand, and maybe take a hit. It’s part of the rough and tumble of the media world and hopefully this has given people an insight of how exposed they can be.”
While she found the matter upsetting, Ms O’Loughlin felt that there is potential for young people to be very hurt and damaged through the use of the internet for bullying. “There’s a massive issue and I would fear what teenagers can go through. It’s hard enough when you’re a fully-grown adult and you’ve already taken a few knocks in your life. There are efforts to downgrade and denigrate people on line. In the page about me someone wrote ‘Why don’t you go away and kill yourself?’ I don’t think that’s done in the name of free speech.”
She said that she would support any efforts to offer greater protection to people online. “If there is anything I can do to help with anti-bullying programmes, I’ll be there. The whole aim is to degrade people and make them feel worthless. If you looked at the page, most of the comments were about my appearance. Facebook should take more responsibility,” she concluded.