Fingal library's Twitter page has been suspended after concerns were raised over it following a number of transphobic accounts.
The library had also blocked accounts who had asked why they were following anti-trans accounts.
Fingal County Council has suspended the account pending an investigation as they felt it violated their social media policy. Cllrs Daniel Whooley and Cllr Karen Power brought attention to the "concerning" behaviour after friends contacted them about it.
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Author of the Harry Potter franchise, J.K. Rowling has since weighed in on the Fingal County Council matter. She tweeted: "The library was also following my account. Am I included in your blanket statement?"
Cllr Whooley told Dublin Live that he changed his Twitter privacy settings to private after receiving a large amount of abuse online following the account's suspension.
He said: "I got a few DMs from friends of mine on Twitter who found out they were blocked by the [library] Twitter account. A few of the people engaging with the Twitter account to ask why they were following so many anti-trans accounts had been blocked.
"We thought it was strange behaviour from a library account which is supposed to be dealing with library events. I was not sure if it had been hacked or not. My background is in cybersecurity so I thought something like that.
"The executive decided that it just should be kept down pending an investigation on whether it was hacked from the outside. I tweeted that it had happened and then it seemed to go off in its own direction. Obviously then, it took what I would call an anti-trans turn.
"People were jumping on myself and Karen Power's backs then it escalated to where J.K. Rowling was in some of the comments. She was in replies to Karen. She has garnered a reputation for being transphobic and for those views.
"One side of me is surprised she got involved at such a local level at what I would have thought was a very normal response that many companies would have taken after seeing confusing and concerning interactions on an account. Any corporate company would be like, 'this is weird, let's see what's happening.'
"It is a council account. The council has a very strong view on LGBT rights and has hosted things like Fingal Pride. It is a bit concerning when you see that activity going around."
Cllr Whooley says he made the decision to go private as he has seen before how nasty things like this can get online. He said that his colleague Cllr Power received far more messages than he did.
He said: "When I saw that there was more momentum building, I went straight to private. I have kind of seen how these pile ons can get. I logged off and then I was working in the cafe this morning and on council business so I didn't have a chance to look at it for a while.
"I got an email saying that the council were launching an investigation and I don't know any more beyond that. If you were to take the content and switch it to something else. If you saw Microsoft following a load of porn accounts, or if you saw a company following a load of Nazi or homophobic accounts, the first response of any corporate company would be to wonder what was happening there.
"As a councillor that deals with social media on a very amateur level, if I saw that one of my accounts was doing things that I wasn't doing then I would log in and delete the account.
"I would want to see what was going on. The content itself obviously is a concern but it's not the reason that it happened. This was unauthorised activity. She [Cllr Power] probably got it worse than I did. I really do feel for her because at the end of the day, we thought we were doing the right thing here in letting Fingal County Council know that something weird was going on. To see it take such a nasty turn is quite a shame."
A spokesman for Fingal County Council said: "The Fingal Libraries team took the decision to temporarily suspend their Twitter account while they reviewed possible unauthorised activity. Until that review is complete it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
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