Canadian government proposes restricting social media for kids under 16
The short of it: The newly-proposed bill C-34, the "Safe Social Media Act", aims to ban people under 16 from using any social media site that doesn't adequately prove that it's safe for children to use. It also requires chatbots like ChatGPT to "mitigate the risk of harmful content" — though chatbots will notably not be banned for under-16s (which suggests it might be the big AI money that's partially motivating this movement).
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/safe-social-media-act.html
https://theccf.ca/billc34explained/
Now, this is not inherently a bad idea; I don't have to tell you how dangerous it is for kids to have unrestricted access to the Internet. But we all know where this is going. Whether or not it's a good idea to restrict people under 16 years of age from using social media, in practice this is almost certainly going be enforced either by using an AI-based algorithm to analyze user behavior a la YouTube's age verification system (which is notorious for false positives) or by outright forcing you to upload a scan of your ID (which, to be fair, is strictly illegal as far as I know — for now). This is not speculation — this is what happens time and again whenever a country or jurisdiction implements a policy like this.
Furthermore, censoring so-called "harmful content" is a dangerous attack on freedom of speech. We can't yet be sure that the commission created by this bill won't ban us from simply talking about dangerous topics. Do we want to risk that? And what about the requirement for chatbots to avoid creating harmful content — sure, we shouldn't be using AI anyway, but do we want Google's search summary to get censored if you happen to search something "problematic"?
The bottom line: This is just another attempt by our government to establish further surveillance over all citizens. It's a good idea in principle, but in practice is far too sweeping and invasive.
As always, there are ways we can oppose this right now.
What you can do as a non-Canadian
You can share this post and make your Canadian friends aware of what's going on. Erosion of online privacy is an issue being faced in many countries across the world right now, and we need to stand together to oppose it.
What you can do as a Canadian
You can write to your member of parliament, inform them of your concerns about the bill, and ask them to vote against passing it as it currently stands. You should also write to other important members of the government, such as the Cabinet. In particular, consider writing (politely-worded) emails and/or letters to Marc Miller (who as the Heritage Minister is responsible for online harms legislation), Evan Solomon (the Minister of Digital Innovation), Sean Fraser (the Justice Minister), Mélanie Joly (the Minister of Industry), and of course mister Mark Carney himself.
One hilarious note: As I write this, I can't actually get to the official parl.ca page to view the full legal text of the bill — the website seems to have been inadvertently DDOSed, or at least majorly slowed down, by the sheer number of people trying to access it. That's a good sign, since it shows that this bill is getting widespread attention. Now, I confess that means I am not yet fully informed on this matter. But I will be continuing to educate myself and research what this bill will mean going forward, and I will share important information as it becomes available to me.
I don't yet know of any official petitions against bill C-34, since it's so recent, but I'll post about them when I find them.
As always, have hope my friends. Hope is itself an act of resistance. All things must inevitably end — even the hard times. Even if we lose here and now, laws written by humans can just as easily be un-written by them.
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