The Globe and Mail reports today that the government will introduce online harms legislation this week that includes a ban on social media for kids under the age of 16. The ban will be framed as a “temporary” measure with the prospect that the can re-establish service after a new digital regulator certifies that they meet its safety standards. I’ve written extensively about why a ban on social media and AI chatbots is a bad policy idea, but it is essential to emphasize that this measure is unlikely to be “temporary.” An age-based ban will require everyone in the country to prove their age before posting a photo on Facebook or uploading a video on TikTok. This raises enormous privacy concerns and turns the government’s AI for All strategy into ID for All.
The government will apparently present this as a temporary safeguard given the prospect of opting back in, but the policy itself requires a regulator and ID for everyone since limiting the services to those over 16 requires knowing the age of all users. This system doesn’t simply disappear since once Canada has required every user to prove who they are in order to police a single age line, that requirement and the infrastructure will remain in place. In other words, the requirement might be reversible, but the data collection and regulatory infrastructure are permanent.
The language of a “kids ban” obscures how the policy actually works. There is no way to keep people under 16 off a platform without determining the age of everyone who uses it, because identifying who falls below the line necessarily means identifying who sits above it. A rule aimed at a minority of users is therefore an age-verification mandate imposed on the entire population, and it makes no difference whether the government calls the result a ban, a restriction, or a safeguard. Tens of millions of Canadians who are not the target of the policy would be required to submit proof of age, typically to foreign third-party verification services, in order to do the ordinary things they already do online. The privacy risks, including the challenge of even applying Canadian privacy law to the collection, are enormous.
None of this would be defensible even if the ban worked, and there is little evidence that it does. Australia’s under 16 ban, the example most cite, has shown how readily children route around age gates through VPNs, borrowed accounts, and false birthdates, with the most at-risk users the most likely to circumvent them. Indeed, even the country’s eSafety Commissioner has acknowledged that the restriction has been difficult to enforce and has yet to demonstrate a measurable reduction in harm. The case for applying any of this to AI chatbots would be even weaker.
The forthcoming online harms bill will presumably revive the notion of a duty to act responsibly. That duty, not bans, is what is needed since it could impose requirements on how platforms and AI chatbots are designed, establish transparency obligations, and create liability without locking anyone out or assembling a nationwide ID verification system. The strategy the government launched last week sets out an ambitious vision for AI in Canada. But it cannot deliver that vision by requiring Canadians to prove their age before they can use the tools it is urging them to adopt. That is not AI for all but rather ID for all, and once established, there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
Related posts:
Why Social Media and AI Chatbot Bans for Kids Are Bad Policy: Making the Case at the Senate Social Affairs, Science and Tech Committee
More Transparency Not Police Reporting: Navigating the Safety-Privacy Balance for AI ChatBots
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 268: Sara Grimes on the Moral Panic Behind Banning Kids from Social Media and AI Chatbots
AI for All, Details to Follow: Government Releases a Big-Spending AI Strategy That Is Still Short on the Specifics That Matter
Keeping students off of social media is a job for parents, not for the government.
I’m prepared to accept that social media is not good for children (even though the evidence is not that strong), but social media should be “regulated” the same way we “regulate” video games, not the way we regulate cigarettes.
Why not? You accept that it’s not good for them. It’s addictive. Most of their parents are addicted to it. And then when a few parents cave to their children because they have no backbone, other kids start pressuring and eventually being ostracized if they don’t have it. If you want kids to be kids, don’t let them have a smart phone and by doing so, you can avoid inviting predators into your home.
Certainly under 13 do not need a smart phone. If parents are concerned about communication, get them a flip phone. Also, schools are doing a terrible job of teaching without screens. We need to go back 30 years ASAP.
no we don’t there’s a reason you die and don’t live forever, so the next generation can stomp all over your shit ideas and do it better, and so on and so forth, so remember that.
ID for all *is* the goal. This never had anything to do with protecting kids, it’s all about destroying privacy and anonymity on the internet. It’s the act of a cowardly, tyrannical government .
don’t forget about Bill C-22 and its data retention policy and defining everything as an Electronic Service Provider. Bill C-34 is really part 2 of Bill C-22, we can’t look at them separately, the government and the law enforcement sure won’t be.
Not to assert confidence that government will get this right, but isn’t it really a matter of the form of age verification and data retention? Underage youth are relatively effectively banned from liquor stores and some entertainment venues. When age is questioned ID is shown but not recorded or retained. Don’t see what’s so difficult if government’s intentions really are good and smart people are tasked to do it.
It seems that the government isn’t or doesn’t want to listening and understand what is said by experts, history, current proofs that it doesn’t work and it’s a nightmare (australia, uk, to name just 2 countries), daily data breaches, country foundational charters saying you can’t do this.
And yet, the still seem to “ask” for permission and try to sell these things. So there must be something we citizens could do make make then understand trough their hard headed heads. But what and how?
Come july 1st, we apparently will have less reasons to celebrate Canada.
Get the Kids off Social Media!
Put the conversation back at the dinner table.
Canadians should be proud they still have dinner together; a lot of cultures don’t.
This time should be used wisely for the benefit of the future Canadians: and Canada.
God Bless Canada and God Bless us all to take care of each other, no matter who your God are, or are not.
We do age verifiction for many things and it is not considered some sort of constitutional crisis. Issue is to verify age while limiting excessive collecting of data. So maybe don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and work out a reasonable solution to this. My issue is the slimyness of adding this into the online harms bill. Each should stand on its own. For me its a no brainer that kids+social media=bad. But turning us all into hate criminals based on a purely emotional response of what they call vilification and/or detestation looks a little scary especially given the ways of our courts. We are getting incomfortably close to East Germany and the Stasi.
Pingback: Everything You Wanted to Know About a Kids' Social Media Ban (But Were Rightly Afraid to Ask): A FAQ on Age Verification and Mandated ID for Everyone
Pingback: To protect under-16s from harmful content, everyone will now need to show their ID online « Quotulatiousness
Pingback: Taking Stock of Bill C-34: Five Things to Know About the Government's Plan for a Kids' Social Media Ban, Mandated Age Verification, and AI Chatbot Rules - Michael Geist - ZoomYourWeb3