The government’s plan to address online safety was introduced yesterday with Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, featuring an under-16 social media ban, pornography age verification, AI chatbot rules, and platform regulation that I argued amount to an everything-all-at-once approach built on a “trust us” bet. My initial guide to the bill highlighted many key issues, but this follow-up examines just how much has been left for later. In many respects, Bill C-34 is best understood as version 1.0 of the Safe Social Media Act with a framework that establishes institutions, sets penalty ceilings, and fixes the age of 16 in the statute. But the bill leaves nearly everything that will determine how the law actually works, including which services are covered, when the ban applies and to whom, what counts as adequate age verification, and what design features platforms must build, to what amounts to a version 2.0 that will be developed later through multiple regulatory processes.
Post Tagged with: "digital safety commission"
My First Take on the Online Harms Act: Worst of 2021 Plan Now Gone But Digital Safety Commission Regulatory Power a Huge Concern
After years of delay, the government tabled Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, earlier today. The bill is really three-in-one: the Online Harms Act that creates new duties for Internet companies and a sprawling new enforcement system, changes to the Criminal Code and Canada Human Rights Act that meet longstanding requests from groups to increase penalties and enforcement against hate but which will raise expression concerns and a flood of complaints, and expansion of mandatory reporting of child pornography to ensure that it includes social media companies. This post will seek to unpack some of the key provisions, but with a 100+ page bill, this will require multiple posts and analysis. My immediate response to the government materials was that the bill is significantly different from the 2021 consultation and that many of the worst fears – borne from years of poorly thought out digital policy – have not been realized. Once I worked through the bill itself, concerns about the enormous power vested in the new Digital Safety Commission, which has the feel of a new CRTC funded by the tech companies, began to grow.
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Blocked Twice: How Bill C-34’s Kids’ Social Media Ban Would Compound the Online News Act’s Harm to Young Canadians’ News Access 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 275: David Loukidelis on Why Stripping Privacy Enforcement from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner in Bill C-36 is Unnecessarily Risky Policy 
The Data on Australia’s Social Media Ban: The Better the Privacy Protection, The Less Effective the Ban
