The legislative efforts to combat online harms in Canada have focused chiefly on platform responsibility, with Bill C-34 reintroducing a regulated duty to act responsibly. An Ontario court recently considered another avenue to address harms that instead targets influencers who weaponize their audiences. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued a decision that extends the tort of Internet harassment into networked harassment, in which influencers or those with large online audiences encourage their followers to target individuals. In Miller v. Ahn, the court granted an interim injunction against a social media creator with more than 100,000 followers who had mobilized her audience against a Toronto employment lawyer. The actions led to fake reviews of her firm, threatening phone calls and messages, and antisemitic abuse that was directed at the lawyer’s perceived Jewish and Israeli identity.
Post Tagged with: "duty to act responsibly"
Why the Answers to Hateful Content Online are Hiding in the Platforms’ Own Rules
The Canadian government has a two-pronged legal strategy to counter rising hate: New Criminal Code provisions to address offline harms, such as intimidation or protests outside schools and places of worship, and the digital safety bill introduced in June, which targets online harms. A new legal duty to act responsibly, which would require internet platforms to publish digital safety plans, provide greater transparency on their efforts to counter harms, and occasionally remove content, serves as the foundation for fighting back against the spread online of illegal content such as non-consensual distribution of intimate images, cyberbullying, terrorist content, and content that incites violence or hatred.
These are worthwhile measures. But for those concerned with antisemitism, Islamophobia, or other forms of hate, my Globe and Mail op-ed notes that stricter rules against illegal content are basic table stakes. The bigger challenge is the far larger category of content best described as “awful but lawful”: the tropes, conspiracy theories, and coded dehumanization that cause serious harm but remain constitutionally protected expression. A law mandating this material’s removal would invite an immediate Charter challenge. Instead, we need to figure out how to address harms without overstepping constitutional safeguards for freedom of expression.
Why the Verdict on Social Media Defective Design Harming Children Gets the Instinct Right But the Law Wrong
A California jury’s decision last week to hold Meta and YouTube liable for harms to a young woman’s mental health has been greeted as a watershed moment. Child safety advocates have called it Big Tech’s “Big Tobacco moment.” Parents who lost children to what they attribute to social media addiction embraced outside the courthouse. Commentators who have long argued that social media companies bear responsibility for the damage their services inflict on young users see the verdict as vindication.
My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that the instinct behind the decision is understandable. The evidence at trial was damning, as internal Meta documents showed the company knew Instagram was harming adolescents but continued targeting them anyway. But the legal theory the jury endorsed – that social media platforms are defectively designed products – is the wrong tool for a real problem, and building on it risks undermining the very accountability the strategy seeks to deliver.
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