Bill C-34, the government’s Safe Social Media Act, was touted as its approach to online age verification, adding a mandated age check for social media account creation for those under-16 and age verification for under-18s for access to pornographic content, all overseen by a new Digital Safety Commission. But it now appears the government is prepared to let Bill S-209, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s age verification and website-blocking bill, proceed alongside it, creating new complications with inconsistent definitions and expanded regulatory powers. Bill S-209, which I have warned about since its predecessor Bill S-210 and opposed before a Senate committee last fall, passed the Senate in April and received its first hour of second reading debate in the House of Commons last month. The Liberals previously opposed Bill S-210, citing privacy and freedom of expression concerns, but this time the government supported sending the bill to committee and the House has now referred it on division to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. The shift surprised even the bill’s sponsor, and it opens the door to a two-pronged regulatory model that doubles down on age verification, features inconsistent definitions of pornography, establishes a second penalty regime, and could give the future Digital Safety Commission the power to seek website-blocking orders.
Post Tagged with: "social media"
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.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 230: Aengus Bridgman on the 2025 Federal Election, Social Media Platforms, and Misinformation
The 2025 federal election is now in its second week and the battle for attention and ultimately votes is taking place both online and offline. The enormous influence of online sites such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and a handful of others raises real issues about how information spreads, its reliability, and risks of misinformation and disinformation. Aengus Bridgman is the Director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory and an Assistant Professor (Research) at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. A contributor to studies on information issues in multiple federal and provincial elections, he is one of Canada’s leading experts on misinformation, digital activism, and the politics of digital media. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about the state of the major platforms in Canada in 2025, how our information ecosystem is vulnerable to misinformation, and what we should be doing about it.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 201: Robert Diab on the Billion Dollar Lawsuits Launched By Ontario School Boards Against Social Media Giants
Concerns about the impact of social media on youth have been brewing for a long time, but in recent months a new battleground has emerged: the courts, who are home to lawsuits launched by school boards seeking billions in compensation and demands that the social media giants change their products to better protect kids. Those lawsuits have now come to Canada with four Ontario school boards recently filing claims.
Robert Diab is a professor of law at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. He writes about constitutional and human rights, as well as topics in law and technology. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide a comparison between the Canadian and US developments, a deep dive into alleged harms and legal arguments behind the claims, and an assessment of the likelihood of success.
Canada Plans to Regulate Search and Social Media Use of Artificial Intelligence for Content Moderation and Discoverability
The Canadian government plans to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in search results and when used to prioritize the display of content on search engines and social media services. AI is widely used by both search and social media for a range of purpose that do not involve ChatGPT-style generative AI. For example, Google has identified multiple ways that it uses AI to generate search results, provide translation, and other features, while TikTok uses AI to identify the interests of its users through recommendation engines. The regulation plans are revealed in a letter from ISED Minister François-Philippe Champagne to the Industry committee studying Bill C-27, the privacy reform and AI regulation bill. The government is refusing to disclose the actual text of planned amendments to the bill.
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Ofcom Did the Work Canada Plans to Skip: What the UK’s Age Verification Report Reveals About the Bill C-34 Social Media Ban 
The Age Verification Bill That Won’t Die: How Bill S-209 Complicates the Government’s Bill C-34 Online Safety Plan 
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The Wrong Ban: The Heritage Committee Backed a Targeted Ad Ban for Kids and Stopped Short of a Social Media Ban, Yet the Government Chose the Reverse
