Member-only story
Canada’s got the world’s worst internet ideas
The Canada Variant is the most virulent “online harms” rule yet.
Canada’s government is poised to pass a “harmful content” regulation. It’s a worst-in-class mutation of a dangerous idea that’s swept the globe, in which governments demand that hamfisted tech giants remove broad categories of speech — too swiftly for meaningful analysis.
Many countries have proposed or passed rules on these lines: Australia, France, UK, Germany, India. They are all bad, but Canada’s is literally the worst — as if Trudeau’s Liberals sought out the most dangerous elements of each rule and combined them.
https://twitter.com/daphnehk/status/1421120217585831938
What’s in Canada’s rule? EFF’s Corynne McSherry and Katitza Rodriguez break it down.
- A requirement to remove “lawful-but-awful” speech that is allowed under Canadian law, but effectively also now banned under Canadian law;
- 24-hour deadlines for removal, guaranteeing that platforms will not have time to conduct a thorough analysis of speech before it is censored;
- A de-facto requirement for platforms to install algorithmic filters to (mis)identify and remove prohibited expression;
- Huge penalties for failing to remove banned speech — and no penalties for erroneously taking down permitted speech — which guarantees that platforms will shoot first and probably not bother to ask questions later;
- Mandatory reporting of potentially harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies;
- A Chinese-style national firewall that will block websites that refuse to comply;
- Far-reaching data-retention policies that only the largest companies will be able to afford, which will create immortal, leaky repositories of kompromat on every Canadian internet user.
Even worse: the specific contours of all these rules will be determined anew with each new Parliament, who will get to appoint a new Canadian “internet czar” with the power to…
