Controversial bill to regulate online streaming becomes law - "The bill makes changes to Canada's Broadcasting Act. The legislation requires streaming services, such as Netflix and Spotify, to pay to support Canadian media content like music and TV shows. It also requires the platforms to promote Canadian content. Specifically, the bill says "online undertakings shall clearly promote and recommend Canadian programming, in both official languages as well as in Indigenous languages." The changes give the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada's broadcast regulator, broad powers over digital media companies, including the ability to impose financial penalties for violations of the act. The government says the legislation is necessary to impose the same regulations and requirements in place for traditional broadcasters on online media platforms. Right now, broadcasters are required to spend at least 30 per cent of their revenue on supporting Canadian content... The Conservatives have slammed the bill as an attack on freedom of expression. "Under this archaic system of censorship, government gatekeepers will now have the power to control which videos, posts and other content Canadians can see online," a Conservative webpage on C-11 says. The public debate has been contentious, with supporters saying the bill will boost the Canadian media and arts sectors, while critics warn that the bill could over-regulate the internet. Internet companies affected by the legislation also have criticized C-11. The online video sharing platform TikTok warned the bill could affect its users, despite the government insisting the regulations won't cover user-generated content... The bill's journey through Parliament has been difficult. Rodriguez tabled the legislation in the House of Commons in February 2022. Nearly a year later, the Senate sent C-11 back to the House of Commons with amendments. The House accepted most of the amendments but rejected others... One of the Senate's amendments would have added protections for some types of user-generated content like comedy acts and instructional videos. The House rejected that amendment, arguing that it could create loopholes for streaming giants... The bill's broad language means it's unclear what it will do in practice"
Bill C-11: Why is YouTube mad at Canada? - "Although it's still unclear what those final regulations will look like, the law has raised the ire of everyone from TikTokers to esteemed author Margaret Atwood. YouTube took out ads in Toronto's subway decrying the bill, which they said would take power away from viewers and creators put it in the hands of bureaucrats. Ms Atwood, never shy with her opinion, likened it to Soviet censorship. Some Canadian influencers have even threatened to move to the US... At issue with Bill C-11 is a clause that would require streamers, including social networks like YouTube and TikTok, to "clearly promote and recommend Canadian programming, in both official languages as well as in Indigenous languages". Experts say it could create a system where Canadian YouTubers have to prove they are Canadian-enough to get seen. Such a system already exists for musicians. Called the "MAPL" system, it assigns points to a song based on the nationality of its singer, producer, lyricist and other factors. The ins and outs of who is Canadian enough annoyed famous Canadian singer Bryan Adams so much that in 1992 he lamented: "You'd never hear Elton John being declared un-British." The advent of algorithms have only made the issue thornier... "If they put [content] artificially in front of people who don't want it… that will send it to the abyss," says Scott Benzie, executive director of Digital First Canada, an organisation that represents Canadian content creators and has opposed the bill, and has received funding from YouTube. The problem lies, he said, with what happens when content is recommended to someone based on location, not interest... The government rejected amendments aimed at exempting individual user content from regulation... Michael Geist, a legal scholar of the internet and privacy and noted critic of the bill, says the issue is not that it stops people from speaking their mind, but that it puts the government in charge of deciding who gets to hear those thoughts. He said the law leaves the door wide open for CRTC overreach... Australia has unveiled a new cultural policy, expected to be introduced in May, that would include quotas for local content on streaming platforms. The UK has also considered regulations for streaming services that would protect "distinctly British" content. Morghan Fortier, who produces videos aimed at preschool-aged children on YouTube, says she's worried that if Canada sets the bar by prioritising home-grown content, then other countries will follow suit, which will mean smaller audiences overall. C-11 was not the only bill the government introduced to try and regulate the internet. Bill C-18, which is currently before the Senate, would make tech companies like Google compensate Canadian news organisations whose content appears on their platforms. The law would be similar to one passed in Australia in 2021. The government says the law is necessary, and accuses tech giants of profiting from news while the organisations themselves lose ad revenue. But Silicon Valley has firmly opposed the move, with Google even going so far as temporarily blocking news content from 4% of Canadian users in protest."
GUNTER: Feds' attempts to have story pulled shows dangers of Bill C-11 | Toronto Sun - "The Canadian Press published a story Tuesday about federal government attempts in 2021 to have an “unspecified” newspaper article removed from social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, because the Trudeau Liberals felt the article contained dangerous misinformation... I was in possession of a confidential draft document that was being circulated inside the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB). In the draft, board chairman Richard Wex laid out a massive expansion of the reasons under which refugee claimants could be admitted to Canada. In effect, Wex was hoping to remove as many barriers as possible for refugees. Of particular note were claims involving “intersectionality.” Intersectionality was defined as two or more of “race, religion, indigeneity, political beliefs, socioeconomic status, age, sexual orientation, culture, disability or immigration status” that “impact an individual’s lived experience of discrimination, marginalization or oppression.” If Wex’s new criteria became IRB policy, refugees wouldn’t have to prove they faced torture or death if returned to their home countries. Nor would they have to meet the United Nation’s legal definition of a refugee. Instead, as I wrote at the time, to stay in Canada refugees would only have to claim they have been discriminated against or persecuted for being poor and old or Indigenous and holding political views targeted by some developing country’s strongman.” In they could waltz. Neither the civil service officers who do initial screenings of immigration and refugee claims nor the immigration and refugee judges who hear appeals, could do much to reject an “intersectional” claim. The IRB asked my editors to correct or pull my column, which the editors courageously refused to do. When that route failed, we have now learned, the then director of communications for the IRB approached the big social media platforms to ask that they take down any posting of my column and prohibit users from linking to it... I had the confidential email outlining Wex’s proposal. And it must have been obvious to the government I had a copy from the portions I quoted. Nonetheless, they still tried to have it banned as misinformation because it was embarrassing to them. It revealed a policy change they didn’t want revealed, which is precisely why it had to be revealed and why the social media platforms should not have banned it. This also further points out why the Trudeau government’s impending Bill C-11 is so very, very dangerous to free speech and government accountability in this country."
"Misinformation" is anything that threatens the liberal agenda
Hate speech bill won't curb freedom of expression, but enhance it, supporters argue
As we know, censorship laws are never abused and non "minorities" don't get insulted (or maybe they just have thicker skin)
Matthew Lau: Liberal hate speech bill an unnecessary, bureaucratic attack on free expression - "these sorts of hate speech laws are rife with pitfalls. There is, first of all, the moral hazard problem. Similarly to how extravagant government welfare programs discourage people from earnestly searching for jobs, entitling people to financial reparations if they complain about hate speech creates the possibility that some people will originate complaints even when they are poorly founded, since the complainants do not face any downside financial risk. The Liberals are effectively reviving Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, which, before it was repealed by the previous Conservative government, was most infamously used by complainants to launch a human rights investigation into Maclean’s magazine for publishing an allegedly hateful excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book — a top Canadian bestseller — in 2006. The complaint was eventually dismissed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission instead of being referred to the human rights tribunal, but seeing Maclean’s forced to justify its publication decisions to the government, under threat of censure, alarmed many Canadians, who correctly saw Section 13 as an infringement on free speech. In fact, in 1999, Stephen Harper said that human rights commissions’ activities amounted to “totalitarianism.” Perhaps to allay concerns about censorship, the government says that “speech that expresses dislike or disdain, or that discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends” is not considered hate speech and so would not be illegal. But what is the difference between speech that expresses hatred and speech that merely expresses dislike? In a society governed by laws, people should be able to know whether something is lawful before they do it. With this proposed hate speech law, people instead will find out after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal reaches its decision whether their speech was illegal or not. This process does not inspire confidence, especially since under Section 13, there were secret trials, and until one case in 2009, the tribunal’s conviction rate over a period of three decades was 100 per cent. From moral hazard and censorship concerns to inordinately unbalanced conviction rates, the hate speech provisions seem to have many downfalls. What are the benefits? If the goal is to protect people from hatred, the bill is poorly designed. Laws already exist to prevent hateful speech and acts of violence, so in such cases the hate speech bill is duplicative and unnecessary. Meanwhile, the new bill has some lapses in logic. Some grounds for hatred, such as such as race, colour, religion, age, sex, disability, and sexual orientation, are prohibited, while many others are not... Mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski has made a similar point about hate crimes. “Very often, an attack will be promoted in seriousness on the grounds that the person doing the attacking was hateful,” he said in 2019. But should it matter why the person was hateful, or even that the person was hateful at all? “Suppose that he was attacking and he was suffused with a loving sense. He just simply wanted lovingly to club someone into the urine-stained pavement.” Then, Berlinski asked, “Would that be a lesser crime?” The severity of the crime of clubbing someone into the urine-stained pavement, or even into perfectly clean pavement for that matter, should be based on the harm that results from clubbing someone into the pavement. The grounds of the attacker’s hatefulness, or even whether he was hateful at all, should not make a material difference"
GUNTER: Canada's disturbing censorship conversation | Toronto Sun - "Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault told a podcast affiliated with the Liberal Party that the government believes federal regulators should have the authority to temporarily block or even shut down websites that say hurtful things about politicians and public servants... Guilbeault told a Commons committee in February that he wanted a new regulatory agency to have the power to block postings that might “undermine Canada’s social cohesion.” And he wanted to protect Canada’s “world-renowned public servants” from online criticism... Whenever someone starts claiming that regulations are needed to keep the Internet (or any media) “fair,” “appropriate,” “truthful” and free from hate, the immediate question has to be, who gets to decide what’s acceptable? I’m leery enough of judges having that power. I sure as Hades don’t want a group of politicly selected commissioners choosing what can and cannot be uttered... Perhaps even more disturbing than Guilbeault’s remarks was an online speech given by Canada’s former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin to the World Press Freedom Canada organization. McLachlin said existing limits on free speech, such as libel laws, hate-speech provisions and prohibitions on inciting riots, are inadequate. “We need to have, in some circumstances, a takedown mechanism,” McLachlin said, without citing a single Canadian example of a site that was “hurting other people or hurting democracy.”... The problem with existing free speech laws is “they’re not always swift and fast,” the former chief justice added. “Criminal proceedings take a terribly long time.” Yes they do, Madame. That is called due process and it is the price we pay in a democracy to safeguard our fundamental freedoms from arbitrary, impulsive, politicized limits. McLachlin conceded that shutdowns occur “in non-democratic countries all the time.” Which is precisely why we shouldn’t be considering them here"
GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau wants to turn back clock on free speech - "Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault plans to introduce legislation and regulations this year to “protect Canadians online” when using social media.Be very afraid... as Blacklock’s Reporter noted in reporting on the issue, we already have criminal laws against hate speech — and for that matter against child pornography, harassment, uttering threats and civil laws against libel and slander. As a Liberal MP wisely said in May, 2019, freedom of speech is “so fundamental to our democracies” that, “we recognize the solution doesn’t lie in government’s heavy hand over our internet, over our public spaces.”He warned while democratic governments might view such legislation as useful to protect citizens and ensure social media platforms behave responsibly, in countries without those traditions, it “might be a tool for oppression of citizens, or control, or really attacking free speech.”The Liberal MP was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said he would only consider such legislation as a last resort.That begs the question of what changed between May and September of 2019, when his election platform promised: “We will target online hate speech, exploitation and harassment, and do more to protect victims of hate speech.”... Given that we already have criminal and civil laws to deal with these issues, it appears what the Liberals really want to target is speech they think “undermines Canada’s long-standing commitment to diversity.”That is, speech that offends Liberals... In a decision in 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada broadened the legal defence of fair comment to make it consistent with the freedom of expression provisions in the Charter.In 2013, the federal Conservative government repealed Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which many Liberals agreed contained a dangerously broad definition of hate speech.In 2015, Ontario’s Liberal government passed anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) legislation to protect the public’s right to speak out on matters of public interest, without being buried in intimidating lawsuits by powerful opponents.Now, in 2021, Trudeau wants to turn back the clock on free speech"
Trudeau Liberals want to regulate YouTube | The Post Millennial
Justin Trudeau’s Plan to Control the Internet - WSJ - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a plan to regulate speech on the internet by placing it under the control of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. His bill is so awful that Peter Menzies, a former vice chairman of the commission, said it “doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.”... anyone who makes programs available over the internet would be treated as a broadcaster and under the thumb of the CRTC. While websites wouldn’t need a formal license to operate in Canada, the commission would have open-ended power to impose conditions and require them to “make expenditures to support the Canadian broadcasting system.” Who has to do this and how much do they have to spend? They’ll tell us later. The legislation also vaguely alludes to the need for the Canadian broadcasting system to “serve the interests of Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds.” Again, who’d have to do this and what they’d have to do is anyone’s guess. Steven Guilbeault, whose Ministry of Canadian Heritage oversees the CRTC, has struggled to shed any light on how the measure would work. For a time the bill included specific exemptions for user-generated content. But then this provision was scrapped—a move that was considered essential to capture sites like YouTube, but also because the government claimed the exemption was already addressed elsewhere. It wasn’t. Then it was only “professional” content that would be regulated; users themselves would be exempt. Except users with a large following who were acting like broadcasters. Or, as Mr. Guilbeault later clarified, not “an individual—a person—who uses social media.” If you have trouble following that, you’re not alone. Before entering politics in 2019, Mr. Guilbeault spent his entire career as an environmental activist. Like many members of the Trudeau cabinet, he has no prior experience in the area of government he oversees. What he lacks in expertise, however, he makes up for in enthusiasm. Having concluded that Canada’s hate speech laws aren’t doing a good enough job to police “hurtful” comments online, for instance, he is working on another bill setting up yet another regulator to tackle online harms. Granting bureaucrats the power, for example, to require YouTube to silence Jordan Peterson, fine Spotify for something Joe Rogan says on a podcast, or impose on independent podcasters such as Sam Harris an obligation to contribute to the production of Canadian content is as dangerous as it is absurd. More likely, harassed independent voices would simply geoblock their content to avoid the headache of dealing with Canada at all—a way for the government to set up a Chinese-style firewall without having to go to the trouble itself."
GASLIGHTING: Trudeau accuses Canadians concerned with internet censorship of wearing 'tin foil hats'
Ottawa faces blowback for plan to regulate internet - The Globe and Mail - "Newly released documents reveal Twitter Canada told government officials that a federal plan to create a new internet regulator with the power to block specific websites is comparable to drastic actions used in authoritarian countries like China, North Korea and Iran. The letter, marked confidential, is among more than 1,000 pages of submissions to an online consultation the Liberal government launched in July, in order to gather opinions on its draft plan for curbing hate speech and other online harms. The documents show the wide-ranging blowback Ottawa received. Another private letter, from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, warns that the government’s plans “could inadvertently result in one of the most significant assaults on marginalized and racialized communities in years.”... The social media giant’s criticism of the plan is contained in a Sept. 24, 2021, letter from Michele Austin, who was then Twitter Canada’s head of public policy and is currently the company’s public policy director for Canada and the United States. She provides a strongly worded seven-page critique. Ms. Austin takes particular issue with the proposed creation of a Digital Safety Commissioner, who would have the power to block access to specific websites... The government’s proposals included options for users to flag potentially harmful content. Ms. Austin points to instances during last year’s federal election – which had taken place shortly before the letter was written – when partisans filed complaints about their opponents. Her letter references a case in August, when a video posted by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland about then-Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s stand on privatized health care was labelled “manipulated media” by Twitter. “‘Flagging’ will be used as a political tactic. As lived during the recent Canadian federal election, a general approach to flagging will result in censorship,” Ms. Austin wrote. “Throughout the election campaign, political parties and their officials tried to have content ‘flagged’ as ‘harmful’ in an effort to have it removed from public discourse or score political points.”... The federal government released a report in February summarizing the feedback it received. That report said the responses were largely negative. Mr. Geist said in an e-mail to The Globe that the newly released documents show the criticism was more extensive than the summary report suggested. He added that the level of secrecy related to the submissions was inappropriate, and that it contradicts the government’s stated commitment to transparency. “Requiring an access to information request should not be the standard,” he said. Criticism of the government’s proposals came from many sources, including internet service providers, privacy advocates and groups representing marginalized communities that the measures are supposed to help... Several of the responses took issue with a section of the proposal that would amend the CSIS Act to give Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, expanded warrant powers to quickly obtain basic subscriber information from private companies. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) wrote that it supports the general framework in the proposed legislation and that online hate poses an existential threat to Canadians. But it warned that it would likely have to publicly oppose the bill unless sections related to terrorist content are removed. The council wrote that proposed wording related to forcing companies to notify law enforcement and CSIS about terrorist content risks “absurd consequences.” The letter says it “could mean that Canadian Muslims who talk about Palestine, Afghanistan, or stand in solidarity with diverse movements could be implicated. Clearly, this is unacceptable.”... The documents show the plan received generally positive feedback from TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance Ltd... The documents also include dozens of e-mails from individuals, most of whom expressed strong opposition to the draft legislation owing to freedom of speech concerns."
So many tinfoil hats
The Chinese support internet censorship. What a surprise
Peter Menzies: Bill C-11 critics are now Enemies of the People - "You may think putting the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and its nine government-appointed commissioners in charge of the entire online world is a good thing. Or you may think it’s a bad thing. But I’m guessing we can all agree that Bill C-11, the world’s most extensive internet regulation legislation so far, is a Thing. And you’d think a thing that big would be deserving of respectful, honest debate and thoughtful review. If there’s something in the legislation that is bad in a way that isn’t intended, you’d want it caught and fixed, right? We are, after all, about to grant authority over 21st-century communications to people in charge of something called The Broadcasting Act. An act that was passed in 1993 to make sure nothing terrible — like people preferring NFL over CFL football or the Oscars over the Genies — results from watching too much American TV. Given that thousands of successful Canadian free enterprise Tik-Tokers and YouTubers fear new rules will disadvantage them in favour of the CRTC’s certified cultural broccoli, you’d think that’d be worth a think. But you’d be wrong... Others whose testimony could have been useful were cross-examined far more aggressively in an effort to delegitimize their expertise by diminishing them personally. Vancouver’s J.J. McCullough (self-described as Canada’s 398th most popular YouTuber) was asked about an opinion he had once expressed concerning bilingualism. Former CRTC commissioner Tim Denton, now chair of the Internet Society of Canada Chapter, suddenly had to account for some of his old commentary that once appeared in the Financial Post. Producer Scott Benzie of Quixote Media and the Buffer Festival got it even worse. Suffice to say, the experience was made unpleasant and intimidating for anyone who might have had a point of disagreement. All showed up hoping they could help and be listened to respectfully; some left feeling labelled #enemiesofthepeople... With that ugly tone set early in the deliberations and despite particularly compelling presentations by Matt Hatfield of OpenMedia and Skyship Entertainment’s Morghan Fortier, it came as no surprise the bill wound up being pushed through, literally in the middle of the night. One of those whose advice was ignored was a man many consider Canada’s leading internet policy expert. Dr. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, summarized the sordid handling of the bill... Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez continued to insist that his bill doesn’t grant the CRTC authority over social media posts when it very clearly does. And he continued to get away with the same tactics for which his less fortunate colleague Marco Mendicinco has been denounced recently: misrepresenting reality. But then Liberal MP Tim Louis of Kitchener took this government’s truth-torquing communications strategy to a breathtaking level of self-righteous fantasy — one that dripped with contempt for all but he and his clan. He calmly rose in the House of Commons and quietly accused C-11’s critics of deliberately spreading “misinformation” — a chilling threat given the government’s plans to deal with he same in “Online Harms’ legislation later this year. Louis did not even try to say, as did Mendicino’s deputy minister, that there was a misunderstanding of some kind. He did not attempt to make it clear that there are people who — as reasonable people often will — disagree. He did not dismiss the bill’s critics as being overwrought, incorrect and yet honourable. He stood up in the House of Commons and, barefaced, declared that views, lived experiences and legal analyses — including the testimony of CRTC Chair Ian Scott — are “simply untrue.” In other words, it’s all #fakenews. And we are all liars"
Content creators pin their hopes on Senate changes to controversial online streaming bill - "Bill C-11 is intended to regulate online streaming services alongside traditional broadcast media like cable television, and compel streaming giants like YouTube and Netflix to promote “Canadian stories” by methods such as tweaking their algorithms. While Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has said Bill C-11 would not apply to digital user-generated content, the Senate’s amendment changes Section 4.2 of the bill to specifically exclude “amateur content.”... Numerous independent digital content creators have expressed their opposition to the bill... AIR Media-Tech, which offers services to boost digital user metrics, found that the number of YouTubers in Canada grows faster than in all of Western Europe, using both its own internal data and findings from Oxford Economics to support its claims. Furthermore, AIR Media-Tech said that if not changed, Bill C-11 could result in an outflow of talent from the Canadian market. At least one prominent Canadian YouTuber who runs the popular channel SomeOrdinaryGamers has said they may have to leave Canada if the bill passes without changes. In 2021, Oxford Economics found that YouTube alone contributed over $1.1 billion and the equivalent of 34,600 jobs to the Canadian economy."
From Bad to Worse: Senate Committee Adds Age Verification Requirement for Online Undertakings to Bill C-11 - "This is a stunning addition to Bill C-11 that makes a bad bill dramatically worse. Further, it is discouraging that some of the same senators that have insisted on the risks to freedom of expression that arise from regulating user content in the bill would support implementing age verification for access that could easily extend to commonly used sites and services. If this survives further approvals (including the House of Commons), I don’t see how it survives a constitutional challenge."
From "one of the country’s foremost experts on Internet law, University of Ottawa Prof. Michael Geist"
GUNTER: Online-streaming bill threatens freedom of expression | Toronto Sun - "We learned this week, via Emergencies Act commission documents, that during last winter’s Freedom Convoy the Trudeau government had no evidence of Russian or other foreign influence behind the protest, no massive foreign funding and no identifiable threat to national security. Yet the prime minister and several cabinet ministers repeated such claims for weeks – even after the convoy was broken up. So whose “disinformation” would online content providers be obliged to counter? It’s very easy to imagine the CRTC suppressing sites that called out the government’s propaganda... Such broad, ill-defined mandates simply open small, independent sites to meddlesome bureaucrats and crusading activists who can be expected to tie up sites they disagree with in ideologically motivated complaints and hearings. The Trudeau Liberals haven’t even introduced their online harms bill, yet, which they promise will add a further CRTC power to take down legal Internet content the regulator deems “hurtful.” Still, even just the current bill has all the potential to “chill” online content that is likely to displease the government. It could make compliance so expensive that only large media outlets can be sure their content is approved. Besides, I don’t trust the CRTC to identify appropriate speech. Last week, the National Post’s Terry Glavin reported that career anti-Semite, Laith Marouf, had not only won a contract for $133,000 to teach major broadcasters anti-hate theory – a scandal that broke in August – but had also received another $600,000 in consulting fees over several years from the CRTC. Canadians should be very worried that the Liberals want this kind of control over the Internet."
FIRST READING: The Liberals' weird obsession with censoring the internet - "Jesse Kline writes that Canada’s march towards countering Russian disinformation is uncomfortably similar to how Russia ratcheted up government control over its internet. Russian online controls “started as a way of blocking content related to harmful activities and quickly turned into a means of subverting internal dissent and preventing outside information from getting in,” wrote Kline. While Ottawa doesn’t have quite the same authoritarian tendencies as Moscow, the end result of C-11 would be bureaucrats trusted with trying to weigh fact from fiction in the “the deluge of content that’s posted on social media each day.” A Toronto Sun critique of C-11 was blunter: “The last thing Canadians need is even more attempts to censor and regulate their social media.” University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist has been one of the leading critics of both Bill C-10 and Bill C-11. In his latest blog post on the legislation, Geist accused the feds of being persistently “misleading” in their characterization of the bill’s contents, including false claims that the bill applies only to “companies” and that “users of social media services would never face obligations.”"
Musk calls Trudeau online legislation an attempt to “muzzle” Canadians - "Musk isn’t the only leading tech figure to have concerns with Liberal online legislation. YouTube is currently campaigning against Bill C-11, which could see online platforms forced to tweak their algorithm to promote content favoured by the federal government. “Your YouTube feed is uniquely yours. Bill C-11 could change that,” reads billboards purchased by YouTube that are placed throughout downtown Toronto. The ad encourages viewers to sign a petition against C-11. Bill C-11, which has been dubbed Trudeau’s “online censorship” legislation, isn’t the only piece of legislation targeting the online realm. Bill C-18 has likewise created controversy among online giants, as it attempts to get online platforms to pay Canadian news organizations for the posting of their story links. A previous hate speech law – Bill C-36 – died on the order paper in advance of the 2021 election, but the Liberals have pledged to bring it back. They’ve previously discussed the need to make laws against vaguely defined “online harms” as well as create a Digital Safety Commissioner who is empowered to police Canadians’ online comments"
Twitter Files a glimpse into Liberal Canada's future of censorship - "The idea of a government-funded entity deciding what is and is not misleading enough in the ever-evolving realm of COVID policy is perplexing, especially if it goes beyond targeting outright misinformation and starts limiting discussion on matters of individual opinion. Individual opinions should be left to public debate, not public funding. The Liberals are also crafting levers for the CRTC to regulate what Canadians can see and hear online. Amendments to the Broadcasting Act will be made if Bill C-11 passes (which appears to be soon — the bill is out of committee and headed for a Senate vote), which will mean YouTube and Netflix will be regulated similarly to television and radio in Canada. Online platforms will be obligated to promote Canadian content in French, English and Indigenous languages. It’s unclear what exactly will be considered Canadian content, but it’s likely it will create a burdensome amount of administrative overhead that will make certification inaccessible for independent content creators (to the benefit of legacy media, which is well-versed in the world of CRTC administration)... C-11 also stands to give the CRTC power over the subject matter you see. It will be able to mandate platforms to show certain proportions of content by genre. While Twitter was deprioritizing certain types of online discussions, the CRTC stands to promote or limit certain genres. They will also have to meet other broad policy goals the Liberals are adding to the Broadcasting Act, such as the “countering of disinformation” and supporting programming and employment that reflects the circumstances of “racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages.” Since the CRTC interpreted “reflecting the circumstances” of various groups as a reason to impose diversity funding requirements onto CBC earlier this year, it’s possible that it could require this of YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and others... In a liberal democracy, it should be up to citizens what kind of content they watch and what kind of policies they support. The Twitter Files shows us how easily that freedom can be tinkered with to suit the politics of higher-ups — it’s unsettling to think that we are starting to give our own government officials a similar ability to tinker in a similar manner"
