Lack of Rules on Social Media
The nighttime side of social media: What Canada is — and isn't — doing near it
When Jason Nickerson's daughter became quondam enough for social media, he did something radical: he bought a landline.
That way, when his 12-twelvemonth-quondam daughter wanted to make plans with friends, she could pick up the phone and call — instead of messaging them through a social media profile, where she'd exist exposed to all the realities of online life, from fun conversations with friends to developing self-esteem issues.
"Our firm just does not have access to social media, and that'south a very deliberate parenting pick that my wife and I have made," Nickerson said.
But as parents like Nickerson lay down rules for online date, he says information technology lays bare a problem when it comes to the ever-growing online globe: a lack of action from the Canadian government in regulating information technology.
"We haven't really done anything yet," said Natasha Tusikov, an assistant professor at York Academy and author of Chokepoints: Global Private Regulation on the Cyberspace.
Canada has yet to laissez passer substantive legislation that reins in the powerful tech giants backside the globe of social media. The few proposals the government has brought forward fail to tackle what Tusikov says is the eye of the trouble: the business model.
Concern near the damaging effect social media tin take — specially on young people — is zilch new. But in the decades since the introduction of MySpace and the rising of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, there are indications it'south getting worse. A recent deep swoop into Facebook'southward operations, past the Wall Street Journal, revealed the company is aware of its platforms' negative influences on the mental health of users — a sizable per centum of them young people.
Despite the negative furnishings coming into clearer focus, the entrenchment of social media in the mean solar day-to-mean solar day lives of Canadians is nearly inescapable. Global News is unravelling the many facets of influence these platforms accept — both offline and on — and what the regime is going to do virtually them.
What's wrong?
Social media companies make their money by keeping users' optics on screens.
"The business model of these social media companies … is to maximize user engagement, whether the content is excellent, wholesome content or whether information technology's terrible, disgusting, hateful content," Tusikov said.
"They make their money by maximizing user engagement, which generates advertisement revenue."
Tusikov's comments echo testimony given by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to the U.S. Senate in October 2021.
During the Senate hearings, the former Facebook data scientist defendant the company of being enlightened of apparent harm to some teens from Instagram, and of beingness dishonest in its public fight confronting detest and misinformation.
"Facebook'south products harm children, stoke partitioning and weaken our democracy," Haugen said.
"The visitor'south leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer, merely won't make the necessary changes because they take put their astronomical profits before people."
In a argument sent to Global News on Mon, Meta — which owns Facebook — pushed back on Haugen'due south claims.
"We want our platforms to be a supportive and safe place for young people especially," said Lisa Laventure, the head of communications for Meta in Canada.
"For years, Meta has done extensive work in bullying, suicide and self-injury, and eating disorder prevention and we volition continue to look for opportunities to consult with experts and build new features and resources that assist people who are struggling with negative social comparison or trunk prototype issues."
Notwithstanding, Haugen'southward testimony worried some parents, including Sulemaan Ahmed, who has three children aged 12 to 18.
"I'm thankful that I didn't take social media as a teenager, because I think the pressure … on kids today is (very) different than information technology was back so," Ahmed said.
He pointed to Haugen's testimony as a key example.
"She revealed internal Facebook documents that showed Instagram has a negative bear on on young women," Ahmed said.
"I think parents have a responsibility, and authorities does, to ensure that when (children) are young and impressionable, that they don't meet certain things that could be traumatizing to them, or radicalize them, or hurt them from a mental health perspective."
Meta has pushed back on these characterizations.
The company told Global News it has "absolutely no commercial incentive, no moral incentive, no company-wide incentive" to do "annihilation other than" endeavor to give people a positive feel on its platforms.
"Instagram'southward inquiry shows … that on xi of 12 well-being problems — including serious areas similar loneliness, feet, sadness and eating issues — more teenage girls who said they struggled with those hard problems, besides said that Instagram fabricated them either better or had no impact, rather than making them worse," Meta'due south spokesperson wrote.
What has the government done?
Canada has dipped its toes in the water of online regulation, simply when it comes to the world stage, we're "laggards," according to Tusikov.
"We're backside Australia, we're backside Germany, we're behind the Uk," she said.
Australia, for case, has established what it calls an eSafety Commissioner, the globe'southward first government agency "solely committed to keeping citizens safer online," according to its website. Deutschland, meanwhile, enacted what the New York Times chosen "one of the earth'southward toughest laws against online hate oral communication" in 2017.
Canada, meanwhile, has been studying the issue of online damage for years. Parliamentary committees have been examining social media's impact on immature people from various angles since at to the lowest degree 2014.
Despite all these studies, information technology wasn't until 2020 that Canada finally put social media regulation into legislation — though none of the bills have made it through Parliament.
In the fall of 2020, the government made its first real foray into regulating the cyberspace.
Beak C-x, legislation aimed at modernizing the Broadcasting Act, was supposed to aid Canadian content regulations reflect today'due south media consumption trends. Simply shortly after introducing C-10, the government brought forward another proposed constabulary — one that took aim at online hate.
That legislation, known equally Bill C-36, gave new recourse to people worried that another person will commit an offence motivated by "bias, prejudice or detest." That hate tin can exist based on a number of factors — including race, sex or gender identity — and the aggrieved party would be able to have the issue to a provincial court, provided the attorney general consents.
The bill would as well amend the Canadian Human Rights Human action to make it a "discriminatory practice" to communicate hate speech through the internet where it is "likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the footing of a prohibited footing of discrimination."
The last meaning proposal for regulation of the digital space came in Nib C-11, which was introduced in Dec of 2020. The beak, if passed, would accept implemented a new legislative authorities governing the drove, apply and disclosure of personal information for commercial activity in Canada.
Basically, it would set rules effectually what data digital platforms can collect and how they can apply information technology.
When Prime Government minister Justin Trudeau asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament in August 2021, however, all of these bills died before they could become law, though the regime has promised to revive them soon.
Meta says they "welcome and support regulation" — provided it preserves "the benefits of the digital economic system while addressing potential harms."
"Information technology'due south been 25 years since the rules for the Internet have been updated and information technology's time for industry standards to be introduced so private companies aren't making these decisions on their own," a Meta spokesperson wrote to Global News in a argument on Monday.
Experts are unimpressed — so far
In late July, the regime dropped a hint about what future legislation and regulations aimed at tackling online harms would look similar.
The government published a "discussion guide" and a "technical paper" on its proposals for a futurity online anti-harm regime. The documents included a broad-ranging plan detailing which entities would be discipline to the new rules, what types of harmful content would be regulated, and the rules for those regulated entities and new regulatory bodies.
"I found that proposal very problematic," said Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms project at the Canadian Ceremonious Liberties Association.
"The regime has taken a lot of the bad ideas from other countries and transported them hither."
Zwibel said if legislation is introduced based on this technical paper, it would be "actually disappointing."
"A lot of groups spent time to permit the government know where they saw problems and if none of that is considered kind of relevant, it actually, actually raises a question of why you lot would ever accept a consultation process at all," she said.
Role of the problem with the proposal, according to Zwibel, is that it focuses as well much on content moderation, as opposed to the business models of the platforms themselves.
"The content moderation slice is, to me, an issue that you get to further downwards the stream," she said.
"It's very hard to target hate speech without incidentally grabbing a bunch of other things that you don't desire to scoop upward."
Tusikov was as disquisitional of the government'southward previous bids to regulate and legislate the online world.
"I think the last attempt at a bill was a mishmash. It was a poorly constructed, rushed bill that confused or collapsed too many unlike types of illegal content together," she said.
That nib, Tusikov said, dealt with content that sexually exploits children, non-consensual sharing of sexual images, and terrorism — all in the same legislation.
"These are really broad, different issues," Tusikov said.
"What I recall the government needs to do now is to take a wait at unlike types of illegal content or different types of harmful content and produce a clearly and cogently constructed bill that makes the argument of how and why this will be regulated."
For both Tusikov and Zwibel, there's ane clear area the federal government needs to tackle going forward: the business model.
"In that location's an incentive for companies to create content that goes viral, whether that'southward medical misinformation or hate speech or true cat photos," Tusikov said.
"And until we address this business model, which is fuelled by advertising and the collection of users' data, we're non going to get anywhere."
Looking alee
Going forward, the government says its aim is to "create an enabling environs in which all Canadians can participate in online public life," according to a statement from David Larose, a spokesperson for the Department of Canadian Heritage.
"We have and will continue to consult Canadians, experts and fundamental stakeholders on how best to tackle these circuitous issues, while upholding fundamental rights," he said.
Just opposition politicians remain skeptical that the end result will prove to reach that balance.
"What nosotros'd like to see going frontward is that the Canadian Heritage Commission undertake a full review of the online globe, (taking) the total opportunity to put forrard ideas, rather than rushing into legislation that will in the terminate have unintended consequences on Canadians," said Conservative heritage critic John Nater.
He wasn't alone in his concerns.
"I'm hoping we can do this in a coherent manner so we don't disrupt the positive elements of online communication," said NDP MP Charlie Angus.
"But in that location are serious issues. I just don't retrieve that the Liberal government up until now has understood it."
Yet, Angus said the authorities does need to act.
"If these companies aren't going to live up to the high standards to protect citizens' rights, we have to practise that every bit legislators," he said.
In the meantime, parents are having to stride up and establish their own rules to make full the void left past a lack of authorities regulation. For Nickerson, the best option for his kids is sometimes no engineering at all.
"Information technology sounds actually simplistic to say kids need to go outside and play and hang out with other people," he said.
"But I really genuinely believe that there is quite a bit of truth to that."
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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