What is Canada doing about the dark side of social media?

As part of their ongoing investigation into the role of social media in Canadian society, Global News is reporting on both the actions an inactions of the Canadian government in regulating it.

“We’re behind Australia, we’re behind Germany, we’re behind the United Kingdom.”

Natasha Tusikov, York Univeristy assistant professor

Global has examined the measures taken by Canada, namely C-10 and C-36 and compared them to similar legislation in other countries. In addition to criticism from Civil Liberties organizations, the legislation is not seen as tackling the root of the problem, which is the business models of tech companies such as Facebook (now Meta), instead focusing on content moderation.

“I think the last attempt at a bill was a mishmash. It was a poorly constructed, rushed bill that confused or collapsed too many different types of illegal content together,” Tusikov said in evaluating Bill C-36.

The government has yet to announce their next steps to manage the social media environment, but critics are urging action as soon as possible.

If these companies aren’t going to live up to the high standards to protect citizens’ rights, we have to do that as legislators.”

Charlie Angus, NDP Critic