2 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

John Ivison: The online harms bill risks replacing digital anarchy with a surveillance state

 

If all these new regulatory bodies and adjudicators are overzealous, it will have a chilling effect on the behaviour of Canadians online

 

 

 

The Canadian government has just executed its own mandate over the internet: the Online Harms Act. The bill is weighty, creating regulation over social media platforms; making changes to the Criminal Code to create new hate crime offences; and amending the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow for the adjudication of disputes over what constitutes hateful material online.

 

A judgment on whether it is the “wrong mandate” will only be possible when we can see how it is enacted.

 

But what can be said is that the rising tide of hate online required a government response — and that this iteration of the legislation is a drastic improvement on the proposal put forward after the 2021 election.

 

Arif Virani made a compelling case for the bill in an evening press conference. “We cannot tolerate anarchy on the internet,” he said.

 

The justice minister said the bill targets the worst of what we see online: the sexual victimization of children; intimate content shared without consent; content that incites violence, extremism or terrorism; content that foments hatred; and content that is used to bully a child or which induces a child to self-harm.

 

https://nationalpost...veillance-state

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 27 February 2024 - 10:58 PM.

[Nparker]

I have zero trust in any bill put forward by the Justin Trudeau Liberals. What reason is there to believe that "online harms" legislation won't be used against the free speech of citizens the government determines to be inciting "hatred" or "anarchy" online? Have we learned nothing from the abuses of the Emergencies Act two years ago?

[dasmo]

How did the Gradual Civilization Act work out for the First Nations?