- Who decides what constitutes "harmful"? Some things will be able to be agreed upon by man, but some won't.

- So every platform needs serious moderation teams? I absolutely believe that major platforms should, but what if I have a blog and someone doxxes someone in the comments? Am I responsible now? So we're going to crush independent sites because they can't afford moderation from serious spam?

I don't know, this is a tricky subject but I can't see this working well.

I hate the modern day we live in where every single person is obsessed with making sure people who think differently than they do should be silenced. This is not limited to one group, this is pervasive throughout all discourse everywhere, and it’s getting so exhausting.

Grass is greener and so forth but as a Canadian I find our current government paternalistic, pandering, reactive, and stifling. Not every problem should be solved by the sledgehammer of our public service, regulation, and bureaucracy, all of which are highly inefficient and wasteful. It's tax season - I pay nearly half my wages to the government in income tax - all so they can redistribute it to those who they deem worthy and unworthy (similar how to they might deem some content harmful and other content unharmful). Let me make my own decisions!

To their credit, Canadian regulators have in the past gotten stuff done in this area. Back in 2010 Canada was instrumental in getting Facebook to implement basic privacy protections. More often than not, the big online platforms internally know that regulation has to happen. Whichever country first comes up with a standard for "reasonable" in an area tends to see that standard mirrored by other countries struggling with the same issue. The online platforms would love to say that they are already in compliance with the Canadian standard when they inevitably have to negotiate new standards for the US and Europe.

That sounds like a very bad idea. Why does it need to be implemented when there are already existing mechanisms in place to hold criminals accountable for their actions?

> It's not clear whether the regulator will have power only over online platforms hosted in Canada or over all websites accessible by Canadians.

Canada is irrelevant, it cannot enforce anything beyond its borders. This regulation will be used as a pretext later to create a digital identity and violate users’ privacy even more. The children’s safety argument is the responsibility of their parents/guardians, not the government. If the government really cares about children, it should start by tackling the drug problem.

The thin end of the wedge. The epistemic supply-chain needs grooming to achieve information purity.

If you support this idiocy, let me assure you that eventually it will be used against you when the Wrong sort of people are in power.

The Ministry of Truth.

A bit hyperbolic, but the West really has fallen.

What I didn't see mentioned in this article is what "harm" means in this context. My pessimistic view is that the govt will define harm as they see fit.

Unfortunately this is extremely dangerous as this opens the door to mis-labeling attacks by politicians pushing agendas and looking to censor talk against them.

Sounds to me like Trudeau is promising somebody who will vaguely do something because the opposition politicians are all pushing a bill to do mandatory identification for porn sites to allow for age gating.

I don't really see how expanding the administrative state will help matters, especially with such a vague and exploitable mission like "preventing harm". What is harm? Is speaking against the presiding government harm?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

It's funny how resistant humans are to learning from history.

This article is jumping the gun; there is no text yet, and it's entirely unclear what "accountable for harmful content" means exactly. How exactly that is defined makes a huge difference. And all of this is based on "sources" so it may not even be accurate in the first place.

Right now all anyone can respond with is guesses and assumptions. This should be discussed in a few days, when there is actually something concrete to discuss.

All of this is typical of "the news cycle". Imagine delaying publication for a few days until there's something to actually discuss...

When I first heard that the gov't is trying to protect children from online harm, for some reason I thought it meant we were going to regulate their access to the highly addictive forms of social media that have been destroying their experience of childhood and setting them up to be a failed generation. But I guess they decided instead to go after the politically low-hanging fruit of hate speech, bullying, and sexual exploitation, as if the heavy hand of government speech regulation is somehow going to solve these problems this time around in history at no major cost to free societal norms.

What a joke. This is how the US has solved this problem.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1761567080988676256.html

Some things ring a Bell: meta oversight board, disinformation governance board, fact checking sites, counter disinformation unit.

It always work with funding from powerful. Always people at top are nominated by the powerful. The last thing is these boards have to listen to powerful people. Therefore it is a puppet show.

Rather than creating social media moderation tools for the community they establish boards.

Goddamn my government is absolutely pathetic.

That commission looks harmful.

This is a terrible idea, but as long as it only applies to incorporated persons it's fine. By incorporating and creating a legal person that has very limited legal liability an entity gives up most human rights.

But if this is applied to non-incorporated human persons it will be very frightening and do much damage.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

(Latin: who watches the watchers?)

I might just not vote at the next elections. They're all a joke.

I can't wait to see what the definition of "harmful content" is. It's likely we'll never know the specific definition because it'll use subjective wording that is up to interpretation which will conveniently be used by the justice system in ways that favor the current sitting government rather than the individual.

Remember, it's "for the children" so we have to ram this legislation through as fast as possible - children in Canada, right now, are getting harmed as I type this comment!

I can't wait until "anti-vaccine sentiments", "anti-government messaging", "apolitical misinformation" etc. all get rolled up into "online harmful content" because "it could cause harm to somebody, somewhere in Canada at any time".

"Prime Minister Trudeau, show me on the doll where the harmful content hurt you."

[dead]

I feel like Americans (HN in particular), distrustful of their government, will not like this.

I think it's great. People will look at Fox News and think 'thank god,' but as a Canadian, I'm glad we have more stringent restrictions on reckless forms of speech (hate/inciting genocide, fake news, etc). Further, I cannot recount a time when I've seen someone's speech restricted in a way I thought was improper.

Yes, it is possible for a power to be abused. I don't agree with not granting the power though. But I think it's fundamentally a 'trust in government' thing (which Americans sadly have little of).

It's very funny to see the brains of all the Americans who are unaware of freedom of expression laws in other Western countries entirely melt whenever headlines like these show up.

I can assure you, this is not China or the USSR. Our press, elections, and democratic institutions are free. Nobody is getting or will be thrown in jail for expressing their political opinions, unless it's calling for the death of a group of people or bodily harm to a protected class.