Canada’s mainstream media is openly lobbying the government to follow Australia’s lead and pass more internet censorship and surveillance legislation.
It could be said that Canada’s mainstream media has never met a censorship bill they didn’t like – at least, that’s the case for the last few years. This even as it meant that mainstream media shot themselves in the foot – as was the case with the Online News Act. You’d think that after the Online News Act that they would learn that internet censorship isn’t all that cracked up to be. Unfortunately, it seems that the mainstream media is too stupid to, well, learn anything at all when it comes to technology.
As we have been discussing, Australia is proceeding to prove me correct on a key point about internet censorship. Specifically, after getting an “age verification” bill for pornographic websites, government will seek to use the newfound ability to censor legally protected speech and look into expanding that age verification laws to other parts of the internet. Australia has chosen to target social media in general next, falsely arguing that social media is inherently dangerous to younger people despite it being a communication tool.
The proposals are problematic on a whole variety of fronts. First, it carries over all of the problems from the first iteration of age verification laws (specifically, for pornographic websites). First of all, it is blatantly unconstitutional as it seeks to have government censor legally protected speech. Second, it envisions technology that simply doesn’t exist – specifically, technology that accurately verifies a users age while, at the same time, maintains users privacy. Third, such a concept is downright worthless in an age where users can seek anonymous tools such as TOR and VPN technology.
The punchline in all of this is that none of these problems were ever solved. Instead, advocates for mass government internet censorship have revised their talking points to say things like how the kids are simply too stupid to understand the internet anyway, so there’s no reason to worry about it. This along with another gold nugget of a talking point which is basically summed up as “well, the people selling us the technology says it’s effective, so therefore, it must be true!” If there was ever a way to telegraph in this debate that you are a complete and total dumbass, it’s hard to think of ways to do it more effectively than making stupid comments like that.
The problem here is that expanding age verification laws to social media brings a whole host of brand new problems. One of the most immediate things is that younger people use social media to communicate with family. This includes family members overseas. By banning younger people, you sever that line of communication with family. Moreover, you are basically demanding government ID to be forked over just to use an online tool that is extremely common and frequently used. As such, if you dare to even consider the idea of using social media, you do so under the governments watchful eye.
Ultimately, expanding age verification to social media is basically the worst of both worlds. For one, you bring forth mass government censorship to legally protected speech. On the flip side, you implement a massive new layer of surveillance infrastructure to your everyday use of the internet. There are no upsides to this.
Yet, despite all of that, there are those who seem to be hell bent on expanding such legislative concepts into other aspects of the internet. That’s precisely what the free speech hating mainstream media is doing here in Canada these days. Yesterday, on a CBC broadcast, journalists were practically doing backflips over how Australia is pushing age verification onto social media. Journalists were breathlessly exclaiming how Australia is leading the way on these efforts and excitedly asking if Canada should follow suit, huh huh huh huh? One of the journalists even went so far as to completely fabricate the talking point that there is an appetite among the public for Canada to pass similar laws in Canada. Obviously, mainstream media journalists lying on the air is nothing new, but it doesn’t make such lies any less infuriating.
The problem with all of this, however, is the fact that this signals that Canada’s mainstream media has already begun the process to bring such Orwellian laws into Canada, pushing government to do so.
The calls for this new level of surveillance and censorship wasn’t just confined to the mainstream media broadcast airwaves. Some of those stories have already started appearing on their online versions as well. From CTV:
As Australia moves to ban social media for children under 16, Quebec is debating whether to follow suit.
The provincial government decided last spring to study the possibility of setting a minimum age for social media accounts, following a push from the youth wing of the governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).
The ban could be a model for other jurisdictions looking to combat the mental health impacts of social media use among young people.
The law will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to $45 million for failing to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.
“We were happy to see this measure approved by the Australian government. It gave us hope for what we proposed,” Aurélie Diep, president of the youth wing of the CAQ, said in an interview. “So for us, it is very positive news.”
I know, the stupidity expressed in this report alone is palpable. Banning teenagers and children from social media is not going to somehow magically make younger people’s mental health issues go away. If anything, it will worsen it as communities of like minded individuals get completely ripped apart from the process. Younger generations these days already face enough as it is. Whether it is the knowledge that home ownership is simply out of reach, that good paying jobs are ceasing to exist, and the threat of homelessness despite having an education, younger people already have enough to worry about as it is. Throw in being barred from communicating with friends online on top of it all, and you are looking at a recipe to increase the size of the suicide watch list.
It isn’t just CTV doing this. CityNews recently published an article with the headline Should Edmonton explore social media ban for children?. The CBC published a video where they somehow found kids that agree that they should be banned from social media. The video alone is downright creepy where the broadcaster got people advocating for having their rights taken away by government.
The overall messaging/propaganda from Canada’s mainstream media is that while there are criticisms towards the law, the benefits simply outweigh those cons and, therefore, the government should get down to business in passing similar surveillance and censorship laws here in Canada.
The good news in all of this is that the federal government really isn’t in any position to push for new censorship laws at this point. Lawmaking has already been largely put on pause for the time being and the next election is scheduled to take place sometime next year. That makes a new bill making its way through government unlikely to happen before the next election. Still, it seems that the powers that be are already looking into the next level of mass internet censorship and surveillance and that appears to be government ID just to use social media.
