What Twitter/X has done is no conduct that the Canadian people would tolerate if they were conducted by a corporation that was aligned with, say, the government of China
And yet, we did not ban TikTok. Nor did the Americans, when it came down to it. Perhaps they saw no prospect of such a law surviving the legal challenges that would rise against it.
As a general rule, the government can’t simply ban speech it dislikes. The government in Canada would perhaps have a marginally easier time of it with our less complete constitutional protection of the freedom of expression, but it would remain a bad idea, unlikely to succeed legally and very likely to do more harm than good if it did stand. It's wrong to say that "no reasonable jurisprudence would defend" Canadians' rights to visit the website and run the software of their choice when doing so is not in violation of any laws other than an arbitrary ban on one specific vendor who is disliked.
If social media firms have engaged in practices that should be illegal, then make those practices illegal. It will be discovered that once they are identified and specified, far more than just Facebook and Twitter will be affected. That is as it should be. The government of Canada should do what it can, and not attempt to do what it cannot. It should pass data privacy laws that make the worst practices of surveillance capitalist social media illegal in Canada. Legislate directly against the "data harvesting" and ad targeting.
And obviously, first of all, the government should stop using Twitter and Facebook, stop promoting them on government web sites, and thereby start leading people away from that shit instead of towards it. Here's the petition again, which has 15000 signatures so far and lots of time left to sign it.
Carney will conventionally do the most conventional thing that can be justified by conventional economics, as is his passion. It will not solve our problems. Neither will it lead to an "even more rabid" future Conservative party, if he somehow does keep them out of power this time. The party and the people will have seen rabid populist wreck-everything politics fail to win an election in Canada and bring the USA to ruin. They are likely to want to try something else.
Yeah I haven't watched much TV since twenty years ago, forgot for a moment how tightly regulated broadcasting is. By contrast, nobody has even talked about banning the RT web site. For the most part, banning the use of foreign websites is something only autocratic censorship-heavy states are in the business of doing. Canada's one attempt to block some random for-profit pirate streaming site that almost nobody had heard of was dangerous enough.
Canada should not ban individual social media services one at a time. It can't be justified, constitutionally or morally. Canada should instead pass a privacy law that prohibits the surveillance capitalist dirty tricks that make them profitable, and design regulations that require interoperability.
Of course that would require a government capable of designing good tech regulation, which we don't seem to have much chance of seeing around here any time soon.
To be fair, it's hard to say what Bethesda has to offer when they haven't released anything since 2011. [checks wikipedia] Nope, nothing. Unless you count Fallout 4, which I wouldn't.
It may seem like a small thing but it's nicely symbolic of America losing its international reputation and standing. At this rate its its soft power will be demolished within the year, and its economic and military might will soon follow.
Drop the tariffs and we'll allow US banks to operate in Canada, allow American cars to be sold here, ban all exports of fentanyl, and stop booing your national anthem.
Cui bono? As with many of Trump's actions, it's obviously not the USA. It's not as if they don't know that it will hurt the American people. It's not being done for their benefit.
kbal @ kbal @fedia.io Posts 13Comments 1,087Joined 2 yr. ago
And yet, we did not ban TikTok. Nor did the Americans, when it came down to it. Perhaps they saw no prospect of such a law surviving the legal challenges that would rise against it.
As a general rule, the government can’t simply ban speech it dislikes. The government in Canada would perhaps have a marginally easier time of it with our less complete constitutional protection of the freedom of expression, but it would remain a bad idea, unlikely to succeed legally and very likely to do more harm than good if it did stand. It's wrong to say that "no reasonable jurisprudence would defend" Canadians' rights to visit the website and run the software of their choice when doing so is not in violation of any laws other than an arbitrary ban on one specific vendor who is disliked.
If social media firms have engaged in practices that should be illegal, then make those practices illegal. It will be discovered that once they are identified and specified, far more than just Facebook and Twitter will be affected. That is as it should be. The government of Canada should do what it can, and not attempt to do what it cannot. It should pass data privacy laws that make the worst practices of surveillance capitalist social media illegal in Canada. Legislate directly against the "data harvesting" and ad targeting.
And obviously, first of all, the government should stop using Twitter and Facebook, stop promoting them on government web sites, and thereby start leading people away from that shit instead of towards it. Here's the petition again, which has 15000 signatures so far and lots of time left to sign it.