Is the proposed social media law in Canada threatening human rights?

 

There is a lot of buzz around a proposed social media law that regulates the content one watches online in Canada. If the bill is passed in the parliament, it will be the first time that a lberal country will be going ahead with such social media restriction.

If this was for any other country, there would have been large scale protests by people opposing such a law that snacthes their right to express themselves. There is no denying that the law threatens the human rights of the people of the country but if it were to be implemented in a more sophisticated way, it might prove to be the best thing for Canada in recent years.

The law will essentially be regulating the social media platforms and moderate the harmful user generated content on the platform. The scholars have already started to criticise the law stating various facts by which this breaks the human rights norms.

Many experts have gone through the proposed norms and as per them, they consist of some of the most widely condemned ideas but what needs to be taken into account is the motive of the government in doing so. The federal system is trying to target the crimes that are taking place in the cover of social media.

Child sexual exploitation content, terrorist content, content that incites violence, hate speech, and non-consensual sharing of intimate images are few of the things that the law aims to target, states and experts.

Social media influencers in Norway are now required - by law - to indicate if their ad photos have been edited to modify their shape, size or skin. A label designed by the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Family Affairs must be added to these posts.

Should Canada do this? 📱 pic.twitter.com/tvmzhCWN8i

— Breakfast Television (@breakfasttv) July 7, 2021

What is concerning here is that this type of content is already illegal on social media. If leagloties already being imposed on them did not do any good for the users then what is the guarantee of this law working when stricter regulations are imposed. It will only be more restrictive for the user.

Many countries in Europe have already issued such norms where they moderate the type of content published within their parameters. To moderate the content, the law is not the problem or the intention of the government is not an issue rather the success rate of the solution being provided is the main cause of concern.

The proposed legislation states that the online platforms, to continue to function in the country, will have to actively monitor the content that is being put online and evaluate any potential harm by them. It is the onus of that particular platform to take responsibility for the content being published online.

Apart from this, the legislation also included individuals being able to flag content as harmful upon which, the social media site should analyse within 24 hours if the content is actually harmful or not.

If the social media platform fails to take action or remove the harmful content from their platform, then they will be eligible to pay a penalty of up to three percent of the service provider's gross revenue or $10 million, whichever is higher.

However, the government fails to understand that these general legislatures will not benefit the cause. The social media harms are all at different levels and to identify it, one must take targeted steps and not go with general impositions.

For example Child pornography is very different from hate crimes and it difficult to identify the latter. Hence general regulations will not be a solution to these problems.

So human rights are definitely threatened here. Be it regulations on every user content or be it privacy issues, the public will be constantly under security given the social media savvy world. But any step can only be taken when people speak up and take note of the core issue.

In Canada, most of the population is unaware of the issue and that concerns experts as nothing should come as a shock to them. They must be aware of the regulations being imposed on them and only then can they secure their rights.