Thread by @doctorow

Canada's government is poised to pass a "harmful content" regulation. It's a worst-in-class mutation of a dangerous idea that's swept the globe, in which governments demand that hamfisted tech giants remove broad categories of speech - too swiftly for meaningful analysis.

1/

Many countries have proposed or passed rules on these lines: Australia, France, UK, Germany, India. They are all bad, but Canada's is literally the worst - as if Trudeau's Liberals sought out the most dangerous elements of each rule and combined them.

https://twitter.com/daphnehk/status/1421120217585831938

2/

What's in Canada's rule? @EFF's @cmcsherr and @txitua break it down.

* A requirement to remove "lawful-but-awful" speech that is allowed under Canadian law, but effectively also now banned under Canadian law;

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

3/

* 24-hour deadlines for removal, guaranteeing that platforms will not have time to conduct a thorough analysis of speech before it is censored;

* A de-facto requirement for platforms to install algorithmic filters to (mis)identify and remove prohibited expression;

4/

* Huge penalties for failing to remove banned speech - and no penalties for erroneously taking down permitted speech - which guarantees that platforms will shoot first and probably not bother to ask questions later;

5/

* Mandatory reporting of POTENTIALLY harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies;

* A Chinese-style national firewall that will block websites that refuse to comply;

6/

* Far-reaching data-retention policies that only the largest companies will be able to afford, which will create immortal, leaky repositories of kompromat on every Canadian internet user.

7/

Even worse: the specific contours of all these rules will be determined anew with each new Parliament, who will get to appoint a new Canadian "internet czar" with the power to expand and extend the regulation's most dangerous elements.

8/

The proposal allows Canadian cops to confiscate online services' computers if they are suspected of noncompliance - but offers them an insurance policy to avoid having their doors kicked in and their equipment seized: to adopt "advice" from the internet czar.

9/

So not only will the internet czar - who might someday be appointed by PM Maxime Bernier or Doug Ford - get to rewrite the rules in public, they'll also be empowered to go beyond those rules in private "advice" to online services, backstopped by the threat of raids.

10/

The Trudeau government are spinning this hard, just as they did with Bill C-10 (which included deceptive language that, on superficial examination, seemed to limit the scope of the law, but which was superceded by later clauses).

pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you…

11/

In this case, the proposal limits regulation to "public" forums. But because the this is copied from other countries, we know there's room to declare a private chat-group public as soon as it hits a certain (unilaterally determined) size threshold:

eff.org/deeplinks/2020…

12/

The combination of:

* prohibiting broad, poorly defined speech categories;

* harsh penalties for underblocking; and

* requiring swift compliance without time for adequate assessment or counternotifications;

all guarantee that tech giants will block all kinds of speech.

13/

But not all speech is equally at risk. People who are already marginalised are disproportionately likely to be censored under rules like this. That's what happened with the US's #SESTA rule, nominally intended to prevent sexual trafficking.

14/

In reality, the primary targets of this law became lawful, consensual sex workers, who are exposed to far more risk now that they can no longer operate forums where they trade "bad date" lists and other safety information.

eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

15/

This discrimination is sticky, because SESTA caused the shuttering of forums where sex workers advocated for their rights. The more marginalised the speaker, the worst it is - which is why the most heavily impacted group is trans women of colour.

swopusa.org/blog/2015/11/1…

16/

As ever, @mgeist is the absolute best authority to refer to on this. Geist has documented the "beware of the leopard"-style secrecy of the Liberals, who have taken great pains to shield this policy-making from public scrutiny.

michaelgeist.ca/2021/07/online…

17/

But despite all the tactical obscurity, there IS a way that Canadians can weigh in on this, through this online consultation form. All Canadians should submit comments on this.

canada.ca/en/canadian-he…

18/

Online harms rules are a human rights disaster. They've been roundly criticised by UN Rapporteurs and civil society groups all over the world.

spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/…

19/

France's version - which was not as extreme as Canada's - was struck down as unconstitutional.

eff.org/press/releases…

20/

None of this is to say the tech giants are good for speech. They're terrible at moderation - of course they are. The problem with Facebook isn't merely that Zuck is a shitty online emperor for three billion people - it's that no one should have the job of "online emperor."

21/

But the Canadian proposal will ensure that these tech giants are the last generation of online platforms, by imposing a duty to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on speech filters - something that only the largest American companies can afford.

22/

This forecloses on the goal of whittling tech giants to size through #interoperability, ending the possibility that co-operatives, nonprofits and startups could independently manage their own spaces that were still connected to the platforms.

locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-d…

23/

Canada is not alone in planning to convert the tech giants into constitutional monarchs, offering them perpetual dominance in exchange for suffering themselves to be regulated in how they rule our digital lives.

24/

But that's a terrible vision for our online future. We don't want wise emperors running our digital world - we want to ABOLISH emperors and give people the right to technological self-determination.

eff.org/deeplinks/2021…

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the…