Tories dissent Heritage Committee report on tech giants’ intimidation

The House of Commons committee on Canadian Heritage has released a report on intimidation by tech giants to evade regulation. The study was tabled in Parliament the first week of November. The panel made five recommendations to the government in its report. It called on digital content platforms to put mechanisms in place to detect content that may be disinformation or foreign interference. The government should come up with an awareness campaign on disinformation, it also stated. Platforms should work with independent academic researchers by providing data to understand the digital ecosystem, especially content that could harm children. Service providers should moderate content so there is no adverse differential treatment of any individual or group of individuals. Finally, the report recommended that the government should change provisions in the Income Tax Act which permit businesses which advertise on foreign platforms to be fully deductible. During its hearings last year, the committee was upset with Meta Platforms Inc. The parent company of Facebook did not make its chairman Mark Zuckerberg or global affairs president Nick Clegg available to testify. Global policy director Kevin Chan and head of public policy for Canada Rachel Curran did appear before the panel in May 2023. The Conservative MPs on the committee filed a dissenting opinion. They maintain that Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, and Bill C-18, the Online News Act, are “draconian” pieces of legislation. “The Liberal government, under Justin Trudeau, instituted Bill C-11 to control what Canadians watch and post online,” the Tories claim. The politicians were just as vehement on C-18. “While countries around the world can easily access news on social media platforms, Canadians are left in an Orwellian state in which news cannot be shared on Meta platforms and is therefore largely unavailable,” the Conservatives wrote. “This is a direct consequence of a collision between big tech and an overbearing government.” Meta began blocking news content on its platforms in Canada last summer in response to the legislation. The full committee is seeking a government response to its study. ppark@thewirereport.ca

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Tories dissent Heritage Committee report on tech giants’ intimidation

Regulatory | By Paul Park | November 11, 2024

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Inside The Wire Report

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Regulatory |
By Paul Park
| November 11, 2024