A heavily redacted 35-page internal memo obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter through an Access to Information request shows that Canada’s Industry Department has been exploring the possibility of pursuing litigation against individuals who post what it characterizes as “false and misleading information” on social media.
The memo, connected to the department led by Minister Mélanie Joly, contemplates potential lawsuits targeting users on platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Key details of what form any legal action would take are obscured by redactions.
Under the framework being considered, ISED itself would determine whether a given social media post was “factually incorrect, misleading or out of context.” Any punitive measures against individuals would be described as “proportionate” and subject to sign-off from senior officials, according to Blacklock’s reporting.
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That combination, a government department acting as both arbiter of truth and potential plaintiff, sits awkwardly alongside the Liberal government’s own past statements on digital rights. As recently as four years ago, the government publicly declared that “the rights and freedoms that individuals have offline must also be protected online,” a position that critics argue is difficult to square with a plan to pursue users for their posts on private platforms.
The memo does not define what threshold a post would need to meet to trigger government scrutiny, nor does it outline any independent oversight mechanism for the accuracy determinations ISED would be making about public speech.
Free expression advocates are likely to push back hard against any move toward enforcement.
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2 Responses
Great idea and long overdue. The web is full of deliberate deceptions and falsehoods. Those that post these items deserved to be held accountable. I do not consider this government (big brother) interference, but standard truth checks that should have been done by those providing the webservice. With the addition of AI, I can no longer believe what I see in a photo either.
So, you want the rest of us to have to live in a George Orwell novel under a Prime Minister who regularly gets caught lying even by our government-funded mainstream media, just because you’re too dumb not to fall for AI content online, Grandpa?