A recent article calls for the creation of a “Moderation Standards Council” to address how social media platforms deal with and moderate what is termed as “harmful content.” I am concerned about the proposal for such a body.

Writing in Policy Options for the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Fenwick McKelvey, Heidi Tworek, and Chris Tenove say that “no concrete regulatory action has yet been taken that addresses how large social media platforms deal with harmful content.” As a result, they assert that Canada needs to create “an institution for content moderation.”

One bold path forward would be to have the CRTC mandate companies to create this council, a co-regulation approach similar to the Broadcasting Standards Council. The CRTC would mandate the work of the standards council, and set specific binding commitments to improve the transparency and accountability of content moderation.

There are a number of problems with this. Let’s start with jurisdiction. Unlike broadcasters that require a CRTC license to operate, social media platforms are unlicensed and unregulated. The CRTC has no authority to ‘mandate companies to create this council.’

Then we need to take a look at whether a democratic country like Canada should be or even could be involved in creating a legislative framework to assert such authority over what might be termed ‘merely’ harmful content, as distinguished from illegal content. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: …

2. 2. freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

As frequent readers know, I often write about the need for increased focus on digital literacy and fully endorse the government’s role in teaching people how to engage online with a more critical eye. That is very different from a government agency policing what is said and involvement in a council to “help leaders, civil society and governments decide how to establish fines or other penalties for platforms that do not meet expectations.”

The academics write “Poor moderation of speech that someone deems harmful can undermine opportunities for free, full and fair participation in online debates by all Canadians.” We have set a very high bar in defining what forms of speech are illegal, as contrasted with speech that someone deems harmful. As Aaron Sorkin wrote in An American President:

You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit is the 18th annual gathering of the most influential leadership of Canada’s communications sector. This year, the event will take place June 3-5 at Toronto’s International Centre, near Pearson Airport.

With a review underway of the legislative framework governing telecommunications, broadcasting and radiocommunications, regulatory issues are certain to be top of mind this year. Participation is already confirmed for CRTC Chair Ian Scott and Legislative Review panel Chair Janet Yale. In addition, the Regulatory Blockbuster will feature leaders from Bell, Rogers and TELUS as well as Iristel/ICE Wireless, Teksavvy and Xplornet.

Panel discussions will cover issues such as:

• Customer Experience
• Cyber Security: Protection, Pre-emption and Privacy in the Age of Bad Actors
• Network Innovation: Transforming networks for nextgen services – SDN, Network Virtualization and more
• 5G: Evolution or Revolution
• Artificial Intelligence: debating human autonomy vs human innovation
• The Innovation Economy: the ongoing journey to digitize our lives

Have you registered yet?

Sorry to have been off the air for most of this week. As many of my regular readers know, family comes first for me and I needed some time to focus on priorities.

Thanks. I needed that. Everyone is fine, now.

I hope to be back next week, with a blog post or two, and my usual snappy observations on Twitter.

How do we ensure our private information is being properly safeguarded?

Every week, there seems to be news of another breech where a government agency or company loses control of personal information being held about their clients. We have seen lost health records, stolen financial data, hacked personal mail, travel plans, stolen photos, eavesdropping on conversations.

In some cases, data was lost due to negligence and sloppy handling. In other cases, criminal organizations exploited system vulnerabilities.

What is the appropriate standard of care that an organization should exercise when handling personal data? How should organizations respond when any kind of data loss is detected?

Those questions were the subject of a recent breakfast discussion I had with a colleague who tolerates me eating fried kippers for breakfast. I will note as an aside that Kiva’s Bagel Bakery Restaurant & Appetizer is one of the few remaining places I know of that has kippers available for breakfast every day. And they make a respectable bagel (for a Toronto bagel). Every so often, my colleague – let’s call him Brian (since that is his name) – and I get together at Kiva’s to try to resolve many of the world’s problems. For a few weeks, we have been looking at the issue of data breeches and wondering how we can get organizations in government and the private sector to take them more seriously.

Brian suggested massive fines and penalties for data losses in order to make sure the companies and government agencies take these losses seriously. I cautioned that an unintended consequence of Brian’s suggestion is that organizations might have a greater incentive to hide a loss, so there needs to be an element of balance in the compensation and penalties to be paid.

How do we assess blame? If you leave your keys inside an unlocked and running car, I don’t think you can claim you exercised a reasonable standard of care when it is stolen. Most of us could appreciate that we failed to reasonably secure the car and anything inside it.

Similarly, shouldn’t we expect reasonable safeguards for our information? How does a Chief Security Officer and Chief Privacy Officer attest to the Board of Directors, to Shareholders and to clients that their organization is securing customer records?

What is the “standard of care” that we should demand from organizations that hold our personal information?

Perhaps part of the annual audit process should certify that organizations are a step ahead, not a step behind, in safeguarding personal information.

The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 3-5 in Toronto, will have a session examining “Cyber Security: Protection, Pre-emption & privacy in the Age of Bad Actors” moderated by Christine Dobby of the Globe and Mail and including noted privacy expert Ann Cavoukian. Early bird prices are available for the next 4 weeks. Save by registering before Feb 28.

I’ve said before that I tend to be a ‘glass half-full’ kind of guy. I like to think that I view situations with optimism as we move forward. There are other industry observers who tend to be more in the ‘half-empty’ camp, viewing the same data with a more negative outlook. And every so often, we run into people who look at that same glass and seem to be unable to see any water at all.

It isn’t just a Canadian telecom phenomenon. Last week, industry critics in the United States seemed to willingly misread financial reports from major carriers and ran headlines like: “It’s Now Clear None of the Supposed Benefits of Killing Net Neutrality Are Real,” [Motherboard] and “Sorry, Ajit: Comcast lowered cable investment despite net neutrality repeal” [Arstechnica]. Both articles were in reaction to Comcast’s financial report last week that showed overall capital expenditures for Comcast’s cable operations declined 3% compared to 2017. Both articles claimed this was “proof” that Ajit Pai’s vision of increased network investment had not emerged from the repeal of heavy-handed Title II regulations for internet service.

However, the commentators made a number of errors in their analyses, the most glaring of which was confusing total capital expenditures with network investment. The Arstechnica article went so far as to quote the Comcast press release, where it was clear: “Cable Communications’ capital expenditures decreased 3.0 percent to $7.7 billion, reflecting decreased spending on customer premise equipment and support capital, partially offset by higher investment in scalable infrastructure and line extensions.”

Unfortunately, the author must not have understood what was meant by those “higher investments in scalable infrastructure and line extensions.” In its 2017 annual report, Comcast said scalable infrafrastructure was increasing network capacity and line extensions are well, extending the lines. In other words, Comcast’s network capital spending has been continuing to rise; its overall capital spending declines because of reduced customer premises spending. The authors of the Arstechnica and Motherboard articles selectively quoted and misrepresented results. Retractions are in order.

On this side of the border, we frequently see similar selective reading of reports. A European consultancy published an international comparison of mobile pricing and usage. Last summer, I challenged the consultancy when it claimed Canada’s mobile data growth between 2016 and 2017 was just 6%, among the slowest growth of all surveyed countries. In the absence of official CRTC published data, it mixed 2016 CRTC results with data it had received from the OECD.

That didn’t keep Canadian academics from citing the flawed study and proclaiming “while Canada’s telecom companies talk about increased usage, the data shows Canada growing slower on wireless usage per SIM than anyone else”. I looked at the flawed data and said the growth rate didn’t pass my smell test.

As it turns out, I was correct. The CRTC’s actual 2017 data ended up showing that data use grew a respectable 37.5%, nowhere near the bottom of the pack.

Last week, that same consultancy released its latest update to the report, continuing its pattern of using old data to represent Canada, and confusing total billing with network service billing. That didn’t stop Canadian academics from again citing the report as evidence of failed communications policy. As I said last summer, “bad data should not be used for policy making.”

As it turns out, investment in Canadian communications networks is producing measurable results. According to the December 2018 Speedtest results, Canada has the world’s 3rd fastest mobile networks (up from 4th in November) and the 7th fastest fixed broadband (up 9 positions from 16th place in November). An Ookla analysis credits repackaging by Shaw for the recent change, demonstrating quite a sensitivity in its results. [If you want to double-check your internet speed, you can also visit Internet Advisor for a listing of speed tests.]

Too often, writers inject their own bias into articles, and have a tendency to present information in a way that confirms their beliefs. It is called confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

Sound familiar? As the past week has demonstrated, it is important to read reports with a much more critical eye and seek information from a wide variety of sources.

Better data leads to better policy making.