Search Results for: harms

As Canada continues to push forward on its Digital Charter, I noticed an interesting thread looking at Florida’s proposed “digital bill of rights”.

Ben Sperry, of the International Center for Law & Economics, writes:

While it bills itself a “Digital Bill of Rights,” the Florida Senate Bill 262 could actually harm consumers and businesses online by substantially raising the costs of targeted advertising.

For consumers, this would mean less “free” stuff online, as publishers switch from advertising-based to subscription-based models. For businesses, it would mean having less ability to target advertisements to consumers who actually want their products, resulting in less revenue.

Unintended consequences.

In Canada, we have countless examples of overly simplistic analysis of digital issues that fail to consider the logical responses (and counter-responses) of the marketplace to new legislation and regulations.

• Exhibit 1: CRTC regulations that effectively capped the amortization period for devices at 2 years. The Commission and consumer groups were warned that this would lead to higher monthly prices (how could it not?) but pressed ahead anyway. There were other options that could have permitted portability, but preserved the ability to pay for pricy smartphones over a longer period.
• Exhibit 2: CRTC banning Videotron’s Unlimited Music and Bell Mobile TV. These innovative services were competitive differentiators, offering new choices to consumers. Rather than letting the market place respond with either lower prices or competitive differentiators, the CRTC just said “no”.

It is worth noting that Canada has not yet tabled draft legislation that targets online harms and hate, which has been the subject of numerous posts on these pages (such as here, here, here, here, and here).

Last month, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner lost a high profile case against Facebook parent Meta arising from the Cambridge Analytica “incident”. In its review of the Federal Court’s decision, McCarthy’s law firm writes that the dismissal is “a monumental victory for Meta”, providing “important lessons for businesses about Canadian privacy law”. The note says, “The federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) strikes a balance between individual and organizational interests, and should therefore be interpreted in a flexible, pragmatic, and common-sense way. This means that courts must consider not only the individual’s privacy interests, but also the organization’s legitimate interests in collecting, using, and disclosing personal information for commercial purposes.”

As Canada moves forward with examination of its Digital Charter, it will be critical to maintain this balance of interests. Policy would be more robustly crafted if it anticipates how different actors might respond to legislative and regulatory initiatives.

Will parliamentary review of Canada’s digital bill of rights anticipate potential consumer and commercial consequences arising from the legislation?

As governments increase intervention in internet content and services, I wonder if sufficient regulatory humility being applied.

A recent New York Times article noted, “As companies like Google and Facebook grew into giants in the early 21st century, regulators chose largely not to interfere in the still-young market for online services.” The concern was that regulatory intervention could restrict the development of innovative applications and new business models.

What has changed?

Many internet public intellectuals have long advocated for a free and open internet, which many interpreted as supporting a hands-off approach by governments. However, one of my first blog posts, way back in March 2006, looked at an article by Tom Evslin, in saying that he was another voice on “a lonely quest to try to partially tame the anarchy of the internet.a lonely quest to try to partially tame the anarchy of the internet.”

If the Internet is a law-free zone:

1. Governments can do whatever they want there including spying and blocking. It’s naïve and illogical to think that governments are governed by law in a free fire zone when no one else is.
2. Monopolies can do whatever they want including blocking competing services.
3. Malicious people are free to attack not only other sites but the structure of the Internet itself including its routers and domain name servers.
4. Threats, libel, and fraud gain immunity from investigation and prosecution by being carried out on the Internet.
5. The Internet becomes a river in which any conspirator can wade to avoid the bloodhounds of law enforcement.
6. There are no laws PROTECTING privacy in a law-free zone.
7. SPAM is as legitimate as any other activity.

The past decade and a half changed the way we look at the internet. We are more willing to have law enforcement in the digital world. As I have expressed before, my concern has been how we tailor new laws and how we define new standards of acceptable online behaviour.

We have laws developed for the analog world and a body of jurisprudence in their application. We have witnessed the failures of anti-spam and do not call legislation. Those laws curtailed activities by legitimate businesses but we continue to get nuisance calls and loads of unwanted emails. To an extent, instead of regulatory processes, we apply technology to suppress what the legislation was supposed to curtail. We target spam and malicious software with software in the networks and on our devices. Telecom networks are trying to target nuisance calls with technology.

Still, I wonder if the legislation suffers from over-reach. At the 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit, then FCC Chair Ajit Pai spoke about the need for regulatory humility:

In short, America’s approach to broadband policy will be practical, not ideological. We’ll embrace what works, and dispense with what doesn’t. That means removing barriers to innovation and investment, instead of creating new ones. That means taking targeted action to address real problems in the marketplace, instead of imposing broad preemptive regulations. And that means respecting principles of economics, physics and law, and acting with humility as we regulate one of the most dynamic marketplaces history has ever known. This vision will unleash the massive investments that the digital world demands.

Every regulation, every piece of legislation risks creating harmful unintended consequences. Some regulations can serve as disincentives for investment, slowing down necessary expansion and upgrades to network infrastructure.

These days, it seems Canada’s Parliament never misses an opportunity to wade into some form of telecom regulation. Parliament crafted laws about somewhat trivial issues, apparently believing it can do better than the specialized independent regulator. As a result, there is legislation on the books mandating paper invoices in a digital world. Why isn’t that part of a regulator’s discretion?

A private member’s bill mandates service transparency that is already part of the the Minister’s policy direction. Recall, I recently wrote about risks arising from online harms legislation in various countries.

Politicians looking to score points with intervention in the digital marketplace should carefully reflect on whether new laws are actually needed. What problems are we trying to fix?

A little more regulatory humility goes a long way to minimize unintended consequences.

A recent study, published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Science”, found that most US citizens preferred quashing harmful misinformation over protecting free speech, despite measurable differences along political lines.

The study may be informative as Canada continues down the path of developing legislation in respect of “online harms”.

The scale and urgency of the problems around content moderation became particularly apparent when Donald Trump and political allies spread false information attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, culminating in a violent attack on the US Capitol. Subsequently, most major social media platforms suspended Trump’s accounts. After a sustained period of prioritizing free speech and avoiding the role of “arbiters of truth”, social media platforms appear to be rethinking their approach to governing online speech. In 2020, Meta overturned its policy of allowing Holocaust denial and removed some white supremacists groups from Facebook; Twitter implemented a similar policy soon after. During the COVID-19 pandemic, most global social media platforms took an unusually interventionist approach to false information and vowed to remove or limit COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracies — an approach which might undergo another shift soon. In October 2021, Google announced a policy forbidding advertising content on its platforms that “mak[es] claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process” or that “contradict[s] authoritative, scientific consensus on climate change”. And most recently, Pinterest introduced a new policy against false or misleading climate change information across both content and ads.

Content moderation, and terminating or suspending accounts is described by the researchers as a moral dilemma: “Should freedom of expression be upheld even at the expense of allowing dangerous misinformation to spread, or should misinformation be removed or penalized, thereby limiting free speech?”

When choosing between removing a post and allowing a post to remain online, decision-makers face a choice between two values, public safety or freedom of expression, that cannot be honored simultaneously. “These cases are moral dilemmas: situations where an agent morally ought to adopt each of two alternatives but cannot adopt both”.

The researchers examined public support for these “moral dilemmas” in a survey experiment with 2,564 respondents in the United States. Respondents were asked to indicate whether they would remove problematic social media posts and whether they would take punitive action against the accounts in the case of posts with:

1. election denial,
2. antivaccination,
3. Holocaust denial, and
4. climate change denial.

Respondents were provided with key information about the user and their post as well as the consequences of the posted misinformation.

The majority of respondents preferred deleting harmful misinformation over protecting free speech. However, respondents were more reluctant to suspend accounts than to remove posts, and were more likely to do either if the harmful consequences of the misinformation were severe, or in the case of it being a repeated offense.

Information about the person behind the account, the posting party’s partisanship, and their number of followers had little to no effect on respondents’ decisions.

Although support for content moderation of harmful misinformation was widespread, it was still a partisan issue. “Across all four scenarios, Republicans were consistently less willing than Democrats or independents to remove posts or penalize the accounts that posted them.”

The type of misinformation was also a factor: Climate change denial was removed the least (58%), whereas Holocaust denial was removed the most (71%), closely followed by election denial (69%) and antivaccination content (66%).

According to the researchers, their “results can inform the design of transparent rules for content moderation of harmful misinformation.”

“Results such as those presented here can contribute to the process of establishing transparent and consistent rules for content moderation that are generally accepted by the public.”

What happens if you ask a powerful Artificial Intelligence engine (ChatGPT) to “prepare 1000-2000 words on the most important issues facing Canadian telecom policy”?

Telecommunications policy in Canada is a complex and ever-evolving field, with a variety of important issues facing the industry and government regulators. Some of the most significant issues include:

1. Network expansion and infrastructure development: Canada’s telecommunications infrastructure is facing increasing pressure to keep up with the growing demand for data and internet services. This includes expanding high-speed broadband access to rural and remote areas, as well as upgrading existing networks to support the latest technologies and services.
2. Competition and market structure: The Canadian telecommunications market is dominated by a small number of large companies, which has led to concerns about lack of competition and high prices for consumers. Regulators are working to promote competition and increase choice for consumers through measures such as spectrum auctions and wholesale access rules.
3. Net neutrality: Net neutrality is the principle that all internet traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination or preference given to certain types of traffic or services. Canada has recently implemented net neutrality rules, but the issue is still a contentious one, with some arguing that it stifles innovation and harms competition.
4. Privacy and security: As telecommunications networks become increasingly integrated into our daily lives, there are growing concerns about the security and privacy of personal data. The government has implemented new regulations to protect personal information and ensure that companies are transparent about their data collection and usage practices.
5. Spectrum management: Spectrum is a finite resource that is essential for the operation of telecommunications services. The government manages the allocation of spectrum through auctions and licensing, but there are ongoing debates about how to best allocate and use this valuable resource to support innovation and competition in the telecommunications industry.
6. Interconnection and roaming: Interconnection refers to the ability of different telecommunications networks to connect and exchange traffic, while roaming refers to the ability of mobile devices to connect to other networks when outside of their home network area. These issues are important for ensuring that consumers can access services and connect with others, regardless of their location or the network they are using.
7. 5G: 5G is the next generation of mobile networks that promises faster download and upload speeds, lower latency, and increased capacity for more devices. It’s also expected to enable new technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) and self-driving cars. This is an important issue for Canada’s telecommunication policy, as it will affect the country’s competitiveness in the global economy.
8. Affordable access: Affordable access to the internet and telephone services is a major issue in Canada, particularly in rural and remote areas. The government is working to increase affordability through programs such as the Universal Broadband Fund, which aims to expand high-speed internet access to underserved areas.
9. Telecommunications innovation: The telecommunications industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies and services being developed all the time. Regulators are faced with the challenge of fostering innovation while also ensuring that the industry remains stable and competitive.
10. International trade: Canada’s telecommunications industry is closely tied to the global economy, and the country is heavily involved in international trade agreements and negotiations. This includes issues such as cross-border data flows and market access for Canadian companies in other countries.

The above-mentioned issues are just a few of the key challenges facing Canadian telecommunications policy today. It is important for government regulators and industry stakeholders to work together to find solutions that promote innovation, competition, and consumer choice while also protecting privacy, security, and affordability.

In an undergrad telecom course, I’d score it as a B-plus. It succeeded in canvassing issues overall, but it is incomplete in the discussion portion of many items, partly due to my imposition of a limited word count. The system got item 8 wrong, conflating the issue of “Affordable access” with government programs to assist investment in infrastructure expansion (which is better covered in item 1). However, given that some academics have supported development of large urban government overbuilds (such as ConnectTO) with a goal of creating affordable access, it isn’t a complete surprise that the AI database has been polluted with some misinformation.

I have seen worse papers published by academics and parliamentarians.

There is still a need to fact-check the output of these artificial intelligence systems, just as there is a need to verify human outputs.

That’s good news. ChatGPT isn’t able to replace me… yet.

As a kid, I never really liked the last week of August. The end of August meant the end of summer vacation, long drives back from family visits to the East Coast, teary goodbyes.

The start of school seemed to always include an assignment to write down what we did on our summer vacations.

Well, here we are.

It’s the last week before Labour Day. I have a lot to write about for that first school assignment.

Despite the crazy mess at Toronto’s airport, I managed to have extended visits with my kids and grandkids from far and farther, and that certainly tops my list of accomplishments. Despite the frequent video chats between live visits, there really is nothing like sitting together quietly on a dock fishing, or spoiling the little ones with visits to the bakery for rainbow bagels, or excursions by boat for ice cream.

Everything else this summer takes a distant back seat to the joy of quality in-person time together after a 3 year absence.

Still, I got an awful lot done, most of which found its way into earlier blog posts and some has been amplified in the general press.

There are various calls for an inquiry into the Anti-Racism Action Program and how it came to fund an organization so intertwined with a consultant with a pattern of “antisemitic comments” characterized as “reprehensible and vile.”

There are longer term issues to be explored that are related to this incident. As I indicated last week, The CRTC and its Broadcast Participation Fund shovelled more than half a million dollars to CMAC over the past 6 years. We have not yet seen the 2022 report to learn what was claimed and awarded in the past 12 months.

The CRTC might want to revisit the appropriateness of not allowing public comment on some of its cost awards, comment that may have challenged the appropriateness of the CRTC’s generous $225 per hour funding. It seems certain that the CRTC and the Broadcast Participation Fund will need to take a closer look at the public interest groups who are recipients of cost awards to ensure Canadians are comfortable with how public money is being distributed.

But in my view, the biggest impact will be the complete loss of credibility for Canadian Heritage to attempt to introduce regulation of online harms. A Liberal Member of Parliament made Ministers in the department aware of the potentially embarrassing contract last month – in mid-July. Nothing was done for more than a month about what the Minister now calls “antisemitic and xenophobic statements”. A department that couldn’t react in a timely way to “reprehensible and vile” statements made on a single platform (Twitter) by one of their own paid consultants has little credibility to introduce legislation seeking regulatory oversight of all online content in Canada.

Just a few weeks before the Minister was quoted in a press release with him, Laith Marouf tweeted, “Nothing is more harmful to any decolonisation movements [sic] in the world, especially Palestine, than Jewish White Boys/Girls. In my opinion, allowing them any space in our struggle is dependent on their complete abandonment of personal opinion & only parroting Palestinian voices.”

If only the Minister’s communications staff had access to a Google search bar.

The online harms bill is effectively dead. But, don’t blame Laith Marouf. This key piece of the Liberal Government’s digital plan was a victim of indifference and inaction in the department responsible for the impugned Anti-Racism Action Program.

Last week, Rex Murphy wrote:

No one could use the language, express the contempt and rage on Twitter about any other so-called “marginalized” group with even one-tenth of the ferocity that Marouf used in reference to “Zionists,” as he did for years, with reference to Jews and Israel, and not be called out, shamed and, yes, cancelled.

My point: Slander, insults and actual hate against Jews gets a pass — until some truly extreme example calls attention to it. Try referencing any “marginalized” group as “bags of feces” and see how long any journalist, politician or ordinary citizen would last.

A year ago, an antisemitic outburst from a university professor was allowed to slide with barely a wrist slap. The school likely didn’t want to have the incident impact a multi-million dollar grant announced a few weeks later.

In my part of Ontario, overall it was a great summer. The long range forecast is suggesting that it should be starting to get uncomfortable for some early this fall.

And, that is what I did for my summer vacation. What did you do?