The Liberal government has laid out a blueprint for cracking down on online materials posted to platforms such as Facebook and YouTube that it deems to be harmful.
Under the proposed rules, a digital safety commissioner would help enforce a new regime that requires social media companies to weed out child pornography, terrorist content, what the commissioner classes as hate speech and other posts deemed harmful.
The penalty for violating the would−be laws ranges up to 5% of a platform’s gross global revenue or $25 million, whichever is higher.
If Facebook were to face such a fine, that penalty would translate to as much as $5.4 billion, based on its total revenues last year.
The new legislation and regulations would cover all "online communication service providers," which includes social media sites such as Instagram and Pornhub but not telecommunications companies like Bell and Rogers or email and text messages sent via WhatsApp or Parler.
The Trudeau government announced in April it would introduce legislation to create a regulator that will ensure online platforms remove content deemed harmful, and now says it plans to present the final framework this fall after public consultation.
The measures would require flagging mechanisms for material considered harmful, a 24−hour time frame for platforms to respond to flagged posts, avenues of appeal for companies’ decisions and regular reports to the commissioner about the volume and type of content.
