Canadian tech expert says social media ban won’t work

There has been a lot of news in recent months regarding banning social media for kids in Canada. In particular, the federal government says it’s “heavily considering” this, and Ontario has expressed similar interest, while Manitoba says it’s going to be the first province to actually do it. All the while, a recent Angus Reid poll found that most Canadians support such a ban.

But despite all of that, one prominent Canadian tech expert has cast doubt on whether such a move would actually work. On his website, Michael Geist, University of Ottawa law professor and one of the leading voices in Canadian law, technology and society, outlined several reasons why he thinks an outright ban is “the wrong response to a serious issue.”

First, he says a ban lets social media companies off the hook because it doesn’t hold them to account for their actual policies and content moderation. Instead, he argues that the government should take the “harder but more effective” approach of “regulat[ing] the platforms through algorithmic transparency requirements and an enforceable duty to act responsibly standard.”

On top of that, he pointed out how most teens find ways to work around such a ban, as we’ve seen in Australia, where one was implemented in December. He added that teens also have constitutional rights and outright preventing them from social media runs counter to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

With respect to adults, Geist also argued that many aren’t considering how such a ban would be enforced. For instance, he said age verification features would require tens of millions of Canadians to provide their IDs to foreign social media companies, where their data is less protected by Canadian privacy law. He also noted that politicians who have been citing polls like Angus Reid’s are missing the fact that while most Canadians support a ban, a majority of them said it should come from parents, not government.

Geist added that the polls didn’t paint a full picture because they didn’t include any questioning about how a ban would be enforced, which is something that could get even messier if legislation is pushed at the provincial levels. Further, he noted that there wasn’t even a consensus on what age it should include. (Under 16 is commonly thrown around, but the Angus Reid poll, as Geist points out, found comparable percentages of respondents naming even younger ages.)

Ultimately, he said a social media ban would fail to protect kids while also posing risks to privacy and free expression for all Canadians. As he explains, “the legislation does not actually require platforms to change anything about their products beyond who is allowed to log in.”

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Michael Geist Via: iPhone in Canada