Should governments ... actually offer $50 or $100 or whatever it takes to get people to roll up their sleeves?

FIERY YET STILL FALLACIOUS DEBATE ABOUT CHARTER RIGHTS. — BERNHARD

The media is abuzz with menacing headlines about the Trudeau government wanting to regulate your social media posts. This hysteria is groundless, but an army of pro Silicon Valley academics, pundits, and advocacy groups is nonetheless screaming from the rooftops about a “full-blown assault” on Canadians’ right to free expression. Some even warn that “Trudeau and the CRTC are coming for your cat videos.”

These critics are wrong about Bill C-10, but blame for this mess lies squarely with the government, which tabled a sloppy Bill under the stewardship of a rookie minister incapable of defending his own legislation.

First, the backstory. Bill C-10 would modernize the Broadcasting Act for the first time since 1991. The firestorm erupted when the House of Commons Heritage Committee removed a provision that would have exempted companies like Facebook from any future regulation, simply because their content is user-generated. The Committee upheld another provision that unequivocally protects Canadian social media users from regulation. But you don’t hear about that much.

Sloppy drafting and Minister Guilbeault’s faltering defence of Bill C-10 have created an opening for critics who oppose any and all regulation of anything that happens online to conjure up the spectre of snivelling bureaucrats censoring social media, which would be terrifying if it were true. What could have been a sensible tweak to ensure that companies like Facebook are held accountable for letting advertisers target 13 year-olds with tobacco, alcohol, and gambling ads has devolved into fiery yet still fallacious debate about charter rights.

The fearmongers want to frame this as a battle between free expression advocates and pro-censorship safe spacers. But free expression and sensible regulation of social media companies can coexist.

I do not support any law that would allow a bureaucrat or politician to issue takedown orders. That would invite precisely the type of overreach the doomsayers are projecting onto Bill C-10.

Yet we can hold companies like Facebook and Youtube accountable for their actions, while protecting Canadians’ inviolable right to say whatever they want within the law. For example, a regulator imposing heavy fines on Facebook for pushing booze to kids would have no impact on free expression. Remember when Facebook live broadcast the Christchurch mosque massacre to Canadians who never asked to see it? That kind of broadcasting has no place in Canada, and reasonable people can say so without compromising free expression in the slightest.

But thanks to the government’s sloppy wording and their slow-motion train wreck of an effort to take it back, we’re not talking about limited, sensible rules for trillion-dollar media companies like Facebook and Youtube. Instead, we’re bogged down in a debate about charter rights.

The opportunists pushing this thought-police conspiracy are putting hypothetical disaster scenarios ahead of the very real, immediate damage that companies monetizing user-generated content inflict on Canada today.

Case in point: Pornhub is a Canadian company that transmitted and promoted thousands of user-uploaded videos of children being sexually assaulted. This is quite likely a criminal offence, but it is also a case of a Canadian broadcaster transmitting content that would get any other broadcaster kicked off the air, with the Canadian public’s full support. Yet critics are clamouring to change Bill C-10 back to its original state, wherein Pornhub could not be regulated as a broadcaster simply because its content is user-generated. Sensible Canadians can agree that a broadcaster transmitting child sexual abuse material should not be broadcasting, whether the offending videos are user-generated or not. Punishing Pornhub for doing this has no impact on free expression.

There are other sensible rules for social media companies that have nothing to do with user content. For example, the CRTC can mandate broadcasters to transmit emergency alerts or make contributions to funds supporting Canadian content. You may not like these rules, but they have zero impact on free expression.

Yet thanks to the government’s blunders, we’re not talking about reasonable rules for trillion-dollar businesses broadcasting user-generated content in Canada. Instead, we’re mired in a hysterical free expression debate that never had to happen.