Miller unclear on how feds will enforce social media ban for children under 16
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Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller has tabled his long-awaited online harms legislation, but it remains unclear how the government will effectively enforce a proposed ban for children under the age of 16.
Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, would require social media platforms to prevent underage users from accessing their websites, but allow companies to apply for an exemption to the ban if they can prove they have implemented “significant safeguards.”
Which social media platforms will be scoped into the regulations, and what those safeguards are, will be decided by regulations created after the legislation receives royal assent, which isn’t expected until after Parliament’s summer break.
In a technical briefing for reporters on June 10, a government official said establishing those regulations could take anywhere from six to eight months, adding that the age-related ban would only come into effect after Ottawa identifies which companies would be regulated.
However, in a press conference following the tabling of the bill, Miller (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs, Que.) said the ban would come into effect as soon as the legislation is passed.
“[Platforms] have to take the appropriate measures to limit kids under 16 from opening social media accounts as soon as the law comes into force,” he said. “That’s clear.”
Except it’s not clear how that will unfold, or how companies would know whether they are included in the ban prior to the creation of the regulations.
The ban, and the other provisions in the bill, would be enforced by an independent regulatory body, which Miller said could be ready 18 months after the bill passes. In the meantime, the government would have no legal mechanism to enforce the policy.
Last year, Australia implemented a similar ban for children, and its effectiveness has come under scrutiny. In March, Australia’s eSafety commissioner—the regulatory body responsible for enforcing the ban—reported nearly 70 per cent of children under 16 still have social media accounts.
When asked how Canada’s ban would be more effective, Miller did not directly answer, saying “the efficacy of a law depends obviously on its compliance, but we’ve got plenty of laws out there, unfortunately, that people don’t comply with.”
“That is why it was so key to have a commission able to interact with industry and able to give some teeth to this law, so that we didn’t just hope and pray that this would be enforced.”
Unlike its predecessor, the Safe Social Media Act also scopes in artificial intelligence chatbots, although there is no age-related ban for those services. Both AI chatbots and social media platforms will have a duty to protect children by adopting age-appropriate design, and to limit children’s exposure to harmful content and “high-risk” interactions.
Both types of services will have a duty to act responsibly. For social media platforms, that means assessing, mitigating, and reporting on the risks to users posed by their platforms, providing resources for users to flag content, and label bot-driven harmful content and deepfakes.
Notably for chatbots, the duty to act responsibly does not include mandatory reporting requirements, which came under question following the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooting earlier this year. However, the bill would require companies to be transparent about their internal reporting requirements.
It would also force companies to mitigate the risks of chatbots communicating harmful content, and implement crisis intervention protocols if it flags a user mentioning self-harm or violence.
Within 24 hours of being reported, social media platforms would have to remove content that sexually victimizes a child, revictimizes a survivor, and non-consensual intimate content.
Miller said the regulator would enforce the bill through a combination of undertakings, compliance orders, administrative monetary penalties, and offences. The maximum penalty for an instance of non-compliance would be three per cent of global turnover, or $10-million, whichever is greater.
The bill does not cover gaming platforms or private messaging applications, despite reports of significant harms occurring on both types of services.
“In private messaging, there is that important aspect of not asking folks to break encryption, making sure that we [aren’t] intruding into private interaction,” Miller said, though he acknowledged bullying can be conveyed through mass messaging.
“The focus of gaming is gaming, but there can be social media aspects of it,” he added. “So, when I talk to those companies, I kind of tell them ‘look to where the puck’s skating and figure out what may happen if you don’t regulate your platforms that are looking more social media-ish than simply gaming.’”
Bill C-34 is the Liberal government’s third attempt to pass an online harms law after promising to usher in the legislation back in 2021. When asked by The Wire Report about adding at least another year-and-a-half to that wait before the bill can be properly enforced, Miller said the timeline for creating the regulator was a “very important” discussion he had with Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.).
There is “plenty of blame to go around” for the government’s inaction over the last five years, Miller said, part of it being that Parliament was not working well prior to the arrival of Carney’s government.
Both previous attempts at regulating the online environment were under a minority government. The newest iteration of the online harms legislation has the advantage of the majority government Carney cobbled together through byelections and floor crossings.
Miller added that previous iterations of the online harms bills were “an overreach and tried to do too much,” including inserting criminal repercussions and a separate human rights regime, which raked in heavy criticisms by organizations that would otherwise be in favour of an online harms bill.
“It is important to really solve what you are trying to fix, as opposed to trying to do everything at once,” he said.
“I think that’s an important takeaway [from] this. We are catching up for five to 10 years of delay. That is unfortunate, but we’re acting now.”
Maria Collins is a reporter at The Wire Report where this piece was first published. The Wire Report covers the intersection of business, technology, and government, with a special focus on the regulatory sphere. Sign up here for a free trial.
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