Feds introduce legislation to restrict social media for minors, but with exemptions

OTTAWA — The Liberal government is moving ahead with a plan to require social media companies to restrict access to their sites for those under 16, but with an ability for them to seek exemptions and a timeline that as of Wednesday remained unclear.

The measure was proposed as part of a new online safety regime outline in a bill Canadian Heritage Minister Marc Miller tabled Wednesday afternoon, known as the “Safe Social Media Act.”

Since taking office, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government’s has faced calls from child safety advocates, children’s health organizations and parents whose children have been victimized online to introduce measures to regulate tech giants.

Miller said the measures introduced in the bill represent the “basic expectations” that parents and Canadians have that children ought to be safe while online.

“I believe all parties should agree on the importance of these minimum safeguards,” he said

The legislation revives certain measures advanced under former prime minister Justin Trudeau but which were never passed, including the creation of a new regulator, the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, and a requirement for platforms to submit safety plans.

It also seeks to establish a rule that platforms must remove content that “sexually victimizes a child” or includes the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, including sexualized deepfakes, within 24-hours of being flagged. 

The legislation seeks to impose a “duty to act responsibility” for social media platforms by requiring them to take steps to reduce users’ exposure to seven different types of harmful content online, from content that can be used to bully a child and encourages a minor to engage in self-harm, to that which incites violence, as well as terrorist or violent extremist content.

Wednesday’s bill also proposes requiring social media platforms to restrict access to users under 16, but with the caveat that it would allow companies to seek an exemption if they make changes to improve safety on the sites that are deemed as sufficient by the new regulator. As proposed, companies would have to verify a user’s age, with the government open to seeing different methods used.

The timeline of when a potential ban could take effect was not immediately clear on Wednesday. During a briefing with reporters, officials said setting up the new regulator, the body that would be responsible for granting exemptions and levying fines for non-compliance, would happen in roughly 18-months time.

Deciding which social media platforms would be covered by the ban would be left up to a set of future regulations, along with the timing for implementation and what criteria companies would have to meet to secure an exemption.

Officials who briefed reporters in a not-for-attribution basis said those regulations could come into force before the regulator was up and running, meaning there would likely be a period of time when social media access would be banned for those under 16, as it would take time before the first exemptions could be granted.

Miller, meanwhile, told reporters on Wednesday that a social media ban would take effect once the bill achieves royal assent, the last stage of the legislative process for a piece of legislation to become law. It was later clarified that that was not the case.

In terms of social media sites expected to be covered by a potential ban, the minister pointed to Meta’s Facebook as well as Snapchat. The bill also includes an exclusion for “any private messaging feature of the service.”

Asked why the Liberals were not instituting a full ban on social media for those younger than 16, a policy first pioneered by Australia and which other jurisdictions have followed, Miller told reporters he knows not everyone will agree with the government’s approach.

“We know that social media can be made safe by design,” he said on Wednesday. “There are platforms for kids under 16 that can be used responsibly.”

The legislation also seeks to apply age verification rules to pornography sites where users can upload their own content. It was later clarified that deciding which sites that verification requirement would apply to would be left up to a future set of regulations. Unlike social media companies, pornography sites would not be able to qualify for exemptions.

The minister declined on Wednesday to specify which sites that could cover.

“Do you want me to talk to you about my experience with porn sites? I don’t think I’ll fall into that trap necessarily,” he said with a laugh, but later added the move was not about “regulating the Internet.”

Instituting age verification rules for porn sites mirrors efforts Sen. Julie Miville-Dechene is trying to advance through a bill that passed the Senate back in April and currently sits before the House of Commons.

When it comes to AI chatbots, the bill proposes its own set of regulations, such as requiring that companies take measures to reduce the risk of the technology engaging in what it defines as “harmful behaviour” and implement “crisis intervention protocols,” when users express a willingness to commit self-harm or engage in violence.

The proposed measures fell short of what Western premiers and B.C. Premier David Eby’s government had called for, which was to legislate a mandatory reporting threshold for when companies would have to notify police of potential threats.

Those calls came after it was revealed that the 18-year-old shooter whom RCMP said opened fire on a secondary school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., back in February, had exchanged troubling messages with OpenAI’s ChatGPT many months before the incident, which the company decided against flagging to police.

Miller said on Wednesday that OpenAI did have protocols in place but that an “egregious human error” was made, saying he believes requiring AI chatbots to be more transparent about their reporting protocols would still be significant.

In the case of what happened in Tumbler Ridge, he said: “I do think this law could have made a difference.”

The minister also defended how the government was not proposing a ban on chatbots as it was with traditional social media companies, saying the AI chatbots were still “an evolving playing field.”

“Admittedly, they play a function and a role that can be very damaging towards kids, but can also play an important function in the educational system and in the AI strategy that we are putting forward,” the minister said, referencing the document released last week by Carney.

National Post

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