Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the internet, intended it to be a place for everyone. But now the web is being used to undermine democracy and free speech. It has become a tool for the powerful to suppress dissent. ‘That feeling of individual control, that empowerment, is something we’ve lost,’ Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair in 2018. Today, not only do corporations like Google and Meta dictate what we see online, but, in places like Canada, the government is quickly making itself the gatekeeper.
Last year, prime minister Justin Trudeau presented his Online Streaming Act as a means to purportedly support the development of online Canadian content. In fact, the legislation handed over power to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), a government entity, to determine what makes it into people’s streaming algorithms and what is removed. In other words, the Canadian government gave an agency previously responsible for regulating TV and radio media power to also regulate what is promoted and what is censored on platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
My speech would be a prime target
Apparently this doesn’t go far enough for our Dear Leader Trudeau, who recently revealed his Liberal party’s proposed Online Harms Act C-63.
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