But unlike Australia’s law, tech firms could sidestep Canada’s ban if they demonstrate they have policies to minimise harm to minors.
The law includes sweeping measures to regulate AI chatbots and curtail “harmful content” online. It would create a regulator to ensure tech firms comply. Some free speech groups have warned it would expand censorship.
This is worse since this will function as regulatory capture for large social media companies preventing smaller competitors from appearing while supercharging government censorship.
This is approximately the opposite of true: speaking from my own experiences having once been a minor, the Internet was pretty much the only thing that gave me some sanity and will to live. If early-to-mid teen me had had only my family and classmates and no online social contacts, I’d have had almost nothing. That’s what you want to take away from current minors… >:(
I didn’t experience this growing up except for niche hobbies people would make fun of me for in real life or were utterly bored by but this is PRECISELY why this lazy simplistic moralizing about the internet and social media fills me with primal rage.
It is burning so many lifelines for kids, leaving them stranded alone amidst people that hate them for simply being who they are.
In my opinion excluding youth like this is quantifiably definable as mass manslaughter.