People blocked from posting hate speech on social media might migrate to smaller platforms not covered by Canada’s new online harms bill, minority advocates warn.
The advocates fear that small social-media platforms not covered by the bill could become hubs for haters who want to avoid prohibitions.
The online harms bill imposes a duty on social-media platforms to act responsibly, to make child pornography and some other content inaccessible, and to protect children. Platforms will have to provide tools to flag content and block users, and publish digital safety plans.
The bill establishes a regulator, the Digital Safety Commission, to hold platforms accountable. It also creates a digital safety ombudsperson, to whom people could complain about hateful posts, including those advocating genocide.
Richard Marceau, general counsel at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said he supported the bill as a way to combat hate speech. But he was concerned that if the bill only included the big platforms it would not deal with “people kicked off them or active on smaller platforms.”
He said he had relayed to government his concerns, including how the worst haters deplatformed from X, Facebook and other social-media sites often migrate to the smaller platforms.
“Haters will always try to find ways to spread hate,” he said, adding he hopes the government or MPs who will scrutinize the bill in committee would include a way to close “any loophole.”
Bernie Farber, a member of the expert Task Force on Online Harms set up by the government to advise on the creation of the bill, said he hoped smaller platforms such as Gab, whose users include white supremacists, far-right supporters and people banned from other platforms, would be included in the bill.
Currently, only platforms with user numbers above a certain threshold, to be set out through regulation, will be covered by the bill. But the government could include social-media services below the threshold if they pose a significant risk of harm.
“What are the numbers you are looking at? It depends how small you mean by small, if you mean 100 people or 1,000 people – that is without question something for the committee to look at,” Mr. Farber said.
Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special rapporteur on combatting Islamophobia, said the bill was a positive “step forward” to combat hate online. She said it “will be important to look at all the various issues” as it moves through Parliament.
“What we have seen when individuals who are promoting hateful ideas, when they do get deplatformed by the larger platforms and they move to smaller platforms, that immediately reduces their reach and it reduces their impact,” she said.
The online harms bill creates a new hate crime offence that carries a penalty of life imprisonment in the most egregious cases. It extends the sentence for advocating genocide to life from five years.
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Stephen Camp, a retired Edmonton police officer and member of the Alberta hate crimes committee, said the new provisions would make it easier for officers to prosecute crimes motivated by hate. While he was a police officer investigating hate crimes, he went undercover on sites used by extremists and racists.
He said people with extremist views “tend to gravitate to particular communities where their ideology is accepted,” and there is an “echo chamber of hate.”
“They do alternate and go to smaller sites,” he said, adding that some people are radicalized on such sites and even act upon their hateful rhetoric.
Some of the sites used by white supremacists, racists and antisemites have user-created message boards. Mass shooters have been known to post manifestos on such sites.