This week the Trudeau government came out with a Digital Charter which has one objective of holding social media companies accountable for allowing misinformation to propogate through their websites. Other governments are looking at ways of doing the same thing and some countries such as Singapore have actually passed laws to meet that objective.
This has lead to something of a backlash from some circles that the governments are attempting to criminalize free speech and political dissent.
To which I ask what do you expect? As I mentioned here propaganda, of which fake news is the latest manifestation, is a direct threat to democracy. In the past we could always count on the Main Stream Media to fact check the assertions of propogandists but they have completely shirked that role in the last couple of decades and in some cases have become the source of the propoganda.
Someone has to look out for our democracies. Governments have been extremely patient, asking the social media companies to clean up their act for many years. They have not listened and the media are not doing their job so it falls upon the government to try to at least reduce the amount of acidic misinformation out there.
Of course, having governments do this is problematic. The opportunities for abuse and a further reduction of our democratic rights are apparent. However, while propaganda and misinformation is a long-term danger to our democracy it is becoming a much more immediate threat to governments so it should surprise no one that they are beginning to take action.
I really do not blame the social media companies. They are in the business to make money and the more traffic they have on their sites the more money they make. I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the MSM. They have been in the position to counter all of the misinformation that has been circulating out there for quite some time but they have not attempted to do so. It was only a matter of time before something gave.
It remains to be seen where all of this ends up.
