Bill C-34 Answers Child Safety with Identity Infrastructure
2 days ago
- #digital policy
- #online safety
- #age verification
- Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, acknowledges real online harms and proposes platform accountability for harmful design, weak safety systems, and failures to protect children.
- The bill's minimum-age provisions (sections 27-29) risk turning child safety into age-verification infrastructure, requiring age verification or estimation for access to major online spaces, which could condition participation in public discourse.
- The legislation bundles multiple issues—platform accountability, child safety, age verification, pornography access, AI chatbot rules, and a Digital Safety Commission—making it complex and harder to scrutinize, potentially entangling good parts with bad ones.
- Age verification infrastructure could normalize access controls on public online life, with privacy safeguards insufficient to address architectural concerns, and may disproportionately impact vulnerable youth who rely on online spaces for community and support.
- The bill has an outdated view of social media, favoring centralized platforms over decentralized alternatives like Mastodon or Lemmy, which could hinder digital sovereignty and competition.
- The implementation details, including which services are covered and acceptable age-verification methods, are deferred to future regulations and Commission guidance, avoiding explicit parliamentary debate on key decisions.
- Amendments are suggested: retain platform accountability measures but remove or narrow the minimum-age regime, focus on age-appropriate design, and ensure privacy protections without making age verification a condition for access.