CBC/Radio-Canada has acknowledged asking social media companies to censor users on numerous occasions — so many times, in fact, that cataloging all instances would be too time-consuming.
On March 27, Conservative MP Dean Allison received back an order paper request he submitted in the House of Commons.
The request was to federal departments, as well as agencies and crown corporations like CBC/Radio-Canada, to list all censorship requests they made to social media companies between January 2020 and February 2023.
The state-broadcaster stated they’ve made too many requests to count.
“CBC/Radio-Canada asked various social media platforms to act on social media content in the described period, to fix copyright infringement cases or to report platform violations,” the response read.
CBC further said that it doesn’t track the requests.
“An extensive manual search would be required to gather the information requested and remove any personal information.”
It added: “The results could only partially answer this request. This could not be accomplished in the time allotted for this request.”
Allison made the request on February 7 and received a response back on March 27.
Each federal department found time to respond to the request, with some indicating that they’ve made zero censorship requests to social media companies, while others made numerous requests.
For example, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) revealed that since 2020, the department asked Twitter to remove twenty-one tweets from social media users for “offensive language.”
Twitter denied PHAC 18 out of the 21 times.
Earlier this week, CBC/Radio-Canada tweeted that it’s “pausing” activities on Twitter, just hours after getting labelled by the platform with a government-funded media tag.
The documents further indicated the Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada asked Twitter and Facebook to censor a 2021 specific news article, and was denied by both.
