New Twitter owner Elon Musk has been alerted to proposed Bill C-11, legislation which critics say will result in online censorship.
Musk, who officially became the owner of Twitter on Thursday, was responding to a tweet from Canada Proud, a group created to stand up for all working Canadians.
“Hey (Elon Musk), now that you own Twitter, will you help fight back against Trudeau’s online censorship bill C-1,” the group asked.
Musk responded, “First I’ve heard.”
Independent thinkers are hopeful Musk will end Twitter censorship. The platform has long been accused of arbitrary bans, like those of Dr. Peter McCullough who frequently shares studies critical of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Musk bolstered those hopes on Thursday with a tweet to advertisers explaining he bought Twitter to support a “common digital town square.”
The Liberals tabled Bill C-11 in February to make streaming platforms promote and invest in Canadian content like traditional broadcasters do. The bill would give the CRTC power to regulate online platforms.
The government insists Bill C-11 is designed to bolster the creation of Canadian content. Yet experts warn the proposed bill’s ambiguous language could result in regulating user-generated content. And CRTC chair Ian Scott said in May that the bill would indeed cover user-generated content.
Under C-11, search engines like Google will also be required to boost news organizations that promote “racialized communities, cultural and linguistic minorities, LGBTQ2+ communities, and persons with disabilities.”
Consequently, non-compliant news publishers would receive lower rankings in searches.
Google criticized the Trudeau Liberals for the proposed bill earlier this month.
Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer of YouTube, owned by Google, wrote a blog titled “Canada: Keep YouTube yours.”
“What’s deeply concerning is that the current version of the Bill has the potential to disadvantage the Canadian creators who build their businesses on our platform, and change the personalized experience of millions of Canadians who visit YouTube every day,” said Mohan.
Twitter representatives compared the Liberals to communists over their desire to implement mass censorship via Bill C-11.
“The proposal by the government of Canada to allow the Digital Safety Commissioner to block websites is drastic,” they wrote.
“People around the world have been blocked from accessing Twitter and other services in a similar manner as the one proposed by Canada by multiple authoritarian governments (China, North Korea, and Iran, for example) under the false guise of ‘online safety’ impeding peoples’ rights to access information online.”
Bill C-11 passed the House of Commons in June. It is currently on its way through the Senate.
