Loading ...Canada Considered Suing Citizens Over “False And Misleading” Social Media Posts
The Canadian government drew up a plan to take individual citizens to court over what they post online. That plan sat inside a 35-page internal memo from the Department of Industry, most of it blacked out before the public could see it.
Blacklock’s Reporter pried the document loose through an Access to Information request. Dated March 31 and titled “Misinformation And Disinformation Strategy,” it belongs to the department run by Minister Melanie Joly, known as ISED. The memo weighs “legal action” against people who post what the government calls “false and misleading information” on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
ISED itself would judge whether a post is “factually incorrect, misleading or out of context.” The same department that dislikes a post gets to rule on whether the post is true. No court makes that call first and no independent reviewer checks the work. The government writes the definition of misinformation and then enforces it against the people it defines.