There are many unanswered questions and a lack of clarity in this bill plus, how it will actually be implemented is concerning. Thank you David for sharing your perspective on this!
David, I agree with your comments. This bill tries to "fix" a problem that may or may not exist - but its like trying to kill a fly in a china shop with a sledgehammer.
Helpful! As a Canadian who wants to create content but now has to think about how this bill will impact the industry I’ll get to see how it plays out. Thanks 🇨🇦✌️
The lunacy of this bill is the idea of a government trying to define whether or not creative content made by a Canadian is Canadian enough to be granted approval or exposure on the internet through platforms where a creator can post their creations. If the Guess Who existed today and posted their famous song American Woman on UA-cam and got the same viral fans and listeners like it got back then would that be Canadian enough today going by how this bill is being proposed? There are million of examples like this that make this bill over reaching to have fair exposure from freedom of expression period. So then we must ask, what is the real reason for this bill? Do they not understand the global audience on the internet? I mean they're really for globalism as is, they should be giving accolades to Canadian content creators for reaching a global audience. In the free market that should be looked at as a sign of success to the citizens. Any other consideration of controlling these creators is a heavy handed move that just wreaks of power grabbing government initiatives.
Hi David. I love the channel. Having legal explanations for non-legal experts is great. I’m not a legal expert, but I am a software engineer. And as such, I have to say that, while I’m sure your legal analysis is solid, your underlying technical assumptions are very wrong. Most importantly, you imply, and come very close to outright saying, that the content recommendation algorithms of platforms like UA-cam is a fair algorithm making good recommendations tailored to your preferences, and thus government regulation will necessarily negatively impact its results. In fact, these recommendation algorithms are designed not to help you but to help the company. They will recommend content that is in line with your interests, true, but given the hundreds or thousands of items that fit your interests they will recommend first and foremost those that most benefit the company, not those that most interest you. That means that high-quality, entertaining or informative content will be ignored by the algorithm in favour of content that “hooks” you and keeps you on the site (usually by causing moral outrage and radicalizing you), and that content that casts the provider in a good light will be prioritized (Facebook is notorious for artificially including pro-Facebook articles in people’s newsfeeds). In other words, letting the platforms recommend content is not creating a free-speech-friendly open marketplace of ideas, it is creating a closed environment under the direct control of the platforms themselves, where speech that benefits them is favoured over the rest, and worst of all this perverse twisting of free speech is invisible to users, cleverly hidden behind “the algorithm”. I’m not defending C-11; to be honest I don’t know enough about it to decide one way or the other, and when I’ve tried reading it I was beaten down by its thick and obscure legalese language. But one thing I’m sure of is that some form of government intervention is absolutely needed on these platforms, to protect free speech and to protect consumers. This is one case where the free and unregulated market has completely failed us.
Thanks for taking the time to write your comment. It's certainly a critique I've head before, and one that goes well beyond C-11 and "discoverability". What I find personally interesting about the topic is that it hasn't been my experience at all. My UA-cam recommendations are 100% full of the things that I want to see and I'm interested in seeing. I can't think of the last time I was recommended anything that was rage-bait. Maybe that's because I "Like" the videos I like and I subscribe to a number of creators whose content I want to see, so the recommendation algorithm has been well-fed with my interests.
@@privacylawyer Concurring with David Fraser on the recommendations. After subscribing to a pile of creators that looked interesting to me, I've only gotten content that is either from those creators, or content that is similar. You don't even need to drop a like to have this effect. The observation that only content that is meant to radicalize users on UA-cam getting recommended would only even remotely apply on accounts with no data (re: no likes, no watch history, no subscriptions, no account). Even then, that is sporadically and rarely placed on the front page at most (typically Fox News content). Search for content not even remotely like it and that kind of content vanishes both in the search results and the ensuing recommendations section. If anything, I got a bunch of content from Britain's Got Talent, America's Got Talent, and Gordon Ramsey clips which is hardly "radicalizing" material. I wasn't even that interested in that content in the first place, but since UA-cam didn't know a thing about me, it's trying to recommend content that is generically interesting from the looks of things. This only adds to the theory that those who say that platforms are ramming radical extremist content either don't know how to use UA-cam, decided to subscribe and like the content only to complain about it after, or don't actually use the platforms at all.
You do have a point about paltform algorithms being misused by the Internet Giants. You are also right about the dark side of recommendation algorithms and how it has been "hacked" by those who spread divisive/extremist/hoax political propaganda. External political actors have weaponised soical media and used it to spread targetted propaganda to influence elections and destabilise governments. That's all corrrect. However, you don't fix one problem by introducing another one. Bill C-11 will not regulate any of these issues, it will give an official the power to determine what you and I can and cannot see. What we need is more openness and transparency and freedom for the users. We should be in control, the users, not the Platforms and not the officials.
I am preparing to stage a sort of protest/awareness promotion for the unaware citizens of moncton, New Brunswick this coming month and would love any advice or input you can offer as to how I can distill that monstrous bill into factual but easily understood notes highlighting the problems surrounding the act and how it was silently pushed through so that I can distribute it in pamphlets outside city hall.
There are many unanswered questions and a lack of clarity in this bill plus, how it will actually be implemented is concerning. Thank you David for sharing your perspective on this!
David, I agree with your comments. This bill tries to "fix" a problem that may or may not exist - but its like trying to kill a fly in a china shop with a sledgehammer.
Helpful! As a Canadian who wants to create content but now has to think about how this bill will impact the industry I’ll get to see how it plays out. Thanks 🇨🇦✌️
Well explained - thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
The lunacy of this bill is the idea of a government trying to define whether or not creative content made by a Canadian is Canadian enough to be granted approval or exposure on the internet through platforms where a creator can post their creations.
If the Guess Who existed today and posted their famous song American Woman on UA-cam and got the same viral fans and listeners like it got back then would that be Canadian enough today going by how this bill is being proposed? There are million of examples like this that make this bill over reaching to have fair exposure from freedom of expression period. So then we must ask, what is the real reason for this bill? Do they not understand the global audience on the internet? I mean they're really for globalism as is, they should be giving accolades to Canadian content creators for reaching a global audience. In the free market that should be looked at as a sign of success to the citizens. Any other consideration of controlling these creators is a heavy handed move that just wreaks of power grabbing government initiatives.
Hi David. I love the channel. Having legal explanations for non-legal experts is great.
I’m not a legal expert, but I am a software engineer. And as such, I have to say that, while I’m sure your legal analysis is solid, your underlying technical assumptions are very wrong. Most importantly, you imply, and come very close to outright saying, that the content recommendation algorithms of platforms like UA-cam is a fair algorithm making good recommendations tailored to your preferences, and thus government regulation will necessarily negatively impact its results. In fact, these recommendation algorithms are designed not to help you but to help the company. They will recommend content that is in line with your interests, true, but given the hundreds or thousands of items that fit your interests they will recommend first and foremost those that most benefit the company, not those that most interest you. That means that high-quality, entertaining or informative content will be ignored by the algorithm in favour of content that “hooks” you and keeps you on the site (usually by causing moral outrage and radicalizing you), and that content that casts the provider in a good light will be prioritized (Facebook is notorious for artificially including pro-Facebook articles in people’s newsfeeds). In other words, letting the platforms recommend content is not creating a free-speech-friendly open marketplace of ideas, it is creating a closed environment under the direct control of the platforms themselves, where speech that benefits them is favoured over the rest, and worst of all this perverse twisting of free speech is invisible to users, cleverly hidden behind “the algorithm”.
I’m not defending C-11; to be honest I don’t know enough about it to decide one way or the other, and when I’ve tried reading it I was beaten down by its thick and obscure legalese language. But one thing I’m sure of is that some form of government intervention is absolutely needed on these platforms, to protect free speech and to protect consumers. This is one case where the free and unregulated market has completely failed us.
Thanks for taking the time to write your comment. It's certainly a critique I've head before, and one that goes well beyond C-11 and "discoverability". What I find personally interesting about the topic is that it hasn't been my experience at all. My UA-cam recommendations are 100% full of the things that I want to see and I'm interested in seeing. I can't think of the last time I was recommended anything that was rage-bait. Maybe that's because I "Like" the videos I like and I subscribe to a number of creators whose content I want to see, so the recommendation algorithm has been well-fed with my interests.
@@privacylawyer Concurring with David Fraser on the recommendations. After subscribing to a pile of creators that looked interesting to me, I've only gotten content that is either from those creators, or content that is similar. You don't even need to drop a like to have this effect.
The observation that only content that is meant to radicalize users on UA-cam getting recommended would only even remotely apply on accounts with no data (re: no likes, no watch history, no subscriptions, no account). Even then, that is sporadically and rarely placed on the front page at most (typically Fox News content). Search for content not even remotely like it and that kind of content vanishes both in the search results and the ensuing recommendations section. If anything, I got a bunch of content from Britain's Got Talent, America's Got Talent, and Gordon Ramsey clips which is hardly "radicalizing" material. I wasn't even that interested in that content in the first place, but since UA-cam didn't know a thing about me, it's trying to recommend content that is generically interesting from the looks of things.
This only adds to the theory that those who say that platforms are ramming radical extremist content either don't know how to use UA-cam, decided to subscribe and like the content only to complain about it after, or don't actually use the platforms at all.
You do have a point about paltform algorithms being misused by the Internet Giants. You are also right about the dark side of recommendation algorithms and how it has been "hacked" by those who spread divisive/extremist/hoax political propaganda. External political actors have weaponised soical media and used it to spread targetted propaganda to influence elections and destabilise governments. That's all corrrect. However, you don't fix one problem by introducing another one. Bill C-11 will not regulate any of these issues, it will give an official the power to determine what you and I can and cannot see. What we need is more openness and transparency and freedom for the users. We should be in control, the users, not the Platforms and not the officials.
I am preparing to stage a sort of protest/awareness promotion for the unaware citizens of moncton, New Brunswick this coming month and would love any advice or input you can offer as to how I can distill that monstrous bill into factual but easily understood notes highlighting the problems surrounding the act and how it was silently pushed through so that I can distribute it in pamphlets outside city hall.