Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino are doing the rounds, insisting on the need to fight online harassment and misinformation.
At the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, Trudeau said that Canada wants to regulate online “harassment and violence.” He added that Canada’s social media platforms have a responsibility to “address online harassment and violence to ensure trust in technology.”
“While always ensuring and defending free speech, we must make it clear that it cannot be OK to bully and attack people online,” Trudeau said.
At the G7 summit in Germany, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told other interior and security ministers there is a need to tackle disinformation. On November 17, he tweeted that “the G7 stands united” when it comes to “addressing the rise of mis and disinformation online.”
On November 19, Mendicino tweeted that Canada will host a G7 summit next year to fight “disinformation.”
“Taking a leading role at the G7, Canada has invited counterpart interior and public safety ministers here for a summit to tackle disinformation, which is one of the most pervasive threats to all our democracies right now,” he tweeted.
He added that a summit in Canada would help “flip the script, and to get ahead of the curve of disinformation.”
“This is where we think that Canada and the G7 can show leadership,” he continued.
According to Mendicino, the “marketplace for disinformation” is bigger than the “marketplace for reliable information,” and Canadians need to be helped to distinguish between the two.
He continued to say that, to fight disinformation, online platforms should ensure they are “adhering to the terms and conditions of their own user agreements.”
During the summit, he suggested the education of high school students on how to identify disinformation, as well as online scams and fraudulent emails and texts.
