{"id":111114,"date":"2026-08-11T15:33:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=111114"},"modified":"2026-08-11T15:33:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:33:47","slug":"opinion-blayne-haggart-and-natasha-tusikov-discuss-concerns-over-big-tech-self-regulating-under-bill-c-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2026\/08\/opinion-blayne-haggart-and-natasha-tusikov-discuss-concerns-over-big-tech-self-regulating-under-bill-c-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Blayne Haggart and Natasha Tusikov discuss concerns over Big Tech self-regulating under Bill C-34"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blayne Haggart, Professor of Political Science at Brock University, and Natasha Tusikov, Associate Professor of Criminology at York University, co-wrote a piece recently published in <a href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/2026\/07\/bill-c34-big-tech\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Policy Options<\/a> about the proposed Bill C-34, the <em>Safe Social Media Act<\/em>, and its reliance on trusting major U.S. tech companies to self-regulate through a new independent regulatory body.<\/p>\n<p>They write:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Can you trust Mark Zuckerberg to design a socially responsible Facebook? How about Elon Musk with X or his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The question of trust is at the heart of the Carney government\u2019s recently tabled Bill C-34, the\u00a0Safe Social Media Act,\u00a0which would include a new independent regulatory body.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>To date, most of the debate on the bill has focused on its\u00a0proposal\u00a0to ban teens under the age of 16 from social media. Critics have raised questions about whether such a ban is\u00a0constitutional\u00a0and whether it would risk\u00a0privacy and freedom of expression\u00a0by requiring that all social media users submit proof of age.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Critics also question how effective a ban would be. In Australia, a \u201csubstantial proportion\u201d of teens are circumventing a similar ban, sometimes with the assistance of the social media companies targeted by the country\u2019s new rules.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading the full article on the <a href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/2026\/07\/bill-c34-big-tech\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Policy Options website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blayne Haggart, Professor of Political Science at Brock University, and Natasha Tusikov, Associate Professor of Criminology at York University, co-wrote a piece recently published in Policy Options about the proposed Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, and its reliance on trusting major U.S. tech companies to self-regulate through a new independent regulatory body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,38],"tags":[3445,4104],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111116,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111114\/revisions\/111116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}