Social media platforms were built to prioritize ad sales, but their myopic focus on holding users’ attention and harvesting their data has led to serious oversights in design and planning that enable the rampant spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories and organized propaganda online. As Samuel Woolley writes, there are pragmatic, concrete changes we can make to platforms, their financial models and the code itself so that these systems prioritize values beneficial to all members of society.
Despite the danger to lives and livelihoods, climate change isn’t treated as a security issue — in fact, Canada’s two most recent defence strategies barely mention climate. Will Greaves describes how, in the same way that bad governance and external events combine to produce humanitarian crises elsewhere in the world, unaddressed shortfalls in climate planning and preparedness at home will fuel acute, chronic insecurity for Canadians as we face more severe climate disruption.
In a case now before the Federal Court of Canada, the House of Commons is asserting an absolute right to access unredacted classified information, even though elected members of Parliament are not trained in the myriad considerations that go into circulating sensitive documents. Greg Fyffe outlines the complex issues now before the Federal Court and argues that the ability to safeguard sensitive information is fundamental to Canadian government intelligence and security organizations: if you can’t keep secrets, no one will share them with you.
Nations looking to reform and enact online protection regulations to address issues of terrorism, human trafficking and hate speech, among others, are experiencing pushback from those who fear they will infringe on civil liberties. The Big Tech podcast’s guest this week, Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and former deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, shares his perspective.
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