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Twitter is testing a new safety feature aimed at reducing unwanted interactions. As explained in a Twitter Safety blog on 1 September 2021, Safety Mode temporarily blocks accounts (Author Accounts) found by Twitter’s artificial intelligence (AI) to be…

On Wednesday, April 14, 2021, the Canadian government launched a consultation on “a Modern Copyright Framework for Online Intermediaries”, seeking comments from the public until May 31. The goal of this consultation is to “ensure that Canada’s copyright framework for online intermediaries reflects this evolving digital world.” Alongside the announcement of this consultation, the government released a paper entitled “Consultation on a Modern Copyright Framework for Online Intermediaries” (the Paper). The Paper provides a background for this consultation and outlines four potential avenues for copyright reform.

Across the world, as digital companies’ advertising revenues climb, traditional news organizations’ revenues fall. As a result, many traditional news organizations, like broadcasters and newspapers, are going out of business. The public’s appetite for journalism, however, has not waned. If anything, the public needs reliable news sources more than ever in this era of “fake news” and internet-borne misinformation. Often it is the very digital platforms that share news organizations’ content that are perceived as putting news organizations out of business.

Governments around the world are contemplating various policies and legislation to save struggling traditional news organizations. Many of these solutions contemplate tying the fortunes of ailing news organizations to those of thriving digital platforms like social media companies. For example, Australia has been in long-standing disputes with large tech companies about its proposed law that would require big tech companies to pay news organizations for use of their content.

Recently, the first proposed legislation to tackle this problem in Canada was tabled in the Senate in the form of a private members bill, Bill S-225.

In the last month of 2020, Canadian courts decided two proceedings involving alleged copyright infringement and social media platforms. Both proceedings were small scale and involved foreign copyright holders. One proceeding was heard by the British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal (BCCRT) and the other was heard by the Federal Court of Canada (FC) under its simplified procedure for small claims.

On November 17, 2020, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Navdeep Bains, tabled proposed legislation in Parliament that aims to overhaul Canada’s data privacy law. Bill C-11, entitled An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Act, will create new data privacy obligations and new enforcement mechanisms for these obligations if it becomes law.

Social media personalities who have tweeted, grammed, Vine’d and snapped their way to stardom have no doubt caught the attention of businesses large and small. Much like how professional athletes and other celebrities are paid to endorse products, businesses and retailers have increasingly turned to recognized social media personalities (often called “influencers”) to recommend their products. Although social media influencers can get paid significant sums of money for product placement and rave reviews, sometimes the relationship with the company is not readily apparent to the public. Where the endorsement is not based on genuine user experience, this can have a misleading and negative impact on consumers.

In an earlier blog post this year, we covered Authentication on Social Media Platforms and the need for businesses to authenticate their social media accounts to protect their brand, credibility, reputation and accountability while advertising or otherwise engaging with their customers in the online space.

Various social media platforms offer the blue “verified” badge in order to help users more easily find public figures and brands, and protect these profiles from the high likelihood of impersonation. The blue badge verifies or authenticates the account as belonging to public figures, celebrities, government, businesses or their brands. While Facebook allows users to submit an application for authentication, other social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat verify accounts on their own accord and do not let users request a verified badge (or special emoji in the case of SnapChat).

Recently, Twitter announced that it had created an online application process for authentication.

With millions of people walking around with their heads down on their phones, it’s no surprise that mobile advertising on social media platforms has experienced significant growth in the past 12 months. Social media platforms have been continuing to develop ad capabilities to maximize offerings for brands and growth in the social media marketing space is ever expanding. Statistics from a report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, however, show that marketers only spend between 2% and 8% of their total ad budget on internet video and mobile internet advertising, respectively.