Some useful stuff. Hopefully the author will get contracts out of it.
One of the items not mentioned is the usefulness of the good cop-bad cop routine with Carney being the good cop and elbozo-in-chief Doug Ford being the bad cop. Taking off the barking chihuahua’s muzzle every now and then does make Carney appear reasonable.
I would be cautious in trying to turn Democrat Governors against the President though. The howls on the Canadian side when Alberta communicated with American advisors or when Chinese foreign interference with elections came to light will be matched tenfold on the US side especially if the interference is as overt as the author suggests in this article. Especially when you consider how Canadian patriotism which admittedly has surged recently is still probably only at IMO a quarter of that of the vast majority of Americans. No Democrat will be prepared to accept gains in electoral points from Canadian influence or put himself in a position of being accused of foreign influence.
I’m puzzled at the suggestion that social media should be controlled and supervised in the same way that children’s use of this media is - or is proposed to be - controlled by government. Who will decide? Bureaucrats with powers to fine and jail with no appeal as is now the case with so called “hate speech” legislation?
I personally don’t believe an agreement will be reached until the Quebec election results are known and the Federal government then decides on their position.
Governments could seriously impact online platforms by requiring sites to verify the identity of their users as a guard against bot nets. Stripping away the anonymity of social media discourse would also turn down the temperature of the rhetoric: people who'll rage and swear at other people from the interior of their car will rarely if ever do the same thing to another person's face.
> Governments could seriously impact online platforms by requiring sites to verify the identity of their users as a guard against bot nets. Stripping away the anonymity of social media discourse
Those are two different things.
You can do both, but they are separate and worth considering separately.
A company can be required to verify it's customer. Wether it's required to identify that customer to a third party and under what circumstances is a different issue.
You could require companies to confirm customer identity but allow anonymous discussion with a court order required to confirm identity. You could confirm identity and ban anonymous discussion. You could confirm identity and require that certain attributes be confirmed in order to be asserted.
Whether or not any of this is a great idea or a bad idea is a different issue again.
Agree 100 %. But how do you accomplish and enforce? It would be interesting to implement. The fear of government imposing consequences on people who disagree with it (eg tax audits, traffic tickets, bureaucratic delays in pension payments etc etc) would stifle any debate on public policy if the identity of the poster were known. The pusillanimity of the opposition parties arising from their fear of media reported controversy leaves no other option for healthy discussion essential to a democracy.
I think the primary path would be putting the onus on the social media and other online platforms to verify identity. They don't need to tell the government who the users are, and the users don't need to publicly reveal their identity. However, the platforms would be subject to periodic audits with fines and other penalties for failing to comply.
What this would probably mean for users is that the platforms are going to require some sort of verifiable identification like a credit card, driver's license, or social security number: the same kind of thing you'd have to show when renting a car or purchasing booze at a liquor store. That's where I see the potential for a large impact on a lot of platforms: do you REALLY want to give some of these sketchy online companies that sort of information? Even if you're not worried about outright identify theft by the companies, you still have to be worried about the potential for data leaks or theft by other parties. This is by no means an insurmountable hurdle: The Line has got my credit card information in order to bill me for my subscription. It's the same with my newspaper subscriptions.
Those are great suggestions. IIRC the government has already stolen these particular horses out of the barn by passing (or perhaps submitting at this stage) legislation that forces all internet platforms to retain user information for 1 year for instant access by police and other state enforcement apparatchiks without the necessity of a warrant. I consider government misuse of this information for punishment of dissenters to be just as likely as misuse by criminals for financial theft or other types of harassment - perhaps low probability , but the temptation will always be there.
Somehow getting people to identify themselves in public discussion fora is a great idea. But in a country where law and regulation enforcement is heavily dependent on anonymous snitch lines and you are unable to confront witnesses at trials - unlike the US - this will be a challenge.
The Ford government's Reagan ad last year provided a strong proof point that this comms strategy would work. It caught the attention of a wide swath of Americans, it highlighted how Trump's policies broke radically from approaches that had long been successful, and Trump completely freaked out. What the Ford government should've done better is avoid the editing that Trump apologists twisted into allegations that the video had somehow been "doctored", but that crowd of Trump defenders can be depended on to twist themselves into knots in efforts to discredit any criticism.
The Trump freakout also foreshadows the Trump administration's inevitable response to a successful campaign: they will use every trick in their book to hit back at Canada. However, this has to be understood in the context of a sustained campaign that will likely conclude with the end of Trump's term. Unlike Trump's ADHD-inflected campaign against Iran, the Canadian government needs to commit to a long term strategy that won't deliver a quick win (other than hearing Trump squeal.)
Your analysis of the toxin that is social media was spot on. As a long-time subscriber to the Financial Times, I can attest to the 20-year-decline in the quality of commentary on that newspaper's commentary fora.
Much of that decline is attributable to organized trolling by paid and unpaid apologists for states (the PRC, Russia, India), political parties (the GOP and MAGA operatives from the United States, Reform UK) and disruptors (people who disrupt debate on behalf of the Kremlin and China's Ministry of State Security).
However, some is entirely a consequence of poor habits among subscribers who apparently grew up on a diet of "shock jock" commentary on the likes of "X" and Facebook. Ad hominem attacks are just the tip of the iceberg.
The suggestion that a trade policy dispute will be impacted by measures ostensibly designed to keep children (who, one hopes, are not voters) off social media makes it very clear that the real purpose of those measures is to achieve censorship of dissenting opinions.
I don't see how you draw that conclusion from the available evidence.
Any policy we have to limit social media use by children will be objectionable to the big tech platforms because they make money from kids using their platforms.
A policy intended 100% for limiting use by children and ZERO percent for censorship of dissenting opinions will be objectionable to the big tech firms because it harms their income. Big tech has the ear of the Trump administration.
Big Tech objects to policy X because it hurts their bottom line and the Trump admin tries to coerce us to protect big tech profits.
This tells us nothing at all about the motivation for policy X.
It's about bot farms and foreign actors manipulating algorithms to push certain messages.
It's known that a social media platform such as TikTok suppresses perspectives the Chinese government doesn't like (just trying posting something about Tiananmen Square or Winnie the Pooh), and boosts narratives it wants spread (infamously when legions of teenagers started lobbying their Congressional representatives when Congress was considering a bill to ban foreign-owned social media platforms.)
Similarly, bot farms run by foreign governments (Russia, Iran, and lately Turkey) have been boosting narratives as a means of interfering with domestic politics in Western nations either to sow discord or serve their own agenda.
The idea that Western countries would've allowed the Soviet Union to operate a TV station or publish a newspaper to distribute propaganda in the Cold War is laughable, even if they loaded it up with popular content to attract youth. However, that's exactly what's being conceded to state actors today, with the ability to target their audience with a ruthless precision exceeding the wildest dreams of mass media 30 years ago.
If your problem is that you feel like your political perspectives are getting a useful boost from those foreign actors, maybe you need to think about what that implies.
Considering that a large swath of online commentators jump to “your a bot” or “on the payroll” when they encounter a dissenting opinion, I’m not convinced that only bot farms or foreign manipulators would be subjected to the online reforms MacDougall is advocating for and I think many good faith posts would get wrapped up in that regulatory net. I also don’t think it’s possible to address the trade issue in the short or medium term with proposed reforms. We’ve already crossed the rubicon.
All governments, very much including our own, are using bot farms. The platforms are working to crack down on them continuously. Censorship is not the solution.
All governments, very much including our own, are using bot farms.
END QUOTE
Please provide corroborated evidence suggesting that the Government of Canada pays online disruptors to attack its critics, or purchases the online services of criminal "bot" operators to disrupt online commentary.
We can't be seen as first, strictest, limiting "platform power" because doing so is too easily linked to socialist oppression, message management by our gov in a free society. I think we'd risk losing perception. We need to follow another country's change, one that goes farther than expected, a change widely reported around the world, then quietly go even further in Canada in the shadow.
So interesting to read such high level strategizing. While it seems both Machievellian and doable, I suggest also keeping an information and messaging focus on Alberta. Canada needs a crushing win on that vote.
So, more censorship than you already have on social media? Great third tactic, very Canadian. I do like the first two tactics. Do those. Skip the platform gagging.
Hmmm. There are some good ideas here, especially the idea to stop engaging in tit for tat and engaging with a reasonable tone. Bu then the context goes a bit off course.
Why not be adult, disengage with Trump's upsetting verbiage, and deal with substance. I think this author would have some good ideas on how to bring the public along, if he could avoid TDS.
Hmmm. In this opinion the best immediate future for the Dems is a possible improvement in their position in the House and if "fair winds" come together also an improvement in their position in the Senate.
Comments about what might happen then are reasonable given past performance, and avoid expecting the Dems to have either a plan for the economy or substance anywhere. There's lawfare in claiming insider trading and crypto - the refuge of gossip because the public doesn't understand it and it sounds ominous. No need to mention what may stand up in court, or not. Oh wait, there's making money off social media; thus threatening a ton of news worthy people who do the same thing from their lofty positions.
Context matters in communications. Much of the American public despises what even might possibly be lawfare. Discrediting a person or claiming without proof might not fly so well.
I'd prefer engaging with substance and being direct, open and honest with the Canadian and US public. The sky is not falling in. A powerful free country wants to rebalance what they put into international trade and economies, and the rest of us have to adjust. Unless the Carney Liberals start acting like children, the tariff threat mainly affects Ontario, that is not the sole Canadian economic engine but is the home of the most votes.
Ask - do we want the US to maintain pre eminence in the world economy, or do we want to be under the jack boot of China? I prefer the US even if we must agree to changes in the agreements between free nations.
Normally I'd stop reading as soon as saw the term "TDS" but stuck around for the entire comment, purely to see what ideas qualified as "good" to you. Apparently, not actually very much.
Worth noting that on January 20, 2025 the US presence in the world economy was "preeminent". I feel compelled to ask what has happened since to put that preeminence at risk.
Excellent ideas. The US appearances should emphasize the key message that we have a free trade agreement that Trump negotiated. It’s been working fine. And if we include trade in services, which a Trump never does, two-way trade of $900 billion shows a $30 million US deficit, about 3 per cent, a rounding error in a $32 trillion US economy. What’s more, labour intensive finished goods make up the bulk of US exports compared with Canadian exports which are largely capital intensive raw materials and semi finished products.
This is a brilliant recommendation re: strategy. It's definitely time for Canada to go on the offensive. This is a will thought out, well laid out strategy that deserves to be fleshed out and then implemented.
Some useful stuff. Hopefully the author will get contracts out of it.
One of the items not mentioned is the usefulness of the good cop-bad cop routine with Carney being the good cop and elbozo-in-chief Doug Ford being the bad cop. Taking off the barking chihuahua’s muzzle every now and then does make Carney appear reasonable.
I would be cautious in trying to turn Democrat Governors against the President though. The howls on the Canadian side when Alberta communicated with American advisors or when Chinese foreign interference with elections came to light will be matched tenfold on the US side especially if the interference is as overt as the author suggests in this article. Especially when you consider how Canadian patriotism which admittedly has surged recently is still probably only at IMO a quarter of that of the vast majority of Americans. No Democrat will be prepared to accept gains in electoral points from Canadian influence or put himself in a position of being accused of foreign influence.
I’m puzzled at the suggestion that social media should be controlled and supervised in the same way that children’s use of this media is - or is proposed to be - controlled by government. Who will decide? Bureaucrats with powers to fine and jail with no appeal as is now the case with so called “hate speech” legislation?
I personally don’t believe an agreement will be reached until the Quebec election results are known and the Federal government then decides on their position.
Governments could seriously impact online platforms by requiring sites to verify the identity of their users as a guard against bot nets. Stripping away the anonymity of social media discourse would also turn down the temperature of the rhetoric: people who'll rage and swear at other people from the interior of their car will rarely if ever do the same thing to another person's face.
> Governments could seriously impact online platforms by requiring sites to verify the identity of their users as a guard against bot nets. Stripping away the anonymity of social media discourse
Those are two different things.
You can do both, but they are separate and worth considering separately.
A company can be required to verify it's customer. Wether it's required to identify that customer to a third party and under what circumstances is a different issue.
You could require companies to confirm customer identity but allow anonymous discussion with a court order required to confirm identity. You could confirm identity and ban anonymous discussion. You could confirm identity and require that certain attributes be confirmed in order to be asserted.
Whether or not any of this is a great idea or a bad idea is a different issue again.
Agree 100 %. But how do you accomplish and enforce? It would be interesting to implement. The fear of government imposing consequences on people who disagree with it (eg tax audits, traffic tickets, bureaucratic delays in pension payments etc etc) would stifle any debate on public policy if the identity of the poster were known. The pusillanimity of the opposition parties arising from their fear of media reported controversy leaves no other option for healthy discussion essential to a democracy.
I think the primary path would be putting the onus on the social media and other online platforms to verify identity. They don't need to tell the government who the users are, and the users don't need to publicly reveal their identity. However, the platforms would be subject to periodic audits with fines and other penalties for failing to comply.
What this would probably mean for users is that the platforms are going to require some sort of verifiable identification like a credit card, driver's license, or social security number: the same kind of thing you'd have to show when renting a car or purchasing booze at a liquor store. That's where I see the potential for a large impact on a lot of platforms: do you REALLY want to give some of these sketchy online companies that sort of information? Even if you're not worried about outright identify theft by the companies, you still have to be worried about the potential for data leaks or theft by other parties. This is by no means an insurmountable hurdle: The Line has got my credit card information in order to bill me for my subscription. It's the same with my newspaper subscriptions.
Those are great suggestions. IIRC the government has already stolen these particular horses out of the barn by passing (or perhaps submitting at this stage) legislation that forces all internet platforms to retain user information for 1 year for instant access by police and other state enforcement apparatchiks without the necessity of a warrant. I consider government misuse of this information for punishment of dissenters to be just as likely as misuse by criminals for financial theft or other types of harassment - perhaps low probability , but the temptation will always be there.
Somehow getting people to identify themselves in public discussion fora is a great idea. But in a country where law and regulation enforcement is heavily dependent on anonymous snitch lines and you are unable to confront witnesses at trials - unlike the US - this will be a challenge.
If only it were a healthy discussion…
The Ford government's Reagan ad last year provided a strong proof point that this comms strategy would work. It caught the attention of a wide swath of Americans, it highlighted how Trump's policies broke radically from approaches that had long been successful, and Trump completely freaked out. What the Ford government should've done better is avoid the editing that Trump apologists twisted into allegations that the video had somehow been "doctored", but that crowd of Trump defenders can be depended on to twist themselves into knots in efforts to discredit any criticism.
The Trump freakout also foreshadows the Trump administration's inevitable response to a successful campaign: they will use every trick in their book to hit back at Canada. However, this has to be understood in the context of a sustained campaign that will likely conclude with the end of Trump's term. Unlike Trump's ADHD-inflected campaign against Iran, the Canadian government needs to commit to a long term strategy that won't deliver a quick win (other than hearing Trump squeal.)
A predictably good piece of work on strategic communications. Thanks for this.
Your analysis of the toxin that is social media was spot on. As a long-time subscriber to the Financial Times, I can attest to the 20-year-decline in the quality of commentary on that newspaper's commentary fora.
Much of that decline is attributable to organized trolling by paid and unpaid apologists for states (the PRC, Russia, India), political parties (the GOP and MAGA operatives from the United States, Reform UK) and disruptors (people who disrupt debate on behalf of the Kremlin and China's Ministry of State Security).
However, some is entirely a consequence of poor habits among subscribers who apparently grew up on a diet of "shock jock" commentary on the likes of "X" and Facebook. Ad hominem attacks are just the tip of the iceberg.
The suggestion that a trade policy dispute will be impacted by measures ostensibly designed to keep children (who, one hopes, are not voters) off social media makes it very clear that the real purpose of those measures is to achieve censorship of dissenting opinions.
I don't see how you draw that conclusion from the available evidence.
Any policy we have to limit social media use by children will be objectionable to the big tech platforms because they make money from kids using their platforms.
A policy intended 100% for limiting use by children and ZERO percent for censorship of dissenting opinions will be objectionable to the big tech firms because it harms their income. Big tech has the ear of the Trump administration.
Big Tech objects to policy X because it hurts their bottom line and the Trump admin tries to coerce us to protect big tech profits.
This tells us nothing at all about the motivation for policy X.
It's about bot farms and foreign actors manipulating algorithms to push certain messages.
It's known that a social media platform such as TikTok suppresses perspectives the Chinese government doesn't like (just trying posting something about Tiananmen Square or Winnie the Pooh), and boosts narratives it wants spread (infamously when legions of teenagers started lobbying their Congressional representatives when Congress was considering a bill to ban foreign-owned social media platforms.)
Similarly, bot farms run by foreign governments (Russia, Iran, and lately Turkey) have been boosting narratives as a means of interfering with domestic politics in Western nations either to sow discord or serve their own agenda.
The idea that Western countries would've allowed the Soviet Union to operate a TV station or publish a newspaper to distribute propaganda in the Cold War is laughable, even if they loaded it up with popular content to attract youth. However, that's exactly what's being conceded to state actors today, with the ability to target their audience with a ruthless precision exceeding the wildest dreams of mass media 30 years ago.
If your problem is that you feel like your political perspectives are getting a useful boost from those foreign actors, maybe you need to think about what that implies.
Considering that a large swath of online commentators jump to “your a bot” or “on the payroll” when they encounter a dissenting opinion, I’m not convinced that only bot farms or foreign manipulators would be subjected to the online reforms MacDougall is advocating for and I think many good faith posts would get wrapped up in that regulatory net. I also don’t think it’s possible to address the trade issue in the short or medium term with proposed reforms. We’ve already crossed the rubicon.
All governments, very much including our own, are using bot farms. The platforms are working to crack down on them continuously. Censorship is not the solution.
It's not censorship, anymore than controls aimed at spam e-mail or phone calls.
@AE. You wrote:
QUOTE
All governments, very much including our own, are using bot farms.
END QUOTE
Please provide corroborated evidence suggesting that the Government of Canada pays online disruptors to attack its critics, or purchases the online services of criminal "bot" operators to disrupt online commentary.
One concern:
We can't be seen as first, strictest, limiting "platform power" because doing so is too easily linked to socialist oppression, message management by our gov in a free society. I think we'd risk losing perception. We need to follow another country's change, one that goes farther than expected, a change widely reported around the world, then quietly go even further in Canada in the shadow.
So interesting to read such high level strategizing. While it seems both Machievellian and doable, I suggest also keeping an information and messaging focus on Alberta. Canada needs a crushing win on that vote.
Helpful and worth considering
Good ideas, except the bits about ads to push Trump into making himself look bad.
They'd just look like cheap shots, besides, they're totally unnecessary.
So, more censorship than you already have on social media? Great third tactic, very Canadian. I do like the first two tactics. Do those. Skip the platform gagging.
Hmmm. There are some good ideas here, especially the idea to stop engaging in tit for tat and engaging with a reasonable tone. Bu then the context goes a bit off course.
Why not be adult, disengage with Trump's upsetting verbiage, and deal with substance. I think this author would have some good ideas on how to bring the public along, if he could avoid TDS.
Hmmm. In this opinion the best immediate future for the Dems is a possible improvement in their position in the House and if "fair winds" come together also an improvement in their position in the Senate.
Comments about what might happen then are reasonable given past performance, and avoid expecting the Dems to have either a plan for the economy or substance anywhere. There's lawfare in claiming insider trading and crypto - the refuge of gossip because the public doesn't understand it and it sounds ominous. No need to mention what may stand up in court, or not. Oh wait, there's making money off social media; thus threatening a ton of news worthy people who do the same thing from their lofty positions.
Context matters in communications. Much of the American public despises what even might possibly be lawfare. Discrediting a person or claiming without proof might not fly so well.
I'd prefer engaging with substance and being direct, open and honest with the Canadian and US public. The sky is not falling in. A powerful free country wants to rebalance what they put into international trade and economies, and the rest of us have to adjust. Unless the Carney Liberals start acting like children, the tariff threat mainly affects Ontario, that is not the sole Canadian economic engine but is the home of the most votes.
Ask - do we want the US to maintain pre eminence in the world economy, or do we want to be under the jack boot of China? I prefer the US even if we must agree to changes in the agreements between free nations.
Normally I'd stop reading as soon as saw the term "TDS" but stuck around for the entire comment, purely to see what ideas qualified as "good" to you. Apparently, not actually very much.
Worth noting that on January 20, 2025 the US presence in the world economy was "preeminent". I feel compelled to ask what has happened since to put that preeminence at risk.
Excellent ideas. The US appearances should emphasize the key message that we have a free trade agreement that Trump negotiated. It’s been working fine. And if we include trade in services, which a Trump never does, two-way trade of $900 billion shows a $30 million US deficit, about 3 per cent, a rounding error in a $32 trillion US economy. What’s more, labour intensive finished goods make up the bulk of US exports compared with Canadian exports which are largely capital intensive raw materials and semi finished products.
Some excellent points to be sure, but Liberals are not likely to listen to or tolerate a former Conservative advisor to Stephen Harper.
This is a brilliant recommendation re: strategy. It's definitely time for Canada to go on the offensive. This is a will thought out, well laid out strategy that deserves to be fleshed out and then implemented.
Solid actionable plan. But actually executing it is essential.