Canadians want to curb online hate, national poll shows
Many willing to sacrifice privacy
Most Canadians want government and social-media companies to do more to curtail hateful and racist behaviour online even if it diminishes freedom of speech and privacy, according to a national opinion survey.
The findings add to fraught debates over free speech and censorship, the power of Big Tech, the boundary between opinions and abuse, and how best to maintain free speech in an omnipresent online world.
The poll was commissioned by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, a Crown corporation, and conducted by Abacus Data, an Ottawa-based public opinion research firm that surveyed 2,000 randomly selected Canadian residents from Jan. 15 to 18.
By a two-to-one margin, respondents were more worried about online hate speech than they were about restrictions on freedom of speech and privacy protection.
Respondents were asked: “When it comes to regulating hate speech online, which of the following comes closest to your view?” They were given two options.
“I worry more about the impact of hate speech and racism on people it harms and the impact on society overall than on limits to people's freedom of speech or protecting privacy,” was selected by 69 per cent of respondents.
Thirty-one per cent of respondents selected: “I worry more about governments and social media companies being able to limit the rights of citizens to express themselves and protecting the privacy of users than the impact of hateful or racist behaviour online.”
The view was widely supported across demographics, according to the Abacus data, including all age groups and genders. The largest split on the sentiment was along ideological lines.
Of those describing their politics as being on the left, 81 per cent said they were more worried about hate speech and racism than limiting freedom of speech; 70 per cent of those describing their views as in the centre chose the same option, as did 50 per cent of those describing their politics as being on the right.
Further, 60 per cent of all respondents said the Canadian government should be doing more to prevent the spread of hateful and racist content online; 17 per cent rejected that idea and 23 per cent said they weren't sure.
The idea of government intervention was rejected by eight per cent of the left, 15 per cent of the centre, and 38 per cent of the right.
Overall, almost all respondents believed online hateful and racist content is a problem in Canada: 49 per cent described it as a big problem, 44 per cent as a minor problem, and seven per cent as not a problem.
“Hate speech and racism are things that have always been with us, but social media platforms allow them to be disseminated under the veil of anonymity to much wider audiences,” said Mohammed Hashim, executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. “The fact that most Canadians see this as a problem is all the more reason why our government needs to make online hate speech regulation a policy priority,” he said.
The survey was done independently, and the government was not informed or consulted in its creation, he said.
That wide swaths of the Canadian public said they support government and tech companies being more interventionist isn't surprising but should also be concerning, said Cara Zwibel, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's Fundamental Freedoms Program.
“The tension between protecting freedom of expression and making sure that people are not subject to discrimination or hate are conflicts that have existed for a long time but have a different kind of scope and urgency because of the internet,” she said.
“This is a really complicated issue and I'm apprehensive of what the government is planning and what approach it might take.”
There can be nuance to unpopular opinion versus something seen as hateful, and the view may be different in a courtroom than on social media, she said.
“I don't dispute that online expression can result in real-world harm. I do think it is a really tricky area to effectively regulate without potentially causing a lot of unintended damage,” she said.
The poll floated ideas on how to respond to online hate, and found broad support for each of them.
Ideas included: Requiring social-media companies to remove racist or hateful content quickly when it is identified; requiring social media companies to inform police of serious hate speech; strengthening laws to hold perpetrators accountable for what they do online; increasing police training and resources to deal with online hate; and requiring social media companies to reveal the identity of users who spread hateful or racist material.
The poll found a majority of respondents believed hateful and racist online content has increased over the past few years. Of daily social-media users, 55 per cent said they have seen or experienced racist content online; 50 per cent sexist content; 46 per cent homophobic content; 46 per cent physical threats and 26 per cent sexual harassment.