Policing ‘electoral integrity’
The Liberals open a new front in their war on social media
SOME OF THE SPECIFICS OF C-76’ S RULES ON POLITICAL ADVERTISING PRESENTED IMMEDIATE AND DIFFICULT PROBLEMS FOR GOOGLE. — COLBY COSH
The federal Liberals’ war on social media opened a new front in the foyer of the West Block on Thursday as Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould denounced Twitter for its continuing silence on her “Declaration on Electoral Integrity.” The D. I. M. issued the Declaration last week; it’s a mushy motherhood statement, co-signed so far by Facebook, Google and Microsoft, in which a) the social media and advertising platforms mostly agree to do the stuff they’re already doing to try to remain in general good public odour and b) the Canadian government agrees to approve of this.
Twitter has been reluctant to sign up, even though issuing a “Declaration” is an obvious sign on the part of the government that its ability to tailor social media by means of statute and regulation has already reached something of a practical limit. Gould’s Bill C-76, passed in December and intended to apply to the upcoming federal election, created new regulations for third-party political advertisers on electronic platforms. This had an immediate comic effect, as anybody knows if they watched Google representatives being harangued at the Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee on May 9.
Google was hauled before the committee because it couldn’t figure out a way to comply with C-76’s requirements in time for the election. As Colin Mckay and Jason Kee tried to explain to the vexed legislators, Google
is in the business of serving unfathomable mass quantities of advertising to other people’s websites and phone applications and keeping some of the cash. They don’t make either the ads or the sites to which they’re served: they are, for this purpose, a pipeline company that imposes a lucrative toll. Like other platforms they are busily trying to stamp out the most socially obnoxious and unethical content in the pipeline, with varying amounts of success: a screening algorithm that gets invented on January 1 is bound to be gamed before sunrise January 2.
In other words, it’s a technological arms race. But some of the specifics of C-76’s rules on political advertising presented immediate and difficult problems for Google, and it did its best to explain them to the committee. The law, as passed, imposes “registry” requirements on the sites and apps connected to the pipeline, who may not even know what ads they are showing. And the registry, if it could be created by Google for its customers, would have to be updated daily. “This effectively means,” observed Google lawyer Jason Kee, “that the registry must be updated in real time, as a regulated political ad that was displayed at 11: 59 p. m. would need to be included in the registry before midnight.”
Not feasible, said Kee, at least on such short notice. Finally, the broad definition of “election advertising” written into the law was a problem: it includes any ad “taking a position on an issue with which a registered party or candidate is associated,” which might literally change from minute to minute during a campaign. What’s the technological solution to that? ( Even if Google could hire a billion human editors to do that work, could the company be sure of complying with C-76?)
So Google, the accused social poisoner and wrecker of democracy, decided to obey the law by cancelling all political ad sales in Canada during the upcoming regulated period. You might suppose that they would be thanked for withdrawing the poison at their own undoubtedly significant expense. Instead, the Liberals, like the restaurant patron who complains that the food is lousy and the portions are so small, flew into a genuine rage. Nathaniel Erskine- Smith whined that “We are too small for you ... You are too important, and we are just not important enough for Google to take us seriously.”
Erskine- Smith and other committee members demanded to know exactly how soon Google would be bringing political ads back to Canada, furiously trying to pin down a 2023 date. In the video of the meeting they seem quite desperate about this — as one might expect from representatives of a technologically aware major political party, one with well-developed demographic targets that can really only be attacked with Google’s help. If you read the transcript of the meeting, or better yet view Erskine- Smith’s cranky demeanour in the archived video, you will understand that the Liberal dialogue with big tech really has the goal of being seen to do something about social media and online advertising without flustering the golden goose.
Which makes Karina Gould’s tantrum in the foyer even funnier. Having treated Google peevishly for taking the Atlas Shrugged approach to C-76, the government was suddenly upholding it as the ultimate good citizen for the purpose of castigating Twitter, a platform “( We) know ... has been used and manipulated by foreign and malicious actors.” Increasingly, when politicians discuss social media, they seem to be advancing the premise that we can only preserve an open, free and internationalist society as long as someone will agree to keep all those devious and unclean outsiders off our internet. ( Our own privilege as Canadians of hopping on Twitter and hurling memes and insults at the Saudis or the Israelis or the Russians or the Americans, of course, is never to be questioned.)