Canada

Regardless of their intentions, granting outsized influence to any very small group of users skews our perceptions of public opinion.

As we know, anyone whose opinion about it is featured in the Globe and Mail has just the right amount of influence.

There is of course "astroturfing" on lemmy as well. But in such a human-scale social media environment it's harder for it to hide, easier for it to be seen for what it is. Many parts of the larger fediverse are slowly developing a culture of just blocking the accounts which appear to be there only to troll, mislead, discourage, and argue in bad faith. Instances that host too many of them get blocked themselves. There is no secret algorithm magically boosting outrage fuel to drive engagement. There is no censorship or manipulation of the discussion motivated by the interests of advertisers. There is no financial motive to tolerate everything that doesn't conflict with those interests. There is no way to buy the power to control the users.

With Bill C-63 Canada had the opportunity to enact an enormous bureaucracy with the power to disrupt our network, impose on it laws designed with the interests of giant corporate behemoths in mind, impose non-solutions to problems we don't have, create regulatory barriers to entry that protect the corporate social media platform mafia, and follow other countries down a blind alley we've been steered into by "big tech" lobbyists. It's a good thing it didn't pass, and I hope they don't try to revive it in anything like its previous form.

If the government of Canada wishes to begin fostering a healthier digital media landscape, let it first join the Fediverse. That will be a sign that there is some hope of it having the ability to make good decisions in this domain.