There's the internet that the vast majority of us see, and then there's a whole series of nooks and crannies in other places that I think some of us would leave us very uncomfortable. It's another episode of the website 101 podcast.

This is the podcast for anyone who wants to learn more about building or managing websites. We are your hosts. I'm Mike Mela. Sean Smith is with me, Sean. How are you today? I'm very good. I'm very...

excited to talk with our guests about our topic for the day. Yeah, excellent. And Amanda Lutz is here. Amanda, how are you? I'm good. Thanks. How are you, Mike? I'm well. Thank you. I'm really excited today because I've been following this

guest's work for a long time through other podcasts. And I'm kind of delighted that we have them on the show. Amanda, why don't you tell us who is our guest today? I am super happy to today. We are talking to Michael Geist. He's a professor at

University of Ottawa and is very well known for all of his information and news about internet security and privacy. Michael holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-commerce law. So smart, nice guy.

Michael, hi, thanks for joining us today. Hi, Amanda. Thanks so much, everyone, for having me. Yeah, glad to have you here. And we know that there's a lot of people wanting time from you these days because of various topics.

We were talking about them before the show, actually. So we'll just jump right into these questions, maybe. The first one I wanted to ask you about is, I guess the biggest, well, it was the biggest news

until a couple of days ago, AI, artificial intelligence, and how that's a f- affecting everything. I've been hearing a lot of stories about voice modulation software and things like that. There was a story recently of a family in Newfoundland

who got a call from their son. He was in a car accident, needed money. They gave money, blah, blah, blah. It turns out it wasn't his son. It was an AI-generated imitation and that kind of thing. So it's going to have a big impact on fishing scams,

all that kind of stuff. What are your thoughts on that? Where do you think AI is going in the future? Yeah, OK, so start off with the... stuffy. Yeah, well listen, I think it's, like everyone recognizes at this date, everyone. I mean,

many people of course recognize that this danger have that sense based on their experience, whether it's playing around with chat GPT or some of the other kinds of large language models that we've started to see emerge that this is pretty clearly going to have an impact on just about every aspect

of daily life. And actually, we're recording this just after a faculty retreat that I had. And we devoted two hours to. AI and chat GPT looking at it from the perspective of how is it going to influence or impact

the delivery of legal services and lawyers? How does it impact education more broadly and the use that students make of it? How do we deal with issues around plagiarism and what does it mean if an AI did some of

the drafting that you produced? So, you know, it I think touches on just about everything. I'm going to submit. I think there's an awful lot that's incredibly positive about this. I would hope many people would see that as well.

Some of this stuff is astonishing and they're talking about... So, website building, it is frankly crazy to think that something like JatchyBT can take a look at a picture and say, hey, this is the website that I'd like to see have built

it. Here's the code I want you to build it in and suddenly it goes ahead and creates it. It's pretty amazing. That said, there's obviously risks and there are concerns about the veracity of some of

the content that's coming out. There's concerns about how this technology can be used as you just pointed to for potential fraud or other activities. There's bias related concerns. We know. where some of the data that's being used,

if they're built in biases inherent in the data itself, then that garbage in garbage out. If you've got that within the data that you're teaching, that's going to raise some of the same kinds of issues

on coming out of it. I think that points to the need to, I don't know if we can get ahead of these issues from a regulatory perspective, regulations move a lot slower than obviously the technology is moving,

but we clearly need to be mindful of it. I think we need to begin to establish some kind of guardrails. And. And we're pretty dependent on some of these larger companies, certainly, to exercise some restraint.

And even if the ones that we trust exercise restraint as your question alludes to, there's many other people that may not be nearly as trustworthy, who may use these technologies for all sorts of other purposes

that can be pretty nefarious. And whether or not we even have law enforcement or others who are at this stage up to the task of dealing with it, I think, is a pretty open question. Yeah. So you mentioned nefarious actors and that brings us up to TikTok bans and there's a lot of talk about

whether government should ban TikTok because it's, you know, Chinese government run and what about other technologies that we run by antagonistic states such as Russia or, you know, things like that. What are your thoughts about that?

Yeah, no, that's another great question. Actually, as mentioned, I have my own podcast of the law by podcast and did an episode specifically on the TikTok ban just a few weeks ago. And I'll link to that in the show notes.

OK, that would be great. And well, I guess, right as soon as I can tell you that I've got a podcast coming up with Aidan Gomez, who's the founder and CEO of Cohere AI, one of Canada's leading AI companies coming out shortly.

And he's got a lot of thoughts on some of these regulatory issues. In any event, on the TikTok ban, I think there's two separate elements here. There's the element of some of the privacy-related concerns

or other kinds of concerns that arise out of the use of that app. And then there's the data. sort of the connection to the Chinese government. And some might say that they're one and the same, although they're not often treated that way

when we see some of the discourse coming out of politicians and the like, you know, when Canada made the step of banning TikTok internally for government employees, they made the point that or they argued that, well,

Canadian privacy law raises concerns about the kind of uses that might take place, I have to admit, I kind of had to shake my head a little bit. The government is responsible for this privacy law.

the idea that somehow they've got no connection. Well, what can we do? The loss aren't that good. So we've got to take steps. I mean, yeah, this is your responsibility. And so I don't think that was a particularly worthy excuse.

And I have to say more broadly that in terms of the way social media functions and TikTok functions, I think a lot of things that it does are indistinguishable from other social media applications and services.

So if the concern is simply that we're uncomfortable with what this social media service is doing, then I think that it's a. hypocritical to suggest that the problem lies specifically with TikTok. I think it's a broader

concern and I think that there is a reasonable case to be made that our laws are outdated at this point in time and haven't adapted well to the current environment. So if the TikTok ban rests primarily on, we're really uncomfortable with the kind of data that's being collected and how it's

being used, then I must admit I don't see why this is a TikTok specific issue at all. And I also would note that there's a bit of hypocrisy with the government that they've got legislation like Bill C-11.

the Internet streaming bill where on the one hand we've got the government saying that TikTok is a critical part of the future of Canadian culture and we want to make sure that it contributes, makes mandatory contributions and helps the discoverability of Canadian

artists. And on the other hand, you've got a cabinet colleague down the hall who's banning the use of the app for government employees. I mean, there's a bit of a disconnect there. I'd like to get a small clarification.

When you say banning for government employees, you mean banning for government employees on government. owned hardware, not the personal hardware, correct? That's correct, but the way this has been interpreted

in a number of places actually has expanded the scope of that. So we've started to see, well, yes, so we've started to see bands in universities, first on university devices, but then we've also started to see universities

make strong recommendations, that these should not be used on university networks. We've seen healthcare providers who also may fall within that broader government scope, and we're not talking about federal now,

we're talking about provincial bands. that we've seen arise, or even municipal bans arise, gets us into that broader scope as well. So you're right to focus on the fact that it is specific to, many of the bans

are specific to government-owned devices that are used by employees. And when we say what is an employee, you need to be using TikTok, although if you're on a government-owned device, although if you're in a cultural ministry, presumably,

that's the same. But in a event, we've started to see this expand. In my own university, at the University of Ottawa, they did not fail. it, but they did issue a recommendation that people not use it.

And we've seen other universities go further than that. So I think it does go even beyond just the devices themselves. And then just quickly, that's all within the world of some of the privacy implications.

But the broader questions certainly about the involvement of the Chinese government and concerns about foreign government actors in this space is a somewhat different one. That is one that I think.

We're up, create some real challenges. We know how long it took, for example, Canada to come to any sort of decision on Huawei equipment. And so we, we, we, we struggle with the sort of the competing views of, of allowing the

market to make some of its own, own decisions and concerns about what some of this means from a governmental perspective. In the case of TikTok, I mean, at this stage, the app is so widely used and so popular that

I have to admit, it feels like it will be exceptionally difficult to put the, I guess the toothpaste back in the tube. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I know that our, our audience, especially, you know, web developers would use TikTok.

I mean, Amanda does our, our sort of social out. reach here for the podcast and she's been putting all kinds of clips on TikTok recently. We just kind of adopted it right before all of a sudden they started banning it on government

devices and we were like, well, it's very difficult to know what direction you should go and all that kind of thing. Just moving on to another question, you alluded to Bill C11. I'm going to jump to that one right now.

So for any listeners who don't know or any non-Canadian listeners, and Michael, correct me if I'm wrong about this. But my understanding about that bill is that it is. enforces Canadian content on certain platforms.

So here's an example I heard on a podcast. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but the problem that I heard someone say was that, let's say us, for example, we do a podcast about web development.

Maybe this law would enforce something like YouTube to show our podcast to Canadian users, even if they're maybe not interested in web development, but they're Canadian, and therefore, a lot of them might go, what?

I don't care about this, down. vote or whatever. And then YouTube interprets that as no one cares about these people, they're all getting downvoted, but in fact it's just they put us in front of the wrong eyes. Is

that accurate? And what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a great way to phrase the question. And there are, there are a lot of issues with, with CLL, we get into a number of them, but the specific one that you're focusing on,

this issue around the inclusion of user content and discoverability requirements that might arise are frankly exactly as you just described them. And government has insisted that the bill is solely about bringing the large streaming

services, the Netflixes of the world, into Canadian broadcast system, enforcing them to make contributions. I have a piece out, actually, as we record this today, that I was able to obtain under access to information, the internal estimates that the government has around this bill.

And it turns out that there's all sorts of stuff that's pretty exaggerated. They recognize that actually won't change employment all that much, if at all, that there's a lot. In Canada, in the film it's...

and television area. And in fact, for all the talk that Netflix doesn't contribute to Cancan internally, the government actually recognizes that they do. They've even created a separate category called

unofficial Cancan, where Netflix has done all kinds of things, but it can't be treated as Cancan. And they expect it, if once this bill becomes law, in what amounts to, I think, an accounting exercise,

suddenly they will change the way it's treated, and it will be treated as Cancan. In any event, that's the Netflix side. There is this user content, so. as you point out that brings in content that would appear on a YouTube

protect talk and the like and the concern there is as you described it that if this content is included and it's included it's so-called professional content or content that is some correlation to some commercial benefit

and this podcast might well be included in that then suddenly it's scoped within the it within the legislation and the CRTC is empowered to establish regularly that would require platforms like YouTube, let's say,

or that it includes others as well, to prioritize through presumably the algorithm, Canadian content. That doesn't mean this show per se, but it means Canadian content more generally. And so if part of the goal is say,

well, we're looking for Canadian podcasts, specifically more broadly that appear on YouTube as a means of trying to promote that for someone who searches podcasts or whatever. So they have to search on.

On YouTube, it's quite possible that that content will begin to surface more prominently, not because it reflects user interests, but rather because the platform is seeking to comply with the regulations that have been established by a Canadian regulator. The concern is, as you suggest,

if it's content that people don't necessarily want to watch, but is there, and even YouTube knows, let's say that, it's unlikely someone wants to watch or listen to this. It's there just because they're not our regular people who want to hear ours.

Clearly not. You'll be a beneficiary of this maybe. But for many others, the concern will be it's there. They may downvote, as you say. They may not click. They may not watch the completion. All of those things send signals to the YouTube algorithm that this is not great content.

And the risk is on a global level that the algorithm has downgraded this content because when it's been presented to people, people just don't seem that. interested. And so suddenly, especially if you've got large audiences outside the country,

that those audiences are put at risk. It's less likely that they're going to start seeing your content because YouTube's the signals to something like YouTube has been, it's not great content. Yeah, right. All right. So I also have my own separate channel about photography on YouTube.

It was suggested that Google or YouTube or any of these content type streamers will deprioritize Canadian content globally. Like they'll just shut us out entirely. Is this something that you've or what do you think about that?

Yeah, no, I don't think that's accurate. I don't think that they're... Okay. I don't... But I think that the fear is that the effect of the policy in Canada could be to deprioritize global. So it's not that they will proactively say, you know, we're gonna seek retribution for

this legislation and so we're going to deprioritize Canadian content globally, not at all. But instead, what I think is likely to happen is... Or the fear of what could happen is as we... been saying that that content will not be popular on a global within Canada and that

sends that signal that it's not great content on a global level. Right. So it would be an unintended side effect is that we would be deprioritized internationally. Okay. I think that's exactly right. And as an aside, the document that I obtained, which

had these internal government estimates highlights both that the government has almost no idea how this will actually be implemented, which. is just kind of got to shake your head a little bit. So they're not really even sure how much of this content

would be covered by within the legislation that might appear on YouTube. And in their estimates, it counts for 1% of what they believe will be the benefits coming out of this legislation and the economic benefits.

So all of this fighting, all of this concern for what is basically a rounding error in terms of what they think is the net benefit from this legislation. Right. Yeah. And it's tough because I know, like I used to be a musician

and I know that in the music industry, can con and that whole thing is really important to a lot of people. It's a good way for more amateur bands and that kind of thing to get their music out there.

If they have some legislative help, shall we say, that allows them to put their music in front of people that might not otherwise have found it. So I get that there are some people who have that. You know.

who see it as a benefit in that way, but for the all the reasons we just discussed, it's also problematic, of course. But at least with music and on radio stations, I mean, radio stations for decades have always

made sure to have a certain percentage of Canadian content, but still radio stations are like genre based, right? Yeah. So I mean, and with YouTube, it's not like you guys were all saying before, we can't

throw any podcast up on YouTube and expect everybody to like it. Yeah. In any case, can con or for our listeners, Canadian. content requirements have its time and place when it came in. But I think it hasn't kept up with the digital age.

And there was a big growth in quality of Canadian musicians, actors, anything related to entertainment short within 10 years of Canadian content going up. But I don't know that we still need it. And I'm sorry, off topic.

Let's get back on topic. OK, Amanda. Did you want to tackle another one of these questions we got on our list here? Or I know that we've been monopolizing a lot of the conversation here. So I'm giving you.

That's all right. I'm actually very much. head in the sand when it comes to news. I don't pay attention to a lot of it, but I did see on Reddit last night, the kid in the States who getting arrested after leaking all of the Pentagon documents

to his what was it his minecraft discord channel, like 500 plus documents. So current news that happened. Michael, I'm sure you've been bombarded with questions about that. Well, I'm not sure they've

been bombarded questions about that. You might be the first. Which idea that Minecraft on Discord? Yeah. Well, I think as generally speaking, it's rather shocking that these kinds of secrets are accessible to what was a relatively low level person

within that organization. But I think it also does highlight, and we've seen this for many, many years going back to Snowden and many other kinds of examples where there's the internet that the vast majority of us see.

And then there's a whole series of nooks and crannies in other places. that I think some of the stuff would leave us very uncomfortable. Even the non nefarious. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Discord is completely innocent.

Minecraft is absolutely nothing. And so the fact that it's like maybe somewhere where not everybody goes. So you're right. Nooks and crannies, but very PG. Although it did. It did make its way onto 4chan from what I understand it.

It went from the discord server to a different server and then someone shared it on 4chan and that's how it kind of got out because people pay attention to 4chan for some reason. Now this content does as you see, the content does propagate.

And that's, you know, that's of course one of the big challenges that is often faced is that once what the leak happens and something's available online as they say the internet never forgets. And the stuff because it'd be, you know, just as propagates in such a way that it's almost impossible

to stop its broad distribution and dissemination. Hey, Amanda here. If you're enjoying the website 101 podcast, we'd love it if you could give us a positive review. You can go do that on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast.

Reviews help new listeners. find out about us and also allow us to keep doing the show. Thanks. So this is more directly related to websites in general. What are your thoughts on GDPR cookie consent like the European Union has?

Do you think that will or should come to Canada? What are the pros or cons? Okay. Well, I think, you know, as your listeners may know, there is legislation currently before the House of Commons that does involve reform and updating to Canadian privacy law and part

of the goal. is to make it more GDPR like. Oh, I did not know that. Okay, so there is a Bill C27. It's not identical, but it moves us in that direction. Whether that ends up requiring the inclusion

of a kind of the ubiquitous cookie consents that we find, I guess will depend on. What the final form of the bill looks like if it passes and then how it gets interpreted by the privacy commissioner,

I must admit my own view is that I think it's privacy theater more than privacy. protection. I like I'm sure your listeners, I've clicked through at least a half dust probably more this morning. They're there, air and annoyance. It doesn't mean

anybody reads the privacy policy. It doesn't provide, I don't take any real additional protection. In fact, I think we ought to recognize that there is no rational reason for anybody to read every privacy policy. First, you couldn't do

it if you wanted. I mean, you'd spend your time doing pretty much nothing but reading privacy policy. So what exactly? at least a point in it. But even beyond that, these are non-negotiated agreements.

There's very little in the way that we can actually change or anything like that. And they're often so amorphous in terms of some of the descriptions that it's very difficult to know what it is that you're consenting to begin with, even if they're even asking

your consent. They're basically saying that, yeah, you know that this thing is there. So I'm not sure that it really achieves very much other than I suppose to kind of put that privacy issue. sort of front and center for a person

when they access the website. But as is the case with a lot of these kinds of privacy related notifications, we, you know, there is, there's kind of, I guess a bit of a sweet spot where between no awareness and sort of bombardment

of privacy related or security related notifications, you wanna land somewhere in the middle where someone takes this efficiently seriously that it actually adds some value. And so, you know, mandated disclosure.

on every cookie that you encounters is ridiculous. It achieves nothing. And the same, of course, would be true with security breaches. And I know that's an issue of concern for you as well. So if we set a threshold that any time a USP key,

I'm dating myself, I even say, call it a USP key, but any time we see some sort of external storage device or whatever it is with some personal data is gone or there's been what we think might be some sort of hack

or access. And we then notify everybody in the universe that we think. might potentially be affected by this, then people would be similarly bombarded with these notifications and they wouldn't act on them because it would just come so regularly there's

nothing you could do. So we need to establish- I got notified this morning. There you go. You need to establish a threshold that is at least high enough that it happens when there is some kind of risk involved so that the person will potentially take action

that track your bank account or try to see whether or not there is a potential risk of identity theft that's going on based on this. So there are things that change your password. I mean there's a number-

things you can do. But, you know, where we, too much of a good thing becomes too much. And I think cookie notifications would be a good example of that. Okay. Well, I hope that if they are considering something similar for Canada, they consult

some web developers because I can't think of a single web developer I've ever met who thinks GDPR was a good idea. European or otherwise, they all hate it. I mean, do you guys know any web developers who think, hey, it's great that we have this cookie consent

on now? And as a user, it pops up. The first thing I do is like, just accept all except all cookies. Accept or decline, just whatever. I just click a button because I just want to be done with it.

I mean, half the time it's not even accept or decline. It says something like, by using this website, you are accepting whatever. So if you don't accept, you have to just leave and you can't get the functionality.

That doesn't sound like something that could be legally enforceable either. I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but you're just telling me I have no choice. Go find your recipes on a different website, you're fine.

Just to be clear though, GDPR is about more than just cookie. So, you know, we're in different worlds a little bit, because in my world with a lot of privacy people, they're a lot of fans of GDPR, not per se because of cookie

consents, but because it does contain a whole series of different provisions that I think actually are pretty valuable and that we would do well to seek to emulate, not the least of which includes some real penalties. I mean, one of the

reasons that I think we struggle a bit with privacy compliance in Canada is that the penalties are not serious and so... You know, you can argue when you make the case that it's a rational choice for someone

to say, well, you know, it's not that I want to violate the law, but I'm going to ask what happens if I'm not fully compliant. And the answer in Canada right now is not all that much. You might get a sternly worded letter from a privacy commissioner at some point in time,

but not really much more than that. Yeah. And also in our actually, you're right because the Google Analytics is another thing that often sort of rears its head with regard to GDPR. I've heard some people say, you know, Google Analytics is an infringement on people's privacy

in the same way. that you're tracking them when you visit, you know, if they have that set up on your website and they visit your website, you're tracking them, albeit somewhat anonymously. And some people think,

oh, that you should be asked for consent, even just to track the fact that you were on the website through Google Analytics and all kinds of things like that. I guess some people will be into that. Yeah, there are some, well, listen, some people, you know, there's obviously been mounting concern

about what is sometimes described as surveillance capitalism and the You know, the basic business model of many of these sites, which is tracking and gathering as much information as possible. And people long for the days when we had an internet that we could do a lot of things

without those, some of these kinds of things happening. And so some of these rules are an attempt to try to push back a little bit and try to restore a greater amount of power in the hands of individual users.

And I think that's a really valuable thing. As we've been talking about with some of the the implications of when you go to go, well, some might say it's not too far, but in my view it would be that if you too much of a good thing just isn't, and in this instance

there are certain outcomes that come out of something like the GDPR that I don't think really advance the cause of greater privacy protection. If anything leads people, either provides a false sense of security or even more just

becomes an irritant and privacy is associated with being a giant pain as opposed to a to something that is a fundamental human right. And we ought to be finding ways to respect within the context of what we're doing.

Right. Right. OK, I'm going to jump to a really just, I guess this is more like a personal question. What do you think about Elon Musk's changes to Twitter since he's gotten on board with regard to, OK,

anything goes, free speech, whatever, say whatever you want. At least that's what he claims he's about. Although apparently there's been some cases of him banning people that are arguing against him and stuff like that.

What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I don't. Well, I don't think that he's all about free speech. I mean, I think there's this really problematic speech that we see flourishing in now on Twitter in a way that wasn't before, but there have been steps taken at times to suppress some

speech. And, you know, consistent with some of the things that I argue with respect to C11 is that, you know, part of expression rights are both the right to speak, but also the ability to be heard.

And in fact, some of the changes that we've seen from Musk on Twitter really live. people's ability to be hurt. You know, he's trying to move towards the subscription model where your ability to be heard is tied to your ability to pay. And I think that's a significant loss.

More broadly, honestly, I use Twitter a lot. And it was, for me, really important part of I sort of just my daily life, I guess, in terms of sort of news consumption and engaging with people and taking some of my ideas and having a

chance to put them out there. And I find this whole, the last number of months incredibly depressing. And surely there were better ways to flush $44 billion down the toilet. And I just don't get it.

And I put up a presence on Mastodon and use post from time to time. And I get that those communities have some value. But clearly it's not easy to replace this. And. And it's just not the place that it was.

And I just find it really sad. Some of the people who I really enjoyed engaging with have left all together. And as for the rest, the tools that I used to use, I used to use Tweetbot. And Tweetbot no longer works.

And we're going to see API changes coming very, very soon too. And those will have a further impact, both on research on Twitter and the rest of it. So it's pretty sad. Yeah. I would agree with that.

Although I've tried to weed out all social media from my life. And it's not easy because everyone around me is on social media. And then I can't reach them or whatever. Well, I find that all social media platforms have been like that.

They always have this good intention. Oh, share news with your friends. Oh, limit it to 140 characters. Oh, share images with the world. And then through monetization and consumerism and ads and celebrities and paid endorsements and everything,

it's like all of these social media platforms have just You know taking a big nose dive eventually You gotta pay the bills somehow so you gotta you gotta make money and it Affects how you do business, right? Yeah

So here in Canada. There was recently a big merger between two of our big telecoms Rogers and Shaw Michael, I'm sure you have plenty to say about that. I know I do but I'll leave to you I've got a number of non PG related opinions

Yeah, I so but in just for some context for our non-Canadian listeners have about three telecoms here that are of any, you know, three now. I think we had four. Yeah, three now. It's not like it is in the states where there's a lot of different options.

So the idea that one bought another big one, basically people talk about it's not a monopoly, but what do they call it? Several. A oligopoly. A oligopoly. A oligopoly. Yeah. And it's basically our government agency, the CRTC that's supposed to like take care of the people.

They're toothless and useless. At least that's our opinion. Michael, what... you say. I'm just trying to bite my tongue and stop and not do any bad words. It's a bad job. Oh, okay. No swears. Good job on that. Yeah, tell us what you really think.

I wish I could. No, it's been, you know, I think this, the dye was cast a number of years ago with a different merger with Bell MTS in Manitoba and they, we saw Rogers basically used the precisely, the same playbook and, you know, their initial proposal was worth.

their next proposal, then was only a pastor. Next proposal was scarcely better, where they found just weakest possible competitor they could find and say, okay, we'll transfer the freedom assets there.

This one here with video, Tron, they'll say is the best of a bad situation, but I think the reality is one, it's problematic when you get to pick your main competitor or one of your main competitors.

And so I think that that speaks to the competition issue. that if you basically let, you know, Rogers, and this is true for all the major players. You know, this is a long-term game, they think in terms of decades,

not in terms of years, and they're going to make a choice in terms of how they structure these deals, where they're even willing to take a bit of a hit in the short term for the long-term benefit

of a less competitive environment. And I think that, you know, we would have done better to have had a true independent player, we did better with more foreign competition, which we don't have, we do better with,

what are known as MVNOs, more. And. virtual network operators that write on these providers and inject some competition. We just haven't seen a lot of that and we get some tough talk occasionally from a politician,

but it doesn't amount to much. It used to be that the carriers tried to deny that there was a competition issue at all. It's our geography or you don't really know. The prices are just fine. I think some of that's gone away now now. It's a quality of the networks or

negotiate better and you'll get a better job. But truth... These people go to a lot of other, you know, canoes are stupid and many travel, especially now post COVID and you go to other places and you do see that there is more competition,

there is more choice and there is better pricing and you can't really chalk that up to anything other than competition. I remember just lastly, a number of years ago, Rogers introduced its Rome-like home service,

which was seen as really great because roaming charges were one of the things that we were paying a lot for. And this was initially was like a $5 flat fee for per day. for roaming in the United States.

And over time, that's now I believe $12 or $14. I mean, it's not even that long a period of time in the same, and there's been similar increases for international as well. And that just highlights where we're at,

that it's just not a competitive enough environment. The only competition for roaming really comes from purchasing e-Sims or local Sims when you're there. And I think those are good options, but a lot of people still want to maintain a connection

with their existing phone number back home beyond. on something like WhatsApp. And so there are limits to some of these alternative choices, trade-offs in a sense. Right. Yeah. I would like to bring up one more question,

pulling back a little bit more related to websites and our demographic here. Is it practical to require websites or services to allow users to delete their account and all data associated with it?

So sometimes you go in to manage your account. There's an option you can delete your account. I don't see it very often. What are your thoughts on that? law. I don't know whether it's practical or not. I think it's the law. So I think

listeners better find a way to make it doable. There isn't any question that a person's website is personally identifiable information. You've obtained effectively of their consent, either express or implied to have collected and used that for the purposes of providing

the service. And if your user doesn't want the service anymore and doesn't want you to continue to maintain that data. You got to, about that failure to do so is violating the law. Being able to delete it, should it be something that they can just log into the account,

click a link, get a confirmation it's deleted, or a lot of places make it more difficult. Like you need to email us under a full moon before we'll delete it. Right. Yeah, I know that's a fair question.

And we see that, of course, with canceling different kinds of services. It's often times much easier to join than it is to exit a lot of these. A lot of these services feel a bit like the Hotel California.

where you can check in, but never leave. And so I, and the law doesn't speak specifically. I think if, you know, if you had a site that made it nigh impossible to essentially exercise your rights,

then that could well serve as the subject matter of a complaint. But you don't necessarily have to make it easy either. So, no, you don't need a one, you know, the law doesn't say you need a click here

to delete all the information. There are other ways to deal with that. Fair enough. Yeah, I, I, I subscribe to one of those food kit delivery things and I have tried a number of times to cancel.

And now I don't mind so much because every time I do, I have to reach out to them through their email address, start a conversation. And to get me to not cancel, they just send me a bunch of free ones.

They say, hey, I'll give you the next month for free. And I'll, okay. And then I do that every few months and I just get a bunch of free stuff. It's not so bad. And that kicks. Well, this has been an excellent conversation.

Michael, thank you so much for your time today. I think everyone will get a lot of good information at this. Thanks a lot. Yeah, I really appreciate this. This has been. helpful and informative.

Oh great, I'm glad. It was a lot of fun chatting. The website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Lutz. You can also find me online at amandalutz.com. And by me, Mike Mela, find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mela.

I'm Sean Smith, your cohost. You can find me online at my website, caffeinecreation.ca