---
title: Internet Privacy with Michael Geist
date: 2023-04-25T05:00:00-04:00
author: Sean Smith
canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-11/internet-privacy/"
section: Podcast
---
<!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Guest Michael Geist
Law professor at the University of Ottawa where i hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law
[ ](@mgeist)
Season 06 Episode 11 – Apr 25, 2023
40:10 [Show Notes](#show-notes)
## Internet Privacy with Michael Geist
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[](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-06/S06-E11-internet-privacy.mp3)
In this episode we discuss internet privacy with Michael Geist who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.
### Show Notes
- Artificial Intelligence and phishing scams
- Chat GPT
- Government TikTok Bans
- Bill C11 - Canadian content requirements
- Potential negative consequences to how YouTube's algorithm shows Canadian content.
- Pentagon Leak on Discord
- GDPR and cookie consent
- Bill C-27
- Surveillance capitalism
- Elon Musk & Twitter
- Social Media
- Canadian Telecoms, mergers, and consumer protection
- Website account deletion
### Show Links
- [Micheal Geist](https://www.michaelgeist.ca/)
- [Law Bytes Podcast](https://www.michaelgeist.ca/podcast/)
- [Bill C-11](https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-11)
- [Bill C-27](https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-27)
Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology.
**\[00:00\]** **Amanda:** There's the internet that the vast majority of us see and then there's a whole series of of nooks and crannies in other places that I think some of the stuff
**\[00:09\]** **Mike:** would leave us very uncomfortable it's another episode of the website one-on-one podcast this is the podcast for anyone who wants to learn more about building or managing websites we are your hosts I'm Mike Mella Sean Smith is with me Sean How are you today?
**\[00:30\]** **Sean:** I'm very good and very excited to talk with our guests about our topic for the day.
**\[00:36\]** **Mike:** 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 him 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. professor at the 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 affecting everything.
I've been hearing a lot of stories about, you know, 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?
**\[02:11\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, okay, so start off with the easy stuff, eh? Yeah, well listen, I think everyone recognizes at this day and everyone, I mean many people Of course, recognize that this data have that sense based on their experience, whether it's playing around with ChatGPT or some of the other kind of large language models that we've started to see emerge, that it's 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 in. We devoted two hours to AI and ChatGPT looking at it from the perspective of how is going an 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, I think touch is on just about everything. I think there's an awful lot that's incredibly positive about this. I would hope many people would see that as well. You know, some of the stuff is astonishing And if we're talking about website building, it is frankly crazy to think that something like JGBT 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, you know, 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 we're pretty dependent on some of these larger companies certainly to exercise some restraint. And even if the ones that we trust exercise restrained as your question loads 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 and thinks a pretty open question.
Yeah, now that's another great question. Actually, I guess we mentioned I have my own podcast of the Law Bytes podcast, and did an episode specifically on the TikTok ban just a few weeks ago. And well, I guess what it's worth, I can tell you that I've got a podcast coming up with Aiden Gomez, who's the founder and CEO of Cohear 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.
**\[04:54\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so you mentioned nefarious actors and that brings us up to TikTok bands and there's a lot of talk about whether governments should ban TikTok because it's Chinese government run and what about other technologies that we run by antagonistic states such as Russia, or things like that? What are your thoughts about that?
**\[05:19\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, now that's another great question. Actually, I guess we mentioned I have my own podcast of the Law Bytes podcast, and did an episode specifically on the TikTok band just a few weeks ago. And. Oh, I'll link to that in the show notes.
Okay, that would be great. And well, I guess what it's worth, I can tell you that I've got a podcast coming up with Aiden Gomez, who's the founder and CEO of Cohear 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 bet, 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 sort of the connection to the Chinese government. And some might say that they're one in the same, although they're not often treated that way when we see some of the discourse coming out 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 while Canadian privacy law raises concerns about the kind of uses in my take place. I have to admit, I kind of had to shake my head a little bit. The government is responsible for these privacy laws, the idea that somehow they've got no connection.
Well, what can we do? The laws aren't that good. So we've got to take steps. I mean, no, 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 the 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 bit hypocritical is just 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 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 C11, so the internet's streaming bill, we're on the one hand, we've got the government saying that TikTok's a critical part of the future of Canadian culture, and we want to make sure that it contributes 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.
**\[07:59\]** **Sean:** I'd like to get a small clarification. Can you say banning for government employees? Do you mean banning for government employees on government-owned hardware, not their personal hardware, correct?
**\[08:09\]** **Amanda:** 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 not that they should not should not be used on university networks. We've seen healthcare providers You also may fall within that broader government scope, and we're not talking about federal now, or now we're talking about provincial bands that we've seen arise, or even municipal bands 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 bands are specific to government-owned devices that are used by employees, and when we say what is an employee 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 any event, we've started to see this expand. In my own university, the University of Ottawa, they did not ban 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 in the world of some sort 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. And that is one that I think creates 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 struggle with sort of the competing views of allowing the market to make some of its 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.
**\[10:10\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I know that our audience, especially web developers, would use TikTok. I mean, Amanda does our social outreach 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. And just moving on to another question, you alluded to Bill C11. I'm gonna 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 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 viewers, 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?
**\[11:34\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, that's a great way to phrase the question. And there are a lot of issues with CLLV. 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 that Netflix is of the world into Canadian broadcast system enforcing them to make contributions. I have a piece out actually as a 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. at all, that there's a law in Canada in the film and television area, and in fact, for all the talk that Netflix doesn't contribute to CanCon internally, the government actually recognizes that they do, they've even created a separate category called unofficial CanCon, where Netflix has done all kinds of things, but it can't be treated as CanCon, and they expect that if, once this bill becomes law, that they, in what amounts to, I think, an accounting exercise, suddenly they will change the way it's treated, and it will be treated as CanCon. In any event, that's the Netflix side. There is this user content side as you point out that 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 legislation and the CRTC is empowered to establish regulations that would require platforms like YouTube, let's say, or better includes others as well, to prioritize through presumably the algorithm, Canadian content.
And that doesn't mean this show per se, but it means, can any content were generally and so if part of the goal is say, while 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, and they happen to search on YouTube, it's quite possible that that content will begin to surface more prominently, not because it reflects user interests, 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, that if it's content that people don't necessarily want to watch, and even YouTube knows, let's say that it's unlikely someone wants to watch or listen to this. It's there just because there are no regular people who do want to hear our Clearly not. You'll be a beneficiary of this maybe, but for many others, the concern will be it's there. They may down vote 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 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, 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.
**\[15:13\]** **Sean:** 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 heard or what do you think about that?
**\[15:43\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, no, I don't think that's accurate. I don't think that's accurate. 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. Instead, what I think is likely to happen is, or the fear of what could happen is, as we've 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.
**\[16:22\]** **Sean:** Right, so it would be an unintended side effect is that we would be de-prioritized internationally. Okay.
**\[16:30\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, 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 you gotta 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 one percent of what they believe will be the benefits coming out of this legislation and the economic benefit.
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.
**\[17:13\]** **Mike:** Right, yeah. And it's tough because I know, like I used to, always saying, I used to be a musician, and I know that in the music industry, you know, can-con and that whole thing is really important to a lot of people that, you know, it's a good way for more amateur bands and that kind of thing to get their music out there if they have, you know, some legislative help, shall we say, that allows them to put their music in front of people that might not otherwise have found it, you know. 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? 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.
**\[18:09\]** **Sean:** In any case, Ken Conn or for our listeners, Canadian content requirements, had it's time in place when it came in, but I think it hasn't kept up with the digital age. 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 okay Amanda did you want to tackle
**\[18:43\]** **Mike:** another one of these questions we got on our list here or I know that you've been we've been monopolizing a lot of the conversation here so I'm giving you that's all right I am I'm actually very much ahead 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 is 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
**\[19:23\]** **Amanda:** about that. Well, I'm not sure they've been bombarded questions about that, but you might be the first
**\[19:29\]** **Mike:** which idea that Minecraft on Discord?
**\[19:31\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, well, I think it's generally speaking, it's rather shocking that these kinds of secrets are accessible to what, it was a relatively low level person within that organization. Yeah, 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, see and then there's a whole series of of nooks and crannies in other places that I think some
**\[20:02\]** **Mike:** of stuff would leave us very uncomfortable. Even the non nefarious. Yeah yeah absolutely. Discords completely innocent. Minecraft is absolutely nothing and so the fact that it's totally like maybe somewhere where not everybody goes so you write nooks and crannies but very PG. Although it did it did make its way on to forechan from what I understand it. It went from from the Discord server to a different server and then someone shared that for Shann and that's how it kind of got out because people pay attention to for a chance for some reason.
**\[20:31\]** **Amanda:** And this content does, as you say, 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 a leak happens and something's available online as they say the internet never forgets. And the stuff, because it be, you know, just as propagates in such a way that it's almost impossible to stop. It's broad distribution and dissemination.
**\[20:59\]** **Mike:** 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 podcasts. Reviews help new listeners find out about us and also allow us to keep doing the show.
**\[21:14\]** **Sean:** Thanks. So this is more directly related to websites in general. So 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?
**\[21:31\]** **Amanda:** 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.
**\[21:45\]** **Sean:** Oh, I did not know that.
**\[21:47\]** **Amanda:** Okay. So there is a Bill C27. not identical, but it moves us in that direction. Whether that ends up requiring the inclusion of a kind of the ubiquitous cookie-kin sense that we find, I guess, will depend on. With 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. You know, I like, I'm sure your listeners, I've clicked through at least a half, that's probably more of this morning. You know, they just, they're there, Aaron and Oiance, 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 is the 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. So, and they're often so amorphous in terms of some of the descriptions that is very difficult to know what it is that you're consenting to begin with, even if they're even asking or 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, 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 sufficiently seriously that actually add some value. And so, you know, mandated disclosures on every cookie that you encounter is ridiculous. It doesn't achieve nothing.
And the same, of course, would be true with security breaches. You know, I don't know that's a issue concerned for you as well. So, you know, if we set a threshold that any time a USP key, dating myself might even say call it a USB key, but, you know, anytime we see some sort of external storage device or whatever it is with some personal data has 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. You'll then, then people would be similarly bombarded with these notifications, and they wouldn't act on them because it would just come so regularly that there's nothing you could do. So we, 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 you know, 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 of 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.
**\[25:04\]** **Mike:** 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.
**\[25:25\]** **Sean:** And as a user, it pops up. The first thing I do is like,
**\[25:29\]** **Mike:** just accept all cookies, accept all cookies.
**\[25:31\]** **Sean:** Accept or decline, just whatever. I just click a button because I just wanna be done with it.
**\[25:37\]** **Mike:** 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 if you don't accept you have to just leave and you can't get the functionality that doesn't sound like something
**\[25:49\]** **Sean:** That could be legally enforceable either. I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but like you're just telling me I have no choice
**\[25:55\]** **Mike:** Go find your recipes on a different website. You're fine
**\[25:59\]** **Amanda:** Just to be clear though. GDPR is about more just cookie consets so yeah, you know, we're in different And different worlds a little bit, because in my world with a lot of privacy people, there's 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 include 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 can argue that you make the case, and it's a rational choice for someone to say, well, it's not that I want to violate the law, but I'm going to ask what happens if I'm not fully complied.
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.
**\[26:53\]** **Mike:** 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 sense 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.
**\[27:27\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, well, listen, some people, you know, there's obviously been mounting concern about what is sometimes described the surveillance capitalism and the, you know, the, the basic business model of many of these sites, which is tracking and gathering as much information is possible and people long for the days when we had internet that we could do a lot of things without, 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 greater amount of power in the hands of individual users, and I think that's a really valuable thing. But as we've been talking about with some of the kind of implications of when you go to go, well, some might say it's not too far, but in my view would be that if you too much of a good thing just isn't. And in this instance, there are certain outcomes have 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 something that is a fundamental human right and we ought to be finding ways to respect within the in the context of what we're doing.
**\[28:52\]** **Mike:** Right, right. Okay, I'm gonna 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, okay, 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?
**\[29:16\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I don't think he's all about free speech. I mean, I think there's this really problematic speech that we see flourishing and now on Twitter in a way that it 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 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 limit people's ability to be heard. 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, I use Twitter a lot, and it was, for me, a really important part of I sort of just by daily life, I guess, in terms of news consumption and engaging with people and taking some of my ideas and having the 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. I just don't get it.
And, you know, I put up a presence on Mastodon and use Post from time to time. I get that those communities have some value, but clearly it's not easy to replace this 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 in the longer works and how, you know, 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. It's pretty sad.
**\[31:24\]** **Mike:** Yeah. I would agree with that. Although I'm trying 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, you know. Yeah. 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 taken a big nose dive eventually.
**\[32:00\]** **Sean:** Well, you've got to pay the bills somehow. So you've got to make money and it affects how you do business,
**\[32:08\]** **Mike:** right? Yeah. So here in Canada, there was recently a big merger between two of our big telecoms, Rodgers and Shaw. Michael, I'm sure you have plenty to say about that. I know
**\[32:22\]** **Sean:** I do, but I leave to you. I've got a number of non-PG-related opinions. Yeah. So, but in
**\[32:32\]** **Mike:** And just for some context for our non-Canadian listeners, we have about three telecoms here that are of any, you know, three now significant. I think we have four. We have three now. We have four maybe. And 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,
**\[32:55\]** **Sean:** but what do they call it? Several. A oligopoly market. I'll look up. 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
**\[33:09\]** **Mike:** opinion. Michael, what do you say? I'm just trying to bite my tongue and stop and not do any bad words. You did a bad job. Oh, okay. No swears. Good job on that. Yeah, tell us what
**\[33:21\]** **Amanda:** you really think. I wish I could. No, it's been, you know, I think this, the die was cast a number of years ago, with a different merger with Bell MTS in Manitoba, and we saw Rogers basically used the same playbook, and their initial proposal was worse. Their next proposal then was scarcely better where they found just weakest possible competitor they could find and say, okay, we'll transfer the Freedom assets there.
That's why to hear with video trot is, 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 speaks to the competition issue that if you basically let Rogers, and this is true for all the major players, 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 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, mobile virtual network operators that ride 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, and you know, 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. You know, I think some of that's gone away now, now it's a quality of the networks or, you know, negotiate better, and you'll get a better job, but truth is, people go to a lot of other keys 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 Roam-like home service which was seen is really great because roaming charges were the things that we paid we're paying a lot for and this was initially like a $5 flat fee 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. It's just not a competitive enough environment. The only competition for roaming really comes from purchasing eSIMs 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 something like WhatsApp.
And so there are limits to some of these alternative choices trade-offs in the sense.
**\[36:32\]** **Sean:** 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, you know, 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? Well, I don't know
**\[37:04\]** **Amanda:** whether it's practical or not. I think it's the law. So I think, I think listeners better find a a way to make it doable. There isn't any question that a person's website is personally identifiable information. You've obtained effectively their consent. They're expressed 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.
**\[37:41\]** **Sean:** 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. You need to email us under a full moon before we'll delete it. Right.
**\[37:57\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I know. That's a fair question. And we see that, of course, with canceling different kinds of services, it's often times There's much easier to join than it is to exit a lot of these services feel like the Hotel California, where you can check in but never leave.
And so the law doesn't speak specifically. I think 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, the law doesn't say you need a click here to delete all the information.
There are other ways to deal with that.
**\[38:42\]** **Mike:** Fair enough. Yeah. 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. Hey, I'll give you the next month for free. Oh, okay.
And then I do that every few months that I just get a bunch of free stuff. It's not so bad.
And that kicks. Well, this has been 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.
**\[39:19\]** **Sean:** Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate this. This has been helpful and informative.
**\[39:23\]** **Amanda:** Oh, great. I'm glad it was a lot of fun chatting.
**\[39:26\]** **Mike:** The website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at AmandaLoots.com. And by me, Mike Mella, find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella.
**\[39:43\]** **Sean:** I am Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me online at my website, caffeinecreation.ca and link down at caffeinecreations. I'm not sure how to do it. You'll see. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
Close Transcript
Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact).
[](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 06
- 1 [ Tools of the Trade](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-1/tools-of-the-trade/)
- 2 [ Website Contract Advice From an Actual Lawyer](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-2/website-contract-advice-from-an-actual-lawyer/)
- 3 [ Choosing a CMS](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-3/choosing-a-cms/)
- 4 [ Tips for Website Maintenance](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-4/tips-for-website-maintenance/)
- 5 [ Working with Conflicting Personalities](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-5/working-with-conflicting-personalities/)
- 6 [ Building an Online Course with Jane Atkinson](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-6/building-an-online-course-with-jane-atkinson/)
- 7 [ PodCamp Toronto 2023 Recap](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-7/podcamp-toronto-2023-recap/)
- 8 [ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly about RFPs](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-8/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-about-rfps/)
- 9 [ Here's how to work from paradise](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-9/heres-how-to-work-from-paradise/)
- 10 [ Rebroadcast: Pimp Your Typography](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-10/rebroadcast-pimp-your-typography/)
- 11 [ Internet Privacy with Michael Geist](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-11/internet-privacy/)
- 12 [ Lessons from a plugin developer with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-12/lessons-from-a-plugin-developer-with-ben-croker/)
- 13 [ Stand Out on Social Media with Jessica Perreault](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-13/social-media-with-jessica-perreault/)
### All Seasons
- [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/)
- [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/)
- [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/)
- [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/)
- [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/)
- [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/)
- [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/)
- [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/)
- [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/)
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