Canada’s government directly leaned on social media platforms to censor news and tweets

Documents that have become available recently and reports based on them, say that in Canada, too, the government is effectively trying to pressure social media sites to remove certain news articles – but apparently, at least in one case, without success. The case relates to links to a Toronto Sun article that has not been named, and the “request” for censorship came from the the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada in September 2021. The board is considered an independent body, but it reports to Canada’s parliament via the immigration minister. The claim made against the article was that it featured “serious errors of fact risking” – and furthermore, it is alleged that this would undermine public confidence in the board’s real or purported independence, and of trust in the system handling refugees. source: Michael Geist For now, neither the Board nor the newspaper in question are responding to queries, the Canadian Press outlet said. As for why Facebook and Twitter – to whom the request was addressed, and who are normally, and particularly at that time, very quick to “pull the censorship trigger” – happened to deny it – it turns out they thought they were able to tell Canada’s government that since the article wasn’t original content on the platform itself, i.e., this was a link, it was none of their business. (Note the marked difference in the way Twitter handled links to the New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop – which proved to be…Canada’s government directly leaned on social media platforms to censor news and tweets