Safe Social Media Act

Part 1 enacts the Digital Safety Act, whose purpose is, among other things, to promote the safety of persons in Canada, particularly children, reduce harms caused to them as a result of harmful content online and ensure that the operators of regulated social media services, regulated chatbot services and other regulated online services are transparent and accountable with respect to their duties under that Act. That Act, among other things, (a) imposes on the operators of regulated services (i) a duty to act responsibly in respect of the regulated social media services that they operate, including by implementing measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that users will be exposed to harmful content on the services, by providing tools to users to enable them to block other users and flag harmful content and by labelling synthetic content, (ii) a duty to act responsibly in respect of the regulated chatbot services that they operate, including by implementing measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that the chatbot will communicate harmful content to a user, measures to ensure intervention in crisis situations and measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that the chatbot will engage in certain harmful behaviours, (iii) a duty to protect children in respect of all of the regulated services that they operate by integrating into those services design features that are set out in the regulations, by implementing minimum-age restrictions for accessing pornographic content on regulated services, and, if provided for by regulations, by implementing minimum-age restrictions for being able to have an account with, or being otherwise registered with, regulated social media services, (iv) a duty, in respect of the regulated social media services that they operate, to make inaccessible to persons in Canada, in certain circumstances, content on that service that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent, and (v) a duty to be transparent in respect of all of the regulated services that they operate, including by submitting a digital safety plan to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to assist it in determining whether an operator is complying with its duties under that Act; (b) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations to make the operators of other online services subject to the duty to protect children and the duty to be transparent; (c) provides that persons in Canada may make a complaint to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada that content on a regulated social media service is content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor or intimate content communicated without consent and authorizes the Commission to make an order requiring the operator of the service to make that content inaccessible to persons in Canada if the person making the complaint has used their best efforts to seek recourse from the operator of the service under that Act; and (d) provides that persons in Canada may make submissions to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada respecting the measures taken by the operator of a regulated service to comply with its duties under that Act. Part 2 enacts the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act, which establishes the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, which has powers, duties and functions under the Digital Safety Act. The Part also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.