Elon Musk on Canada’s move to curb online hate content: ‘This sounds insane’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has commented on a Canadian legislation that aims to curb online hate content and create stronger online protection for people in the country, especially children.

The Independent newspaper reported that Musk on Tuesday retweeted a news article, which “appeared to be an untrue claim”, that the legislation would give power to the police to arrest anyone who has ever posted hate speech, even before the bill was introduced in February this year.

“This sounds insane if accurate! @CommunityNotes, please check,” he said.

Community Notes is the X microblogging platform’s crowdsourced fact checking service.

The bill, dubbed as the Online Harms Act, was introduced by the Justin Trudeau-led Canadian government on February 26.

“The bill would create stronger online protections for children and better safeguard everyone in Canada from online hate and other types of harmful content,” the government had said in an official statement at the time.

“It would hold online platforms, including livestreaming and user-uploaded adult content services, accountable for reducing users’ exposure to harmful content on their platforms and help prevent its spread.”

The legislation would also enforce the removal of content that “sexually victimises a child or revictimises a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent”.

It will further increase the maximum sentences for illegal hate speech, while allowing citizens to report discriminatory speech to a human rights tribunal, which could entail a compensation up to 20,000 Canadian dollars or a fine of 50,000 Canadian dollars, the Independent reported.