RightsCon Toronto 2018

Activism and innovation are two important foundations of thriving democracies and economies, yet both may be under threat with global trends in laws governing online intermediaries. New online platform regulation in safety and privacy, such as Germany’s NetzDG law and the EU’s GDPR, and emerging legislation on fake news and election foreign interference offer people important protections -- but what are the unintended consequences? Are the onerous fines acting as a deterrent to start-ups that want to host user-generated content but can’t afford it? Are data erasure laws being cited by people in power to disassociate themselves from wrongdoing? Are restrictions on fake news and electoral speech being used to silence community advocacy?

The public conversation up until now has been dominated by the impact such laws will have on large social media companies, with NetzDG even being nicknamed “the Facebook law”. In this panel, we’ll have a more nuanced conversation on the effects of these laws on the activism and innovation led by individuals and smaller organizations. We’ll also discuss solutions, with a focus on what online platforms, policy-makers and civil society can all do to protect activism and innovation.