Censorship of an episode of the Quebec series Caleb’s daughters by the Netflix platform illustrates what happens when multinationals are allowed to decide what appears on our screens. Some worry about the caricatural excesses of extremists who claim to censor everything that bothers them. But there is worse. By letting international platforms dominate the Canadian market, we have subordinated our access to audiovisual works to the reflexes of companies that judge their acceptability according to cultural codes that are not necessarily in phase with those that prevail here.
Online platforms practice censorship that reflects their values, not necessarily ours. For example, a few years ago, Facebook mechanically censored images of paintings featuring nudes. We will remember the controversy about the censorship of the painting The origin of the world, by Gustave Courbet. Social networks have censored sites dealing with topics such as breastfeeding. On the other hand, several of these platforms do not see a problem with posting online praise for the use of machine guns by teenagers!
Operating an online broadcasting platform necessarily comes with the power to exclude, censor or even marginalize this or that content. When such a power is exercised according to commercial imperatives, this can put at risk the integrity of works emanating from a cultural environment different from that of companies.
Transparency
This shows the importance of ensuring that the decisions of online platforms are subject to real obligations of transparency and accountability. It is indeed important that the logics by virtue of which cultural content is programmed be publicly known and discussed. These logics must be compatible with the requirements of diversity and creative freedom that are enshrined in our laws. This will be even more necessary with the generalization of algorithms and other automated processes deployed by online platforms.
It is not surprising that Netflix considered that what is held to be an unacceptable image in the United States is necessarily so in North American French-speaking society. These companies have the reflex to consider that the only cultural referents that count are those that prevail in the English-speaking world. Regardless of whether Caleb’s daughters tells a story set in the 19the century, at a time when Quebec cultural referents did not attach the same meaning to the fact of coloring the face for playful purposes.
Such decisions on the part of online platforms reveal much more than the anecdote of the censorship of an episode of a fictional series. This illustrates what happens when one chooses to leave the delivery devices in the hands of companies with different sensitivities than those prevailing here. Above all, this highlights that online platforms can practice even more severe censorship than that which emanates from the application of state laws.
This is why we must denounce those who, in the name of a simplistic vision of freedom of expression, oppose the implementation of measures such as Bill C-11, the Online Broadcasting Act, which aims to impose on platforms that are active on Canadian soil operating rules compatible with the objectives of promotion and availability of works from Canadian creators.
But the issue of censorship imposed in the name of references that do not always correspond to our values will not be resolved once the Online Broadcasting Act is in place. The law gives a regulatory body, the CRTC, the mandate to implement the requirements of the law. This organization must operate with respect for the cultural referents of Francophones.
Over the years, we have seen the CRTC ignore the requirements—even though they are clearly set out in the law—to take into account the characteristics of broadcasting in French when it imposes obligations on companies. For example, the CRTC made light of the conditions prevailing in the French-speaking market when it ruled on the conditions to be respected in the area of the broadcasting of musical works. More recently, he ignored the differences relating to the pejorative character of a word in French and in English. This organization must quickly regain its ability to understand the issues in both official languages and be supervised in order to comply with the laws it is responsible for enforcing.
By failing to act, federal authorities have given online platforms control over what we can watch and listen to. This may seem less problematic for our English-speaking fellow citizens. But leaving such powers to American platforms increases the risk of exclusion of works from minority cultures, such as French-speaking works or those of creators from First Nations.
If we continue to postpone the implementation of measures to strengthen our ability to regulate our online spaces and our media, we will have to resolve to see the works of our creators regularly pass under the scissors of the conformism of the Netflix of this world. .