OpenMedia

Pleased to sign this letter alongside many 🇺🇸 peers.

The Trump administration is taking advantage of the vast web of corporate surveillance Amazon Ring, Flock, and many other vendors are building to expand government surveillance far beyond legal limits.

They can and must be stopped.

https://demandprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Coalition-Letter_-Oppose-Stephen-Millers-Warrantless-Surveillance-Agenda-1.pdf

The replacement for 2025's disastrous Bill C-2 is out - and just as broken! Bill C-22 still gives the Public Safety Minister broad powers to issue secret orders to any electronic service provider in Canada.

It isn't safe for privacy or rights, and cannot pass like this. We stopped broken Bill C-2, and we can stop this bill too if enough of us speak up.

Stay tuned for more updates in the next week!

https://openmedia.org/press/item/ottawa-repackages-its-surveillance-backdoor-in-bill-c-22

UPDATE: 🇨🇦's house just REFUSED to accept a Senate amendment that would put a sunset clause on PERMANENT immunity to privacy law for federal political parties!

LPC, CPC, and NDP did not have the courage to defend their choice; only Elizabeth May spoke to the obvious issues in #BillC4.

This isn't the end of the line; we're working on a HUGE nation-wide campaign demanding real voter privacy law!

Sign the parliamentary petition here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7237

ALERT: 🇨🇦’s political parties are DAYS away from using Bill C-4 to PERMANENTLY exempt themselves from basic privacy law.

Now is the time to force the House to accept a key compromise proposed by the Senate: a 3 year sunset period, during which they must get privacy right.

Tell your MP: respect voter privacy, sunset Bill C-4! https://www.openmedia.org/C4Sunset-mtd

Our first live community chat, Media Riff-Raff, was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who joined! 🙌✨ Catch up on everything we explored about online harms in the AI era in our latest article. 🤖

https://openmedia.org/article/item/rethinking-online-harms-in-the-ai-era-openmedias-first-community-chat

🚨 Bill C-4 has passed the Senate with a three-year sunset clause. Federal parties get three years to self-regulate, still exempt from privacy laws. What does this mean for your voter data? Find out in our latest blog post.

https://openmedia.org/article/item/senate-passes-bill-c-4-while-sharply-criticizing-political-parties

Momentum for a return to the OPEN web is gathering steam!

It's time to break down the walled gardens Big Tech locks us into, and bring back the interoperable web. A new report from Goodbot explains why.

https://www.goodbot.ca/tech-policy/why-now-is-the-time-for-social-media-interoperability-policy-in-canada

🤔 Are you a curious thinker who values dialogue? Join Media Riff-Raff on Feb 25, 2026! We’ll riff on AI, online harms, and big tech, unpacking issues like Grok AI deepfakes and stalled regulations.

Bring your ideas, questions, and curiosity for a live community conversation.✨ Sign up now: https://openmedia.org/riff-raff-feb-2026-mtd

It can be tempting to think that if we don't have a Meta or TikTok account, we're safe from them tracking and selling our data.

That's unfortunately not true: but there's easy steps we can each take today to reduce our data exposure.

Learn more in this guide! https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260210-tiktok-is-tracking-you-even-if-you-dont-use-the-app-heres-how-to-stop-it

Glad to speak with CBC about how network effects lock us into bad platforms, and how mandated interoperability - the ability to send and receive posts across platforms- is needed to break that effect up.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/social-bans-tribela-alternative-9.7093664

Is 🇨🇦 a sovereign country? Are we prepared to do what it takes to be one?

We just released a five point plan to getting there – and YOU can review and endorse it!

Read the Digital Sovereignty Charter and add your voice: https://www.openmedia.org/DigitalCharter

A reminder, Hootsuite is a B corp- legally required to consider the impact of their work on the public. Does selling "social listening" tools to 2026 ICE, and angling for up to a billion dollar contract, strike you as B corp behaviour? If it doesn't, speak your mind here: https://www.openmedia.org/NoTech4Ice

Take a deep breath. One day after launch of our campaign for Hootsuite to drop their contract to provide ICE "social listening" tools– this letter. Their CEO writes she is glad people are "showing up" and "being vulnerable", but they'll keep the ICE contract. Their ToS prohibits individual surveillance, and that's enough. https://www.hootsuite.com/letter-from-irina Is that enough to anyone else?

Hootsuite signing a contract with ICE in this environment is profoundly shameful. They know very well their social media monitoring tools will be misused to attempt to punish ICE's targets and citizen protestors. We deleted our account with them, others should too! https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hootsuite-ceo-says-ice-contract-will-stand-as-long-as-agency-honours/

Today we're leaving X. If you're still there, we think you should consider leaving too.

A word here on:
1. why it is so difficult to leave collapsing platforms;
2. why we're making this decision today;
3. where else you can find us.

https://openmedia.org/article/item/were-leaving-x