By Canadian Press

Request to remove newspaper article among Ottawa’s queries to social-media giants

Apr 11, 2023 | 10:07 AM

OTTAWA — Newly released documents show that a federal government department asked Facebook and Twitter to delete a newspaper article that it felt contained errors — but both social-media giants denied the request.

The request to remove social-media posts that linked to an unspecified Toronto Sun article came from a director of communications at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in September 2021.

The social-media companies said they were denying the request because the article wasn’t their original content.

Documents tabled in Parliament detail more than 200 examples of Ottawa asking for social-media content to be removed, with companies taking down posts about half the time for reasons such as impersonation or copyright violations.

In another case, the Canada Revenue Agency requested that private messages be removed from Facebook Messenger after employees shared taxpayer information on the platform.

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The agency said in the documents that it disciplined and terminated employees as a result, but was not aware of whether Facebook had deleted the messages from its servers.

The Toronto Sun did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 11, 2023. 

The Canadian Press