Protecting free tweets: Taking back freedom of expression in Canada's 'Town Square'

National Post: "Canadian lawyers accusing Twitter of stifling free speech score first victory in novel lawsuit"  

Globe & Mail: "Companies wary as Twitter’s verification checkmark policy fuels imposter accounts"  

CNN: "Twitter removes transgender protections from hateful conduct policy"  

CBC: "Russian, Chinese propaganda surging on Twitter amid platform changes"

With Twitter making headlines daily, Allard Law Professor Joel Bakan, along with co-counsel Sujit Choudhry, is taking Twitter to court over their refusal to run paid promotions for his award-winning 2020 documentary, The New Corporation. The documentary, which exposes the corrosive impact on democracy of large corporations’ unbridled power, was deemed to violate Twitter’s Political Content policy. Professor Bakan alleges that Twitter is stifling free speech, using a novel legal approach to make his case. Should he win this precedent setting case, the impact on the North American social media landscape would be groundbreaking. 

In this webcast, Professors Joel Bakan and Hoi Kong, The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professor in Constitutional Law, have a fascinating conversation about the lawsuit and recent controversies surrounding Twitter.

  
  

      

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Host

Peg Fong – Vancouver correspondent for The Economist Magazine and sessional instructor at the Sauder School of Business UBC

SPEAKERS

• Professor Joel Bakan – Author, filmmaker and a professor of law at the University of British Columbia
• Professor Hoi Kong –  Inaugural holder of The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professorship in Constitutional Law, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Program on Constitutional Studies and Peter Wall Scholar (2020-2021)

Recorded June 14, 2023.