Seventy-seven per cent of respondents to The Logic’s latest subscriber survey said they support requiring chatbot companies to report suspected imminent violence to authorities, even though nearly all respondents expressed reservations about trusting those companies to safeguard their privacy. 

Following February’s mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., the federal government reconvened a Trudeau-era expert advisory panel on online safety. The panel is expected to advise the government on whether it should include chatbots and other AI technologies in its upcoming online harms bill, a revamp of the previous Liberal government’s Bill C-63, which was introduced in 2024 but never made it into law. 

As part of the legislation, expected to be tabled this year, the government may require AI companies to report suspected imminent violence to authorities, after ChatGPT owner OpenAI chose not to report disturbing conversations the chatbot had with the B.C. shooter months before the killings. 

Most readers said chatbot owners should be required to bring concerning conversations to the attention of authorities, which could “at the very least… identify people in need of psychological intervention,” according to one reader. 

Other subscribers expressed concerns about protecting privacy and freedom of expression. One reader said they are “uneasy” about “what chatbot companies decide are ‘suspected imminent threats of violence.’” 

Some respondents questioned whether there are sufficient policing and governmental resources to properly assess conversations flagged to authorities. “I do not believe the federal government has the technical capacity or resources to handle the potential onslaught of complaints and concerns,” one subscriber wrote. 

The government is also considering a ban on social media for children aged 14 and under as part of the bill—akin to the under-16 ban adopted by Australia, with similar restrictive measures also being considered in other countries. 

Sixty-four per cent of readers said they support a 14-and-under ban, citing the harms of social media to underage users and the benefits of removing social pressures. “Individual parental restrictions on child access to social media isolate individual children and damage their social circles, versus everyone being subject to the same restrictions,” one subscriber said. 

Many respondents who said they do not support a ban cited privacy concerns around age-verification technology as the reason. Other subscribers said that while they support a ban, they did not agree with the use of such technology to enforce it.

Most respondents signalled they do not trust tech giants or social media companies to protect their data. Less than one per cent of subscribers said they “greatly” trust such companies to safeguard their personal information, while the rest said that they only do “somewhat” or “not at all.” In response to the question, one reader asked, “Are you kidding?” 

Others pointed out that giving tech giants access to sensitive biometric data, including through age-verification technology, would introduce another potential security vulnerability. “Hackers and bad actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated,” they said, adding that a data breach would be “a matter of when, not if.”

Despite privacy concerns, many readers acknowledged the potential harms of social media for minors and said they supported online harms regulations. Tech companies “already don’t protect our data and yet we provide it to them consistently,” one subscriber wrote. “Now they will use that failure to prevent a social media ban, and ‘privacy experts’ will support them.” 

More than 90 per cent of readers agreed that sexual victimization of children and image-based sexual abuse content should also be included in the upcoming bill. Other subjects respondents wanted to see addressed in the bill included violent extremism (76 per cent), hate speech (62 per cent), and self-harm or bullying content targeting minors (82 per cent). 

While many supported the inclusion of other issues in the bill, some subscribers pointed out that the real challenge lies in enforcement.

“We can’t regulate all the risks away,” one reader wrote. Another added that “history shows that kids will always find a way to access what is ‘banned.’” 

“We need to balance freedom and responsibility,” one respondent said. “Where there is imminent risk of violence, responsibility must prevail.”