Canada wants kids off TikTok. It also wants the app to collect users’ photo and ID data

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-tiktok-kids-privacy-bill-c-36-app/

Publish Date: 2026-06-25 05:00:00

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Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, would bar Canadians under 16 from social platforms such as Tiktok.Kiichiro Sato/The Associated Press

Danny O’Brien is vice-president of Guru Communications.

The inconvenient truth of the federal government’s bill to bar children under 16 from social media, introduced this month, is that to achieve its goal, companies will have to tear deeper into people’s privacy. Yet alongside that bill, the Liberals last week tabled another designed to tighten how companies collect and protect our personal data.

In the media and advertising sectors, we’ve already experienced the privacy paradox Ottawa just stumbled into. In 2021, Apple handed us app tracking transparency (ATT) in the name of user privacy. But when Apple started asking users whether apps could track them, most users said no, so companies shifted strategy. They started collecting data directly from their own customers through loyalty programs, account sign-ups and on-site behaviour tracking.

They started building identity graphs – databases that link each user’s e-mail address, phone number, device IDs, social-media accounts and browsing behaviour into one unified profile. To get around privacy rules, companies reportedly started building data clean rooms, where two businesses compare their customer data without actually handing them over to each other, all to learn what convinces us to buy.

The result of ATT was the opposite of what the privacy rule intended. The privacy crusaders giveth; advertisers and tech companies taketh away.

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So forgive me a knowing smile while I watch Ottawa run the same play, this time with the force of law.

Within the span of five days, the government tabled two bills pointed in opposite directions. Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, would bar Canadians under 16 from social platforms. To enforce that, everyone will have to prove their age to access those sites,…

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