Canada Gets It

There are a lot of reasons we Americans might look to north to our Canadian neighbors as role models. In addition to boasting much lower rates of both crime and incarceration than the U.S., of course all Canadians also have access to health care without regard to their job status or income.

Another reason for the U.S. to emulate Canada is their response to hate speech online. The Simon Wiesenthal Center chose the release of its CD-ROM "Report on Digital Terrorism and Hate" to also commend Canada's response to hate speech online.

Part of the way Canada has been aggressive in confronting hate speech online has been to target ISP's (Internet Service Providers) who host websites that feature hate speech. A rabbi quoted in the article above says: “The Canadian Association of Internet Providers [CAIP] has very strong rules and won’t allow this kind of hate material to stay on a Canadian server.” Once a website has been identified as a problem to one of the companies in the CAIP, "it doesn’t take very long for it to be bumped,” the rabbi said.

Taking this approach, aggressively monitoring the internet and then approaching ISP's to remove the sites, is certainly one that could work here in the U.S. if the political will to do so existed. Finding the collective commitment to target such intolerance online is another way the U.S. could follow Canada's example because clearly, Canada "gets it" when it comes to battling hate online.