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While hand-wringing over the term ‘fake news’ became all the rage following the 2016 U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump, there are no major examples of any jurisdiction actually regulating against ‘foreign disinformation campaigns’ for the Liberals to learn from.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently pledged to ban ‘fake news’ during election campaigns, but failed to offer policy specifics. Policymakers’ concerns over the phenomenon aren’t isolated to the West, ranging as far as the Philippines.

The most recent examples of regulating or restricting social media tend to involve tackling some version of hate speech, granting tools for users to report what they consider offensive posts. The European Union got tech firms to agree in 2016 to responding to online hate complaints within 24 hours, although studies have shown they’ve had trouble keeping pace.

The Liberals haven’t offered up any working definition of what ‘foreign disinformation’ means to them. Despite that, they apparently still see some urgency to the situation, with Gould telling CBC last week that their plan may commence as early as six months from now.

“Are we going to see something more robust in the next six months?” she said of self-policing by social media giants. “If we don’t see something more robust in the next six months, then we need to take action.”

Meanwhile, legislation put forward by Conservative Senator Linda Frum designed to tackle foreign funding to registered third-parties during election season has been languishing for nine months due to inaction on the part of Liberal-appointed Senators.

It’s unclear when Gould will commence next steps and what form those steps will take.