OpenMedia Digital Safety Survey Findings: Canadians Want Platforms to Change, Not Our Privacy Rights

More than 2,500 people told us what they want from Canada’s approach to online safety: action on real harms, more accountability from platforms, and stronger privacy protections.

The Internet poses real safety challenges. Scams and fraud are widespread, while increasingly convincing deepfakes are creating new risks for people online. Our personal data gets collected, traded and used in ways most of us can barely keep track of.

In June 2026, the federal government introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, proposing new rules intended to protect young people online. We asked the OpenMedia community what they thought Canada should prioritize, which harms worried them, and what trade-offs they were willing to make.

From July to August, 2,520 Canadians responded to our Your Voice on Digital Safety survey. The results show that respondents are concerned about online safety and want Canada to address concrete online harms, while also expressing serious concerns about approaches that require people to provide more personal information.

Respondents represented a range of age groups and experiences. 66.48% were adults between 18 and 64, while 30.6% were 65 or older. Nearly half (48.45%) also had some connection to children through parenting, their work, or being a young person themselves.

Across those responses, a bigger picture emerged. People aren’t choosing between online safety and privacy. They’re asking why they should have to choose at all.

Yes, people are worried about online harms.

Concerns about privacy should not be mistaken for a lack of concern about online harms.

Our survey data says otherwise. 80.75% identified scams and fraud as an important issue for Canada to address. Non-consensual intimate imagery and deepfakes followed closely, both identified by nearly three-quarters of respondents.

These harms can have serious consequences in people’s everyday lives. Scams and fraud can cause significant financial harm. A fabricated intimate image can devastate someone’s life before they even know it exists. And these harms don’t belong to one generation. Young people may be navigating deepfakes and image-based abuse while older Canadians encounter increasingly convincing fraud. Parents, educators, and other adults are also trying to help young people navigate a rapidly changing digital environment.

Different experiences can lead people to online safety from different directions. What our overall results show is considerable agreement that these harms are real. The disagreement is over what we should do about them.

As one respondent argued:

“Harassment does not stop by banning teenagers from social media because that does not address the core part of human emotion which is being exploited by attention monopolizing algorithms.” ( T. Zhang, British Columbia)

Privacy isn’t the obstacle. It’s part of being safe.

Privacy didn’t just win one question in our survey. It kept showing up. 85.36% of respondents identified privacy violations and misuse of data as one of Canada’s most important online safety issues. When we shifted from problems to solutions, the answer barely changed: the most-supported measure in the entire survey was giving users more control over their own data and privacy at 89.29%.

Together, these findings show that privacy is not a separate concern from online safety for our community; it is a central part of it. People already navigate an Internet where platforms routinely collect significant amounts of personal information. So when a new safety solution requires collecting even more of it, people are understandably asking what happens next.

In fact, the most common concern about stronger online safety laws was increased collection of personal information at 88.61%. Increased government surveillance followed at 86.83%, with increased corporate surveillance close behind at 86.27%.

These findings highlight a central tension in the online safety debate. For respondents concerned about increased data collection and surveillance, safety measures that require additional sensitive information may introduce new privacy risks.

As one survey respondent put it:

“Canada should stop acting like online safety and privacy are opposites. You protect online safety by protecting privacy.”

Fix the platforms, not the people using them.

When we asked what Canada should prioritize, the OpenMedia community expressed clear priorities. They strongly supported giving users more control, educating people about online safety, and making platforms more accountable for how their products are designed. Respondents also called for greater transparency from online platforms.

83.02% want platforms to disclose how they protect user data, while 73.73% want greater transparency about how their algorithms work.That’s an important shift in where responsibility sits.

For years, Internet users have been told to make stronger passwords, check their privacy settings, spot increasingly convincing scams, understand complicated terms of service and understand why algorithms recommend and prioritize certain content.

Our survey suggests people are ready to turn some of those questions around. What are platforms doing to keep people safe? Why are their systems designed this way? What happens to our data? And what responsibility should companies have when their design choices contribute to harm?

Our findings suggest that responsibility for online safety cannot rest primarily with individual users.

One respondent wrote:

“Transparency and accountability are key. Those who profit from these systems are the ones who need to bear the risks and consequences.” (G. Johnson, Alberta)

Protect young people without surveilling everyone.

Bill C-34 is especially concerned with young people’s safety, and our respondents weren’t disconnected from that issue. Nearly half had some connection to children through parenting, their work, or being a young person themselves.

Yet age restrictions received substantially less support than other proposed approaches. Only 22.78% selected age restrictions as something Canada should prioritize. Support for verifying people’s ages on other online platforms, such as forums and file-sharing services, fell to 16.67%.

That contrast deserves attention. Our survey included relatively few minors, so these results should not be presented as the voice of Canadian youth themselves. What they do tell us is how a large group of Internet users, including parents, people who work with children and adults across generations, responded to policies being proposed in the name of young people’s safety.

And they overwhelmingly want control over their personal information. They’re deeply concerned about increased data collection. They want platforms held accountable. When presented with age-verification measures, relatively few chose them.

Another respondent explained:

“Making it illegal for those under 16 to access social media won’t stop them from doing so, they will just do it in an unsafe manner...” (K. Mulhern, British Columbia)

Protecting young people online matters. But protecting young people cannot be the only consideration when evaluating online safety measures. We also have to ask whether a proposed solution works, what information it requires, who gets access to that information, and what happens if something goes wrong.

Effective digital policy must consider both its intended benefits and its potential consequences for privacy and other rights.

A false choice between safety and rights.

Near the end of the survey, we asked our community directly how they would weigh online safety against privacy and civil liberties. If Canada has to choose, what matters more?

The largest group, 41.83%, said Canada should prioritize our privacy and civil liberties even if that makes some online harms harder to address. Only 13.49% were willing to prioritize stronger safety measures at the cost of some existing privacy or online freedoms.

But the results also show that respondents do not see stronger online safety and stronger privacy protections as mutually exclusive goals. 80.75% identified scams and fraud as an important issue for Canada to address, while nearly three-quarters identified non-consensual intimate imagery and deepfakes. At the same time, 89.29% supported giving users more control over their data and privacy, and 83.02% supported requiring platforms to disclose how they protect user data.

These priorities are not contradictory. Taken together, they offer a clear direction for online safety policy. Canada has an opportunity to build an online safety policy that tackles real harms, puts responsibility where it belongs, and gives people more control over their digital lives instead of less.

As another respondent put it:

“Canada should prioritize holding tech platforms accountable for the harms they cause, to adults and children alike.” (J. Penner, Ontario)

Start by putting the burden on the platforms creating and profiting from these systems, not on the people using them. Bill C-34 is an opportunity for the government to listen and build an approach that protects people from real online harms, demands more from platforms, and gives Canadians more control over their digital lives, not less.

Want to dig deeper into the results? 

Explore the full survey report, including charts and a breakdown of how our community responded to each question, in our downloadable survey results.

If you want online safety legislation that protects people without sacrificing our privacy and rights, join our campaign and tell the government to get Bill C-34 right!