On Saturday night, Manitoba premier Wab Kinew promised to ban social media and chatbots for youth, which may sound like a good idea, but it’s very, very bad. Why? This is essentially just internet surveillance. You need to upload ID in some variety to access anything, which means that you are being tracked, either by government or by third parties who will either profit form that tracking, or who will leave your data vulnerable to being hacked. This is exactly the same issue with people who want age verification for internet porn—the same problems exist, and those problems are very, very bad.

Using what age verification tools, exactly?This is going to end so very badly. This is just more internet surveillance, and politicians cannot get that through their heads.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:54:14.098Z

I’ve written about this problem a lot over the past few years, and there is no good system of age verification. It simply doesn’t exist, but too many politicians treat it like a “nerd harder” problem, meaning that they are sure that the nerds will just figure it out rather than accept the fact that it’s really just surveillance of all of your online activities. And even worse, most kids will figure out workarounds, leaving all of that surveillance in place for everyone else, while you didn’t solve the problem you wanted to.

As I wrote in @xtramagazine.com, age verification is bad tech, and it is going to just harm so many people unnecessarily, most especially queer and trans people.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:58:36.941Z

I get why Kinew is doing this, which is because it’s a populist move. Yes, it’s well-intentioned, but again, there is no good way to implement this (and frankly, I’m not entirely sure which tools he has to enforce this at the provincial level). But boy howdy do a lot of people need to start speaking up about why these kinds of age verification tools will only do so much damage to the internet at large, while doing nothing about the problems of social media on minors, most especially because it also allows the platforms to get away with not doing their own due diligence of content moderation or online safety tools that would shield minors from the worst of the problems. So instead, politicians want to remove everyone’s internet privacy instead. It’s bad news all around.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-26T23:08:01.383Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on Dnipro killed ten people and injured dozens of others early morning Saturday. And just this morning, a drone attack on Odesa wounded at least ten people. Ukraine marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Sunday.

Good reads:

• Here is a look at how Lithuania developed economic resilience through diversification when faced by coercion from Russia and China.
• Governor General Mary Simon plans to be in Tumbler Ridge, BC, for the next three days to support the community’s “ongoing healing journey.”
• Poilievre is now demanding a cap on the deficit, and claims that we wouldn’t have one under his leadership (when his election campaign said otherwise).
• Kevin Carmichael notes the divergence in the oil sector where gas producer Entropy is working on decarbonising natural gas, while Pathways is kicking and screaming.
• Jared Wesley posits that Albertans no longer know how to care about the democratic backslide in the province because they are inundated.
• Heather Scoffield explains some of the problems with the disability tax credit, that so many other benefits rely on as the gateway or passkey.
• Tyler Dawson points to the grievance culture at the heart of the separatism movement in Alberta, which the UCP government has stoked and fostered.
• Justin Ling suggests that the Trump administration is panicking behind the scenes, and we should resist a bad trade deal until they are forced to back down.
• My weekend column wonders just how much Carney will capitulate to get a pipeline to the west coast, particularly if it means bankrolling the Pathways project.

Odds and ends:

No #QP for the PM tomorrow. #cdnpoli (Also, my email formatted this incredibly weirdly).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-27T02:20:09.862Z

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