Canadian Heritage committee  It's incredibly important that you move forward with this legislation. Free Press Action endorses Senator Markey's legislation. We just met with him yesterday regarding the algorithmic justice and online platform transparency act. Companies often will acquiesce under threat of regulation.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you so much. We know that, in the most recent year, with Elon Musk taking over Twitter, part of why he has reinstated so many previously banned accounts is to try to build up revenue, and many advertisers who have departed that platform have done so because they've seen that their brand content is featured next to horrific, hateful, white supremacist, neo-Nazi content.

Canadian Heritage committee  Given many of the opacity problems I've mentioned previously, it's difficult to say with certainty, certainly across every platform, what content is being boosted more than others. We have anecdotal evidence at best, and that's part of why we continue to call for greater disclosures and greater auditing of what processes are occurring within these companies, but one of the pieces we know is that far-right and extremist content has been engaged with over six times more than other content that is politically neutral.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. There are dangerous real-world consequences when companies retreat from their previous commitments. This relationship...as content moves from online discourse to the off-line world. There is ample evidence now that we, as human beings, are informed and motivated by what we see online.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you so much. It's excellent to note that platforms alone do not bear the responsibility for content moderation. I believe it's important to elevate how government interventions can blunt many of the harms detailed in my own comments, as well as in those just provided. There are a few calls that Free Press is making, many of them centring on the use and extraction of our data.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's difficult to quantify how users are targeted with different content, because as I mentioned in my opening remarks, there's just so much opacity plaguing these companies, and attempts by researchers or others to glean insights are met with the various tactics I mentioned. That being said, there are some hallmarks that we've seen over the years.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press—not The Free Press, which is a different entity. I just want to clarify that. We are a U.S.-based NGO, where I run public accountability campaigns and federal policy reform efforts to ensure that tech is protecting human and civil rights and upholding democracy.