Evidence of meeting #37 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
If you become aware of the 2015 project that's referred to in the BuzzFeed article, would you be able to provide us with the details?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I can ask and provide you with something to the extent that I can confirm it. At this point, I cannot make that commitment on my own, and I don't really know what—
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
If you can look at that reference and find out if there is a project out there and let us know the details, that would be great.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
You referred to a book I mentioned in our last meeting in which there was a reference to the fact that Facebook was the second-largest driver to major news media such as, let's say, The Globe and Mail. In fact, Google was first and Facebook was second, as far as getting people to read articles from the Globe was concerned. There was also a gendered part to that, which was very interesting, which was that it was more of a female audience.
Do you have any breakdowns as to that part, the gendered audience of people who are clicking through on Facebook?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I don't have that information. Marc can perhaps provide more detail. I suspect that this type of information is something that probably the publishers may know about.
Head, Media Partnerships, Facebook Canada
Within their reporting suites, each publisher has a breakdown by gender, by age group, etc., so they can look at the analysis of who is frequenting their pages, who is clicking on the links to go to their own properties.
That is probably where Mr. Stackhouse would have pulled that information from. It would have been, very specifically, their insights within the publishing tool.
Liberal
Head, Media Partnerships, Facebook Canada
It's a reporting tool that we provide to them so that they can understand the audience that is interacting with them on Facebook, so that they can use that information in analysis or as part of their business planning as well.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
We're talking about local news. One thing I find fascinating when I look at my own community is that there are a lot of local pages or groups that form: “I am a Leslievillian!”, “I'm from East York”, “Friends of Withrow Park”. In fact, that is the way that people are now sharing many of their local news stories, completely independent from traditional media.
What do you see among those developments about how people are sharing news? Do you have any stats about the number of pages or what kind of information is being flowed through those types of independent groups?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I don't.
Marc, I don't know whether you have any information on that.
Private groups are private groups. One interesting anecdote, really, is how people are using these things. We were with Niki Ashton over the summer a year ago, up in her riding. She said, if you want to know how first nation communities are using Facebook groups, you should come and see this.
We went with her, and she was indicating how everybody in the community was actually in the Facebook group. When it was time for little Jimmy to come home for dinner, rather than call somebody they'd just post in the group, “Tell Jimmy it's time to come home.”
Indeed, out in many communities, and especially remote, rural ones, Facebook groups are incredibly powerful for sharing. Presumably then, that includes the sharing of articles.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much. That's over the five minutes.
We have come to the end of our round of questions and answers. As chair, I would like to ask a question.
Today we heard from one of our witnesses, Mr. Waddell from the Neepawa Banner, that information should be verifiable and accountable. This is at the heart of what many of us are concerned about. When someone shares what is considered to be a piece of news, the accountability should be to make sure that news is verifiable. I am not talking about fake news when somebody posts a piece of whatever as a joke. I am talking about Mrs. Jones posting news, and it may come across as news.
If Facebook is going to become an aggregator or purveyor of news, I understand and I think it's great when you send people to the newspaper or the television or the radio to verify their news because all those other platforms have a duty to be verifiable and accountable. The accountability piece comes in, that if they're not verifiable news then legislation is in place to make them accountable for posting unverifiable news. The concern of a lot of people has been that if you are posting news and they're going into news, should you not have an equal responsibility to be as verifiable for those news items?
If everyone is going to Facebook as a platform, if everyone is looking at news there and we're looking at an election—Mr. Trump's election was the last one, or Brexit being another example—people believe what they read. How can a democracy be well served when the information isn't verifiable? People will make decisions based on what they consider to be news. The definition of news on these kinds of media needs to be dealt with. I don't know whether anyone has talked to you about this, and whether you feel you're going to move in this direction. Otherwise, people get information that is not true, not real, and they act on it. There is a responsibility.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
But anyway, that's the issue. It's a philosophical question but it is a real one to serve democracy and to serve the whole objective of information being reliable and accountable.
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
Thank you for that, Madam Chair.
As I mentioned to Mr. O'Regan, our CEO Mark Zuckerberg is very much seized with the issue. He posted about this on Saturday, and I can certainly circulate it to the committee if folks have not seen it. I think one of the things he has said is that over 99% of the content that people see on Facebook is authentic.
Then there's a question of what additional measures we should be taking. It is early days, as I mentioned, but we are very much seized with the issue. I think Mark also makes the point at the end of the post to talk about the challenges of potentially finding that balance between what is truly fake and a hoax, and what is opinion, etc.
I want you to know, and obviously I want the parliamentary committee to know, that Facebook takes our responsibilities very seriously, and we hope to be able to share information in the coming weeks and months.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
Just as a quick aside, some reporters from the news media who came to us told us that while it's very nice to have six million people reading their piece that was taken by a Facebook user and put on the web, it doesn't pay the mortgage. How do you monetize using people's intellectual property?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
Again, Madam Chair, if I may humbly submit, I don't believe that is an accurate way to describe what is happening. Let's say that if I share an article presumably there would be a photo or some kind of caption or some headline. But when the individual I share it with clicks through it, it takes them directly to the website, so obviously that would be a way for them to monetize.
What we are really proud of being able to do and to talk about with the committee and with you today is that we are actually building new products that are essentially designed for publishers, like instant articles, where they will monetize 100% of the revenue. So I would humbly submit to you, Madam Chair, that we are very much seized with the issue. As I indicated, we take our responsibilities seriously and we do want to help publishers develop new models for monetization.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming. Thank you for sharing with us.
I thank the members of the committee for their questions. I will entertain a motion to adjourn.
Mr. Van Loan.
