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.
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
Just for the record, I do subscribe to a Canadian newspaper, a print edition, for which Mark gives me no end of trouble.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Yeah. Agreed, you're a dinosaur, just to let you know.
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I would say, with respect to copyright, and perhaps I misunderstand the question, but the nature of the way things are shared on Facebook is people. Publishers themselves put articles on Facebook. They put articles, unless it's an instant article.... The traditional way has been to provide a link directly to their web page. In that instance, people, Canadians, would consume the content directly on the page itself, on the publisher's news site.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
As we've also heard here, we're looking at Europe, and they seem to get that digital news initiative. Google has been talked about here. The fund has a budget of 150 million euros to supply support. Could that come to North America and to Canada?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I can't speak to this particular program. I'm not familiar with it. For us, at Facebook, we want to work directly with publishers to help them monetize. There are digital ads that exist on their news sites. I think what we're talking about here are potentially pathways to monetize on Facebook Live, and clearly on instant articles people are doing that. In that case, they keep 100% of the revenue. We won't even be in that process, really.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I'm concerned about the credibility and that issue. I wonder if you could elaborate on that. Others have commented that when you have it in your hands, then it's more credible. I find that if it's extrapolated for the amount of time that Mr. Waugh has just indicated, there would be about $6 million spent in advertising this year with Facebook by the federal government through Public Works.
Is that accurate? How do you maintain the readership and the credibility of the statements that are used not from the government, because that's direct advertising, but on the other side with the publishers that you pick up?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
As I mentioned with Mr. O'Regan, these are very early days, as you can appreciate, based on events in the United States. I can circulate Mr. Zuckerberg's posts on it on Facebook from last weekend.
One thing I can talk about is clickbait. We've heard a bit about clickbait, and for those who are not familiar, those are leading headlines that get you to go ahead and click on stuff in order to drive you to their websites. We have spent a lot of time on the newsfeed trying to figure out what clickbait looks like generally, and then trying to down rank them, so that they don't surface as readily.
Those are things that we do, and we take seriously. I think the point here is that we do want people to engage with good content and good-quality content. We do take our responsibilities very seriously.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you Mr. Dinsdale and Mr. Chan for joining us.
Our clerk told us that you were preparing a written brief. Unfortunately, although we were very eager to meet with you, we are running out of time. It's pretty incredible! We are rushing to put questions to you, and we will have barely 20 minutes to do so.
That is why it is my duty, as a federal member of Parliament and the representative of my constituency to ask you to still submit your written brief. We currently have too little time.
Facebook is a major player that accounts for, based on the figures, about 20% of online advertising sales, 80% of which the Canadian domestic market is missing out on. That is more or less what the media representatives who came to testify here told us. 80% of online advertising sales are going to American or international providers—in any case, not Canadians ones. Those providers have only a few employees in Canada, including you. You own about one-fifth of that 80%. According to an article that recently appeared on the Bloomberg website, you get about 20% of online sales, and Google gets the remaining 80%.
As Canadians, how do you respond to that accusation that we are hearing from all over the place? There probably a few nuances, a few people who are freaking out at CBC, which is putting advertising online. People are quarrelling over 12%. I apologize, but this is honestly quite minor. We have control in that area, and we can talk to the CBC representatives and ask them to make an effort. However, the crux of the problem is not that, but rather the remaining 82%. What do you have to say about that?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
We are very pleased to provide a platform that has been—
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
—largely successful. One cannot predict the future but we are very happy that it has been successful thus far. Obviously, I think at the end of the day these decisions about where an advertiser will place an advertisement is up to the individual.
We feel that we have a good platform that drives user experience and that has a good user experience, but—and you will appreciate this—
I don't want to speak without knowing my facts.
I don't want to presume why advertisers would choose one platform or another, but we are proud of our ability to be able to reach a vast audience both in Canada and abroad.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you for your answer. I understand your prudence.
However, the reality—and I am not an economist nor I am familiar with those types of major statistical analyses—is that I am old enough to know that, in the 1960s, the auto pact was created. The Americans sent all their cars to Canada. So the Canadian government told itself that, since Canadians had to by so many of those products, we may as well manufacture them in the country because Canadian dollars eventually always went abroad.
That is what is currently happening, basically, when it comes to advertising sales on the Internet. The print model is slowly disappearing and leaving behind it some nostalgia. People listen to vinyl records and read real newspapers on Saturday morning, like you—that's nice and thank for having so much affection for our old formats—but we will have to resolve the situation. We cannot refer to this as natural resources, but we are letting our advertising market leave the country. In this context, I want to ask you what the proportion of business purchases made online is compared with individual purchases.
As an individual, I also buy advertising on Facebook. Of course, I will spare you the debate on sales taxes. I believe that the government is currently trying to figure out the possibility of charging transactional taxes on advertising purchases. What is the proportion of purchases? I am convinced that everyone here, all the members, buy advertising on Facebook and overlook the fact that they are not paying any GST. Do companies like Honda Canada have to present themselves as
your local car dealer
or rather as Honda Canada?
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
What I can share—and this is current as of September 2016—is that there are over four million active advertisers on Facebook globally. The vast majority are small businesses and more than 70% of these advertisers are located outside the United States.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Okay. Thank you.
In any case, if possible—I have 15 seconds left—I ask that you send us your written presentation.
Thank you.
Liberal
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
There have been a few questions already about hoax news, and some of the stories have been coming out in the media over the past few days. One article I read referred to there being a project launched by Facebook in 2015 to try to segregate fake news.
I wonder whether you could provide us any details on what that project would have been.
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I personally, ma'am, am not familiar with it. Perhaps Marc is.
Marc Dinsdale Head, Media Partnerships, Facebook Canada
I don't have any specific details of it. I know that there are constant efforts. There's a great philosophy of “test and learn” within Facebook, so what we see are the adaptations from day to day. Understanding how news is produced and the changes within that market as well is a constant progression.
I don't know that there's anything in particular that we would have pointed to in that time period, as distinct from the day-to-day improvements that we always try to make relative to the algorithm, relative to—
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
It was, I believe, in the BuzzFeed articles that came out about it, in which they were specifically referring to the fact that it would reduce distribution, which is a bit of what you were talking about. It was clickbait, right there, but it also would identify it as false or a hoax. There was a feeling, in the article in which they were describing this project, that it would have had partisan repercussions, that certain types of articles might have been removed more than others, on a partisan basis, and this was why it wasn't followed through.
November 17th, 2016 / 1:30 p.m.
Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada
I honestly cannot comment on that. I don't know about the particular reference.
As I mentioned, we have done stuff over the summer to address clickbait, as it's commonly known as in the industry, but I unfortunately am not familiar with the particular thing you're talking about.
