Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 14th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I call the meeting to order.

As you see, we have two hours. In the first hour, we have Facebook Inc, with Mr. Chan and Mr. Dinsdale, and from Google Canada, we have Mr. Kee and Mr. Brindle.

As you know, you have presented to this committee before, but at the request of the committee, you have been asked to come back to answer some questions. There are things that have occurred in the interim, between when you last appeared before us and today. Things seem to be moving so rapidly that we need to clarify a couple of things with you.

You know the drill. Each group has 10 minutes to present. You can decide how to do that. At the end, we will have some questions from members of the committee.

Without any further ado, I invite Mr. Chan or Mr. Dinsdale to present on behalf of Facebook.

[Kevin Chan, Head, Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.]

Thank you very much.

Madam Chair, members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, thank you for this additional opportunity to present our views as part of your study of the media and local communities.

As most of you already know, my name is Kevin Chan and I am the head of public policy for Facebook Canada. With me again today is my colleague, Marc Dinsdale, the head of media partnerships in Canada.

Since we last appeared before the standing committee in November, we have made some important announcements in our early efforts to address fake news. I am pleased to share today with the committee our progress in this area.

As Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, recently wrote:

Giving everyone a voice increases diversity of perspectives, but there is more we can do to build a shared perspective—to reduce polarization, sensationalism and misinformation.

I am pleased to report that we are hard at work putting together initiatives and partnerships that we believe will address this issue here in our country.

On December 15 last year we announced work in a few key areas to fight fake news. Facebook strongly believes in giving people a voice and believes that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves. We are thus approaching this problem carefully, launching tests and learning from our experiences. We will iterate and extend them over time. We have focused our immediate efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third-party organizations.

Our areas of work consist of the following.

First is easier reporting. We are testing ways to make it easier to report a hoax if you see one on Facebook, which you can do by clicking the upper right-hand corner of a post. We have relied heavily on our community to report problematic content in other areas and we hope that reporting can also help us detect more fake news.

Second is flagging stories as disputed. We believe that providing more context can help people decide for themselves what to trust and what to share. We have started a program to work with third-party fact-checking organizations that are signatories of Poynter's international fact-checking network's code of principles, including ABC News, The Washington Post, and Snopes.com in the United States.

We use the reports from our community to send stories to these organizations. If the fact-checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will be flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed will also appear lower in news feeds. Once flagged, these stories will come with a prominent warning label indicating that the story has been disputed and cannot be made into an ad and promoted.

Third is disrupting financial incentives for spammers. We have found that much fake news is financially motivated. Spammers make big money by masquerading as well-known news organizations and posting hoaxes that get people to visit their sites, which are often mostly ads.

We are doing several things to reduce the financial incentives. We have eliminated the ability to spoof domains—that is, the ability to pretend to be a legitimate website—which will reduce the prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications. Our advertising policy also makes clear that fake news sites are barred from using Facebook ads. We are analyzing publisher sites to detect where policy enforcement actions might be necessary.

I would like to now talk a bit about the Facebook journalism project. As we take steps to address fake news on our platform, we also recognize that we need to be working even more closely with the news industry. We know that our community values sharing and discussing ideas and news, and we care a great deal about making sure that a healthy news ecosystem and journalism can thrive.

That is why we announced last month the launch of the Facebook journalism project, a continuation of the work that my colleague Marc Dinsdale is already doing with news publishers across the country, collaborating with news organizations to develop news products, to learn from journalists about ways we can be a better partner, and to work with publishers and educators on how we can equip people with the knowledge they need to be informed readers in the digital age. I will expand on each of these areas in turn.

First, on collaborative development of news products, we can better serve the needs of people on Facebook and those of our partners when we work together to develop products. While we have worked with our news partners on this in the past, as part of the Facebook journalism project we will begin an even deeper collaboration with news organizations, connecting our product and engineering teams so that we can build together from the early stages of the product development process, evolving beyond Facebook Live, Facebook 360, and Instant Articles to even better address the needs of journalists.

Honourable members, you were briefed on these three products when we first appeared in November.

We also want to explore ways in which we can support and strengthen local news on Facebook, as well as emerging business models in an Internet age. Most importantly, we want to engage in regular meetings with the media and publishing partners to listen and learn from them. We will be launching a series of listening round tables with news organizations later this spring.

Second is training and tools for journalists. In addition to the newsroom training we currently offer, we are conducting a series of e-learning courses on Facebook products, tools, and services for journalists. We also recently acquired CrowdTangle, a popular tool among journalists to surface stories, measure their social performance, and identify influencers on different social media platforms. Last month we announced that CrowdTangle would become a free service for all of our media partners.

Third is training and tools for everyone. As we seek to support journalism, we will also be working on new ways to help give people information so they can make smart choices about the news they read and have meaningful conversations about what they care about. Some of this we will do in direct partnership with journalists. At other points we will work with educators and researchers. Initially, our main area of focus will be promoting news literacy by working with third-party organizations on how to better understand and promote news literacy both on and off our platform to help people in our community have the information they need to make decisions about which sources to trust.

We will help organizations already doing important work in this area and bring a consortium of experts together to help decide what new research to conduct and which projects to fund. In the short term we are working with the News Literacy Project to produce a series of public service ads to help inform people on Facebook about this important issue. Our longer term goal is to support news organizations with projects and ideas aimed at improving news literacy, including with financial grants where needed.

Next month we are partnering with the Walter Cronkite school of journalism and mass communication at Arizona State University to convene a news literacy working group, bringing together top media thinkers and practitioners for a two-day, action-oriented meeting to review past news literacy research, identify new research questions, and assess projects for possible funding. I am proud that our news literacy working group will include distinguished Canadian journalist, Catherine Cano, president and general manager of the Cable Public Affairs Channel, or CPAC.

For more than a year now, people in Canada have been able to report a story is fake. Now we are engaged in preliminary conversations with potential media partners to see if we can bring our fact-checking initiative to Canada so Canadians can see which stories independent third parties have disputed. At this early stage in the process, we believe that our partnership with news publishers in Canada should be editorially unbiased and neutral, national in scope, and operate in both official languages. We would welcome feedback from the standing committee on these core principles.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Excuse me, please, Mr. Chan. We wonder if you could slow down a little bit as the interpreters are having some problems.

[Kevin Chan]

Sure, I'd be happy to do that.

I'm just worried about my 10-minute allocation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two more minutes to go.

[Kevin Chan]

I really appreciate that, Madam Chair.

Later this spring, we will also convene a gathering in Canada of major English and French news organizations as part of the Facebook journalism project's series of round tables to listen and learn from media organizations and to collaboratively begin designing new products optimized for publishers.

Finally, we will partner with key Canadian stakeholders in the development of news literacy resources to promote critical thinking and judgment when reading and consuming news content. We are pleased to announce that MediaSmarts, Canada's digital literacy organization, has agreed to work with us on this exciting new initiative, and we expect to partner with a few other leading Canadian organizations on this important project in the months ahead.

Facebook is committed to creating a more open and more connected world. We believe our mission will help people all over the world be better informed, more empathetic, and more productive.

Our responsibility as regards the spreading of false news is an integral part of this commitment and we take it very seriously. In just three months, we have taken a number of initiatives, both on our platform and in cooperation with community stakeholders through our Facebook journalism project. I am excited to be working closely with my colleague Marc Dinsdale to further these initiatives in Canada.

I want to thank the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for listening to our presentation, and I am now pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chan. You just came in at 10 minutes, well done.

Now we go to Mr. Kee or Mr. Brindle for Google Canada.

[Jason Kee, Counsel, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

First, I wanted to wish all the members of the committee a very happy Valentine's Day. We are pleased that you chose us as your valentine today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Did you bring the chocolates?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jason Kee]

We're pleased to be back to contribute to this important study and discussion that you're having with respect to the evolving media ecosystem, including emerging concerns around misrepresentative content or what some refer to as fake news.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. At the heart of that mission is the firm belief that a world that is more informed makes better decisions and leads to better outcomes. Accordingly, we take our role in connecting people to the best available information online very seriously.

Our users expect us to show results that include authoritative reporting from objective and informed journalists and publishers. Hence, we constantly invest in innovation to improve the quality of our results and are deeply committed to ensuring that credible and quality news sources survive and thrive on the web. We are equally committed to the Internet as an open ecosystem for expression and knowledge.

A free and open web is a vital resource for businesses and citizens in Canada and the world, and ensures that the public has access to a range of diverse viewpoints. It enables the widest possible range of innovation, experimentation, and creativity, allowing news publishers to experiment with new business models, reach new audiences, and succeed on their own terms.

Dealing with propaganda and misinformation is a perennial challenge. Rumours, misinformation, inaccurate reporting, and propaganda have been issues for the past two centuries, from pamphlets to hoaxes, from tabloids to false accusations against opposing candidates in political campaigns. The Internet has made it easier for publishers to distribute such information, but at the same time, it has also made it easier than ever for citizens to find and access reputable sources and get more facts to counter propaganda and misinformation.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed properly. Drawing a line between what constitutes fake news and what is otherwise shoddy or inaccurate reporting, opinion, or advocacy can be arbitrary and challenging. Facts are often hard to verify and even reputable sources can provide varied and inaccurate accounts.

Google favours an approach built on maximizing access to information to users rather than acting as arbiters of truth. This is a challenge that's at the very core of our corporate mission and values. As our CEO, Sundar Pichai said, we will “work hard to make sure we drive news to its more trusted sources”. We understand that this is a complex issue and want to be thoughtful in any of our responses.

There are a number of ways in which Google is working to ensure users have access to high-quality information on the web. We respect that same old, same old isn't good enough. We want to keep pioneering efforts to serve the best possible results to users and support the success of the news ecosystem.

Today, I want to highlight three approaches to this issue that we think are the most pertinent to this committee's investigation. First is a collaborative approach with news organizations driving traffic to news sites through Google News and initiatives like Google's News Lab. Second is our recently announced labelling of fact-checked articles, and third is our efforts to tackle the issue at the source, targeting bad ads, sites, and scammers online.

Aaron.

[Aaron Brindle, Head, Communications and Public Affairs, Google Canada]

Thanks, Jason.

This committee heard previously from us about our various collaborations with news publishers in Canada and around the world. Collaboration and partnership are central to our approach to the news. Globally, Google Search and Google News send over 10 billion clicks a month to publishers' websites for free, representing an opportunity for publishers to grow and monetize their audience.

Google News, our service that aggregates news headlines and links to sources, is a white-list service. Publishers are reviewed and approved before they are eligible to be featured as part of our news corpus. Google News features over 75,000 publishers globally, including almost 2,000 Canadian publishers. Our review process is rigorous and is aimed at separating news websites that conduct original journalism and analysis from non-news websites such as pure news aggregators, marketing, content not dealing with current events, or websites that deceive users about their ownership or their primary purpose.

To be clear, reviewers do not assess the quality or accuracy of each news website nor do they assess or rank political viewpoint or ideology.

Google News aims to provide diverse perspectives on news stories. Under each news story, Google News offers links to several other articles from different news publishers on the same story. This exposes users to different perspectives on the subjects that interest them and allows them to select for themselves which publishers' accounts they wish to read.

Further, Google News highlights content from local news sources by including a “local source” tag to showcase local coverage of major stories. Not only does this allow for the local section in Google News to link to stories in regional papers, it ensures that national or international stories include a local perspective where available, and it is consistent with our goal to surface diverse perspectives.

We don't just work with publishers on Google News. We help them leverage the best of the web. News Lab is an initiative from Google that is wholly dedicated to helping news publishers make the most of digital opportunities.

To do this, we offer face-to-face training in newsrooms, online resources for journalists—notably, including Google Trends, which we provide based on input from many publishers—and we support research that can be of help for publishers.

We've also been partnering with the broader news industry to work on the problem of verification for several years now. For instance, we are a founding member of the First Draft News coalition, an organization that is helping efforts to improve social news gathering and verification. We also support the Trust Project, which is investigating ways to distinguish authoritative journalism from promotional content and fakery, and effectively signal its trustworthiness.

For many years, Google News has marked links with specific source labels such as “opinion content”, “user-generated content”, or “satire”, which help readers understand what they are about to read and encourage them to consider the source and nature of the information. More recently, we launched a new label in Google News for fact-checking. This tag highlights news that's been fact-checked and verified by authoritative organizations, including news publishers and independent fact-checking organizations. The tag is currently available in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and France, with more countries, including Canada, soon to come.

The fact-check industry has reached a level of growth that makes this kind of work possible and we are strong supporters of fact-checking initiatives. Google has provided support for more than 10 different efforts looking at fact-checking and authentication, adding six new projects at the end of last year. We are very enthusiastic about the future of our collaboration with this growing fact-check community and its implementation across our platforms.

We look forward to sharing more with the committee about our progress on this front at a future meeting.

This leads us to our last point.

[Jason Kee]

Google does a lot to combat bad ads and bad sites online. In 2016, we took down 1.7 billion ads that violated our advertising policies, more than double the number of bad ads in 2015.

Our publisher partners use our AdSense platform to make money by running ads on their sites and content. We have strict policies in place to keep Google's platforms and networks a safe environment for our advertisers, users, and publishers. When a publisher violates our policies, we can stop showing ads on their site or even terminate their account.

We've had long-standing policies prohibiting AdSense publishers from running ads on sites that help people deceive others. In November, we expanded on these policies, introducing a new AdSense policy directed at misrepresentative content. This policy helps us to take action against website owners who misrepresent who they are and deceive people with their content.

From November to December 2016 we reviewed 550 sites that were suspected of misrepresenting content, including cases of impersonating news organizations. We took action against both misrepresentation and other offences, and nearly 200 publishers were kicked off our network permanently.

In conclusion, this is a challenging issue. We don't have all the answers, which is why we host events such as the News Lab Summit and Newsgeist. Both are important forums that bring together people across the news industry with technologists to discuss issues like these and to generate new ideas.

We thank you again for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion. We look forward to answering your questions today and continuing this important dialogue with the committee and members beyond today's meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go to the question part of this. The first round is a seven-minute round. The seven minutes includes questions and answers, so I would ask everyone to try to fit as much content as they can into that time. Please answer short questions briefly.

Ms. Dabrusin is first, for the Liberals.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

I want some clarification about what programs are already running in Canada and which ones aren't, because I've heard about a lot of different programs.

I was going to start with Facebook, because I just went to check out Facebook right now. I see that if I want to report something, I have the choices, “It's annoying or not interesting”, “I think it shouldn't be on Facebook”, or “It's spam”.

Are those the only three categories I have available right now?

[Kevin Chan]

No. If you click through the flow a bit more, there's one that says, “This is fake news”, or uses some language like that; you can report it.

This has been available for a year now in Canada. What we are looking to do is to find ways to make it more prominent; we're testing that out. Some of it we may find works really well. Some of it may work less well. Part of the way we think about making design changes and product enhancements is to test them and see how people interact with them. That is what we're looking to do with the reporting flows.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

What kind of data have you managed to pull together over the past year as to the number of reports coming through on fake news and whether you're able to keep up with the volume of fake news reports? How many do you disregard as not being fake news?

[Kevin Chan]

For the existing reporting flow from a year ago.... I think you'll appreciate that we need to be very careful about how to categorize fake news. We're focused on the worst of the worst, and you have to be careful that you don't capture things such as satire or opinion or that sort of thing. We need to be very careful about how we approach this.

What I can share is that one of the signals we use to figure out whether or not to prioritize a piece of content on News Feed is based on some of these reporting flows that you're talking about. For example, if we see lots of people reporting a particular article, that is one signal that may factor into how content may be down-ranked in News Feed.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I was looking at some discussion about Facebook's policies concerning fake news, and one criticism was that people could choose to flag things that are just an opposing point of view. They disagree, but it might be completely accurate. They simply disagree with the opinion expressed. There was a concern that what might happen is that you would have a deluge of people saying, “This is fake news”, when in fact they're trying to downgrade something they disagree with.

[Kevin Chan]

I think you're exactly right, and that is why we have been very careful, especially with the new initiatives that we're pioneering. We're very careful about how wide to draw the circle. The scope will be very narrow at first.

We're very much in the testing and piloting phase. We're focused on the most egregious examples of fake news, in which it's clear and easily verifiable that something did not actually happen. We want to learn from that before we roll it out in a more comprehensive way. We want to be careful that we don't inadvertently capture all of the other things you are rightly concerned about.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I was looking at Abacus Data, which had a study from August 2016 in which they said that 21% of Canadians hear news first from Facebook now. The only level higher on their grid was 29% from TV.

Then I was looking at Vanity Fair, which quotes Elliot Schrage—

[Kevin Chan]

He's my boss.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

—president of global communications, marketing, and public policy. The article was published December 2; I'm not sure when he said it. He said:

For so long, we had resisted having standards about whether something’s newsworthy because we did not consider ourselves a service that was predominantly for the distribution of news. And that was wrong!

We have a responsibility here. I think we recognize that.

Building on that, how do you define Facebook's responsibility as a news carrier?

[Kevin Chan]

We take our responsibility very seriously, ma'am.

You'll appreciate that this is precisely why we've spent so much energy in just the last two or three months to build out efforts to address fake news. Looking to the future, as I said, we're really pleased to be able to work to develop programs and initiatives, a lot of which my colleague Marc Dinsdale will spearhead, to engage further with news organizations in Canada, both to better understand what their product needs may be in the online space, but also to further refine the way we think about how we help in the distribution of content in a way that makes sense for them from the monetization standpoint. That again is, as you recall, one of the things we talked about last time we appeared, in November.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Part of the reason I raise this is that when Mr. Greenspon came to speak about his study, he mentioned that as an editor of a newspaper, even the letters to the editor that appear are within his responsibility, that he has responsibility for what is published in his paper even if it's not from his own journalists but is coming as a letter to the editor.

I was wondering whether you feel that you share that same kind of responsibility that an editor would over a newspaper.