Canadian Heritage Committee on March 29th, 2021

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.

Following up a little, being the old guy I am, I remember being in London, at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, where you can find all sorts of interesting characters saying whatever they want. That's the old form of today's social media.

Mr. Chan, as governments react and as you hear the concerns here, governments are following along, in a sense, where there is a concern. I brought up censorship before, and how it's been referred to other people and mechanisms. We have a judicial system that interprets our hate speech. It's a very public and open forum.

What you're doing is behind closed doors, and you're providing a policy and implementation of rules that you develop, and it's not in a public forum. That leaves government in a position where it will begin to draft legislation to control and make public what you do.

You have a choice. You can become more public and open about the policies you develop for censorship, or you're going to face government regulation. You don't like government regulation. The Australian model doesn't work for anybody, because the actual authors don't get any money out of it, so it's not a solution. You just pay and publishers get money.

What are you going to do?

[Kevin Chan]

Sir, that's a very astute point, and I thank you for raising it. We agree with you, and we've heard the same criticism elsewhere, which is that Facebook is creating these rules and Facebook is deciding what stays up and what stays down.

To your point, sir, as you know, the only entity in a liberal democracy that has the legitimacy to make these rules is Parliament, which is in fact why—and here I would disagree with you, sir, respectfully, just a little—we welcome regulation.

When it comes to speech, you're right. We've been doing this for as long as Facebook has existed. The reason we're in the middle of it all is that for any decision we take about content, there will be people who say we took down too much and then there will be people who say we didn't take down enough. To do this in a way that is satisfying to a democracy is very much to have Parliament rule and draw those lines.

Obviously we've heard from representatives of the government that they will be pursuing this. Presumably this committee will be studying it and providing input, and we look forward to working collaboratively with you to share whatever experience and knowledge we have on this question that might be useful to the committee's deliberations.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you. That may get to be very interesting and not a model that ends up being what you would prefer as we bring this into the open. Maybe you do prefer that, but you have a lot of people employed, you have a lot of algorithms working at specific words. This is going to be a challenge for you as you work with us.

[Kevin Chan]

I understand that, sir, but thank you for that, and we agree.

Obviously we are trying to be transparent. That's why we publish all our community standards. We also engage with experts around the world, including in Canada, to.... As we refine our policies, we engage with the foremost experts in Canada on things like hate speech, human rights and constitutionality, freedom of expression, and discrimination.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Right, but you have no mechanism like in a judicial system, where you can appeal it. You can challenge it in the public sector. Yours is all behind the screen.

[Kevin Chan]

We do have an appeals mechanism. I'll refer to Rachel, who might be able to talk a bit about our new final board of appeal.

[Rachel Curran]

That's a really good point, Mr. Shields. Where some of the issues come in is in our interpretation of the community standards. The community standards are the rules, but not everyone agrees with how those rules are enforced, and we totally understand that. You're right. Those decisions and those interpretations are made behind closed doors.

We set up the Facebook oversight board very recently. That board is entirely independent of the company. It is a body to which users can appeal to say they don't agree with a decision Facebook has made around taking down their content, and they'd like the board to look into it and review it.

They are now starting those cases, and they do not agree with Facebook's decisions in all of them, for sure. There is now this judicial body, if you will, overseeing those decisions around removal.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Alain Rayes]

Ms. Curran and Mr. Shields, thank you for this round of questions.

I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Housefather.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Chair, I believe Ms. Dabrusin should have the floor.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Alain Rayes]

I'm so sorry, Ms. Dabrusin.

The floor is yours.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

This gives me a chance to pick up where I left off, which was on this question. You've spoken a lot today about how there's a free platform provided to companies such as Village Media, from which they make money. It seems to me a bit surprising that Facebook is doing this just out of the goodness of its heart to provide a free resource or platform to these news media companies.

Can you perhaps help me better understand? How does that get monetized? If people are going to Village Media, for example, as you've pointed out, does that not boost them being on Facebook elsewhere or the data collection behind it for you?

[Kevin Chan]

No, ma'am. Again, I'm trying to make sure I understand your question so I can answer it appropriately, but I don't think—

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

Let me make it very clear, then, so we know. My question is, is it truly a free resource? Let's start with that.

Are you saying that in no way whatsoever does Facebook collect any data or receive any increase in funding through driving to other resources when you have companies like Village Media posting links onto your platform?

[Kevin Chan]

Oh, I see.

No, ma'am. I mean, obviously Facebook is an ads platform. It is a platform, so advertisers who want to reach a certain audience will say that maybe they'll advertise here and there, and maybe they'll advertise on Facebook because they want to reach a certain audience. That's how Facebook makes money.

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

Just because you keep on placing it as free.... This part just seems a bit surprising to me: that Facebook is providing an entirely free resource for our news media. That seems to be, if I understand correctly, what you're saying.

I'm just trying to understand. Do you not collect any data, or does it not keep people going back to Facebook more by having these links?

[Kevin Chan]

Oh. Well, there are a lot of questions there, ma'am. Let me try to unpack them a bit.

We do not make money off links being shared onto Facebook. We make money because people are there and advertisers say they want to reach them, much like, for example, the political parties represented here.

Presumably, political parties are using Facebook because they want to reach Canadians. Some of that might be by posting things organically, by sharing things, just like a publisher might share a link. Some of it might also be advertising. If you choose to advertise to people on Facebook, then obviously we are going to be the beneficiaries of it from a revenue standpoint.

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

Why don't I jump in? One of the things, if I look at the Canadian media concentration research project, if I understand correctly their argument—

[Kevin Chan]

Is that with Professor Winseck from Carleton?

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

Yes. It's about the Australian model. They actually suggested that the better response is to break the data surveillance model with stronger data protection rather than attaching something to links. What do you have to say about that? Isn't it all about the data?

[Kevin Chan]

No, I don't think so, in the sense that we are.... This takes us into a different regulatory area, but we are for strong privacy regulation. We are also for strong data portability rules.

On this idea, what that would mean is that if the government in its wisdom, or Parliament in its wisdom, wished to create data portability rules that allow it to be easier to transfer information from one platform to another, we would support that, as long as certain privacy conditions are respected. In fact, we have built tools that allow for the transfer of information between the various platforms.

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

I have just a few minutes. I'm not really talking about.... Your advertising dollars are boosted by the fact that you collect data, are they not? The fact that you have data about who is on Facebook is how you build your ad platform, is it not?

[Kevin Chan]

The value of Facebook to advertisers big and small is that they're able to reach audiences on Facebook. For example, if you wanted to reach the community in your riding, ma'am, you can do that on Facebook because—

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

The fact that you know who is in my riding or who is anywhere else is based on the data you collect, is it not?

[Kevin Chan]

It's based on the data of people who are on Facebook and who have chosen to share that, yes, but I would say, ma'am, though, that advertising is.... I'm old enough to remember a time before the Internet and, of course, when you think about how any other ad surface works [Technical difficulty—Editor] also a bit like that. It's kind of saying, listen, if you put an ad in a TV show—