Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all today.
I am Imran Ahmed, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. I am here to speak about the role that tech giants play in our information ecosystem, how the design and business model of their platforms increases the prevalence of disinformation and hate speech, and how they behave in response to democratically enhanced oversight—enacted oversight in regulation.
Social media companies are not, despite their vital role in public discourse, in the business of free speech. They are motivated by money and make that money by selling advertising space on the back of content that news publishers and platform users create for them for free. Meta and the other platforms do not want editorial responsibility for the content on their platforms—for liability and financial reasons—because content moderation and editorial control require lots of resources.
However, in blocking the sharing of news posts in Canada, Meta is proving that they've always had editorial power and will use it indiscriminately if content threatens their all-important bottom line. Meta's decision to block Canadian news shows that this company, and others like it, only take responsibility for the content on their platforms when it threatens their finances.
This is why the Online News Act incenses them so. Bill C-18 compels platforms to negotiate with news publishers whose content they have profited from and some of whose businesses they have destroyed.
Canada has been left in a position where Canadians cannot share news posts with their friends, family and community. This decision is nothing more than a temper tantrum by a company that has shown itself, at every opportunity, to be completely opposed to governance by democratically elected governments worldwide.
This year's Reuters digital news survey found that 27% of Canadians share news via social media and messaging. Now news has gone from Canadians' newsfeeds, so what replaces it? What content do users turn to now that reputable news outlets have been shut out?
That news vacuum—