Evidence of meeting #100 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was platform.
A video is available from Parliament.
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Absolutely, sir, and it's not just in the privacy realm. There are many other areas that we touch on in how we operate or how users use our service, and we always want to be doing it in a way that is consistent.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You don't have to give me the answer now, but I would like to hear back formally as to what level you are or are not subject to our Canadian privacy laws.
Mr. Chan, you touched on the other point I wanted to talk about, which does concern me tremendously. We've seen bad actors use Facebook and other mediums, like Twitter, to interfere with democratic elections. In Canada, we have laws that control how much money can be spent to promote one party or another. I'm not attacking any particular country, but, say, a country that didn't want to follow these rules were paying someone or buying advertising and breaking our laws, but were doing it in this foreign country, what do we need to do, as regulators, as writers of law, to make sure this does not happen? It's even if they're not paid. Let's say someone is just actively flooding your social network with information and impacting our democracy for nefarious reasons. How are you going to look at this challenge? It's a huge challenge. I want to understand what you're going to do to help address that.
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Sure, I'd be happy to do that.
I can obviously only speak for how we think about it at Facebook. I don't want to make representations for other companies. Again, it is clear that we were much too slow to identify this new kind of threat back in the U.S. presidential election. When we did turn our mind to it—and I was getting at it a bit with an answer to Mr. Saini—we were trying to look at automated signals to understand, from a political standpoint, foreign interference, and how we could recognize that on the platform. It turns out that it's people setting up fake accounts on Facebook and spreading misinformation.
Now, as you know, on Facebook we have an authentic identity policy. Overwhelmingly, the two-plus billion people on Facebook actually behave a certain way because they're real people. They will do things in their personal time that we expect normal people to do. The fake accounts actually behave very differently. With AI we are able to identify, and we're getting increasingly better at identifying, these fake accounts and taking them down proactively. When you look at the subsequent elections after the U.S. presidential election, when you look at the French election and the German election, and most recently at the Italian election, you will see that we were able to identify tens of thousands of fake accounts and take them down proactively. I'm pleased to say that, although, again, our work is never done—
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I have a quick question before I run out of time.
Specifically on paid advertisement—and I understand how you're going to use it to find fake users and that—we control what can be done within Canada's borders in Canadian elections. If someone's buying an ad outside of our jurisdiction, but it's designed to impact our democracy.... You don't need to answer now, but I'd like to get you to think about that. Think how can we work together and what laws we need to put in place so that does not happen.
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Thank you for that, sir.
We are doing a lot of thinking on that. We've made commitments for the U.S. mid-terms coming up, and I'd be happy to share them with you.
Conservative
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Chan, I was pleased to hear you acknowledge today that Facebook was too idealistic, I think you said, on how technology was used. You committed to say that, if Facebook finds abuse in the future, you will act fast and you will ban those privacy abusers.
However, some might say that's a little bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, that it's an imperfect remedy, that, depending on the speed and your ability to detect abuse, much more potential abuse could be done, if for an increasingly shorter period of time.
How do you address that?
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Are you talking in general, sir?
Conservative
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Yes.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
You have discussed some preventive technologies, but the fact is that there's still a barn door context if you're waiting until the abuse is detected.
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Yes, I better understand the question now, sir.
Again, we do have proactive measures in place that are getting increasingly better and sophisticated. Those are the AI tools I've talked about for us to be able to proactively delete accounts before mischief arrives. Again, we have looked at elections subsequent to the U.S. presidential one, for example, the German election. Independent studies have shown that the phenomenon of misinformation and fake news was not a material concern in that election.
In response to the broader point you may be raising, I just want to assure you, to the best that I can, obviously, as an individual, that we in Canada take abuse on the platform very seriously. Obviously the ones that would potentially occur during an election are the most serious.
Mr. Chair, if I may, I have a letter from the Commissioner of Canada Elections from 2016 following the 2015 election. He writes about his appreciation for the way in which Facebook Canada has engaged with his office proactively to ensure that there was no malfeasance during the last federal election. This is obviously something that we have not discussed, but I would be pleased, Mr. Chair, to circulate this letter, so people can see that—
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
—our good faith has been long-standing, and we've been applauded for it.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
We appreciate that. Certainly in the context of 2015, the commissioner may well have had congratulations to appropriately deliver. After Cambridge Analytica and AIQ, as you've heard, the Privacy Commissioner has some very serious concerns about how urgent it is to address these problems between now and the next federal election, let alone a number of provincial elections.
Some observers thought that in his testimony last week, Mr. Zuckerberg dodged a couple of important questions, particularly with regard to who owns virtual reality, the virtual you, if you will. His response on a number of occasions was to note that the user owns all of the content, that one uploads it and can delete it at will, but that didn't answer the question of whether the advertising profile that Facebook builds up about an individual user can be deleted The fact is that Mr. Zuckerberg didn't acknowledge that a user has no control over that data.
Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook Inc.
Sir, I can answer that question. Yes, as I mentioned earlier, I think it's important that in our terms of service the information you put on Facebook is your information. You can delete it; you own it.
With regard to the information that we use for advertising, I think it is equally important that we tell people what that information is. If you've liked the pages of several car manufacturers, we might assume that you're interested in cars. That's an assumption that Facebook has made. It's important for us to tell you about that, to give you access to that information, and to allow you to remove it, if that's what you want to do. Again, with regard to that kind of information, I think it's also important that people have access to it and be in control.
The ultimate control is that, if people don't want us to have any information about them, they can remove their account. We hope they won't do that. As we've said today, we hope we provide great value for people and the lives of every Canadian who uses Facebook. We want to make sure that at each step of the way people are in control of their information.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you for that.
There was one other suggestion—well, there were a number—that Mr. Zuckerberg might have dodged a couple of questions with regard to the information, the data, that Facebook holds on browsing activities. I guess he rebuffed the question. He rejected the question that Facebook does own users' browsing activity. His answer was that browsing information is not part of the user's content since the user didn't upload that information. That may well be, many observers have said, and I tend to agree with them, but that's beside the point.
So, who does own the browsing information and browsing activity of a user?
Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook Inc.
If I might provide one minute of context on what we're talking about.... If a website or app developer wants to integrate Facebook technology, they have the ability to do that. For example, if they want to put the Like button on their page, if you load the web page, your browser will send a request to Facebook servers to ask to receive the Like button, and then we'll obviously record that we have that information.
With regard to that information, we're using it predominantly to provide the Like button and to make sure that if you hit the Like button this is recorded in your profile. Also, it's for technical purposes to support advertising and in other ways.
With regard to that information as well, it's important that people have access to control it if they don't want that information to be used for advertising. They should be able to do that. Our practice is to delete and de-identify that information on a routine basis, independent of whether people exercise that.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Do you not agree that it might be appropriate to protect users who are small “i” ignorant of what might be happening with their browsing activity or when they click that access box? Do you not agree that perhaps you should have a very clear warning—a very concise, one-sentence warning—about the dangers of unintended use of this browsing activity? Or would you not do that because that might compromise and reduce your revenue potential with these third parties?
Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook Inc.
No, I think it's important for us to let people know how this technology works. We've done that in a number of ways over the years. I think it's clear that we need to do more of that. One of the things that we've announced this week is that we're going to be educating people, specifically as a part of using the Facebook service, about the fact that this technology exists and that we collect this information. We'll be educating people in other ways as well.
We recently published a blog post on our website that provides more information about this practice. Following the hearings this past week, people were interested in understanding more.
I certainly agree with your point that we need to communicate more about this.
Conservative
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you.
When I was elected in 2004, I came out of the music business at a time when what was happening in Silicon Valley was turning the music industry upside down. Certainly, the massive losses in recording revenues were noted. There was a lot of pressure at that time here on the Hill to bring in legislation to regulate, to try to limit, digital growth. I was very much against that because I saw the potential for new ideas and for development, even though it was upending the music industry. Now it's upended newspapers and so many stable sources.
However, what we've seen is that so many of these young start-ups have become monopolistic giants. The idea that there would be a whole series of competing, for example, platforms has disappeared. Looking at it in 2018, my concern is that Facebook has morphed from a place where you meet your old friends from high school into the single, defining source of information for the vast majority of people. It is the news media for the vast majority of people, whether it is false news, Russian troll bot news, or CTV.
When Mr. Therrien came here the other day, he said that he needed the tools to be able to go in without permission and investigate or audit Facebook on privacy. He also raised the larger issue, that there are Competition Act issues and a series of effects that Facebook now has that have not not really been looked at.
Mr. Chan, if a federal auditor for digital platforms was brought forward who had the power to investigate these complaints to ensure compliance, what would Facebook think of that?
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Sir, are you referring to privacy or something broader?
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Well, Mr. Therrien mentioned privacy, but obviously Facebook affects so much more than privacy. It affects the news. It affects information. It's now affecting elections and whether or not elections can be undermined, as in the United States or as in the Brexit vote. It's a question of whether or not we need to have an independent auditor. I don't see how we can regulate something as big as Facebook when you can move 1.5 billion users from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to get around laws. Would you support an auditor?
