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.
10:40 a.m.
Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook Inc.
Absolutely. We're in the process of looking not only at Cambridge Analytica but at other situations as well. Once we understand the scope of that problem, we will certainly communicate that.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.
The last couple of minutes go to Mr. Kent.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Mr. Chan, Mr. Sherman, this follows the point Mr. Saini made earlier at the end of his questioning. The Facebook posting of Russian disinformation maliciously attacking, or trying to attack, the credibility of Canadian Forces serving in Latvia says that it was posted “about 10 months ago”. It is still up on that site, which I think is a fairly obvious posting of malicious material that is certainly fake information that should be removed. On the other side of the coin, there are any number of complaints from human rights groups in countries like Iran, Russia, China, and elsewhere around the world that when the governments of those dictatorships, authoritarian governments, complain to Facebook about the human rights postings they make, they are too often removed.
What's Facebook doing with regard to the balance of hateful disinformation and the repression of legitimate information in some of these far-from-democratic countries?
10:45 a.m.
Global Directeur and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Thank you very much for the question, sir. With respect to the post you referred to, if it's appropriate for me to ask if your office could follow up with me afterwards, then I would be happy to take a look at it and see what may be the issue there.
Generally, sir, as you and others have pointed out, we obviously operate around the world. We do want to be sensitive to local laws, cultures, and customs in many respects as well. I think your point very much seizes on the challenge of making sure that we are doing this in a way that ensures we have consistency, but also that we are sensitive to the realities in different countries. That's why we have a global set of community standards.
We do recognize that those are not perfect. As cases arise—and you can imagine that there are going to be, on any given day, millions if not billions of posts in a day—they will give rise, as I mentioned to Mr. Angus for a different question, to novel public policy issues. Every time we encounter these novel cases, it is once again an opportunity for us to engage and to try to understand what the right response will be.
I think that in general, sir, we obviously have very clear standards on hate speech, terrorist content, pornography, and those sorts of things. Obviously, we hear about those sorts of things and we would not want to see those sorts of things on Facebook. We take all of these things very seriously.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Yes, and I think the concern is about the suppression and repression of legitimate human rights information at the direction of these questionable sovereign governments.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thank you, Mr. Kent.
To finish up, as chair of the committee, I'll say that I think we've all appreciated the good parts of Facebook allowing us to connect with loved ones and voters, etc., on a daily basis. I check Facebook regularly for my news, yet we task you with the deep responsibility of keeping Canadians' data safe.
I think one thing that's unique about this committee is that all parties are committed to doing what we need to do to ensure that you keep Canadians' data safe.
Thank you once again, Mr. Chan and Mr. Sherman, for your attendance today.
We're adjourned.
