Information & Ethics Committee on April 19th, 2018

[Kevin Chan]

I think there are many different instruments that already exist. I think the Privacy Commissioner is investigating. I think he is already very much seized with his existing abilities under mandate or statute to understand and get to the bottom of what he has.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I guess the question is, are you a utility now? You've moved from being a really cool space, but are you basically a public utility that everyone relies on?

[Kevin Chan]

Sure, if I may say, we are a platform where there are, as you point out, 23 million Canadians on service. We take that responsibility very seriously. I think the core of your concern is whether or not we take that responsibility seriously, and we absolutely do. If I may look at one issue that you're alluding to, the news issue—again I'm very much seized with working with a broader ecosystem—there are indeed seven million Canadians every day who get at least some part of their news from Facebook. We understand that's a very significant responsibility. We understand that we are a part of that news ecosystem—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Sorry to interrupt, but I don't want to get cut off by the votes in the House.

Let's just zero in on that issue of news. On the question of Myanmar, where Facebook was the sole source of news for a vast majority of people in Myanmar, The Guardian and international organizations said that the use and misuse of that platform definitely played a huge role in the horrific genocide that we've been seeing there Myanmar and in the rise of hate, because Facebook was the primary source of news. The UN investigator, Yanghee Lee, said that Facebook had become a beast in Myanmar. No one thought when we started to exchange information that it could be taken over by haters and be used in such a manner, but it has. How do we prevent that atrocity from happening again?

[Kevin Chan]

Sir, I, of course, would not want to speak to the specific details from another part of the world, but I can you tell you, if I may, about our global approach to this.

As I mentioned earlier, we do have community standards that apply globally. Hate speech, incitement to violence, terrorist content, those sorts of things I think we can all agree should not be on the service. We do take them down proactively where we can with artificial intelligence, which, to be very clear, is not a panacea. It's getting better, but we would not sort of say that this is always going to be perfect. We also take down content that is reported to us. I think we try to do this in all the languages in which we operate around the world.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm on Facebook all the time. My wife says I'm married to your platform for better or for worse. The issue I see is the anti-Muslim, pro-Russian, pro-Putin, pro-Assad comments. They are derailed comments.

I'm always trying to do deal with this, but that's small potatoes compared to what has happed in Myanmar. Alan Davis, who is one of the people looking at that genocide, said:

I think things are so far gone in Myanmar right now... I really don’t know how Zuckerberg and co sleep at night. If they had any kind of conscience they would be pouring a good percentage of their fortunes into reversing the chaos they have created.

You have an enormous power with your corporation. It's unprecedented in history. With Facebook identified as one of the key sources of such horrific killings, I would think that Facebook would be so outraged that you would be begging to come to committee, not being asked to come to committee, to say, “We will make sure that this will never happen again.”

So, where is that assurance?

[Kevin Chan]

Well, again, sir, I would just say, respectfully, in Canada....

I will circulate documents that show that before issues generally become public issues, we have long been at work with the right authorities to get things right. Again, I could just point back to the letter I have here from the Commissioner of Canada Elections, congratulating us for our efforts—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I know, but we're talking about the power of one platform to cause horrific harm and death—an unprecedented massacre. That's an incredible power.

As a corporate entity, with Facebook's response that we've heard this morning, are you equipped to deal with this kind of power, given the potential for harm as well as the potential for good?

[Kevin Chan]

We understand very much where you're coming from. We understand our responsibilities. I think, as I indicated in the opening statement, we did not take a broad enough view about our responsibilities. It's not enough just to build tools that people can use; we have to ensure they're not abused.

We have made big commitments to grow our safety team, going from 10,000 to 20,000 people in the next year, which is a significant undertaking for a company of a certain number of full-time employees, and we will continue to do more, both on the technical side, which we spent some time talking about, but also on having enough people on the ground to deal with all these types of issues.

I certainly would never want to say that we are perfect and that we'll get it right tomorrow, but we certainly have been on this journey for the last year or more. We see much more work to be done. I want to assure you that we will do all we can in Canada, but also elsewhere around the world, to ensure that abuses do not happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus and Mr. Chan.

I want to highlight to folks that we've gotten word that the votes aren't likely, so you don't need to be as urgent with your questions. It looks as if we're going to get as many questioners as are on the list.

Next up we have Madame Fortier.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

A number of years ago, I was very proud to subscribe to Facebook and I was always “liking” and “sharing”. But today, in the light of what is happening, I am constantly wondering what I can post. I hope that you are going to be able to give Canadians back some trust in the network, not only through what you are doing now but above all through what you will be doing in the future.

As the mother of three children who use Facebook, I think about what awaits them in the future. I also think of my parents, who could well become vulnerable because they like everything on Facebook. I really want you to understand that, in both our professional and personal lives, we now have a filter in our heads that we have to use every day when we use Facebook.

I still maintain that Facebook is an incredible networking tool that allows me to stay in touch with my acquaintances and my family and to be up to date with everything that is going on. You can understand a little how my doubts and my lack of trust are affecting me. It is important for me to tell you this, because I feel that everyone is feeling the same way, not only in my constituency, but all over the country.

Now I would like to discuss those who create apps. We talked about them a little earlier and I would like you to explain the policy on those developers you referred to. How many of them does the policy apply to and how many violations have you had in the past? Also, what did you do about the violators?

[Robert Sherman]

Thank you for you comments, and particularly about your use of Facebook. I also use Facebook very frequently to communicate with my family and friends, and find it valuable. As we've said before, we have a very significant responsibility as well to make sure that people using our service are able to use it in a safe and protected way. That's been important for a long time, but we're continuing to invest in it.

With regard to application developers, first, we have a series of restrictions on how they can use information from the platform, including that they can't ask for information they don't need to operate their apps. They can't sell information they receive. They can't use it for monetization or app networks or those kinds of things. They have to delete the information if we or somebody else asks them to do so.

As a part of the changes we made in 2014, we introduced an upfront review process, so that apps that wanted to get access to our platform and to get those additional pieces of information would have to go through an upfront review. We also do a reactive review when we identify a problem. Those steps can include removing somebody from the platform, investigating what they're doing or—

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You are telling us today that there were violations. What did you do about them?

[Robert Sherman]

We can take a range of steps when people violate our policies. These include terminating them from the platform. We can engage them informally about improving it—if it's a minor violation of some sort. We can refer them to law enforcement or take legal action. I think one of the things that we've learned, particularly with respect to the events over the past several weeks, is that we need to be more aggressive in our oversight and our understanding of when these situations occur, and also in taking enforcement action, including collaborating with law enforcement where appropriate.

[Kevin Chan]

Madame, the other thing we said very clearly is that, obviously, we're going to go back and look at all the apps that were in play at the time. If we do have evidence of malfeasance, we will ban the app from the platform and will notify all affected users.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Do you ask app developers to register by providing a physical address or to confirm their identity? How do you go about making sure that they really exist and that you can monitor their activities?

[Robert Sherman]

We have an application process that app developers have to undertake. They have to provide some additional information about who they are and who is responsible for them. They have to connect to a Facebook account that we can identify with a real name. There are a number of steps we take to identify them. One of the things we've been doing across the platform, that we've been investing in, is further verification to make sure that we understand who we're dealing with and, as part of the efforts we've announced, we will undertake further review of developers on the platform. As Kevin said, looking back at app developers who would have had access to significant information before, as well as going forward, we want to make sure that we have appropriate oversight, not just of what people are doing but of who is doing that information collection.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Now I want to deal with the issue of fake accounts, which we have already talked about a little. You explained how you prevent fake accounts from being created. But, in the light of what we know today about the problem, what new measures have you undertaken recently to determine or confirm an individual's identity? What other processes or mechanisms do you have to implement to ensure that fake accounts are suspended or removed from the platform?

[Kevin Chan]

There are two things. We have talked about one already, but let me just briefly underscore them. We are constantly changing and refining the way we identify fake accounts using machine learning. So again, in elections following the U.S. presidential election, we did identify tens of thousands of fake accounts for each of these electoral moments, and we put them down proactively. Again, independent studies confirmed that in the German election, this phenomenon of information being spread by fake accounts was not a driver in that election. We feel we are making progress on this. I would never want to make you think that we think we've solved it. This is a constant game of steady improvement and technical improvement. We need to do that .

More recently, in the lead-up to the mid-term congressional elections in the United States, which I alluded to earlier, we have made commitments to roll out a second phase of ad transparencies. Again, as I mentioned, Canada is the first country that we have tested “View Ads” in. We are going to bring that to the United States prior to the U.S. congressional elections. We're also going to have special additional measures for political advertising, whether it be for individuals or issue-based ads. For those ads, we have a few measures that we will implement to try to ensure the authenticity of the individual who is running these ad accounts. For example, we will make sure they upload a government I.D., and we will then confirm their address by sending them a piece of mail with a special code in it. We will launch those things first, in advance of the mid-term congressional elections. Our intention, as we've announced, is to roll this out globally afterwards.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Ms. Fortier.

Next up for five minutes is Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As lawmakers, we have no doubt that Facebook is doing everything it can to remain a valuable platform. As an analogy, nuclear medicine has valuable uses, but if the technology falls into the wrong hands, it could be used to make bombs.

Facebook has become a very large company. You said that you have put measures in place and that you have hired 10,000 to 20,000 people to make your platform safe. With more than 2 billion users, a number that is certainly going to increase exponentially in the coming months because things are moving so quickly, Facebook will be one of the most popular social media on the planet.

As lawmakers, our fear is that you may lose control of your platform despite having put in place all possible measures. In fact, there could be very smart but ill-intentioned people who would like to use your platform illegitimately, for purposes other than those we are familiar with today.

Do you believe that you will be able to regain control of the situation in the short term? As lawmakers, we are not necessarily going to be giving you four, five or 10 years to prove it. You have to face major challenges and you have a heavy responsibility to act now. Are you going to move quickly?

[Kevin Chan]

Thank you very much for the question, sir.

You know, for good and perhaps less good, we are known for moving quite fast to get on top of things, and I think you will see, and probably have already seen in the last few weeks, that we are moving very fast to address many of the things that have been raised. Again, as I said earlier, this is not something we have done just in the last month. I would like to characterize this more as a journey that we've been on for the last year or year and a half, to roll out a bunch of different things, a bunch of initiatives, whether they be on platform, from a technical side, or new products like “View Ads”, but also partnerships with the broader ecosystem to try to prevent abuse on our platform.

Again, as I said earlier, and as I think our CEO has also said, I don't think we can ever give assurances that there won't be a bad actor who does try to abuse the platform, but we take our responsibility very seriously, and we're not waiting for authorities to decide what should be done. We take all the criticism very seriously, we take all the feedback very seriously, and we're putting in place—I hope you can appreciate—very tangible, concrete measures, both on platform and off, to address this very quickly.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Do you have any comments, Mr. Sherman?

[Robert Sherman]

Yes, I agree with what Mr. Chan said. I think it's important for us to take steps expeditiously to address some of these challenges. I think the steps we've announced with regard to platform over the past several weeks are the first of what I expect to be many efforts along these lines, and I think some of the most immediate things we can do, in addition to looking backward, are to restrict the availability of information as quickly as we can, impose oversight.

I will say, with regard to your broader comment, that we have a broad responsibility. There are people who are going.... We've been idealistic and wanted our products to be used for good. I think it's fair to say that not everybody will use them for good. We have a responsibility to get on top of that. I think we also have a responsibility to you in Parliament and the government more generally to work also with you on those problems and make sure we're communicating with you about the steps we're taking. That's something we're committed to doing expeditiously and in consultation with the Canadian government.