Evidence of meeting #19 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was site.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I appreciate that.
I'm out of time, but just so I have the timeline right, in December 2020 you made changes, but they began in April 2020 when you retained the law firm. You started with this company in 2008.
Thanks very much.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
Sorry, Mr. Chair, do we have the time to reply to that, or do we just wait for the next round?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Chris Warkentin
We will have some additional time, and if there are questions you need to answer at the end, we'll make sure we allow you to do that as well.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Good afternoon.
My first question relates to the 2018-2019 numbers. I would also like you to provide us with a copy of your terms of service before the revised version of December 8. Can you provide us with it shortly? We would like to see those terms and conditions.
You talked about privacy. Let's talk about the past. I understand that you are concerned about the content. Furthermore, there's the issue of uploading. Unless I'm mistaken, when an individual makes a request to remove content and does so within what I think is an unreasonable timeframe, that is, one week or two, that content may once again be found because another user—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Chris Warkentin
Excuse me, Madame Gaudreau. I'm not sure if other people are experiencing the same thing, but there is overriding translation, as well as the floor channel, that seems to be going on the same channel. I'm not sure if there is a technical problem there. I'm wondering if our technical experts could just verify that.
Were other members experiencing the same difficulty hearing?
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
I was able to hear both, but I can make out the translation enough to answer the question.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Chris Warkentin
Thank you for that. I'll just make sure our technical folks are aware of that.
I do apologize, Madame Gaudreau, for interrupting you there.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I am still going to keep my 30 seconds.
Mr. Tassillo, here's what I would like to understand. Even if you look after the content on the platform and you remove what was on the site, a user could have already downloaded it, become a member of the platform and repost the content.
You'll probably say that's what used to happen, but what about today?
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
Thank you for the question. I'll be replying in English, if that's okay. It's more familiar for me.
I'll take a couple of steps back. There are a couple of different ways to have content removed from the site. Some ways will have the content removed immediately. Some ways, it gets sent back to a review team. It depends on the path the end-user would take.
If you are an end-user to the site, just a visitor to the site, and you might be watching a piece of content and for whatever reason you feel the content shouldn't be there, you can actually flag the content. Once the content is flagged, it is sent to our team for a re-review process. This is obviously a re-review, as before the content made it out to the site in and of itself, it went through the process that I briefly described before.
If you so choose, you can also use a content removal form.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I'm sorry, I don't have much time.
You were saying that you had very specific measures. Your technology cannot detect content that had to be removed either by your moderators who saw that it was child pornography, or as a result of a request from someone claiming that the content was non-compliant and had been made without their knowledge.
What technology do you use to ensure that content will not be reposted, content that should not even have appeared and been removed because it had been flagged?
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
Specifically for the re-uploading issue.... I'll box it in; I'm trying to be respectful of your time.
For the re-uploading process, when a piece of content is taken down by either one of those paths, we now automatically create a digital fingerprint of it, so when someone attempts to re-upload the content, it will get blocked at the upload phase.
Obviously, no software in the world is perfect, and that was something we outsourced—
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Was it like that before your new procedures? According to testimony we have heard, the content clearly reappeared.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
The software was always available. In early 2020, I believe, we made the process automatic so that it was automatically added to the database, but the end-user always had the ability to use it. We decided it's one thing we shouldn't ask the end-user to use, so we added it automatically.
Even at that, we saw that the software wasn't performing to our standards, and that's why, about two years ago, we started creating SafeGuard, which we believe is much more effective in being able to—
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
It's called SafeGuard. That's our in-house software. The other software is MediaWise, provided by Vobile, the end-user version.
Bloc
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
The SafeGuard software, our plan is to put it out for everyone, so anyone who sees any non-consensual content on their site can upload it to—
Bloc
Bloc
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Okay.
I have a question for you, and I won't be able to sleep well tonight if I don't ask it.
You said that you are parents. So am I. We can talk about business, profitability and accessibility. We can also talk about the fact that this is entertainment for consenting adults, so there's no connection to minors. What we are seeing today is that you are making changes.
I would like to hear you talk about your conscience as parents. It's not like this is financial fraud, but these events have an impact on entire lives. I'd like to hear what you have to say on that. I'm not talking to businessmen, I'm talking to individuals who wanted to provide entertainment for consenting adults. It's a thin line and there were rules that you had to follow; clearly, you have failed to do so over the past few years.
How do you experience this personally?
I'd like to hear from each of you for the minute and a half that I have left.