Good afternoon, everyone.
I'd like to thank the committee members for the invitation.
I've been a journalist since 1990 and a professor of journalism at Université du Québec à Montréal for five years.
I believe that 2024 represents a crossroads for disinformation and misinformation. Content automation has proliferated with the launch of the ChatGPT 3.5 AI chatbot in 2022. Not only that, but a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study published in 2018 shows that false news has been circulating six times faster on Twitter than fact-checked news. That's cause for concern.
Things have gotten worse on X, formerly called Twitter, over the past 18 months, since it was taken over by businessman Elon Musk, as a result of several announcements, including the possibility of acquiring a blue checkmark, meaning verified status, simply by paying a few dollars a month, along with the reinstatement of accounts like the one held by former U.S. President Trump, who is himself a major vector of disinformation.
These social network algorithms clearly promote content that generates the most traffic, meaning comments, “likes” and sharing, which amplifies the spread of extreme ideas that we've been seeing in recent years.
One current concern is Meta's blocking of news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada since the summer of 2023, which further fuels the growth of disinformation and misinformation by suppressing news from Canadian media, except for sports and cultural news.
A recently published study that was quoted by Reuters says:
comments and shares of what it categorised as “unreliable” sources climbed to 6.9% in Canada in the 90 days after the ban, compared to 2.2% in the 90 days before.
On the political side of things, I believe efforts should be made to get the news back on Facebook and Instagram by the end of 2024, before Canada's federal elections. The repercussions of this disinformation are political. For example, on Instagram, you now have to click on a tab to see political publications. They've been purposely blocked or restricted by Meta for several months now. The experience is unpleasant for Canadians on Facebook, because more and more content of interest to them from major Canadian media outlets is being replaced by junk news. This reduces the scope of what people are seeing, is harmful to democracy, and also leads to less traffic on news sites. According to a recently published study from McGill University, to which our colleague who testified earlier contributed, news is being replaced by memes on Facebook. It reports the disappearance of five million to eight million views per day of informational content in Canada.
The Canadian government will also have to take rapid action on the issue of artificial intelligence by prohibiting the dissemination of AI-generated content, like deep fake images and audio. Bill C-63 is a partial response to prejudicial content, but it doesn't go far enough. More transparency is needed with respect to AI-generated content.
Oversight is also urgently needed for intellectual property. The Montreal newspaper Le Devoir ran an article about that this morning. What are the boundaries? I encourage you to quickly develop legislation to address this issue, rather than wait 30 years, as was the case for Bill C-11.
Canadian parliamentarians also need to declare war on content farms that produce false news on request about our country and other countries. Foreign governments like China's and Russia's often use that strategy. We mustn't forget that 140 million people were exposed to false news in the United States during the 2020 election. That's clearly very troubling in view of the coming U.S. election this fall. I am also amazed that Canada has been allowing the Chinese Communist Party to continue spreading propaganda press releases on the Canadian Cision newswire for years.
To conclude, I'll be happy to answer your questions. Canada needs to be on a war footing against disinformation, whether generated by artificial intelligence or manually. Stricter rules are required for generative artificial intelligence and for the protection of intellectual property owned by Canadian media and artists, who should be benefiting from these technological advances over the coming years.
Thank you.