Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 24th, 2024

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Are you familiar with the Center for Countering Digital Hate's report entitled, “Hate Pays: How X accounts are exploiting the Israel-Gaza conflict to grow and profit”?

[Wifredo Fernández]

I'm not familiar with that particular report, but I am happy to talk about our response to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It states:

X appears to be profiting from ads served near content from hateful accounts exploiting the conflict...

Hateful accounts benefit from ‘verified’ perks that boost visibility of their posts

All ten accounts in our study benefited from paid-for ‘blue tick’ verification, which X ensures X gives their posts greater visibility from “prioritized ranking” on the platform.

Six of the hateful accounts studied have enabled X’s subscription feature, enabling them to profit by charging followers to access exclusive content.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Mr. Green, we're at six minutes now.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I find it all despicable, sir—I'm going to say that—and I find the testimony not credible.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Caputo....

That completes our first round.

We're going to go to five-minute questions and we're going to go to—

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I think Mr. Barrett will be taking over now.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

We're going to go to Mr. Barrett.

Go ahead.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. de Eyre, in the United States, your platform has a creator fund. Mr. Fernández talked about that aspect of his platform. Can you quickly give us some sense of what the anticipated rollout in Canada will be? Are there any plans to roll that out in Canada?

[Steve de Eyre]

Sure. Thanks for the question. This is something we talk a lot about with Canadian creators.

The creator fund, or the creativity fund as it's called now, is specific to the U.S. and a few other countries. We haven't rolled it out globally yet. We're always looking at ways we can continue to help creators monetize their content and earn a living from their content. There are quite a number of other ways, though, that Canadian creators are thriving and making money by using TikTok.

You have a constituent in your riding, whom I mentioned in my opening statement, Corey McMullan. He uses it for brand partnerships and to sell his own items directly to his followers. I think he has an audience of over 400,000 or 500,000 followers.

Live gifting is another major way that Canadian creators are able to monetize their platforms. They go live and receive virtual gifts.

We're constantly looking at ways we can help our community leverage their audience and earn money or even make a living through TikTok.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I appreciate that response.

I have a question that I'd like to put to each member of the panel, and it has to deal with the responsibility that verified users on your platforms have when it comes to the dissemination of disinformation.

Mr. Fernández, you talked about the grey check mark and the trust that users of your service can have when they recognize that the grey check mark means that this person is an elected official or a government official.

I want to read to you a post on X from October 17, 2023. Canada's foreign affairs minister posts, “Bombing a hospital is an unthinkable act, and there is no doubt that doing so is absolutely illegal.” That post was viewed 2.7 million times. It's still live on your site today.

I want to juxtapose that with an ABC News story from October 18, 2023. I'm just going to read you the first paragraph:

A day after the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry claimed Israel had attacked the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, saying some 500 Palestinians had been killed, Israeli and U.S. officials, explosives experts, and President Joe Biden said Wednesday that available evidence shows the destruction was caused instead by a failed Palestinian terrorist rocket launch.

How difficult is it for your users—and also your services—to manage this when we have this type of recklessness not only from an elected official but also from the foreign affairs minister of a G7 country who is spreading what is demonstrably evidenced as fake news, false information—call it what you will?

We talk about misinformation. The chair has pointed out before that that's a clever term for when people lie. What kinds of challenges does it create when this type of actor is posting this type of misinformation?

[Wifredo Fernández]

At times of conflict and disasters, people come to X to find out what's happening. Often it can be challenging to understand what's happening in a conflict zone, such as the Israel-Hamas war. This is where Community Notes can be really powerful and can sometimes act faster than traditional fact-checking.

However, because so many people come to the service and there are a lot of different sources of authoritative information and important information, this is where folks can make better sense and get a more accurate picture of what's happening on the ground.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Yes, and I'll note....

I regret that I don't have time for the other platforms to engage on this question. I think I have 45 seconds left, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You have 30 seconds.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I note that there are Community Notes that have been suggested, but an agreed-upon note has not been posted yet. However, I do think that in this case, that feature is important, because there is definitely added context, including the truth, that should have been offered by that verified user, Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, when posting and not taking down something that's demonstrably false.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

I see that Mr. Bains has his headset on and that he's ready to go online there.

Go ahead, Mr. Bains, for five minutes, please.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our platform guests for joining us today.

I want to talk to Mr. Fernández regarding bots. Bots, we know, are a source of misinformation on social media platforms. Since X was sold, bots' activity on X has become worse than ever, according to experts like Timothy Graham at the Queensland University of Technology. There is an article from The Washington Post in July 2018 that reads:

The rate of account suspensions, which Twitter confirmed to The Post, has more than doubled since October, when the company revealed under congressional pressure how Russia used fake accounts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July.

However, according to your statements earlier today, Mr. Fernández, you said that X has removed 60,000 spamouflage accounts in the last year. Why is there such a discrepancy between the suspensions before Mr. Musk purchased the platform and what I referenced in 2018? Is that not a huge gap of bots still active?

[Wifredo Fernández]

One thing I would say is that compared to 2018, now, in 2024—six years later—we have a lot more activity on the service. We have more monthly and daily active users. Just in the first half of this year, as we recently disclosed in our public “Global Transparency Report”, we suspended over 460 million accounts under our platform manipulation and spam, so our threat disruption teams are active and busy every day thwarting these types of campaigns.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Spam would be equal to bots, or are they people actively...? Are they actual people accounts, or are you able to identify what's a bot versus an actual account?

[Wifredo Fernández]

It can be a mix. Our teams use different behavioural signals, when it comes to the accounts and technical signals, to determine the authenticity and whether there's coordinated and authentic behaviour. However, yes, it could be spam or individuals or a network of individuals. It really depends on the operation.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

That 300 million was over what time?

[Wifredo Fernández]

The 460 million was in the first half of 2024.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

To shift to Ms. Hundley, you talked about disinformation for hire. Can you expand on that, on these organizations that are now...? You said there's an increase in these organizations and in people retaining their services.

[Dr. Lindsay Hundley]

Yes, I would be happy to.

A disinformation-for-hire firm is simply a firm that sells services in order to conduct deceptive campaigns, generally relying on the use of fake accounts and fictitious identities. Over the years, since 2017, we have identified dozens of disinformation-for-hire firms that ran networks that violated our policies against coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

What's their primary messaging? What are they focused on? What are they targeting?

I understand it must be a range of things, but can you highlight some of the key messages? Is it tropes or hitting on people's social issues that they maybe value versus devalue?