Evidence of meeting #97 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A video is available from Parliament.
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
No. We're not doing anything with the biometric information that we have, other than to note that it is facial biometric information that is present on ID cards.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Are you using that to train any AI systems or any other technology that might be used?
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
We'll need that identification, for example, if we need parental consent for somebody to create an X account.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
On your 500 million users, you're collecting all of this biometric information. When people click on, do you believe that the users in this new privacy statement have informed consent when they're clicking through?
Do they know what it is they're consenting to?
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
Yes, I believe they do. We work very hard to make sure that our privacy policy is as clear as possible.
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
It's written across a number of teams, including our legal department.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Do you believe that the average person has the ability to understand the terms and references of a privacy agreement?
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
Our hope is that we're getting to a place where people can understand those terms.
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
I believe that they can.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You believe that young people, teenagers, people who are posting their driver's licence online, have the ability to understand what it is they are consenting to.
Senior Privacy and Data Protection Counsel, X Corporation
Yes, that is the nature of our privacy policy.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That's fascinating.
Okay. I'm going to move on to Meta.
According to a New York Times article published on November 25 of this year:
Meta has received more than 1.1 million reports of users under the age of 13 on its Instagram platform since early 2019 yet it “disabled only a fraction” of those accounts....
Instead, the social media giant “routinely continued to collect” children's personal information, like their locations and email addresses, without parental permission, in violation of a federal children's privacy law....
Ms. Curran, how do you respond to that?
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Listen, we think youth safety is a really key priority for us. We've developed over 30 new tools and features to support safe and positive experiences for teens on our platforms.
I'll just run through some of these very quickly.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Before you do that, I want you just to consider that in the same article it says:
The unsealed filing said that Meta “continually failed” to make effective age-checking systems a priority and instead used approaches that enabled users under 13 to lie about their age to set up Instagram accounts. It also accused Meta executives of publicly stating in congressional testimony that the company's age-checking process was effective—
I assume that is what you are about to do in your response.
—and that the company removed underage accounts when it learned of them—even as the executives knew there were millions of underage users [online].
The article goes on to state:
An internal company chart displayed in the unsealed material, for example, showed how Meta tracked the percentage of 11- and 12-year-olds who used Instagram daily....
How do you respond to that?
December 13th, 2023 / 5:20 p.m.
Head of Public Policy, Canada, Meta Platforms Inc.
Mr. Green, look, we do our best with age verification and with the tools we have available. We remove accounts that don't meet the age standard when we find out that they are underage.
Listen, I'm not—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
How about this, Ms. Curran?
The article published by The New York Times on October 24 of this year states:
...Meta had “designed psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users' compulsive and extended use” of platforms like Instagram. The company's algorithms were designed to push children and teenagers into rabbit holes of toxic and harmful content, the states said, with features like “infinite scroll” and persistent alerts used to hook young users. The attorneys general also charged Meta with violating a federal children's online privacy law, accusing it of unlawfully collecting “the personal data of its youngest users” without [parental consent].
