Evidence of meeting #114 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. Do you keep a copy of all these ads somewhere and a database of who's buying these ads?
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, we do have a new ad transparency feature, which, again, up until very recently was available only in Canada, in which individuals can see all the ads that are running, not just political ads, but all the ads that are running on Facebook in Canada at any given time.
Conservative
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
In the United States in time for the mid-term Congressional—
Conservative
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Well, if I may, sir, I just want to give you a bit of a preamble.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'm short on time, so I'd prefer to skip the preamble. Do you keep a copy of the ads that are being targeted up here?
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Our intention is to roll out the archiving of ads around the world.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. How do you proactively ensure that election ads being purchased and used in Canada are not being paid for by foreign actors?
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
We are piloting a project, sir, in the United States, because there is an election coming up.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Yes, I realize that, but if you're piloting it there, when will it be rolled out up here?
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
These measures will be rolled out around the world. Like “view ads”, it was initially launched in Canada first so that we can understand how it works and get feedback from stakeholders. Then we can implement it globally. We are taking the same approach for the things that we are piloting in the United States. The way it works, sir, is that to understand and authenticate the individuals in question who are running advertisements, we require them to upload a government-issued ID. We then send an actual letter with a code to the residential address that they have provided. They use the code to authenticate their address and their identity. Then they need to also indicate on behalf of which organization they are running ads before they can even run a political ad. This is something, again, that doesn't exist anywhere else on the Internet. We just launched it a few weeks ago in the United States. We intend to roll it out around the world in due course.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
When will you do that in Canada, though? When you say in due course, do you mean six months or two years? Do you have any idea?
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
I would not, sir, presume to be able to give you at this time a definitive date, but our intention is to indeed roll it out around the world.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Let me ask you just a quick question that's a bit off topic. It's about government advertising on Facebook. When people click on it, is any of the data there susceptible to people skimming off it to target...?
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Do you mean people who are advertising on Facebook?
Conservative
Global Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook Canada, Facebook Inc.
Oh, for government advertising, I don't believe so. No, sir.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
No? Okay.
Michele and—sorry, I forget your name, sir—Carlos—sorry—we've been ignoring you.
I have similar questions if you've been watching for Facebook. What is Twitter doing specifically to block trolls or block foreign advertising on Twitter for Canadian elections?
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
The challenges we face are extremely similar to Facebook's, but our platforms are substantially different. The effort to address misinformation and disinformation has to be multi-faceted and has to be focused on our being good at what we're good at, which is trying to stop manipulation of our platform and identify places where people are using malicious automation—the bots and trolls that you discussed—to try to hijack the conversation and kick people off the facts or what matters. It's about reducing visibility of that noise so the signal can go through.
Twitter is essentially a different platform from Facebook or YouTube in that the way people have conversations is organized around hashtags. We try to identify the credible voices on our platform—the eyewitnesses, politicians, journalists, experts—and make sure their voices carry further, and that their signal can break through the noise.
When it comes to things on the ad transparency centre, we are piloting a project that is for us, as a tech company, focused on at-scale on our platform. When we are dealing with 500 million tweets a day, trying to figure out the signal from the noise, to validate who is advertising and who is paying for it is a very analog process. It's a very high-touch process in which we, like Facebook, are requiring you, if you are registered with the Federal Election Commission in the U.S.—and I imagine there are similar circumstances in Canada—to give us that number so we can send you a paper form that you put into the platform that says you are an American. If you aren't registered and you're just excited about whatever election you're dealing with....
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
You're out of time. If you want to briefly wrap up what you are saying....
Director of Public Policy, Twitter - United States and Canada, Twitter Inc.
If you aren't registered, we have a very high-touch process and we'll send you a notarized form and you'll have to go to a notary. Then you'll have to give us a copy of your passport that validates that you are who you say you are and that you're a national. That will allow you to advertise on the platform.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Thanks.
We'll move to Mr. Cullen now for the next seven minutes.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
You can sense from the committee's questions the urgency with which we wanted to speak with both of your organizations. You're the face of this conversation in lots of ways. This committee is under quite a bit of time pressure, so hearing from you before terminating our study was important, and I'm glad you were able to make the time to be here.
When Facebook testified previously about Cambridge Analytica in front of a House committee, they noted that an app they used had been installed 272 times, but that 621,889 Canadians may have been affected. Does that sound about right to you, Mr. Chan?