Justice Committee on May 30th, 2019

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Why is being anonymous...? That's the point I want to understand. You can't be anonymous in a newspaper, or on radio or TV, but somehow you can be anonymous on Twitter. I don't see what protection that would afford someone who wants to express an opinion, whether it's good or bad. There's a freedom of speech element but we don't allow hatred on other platforms. It's not a freedom of speech element on a regular broadcaster, but it's a freedom of speech element on Twitter. I don't understand how that....

[Michele Austin]

Again, I would say to you that an anonymous account is still completely subject to Twitter rules. It can be reported, should not be engaging in hateful conduct and should be actioned in the same way.

We have taken a different approach to allowing anonymous voices. Again, I specifically speak to the issue of women, and violence against women, and how contextually.... Again, I lean on Korea. Korea has a problem with regard to what they call peep cameras and people filming women. They come to the platform anonymously to talk about it, and how they don't like it.

We're hoping to have that kind of conversation. Many people choose to run to that conversation. In terms of bad behaviour, if it is very bad behaviour, we will certainly act.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

My final question is this. You mentioned to my colleague, Mr. Ehsassi, that you have 2,500 people globally—

[Michele Austin]

I have to confirm that.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Let's just use 2,500 as an example. These are people who look out for tweets that are offensive in nature.

Let's take a very recent example. India had an election campaign. Nine hundred million people voted. In India, you have 22 official languages and a thousand different dialects. Do you have the capacity, in a country like India, where there are 22 official languages, plus thousands of dialects, to monitor everything that's happening on Twitter, with all those languages?

[Michele Austin]

You're speaking to the issue of scope and scale, which we tackle daily.

India is an excellent example. We have many content reviewers who speak those languages and dialects. We have a heavy presence in India. We have the ability to review content in the languages that are supported by the countries we are in.

We feel confident that we have the ability to review those. We are, as I mentioned, hiring more, and we'd like to hear also.... It's been raised with me. Dialects are really important. They are very important in first nations here in Canada. The dialect changes as you move from community to community. We certainly feel confident in our ability to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

I have Ms. Khalid and Mr. Fraser. Is there anyone from the opposition side who wants to ask a question?

If not, we're going to go to Ms. Khalid.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Austin, for coming in today.

You touched on this a bit when you were talking about indigenous communities, and also just now, when we were talking about women.

In terms of the review and identification of what is hateful content on Twitter, is there a gender lens that you apply? As you said, indigenous communities experience it differently, and I can tell you that women definitely experience it differently as well. They are more targeted than their male counterparts, for example.

[Michele Austin]

We train constantly at Twitter with regard to bias and understanding. I will speak specifically to women in politics, and specifically to women in politics in Canada. Women like you, who run for office, perhaps experience an abnormal amount of abuse and hatred. A number of Canadian female politicians have come to me and explained their context, and how they approach it, which has been extremely helpful to me. We have made a couple of changes internally, with regard to policy review and context, based on those conversations.

Those conversations are extremely important. They happen often. I encourage any group that feels we don't understand the context to come and speak to us.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Following up on that, based on the context, what specific policy changes were made?

[Michele Austin]

I'm not going to.... The problem is that people game the system when I tell them exactly what policy has been changed. They'll do something like change a capital i to a small l.

I'm not going to tell you exactly what has been changed. However, in review, in terms of Canada, for a number of accounts, we are aware of certain words that we weren't aware of before that were being used that we should keep an eye on. It's kind of like unparliamentary language.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you.

I'd be happy to identify a few more afterwards.

[Michele Austin]

I'd be happy to hear them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thanks. I have a question that I didn't get to ask in my time.

Touching a bit on authentication, which has been raised a couple of times, I'm obviously very concerned about the amount of disinformation on social media platforms that is propagated easily. Unfortunately, too many people aren't using their critical thinking skills when they see this disinformation. It allows these sorts of stories to spread like wildfire. People believe them and then they comment, and it almost becomes a mob mentality online.

It's important to respect journalistic standards for news items that are shared on social media platforms. I know that you have the blue check mark that certain organizations can be authenticated in a certain way, to say that this is a legitimate entity that's putting forward this information.

Is there another way to identify to individuals using your platform that this is a trustworthy news source that uses journalistic standards? It's not necessarily trying to get into the content itself, but saying that this is something that could be relied upon for your users?

[Michele Austin]

I used to work for Preston Manning and he said to me not too long ago, “Michele, fake news is not new. You just have to go back to Genesis, and what the serpent told Eve was 100% fake news.” So it's not a new phenomenon. It's something, though, that we are very, very aware of and actioning. In 2018, we identified and challenged more than 425 million accounts that were suspected of engaging in platform manipulation.

With regard to context, we do context differently than our other competitors and other digital companies. As I mentioned, the Moments team, which has a really wonderful foothold in Canada, is now adding more information to stories that they curate. We curate stories using individual editors, if you will. We put tweets together, and now we're adding more context.

I'll take the example of the Alberta Speech from the Throne. We explained what a Speech from the Throne was in terms of that moment, and how it worked and what happened.

Certainly, fake news is something we're keeping a very close eye on. It's particularly concerning during elections. We have an election integrity team dedicated to it. It's a cross-functional team during elections. The Alberta election—knock on wood—went very smoothly. We had that team completely involved in that election.

However, it's something we're concerned about.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I guess my question is whether there is contemplation of some other way you can identify a source as adhering to journalistic standards, versus those that may not meet the criteria to be banned from Twitter but do not achieve the gold check mark, for example. Is there something so that an individual can identify a trustworthy news source versus some sort of fake news outlet?

[Michele Austin]

Are you asking me to decide what is trustworthy and isn't trustworthy from a news perspective?

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

No. I'm asking whether or not there's any contemplation of some way to identify entities that have journalistic standards, that adhere to the common practice, the best practices, for journalism, versus those that don't.

[Michele Austin]

We work with many news organizations. That industry is changing, and a lot of them do not have blue check marks that should, so we are reaching out to them. We did that especially in advance of the Alberta election, to make sure that the parliamentary reporters were there.

However, if you're asking me whether there is some sort of verified list of news organizations that Twitter allows or lifts up, we don't make that choice.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

All right. We'll leave it there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you so much.

Is there anyone else—

[Michele Austin]

That's a good question for Google, though. They have a different approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Mr. McKinnon has one small question.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I'd like to segue over to bots.