Public Safety Committee on April 26th, 2022

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for that.

I'd like to go to the previous conversation you had with respect to the convoy that made its way to Ottawa and then turned itself into an illegal occupation. When we had GoFundMe before our committee, they pointed out that any fundraising campaigns relating to misinformation, hate speech, violence or more are prohibited by their terms of service. Yet, their fundraising platform, their crowdfunding, allowed this convoy to raise money all the way up until they shut it down on February 4, despite factual evidence that misinformation was floating everywhere for the previous two weeks.

I want to know from Meta's perspective what you were doing during the time that you were monitoring these Facebook groups. How did you change tactics when GoFundMe stopped the fundraiser, when Ottawa declared a local state of emergency on February 6, when the Province of Ontario followed suit on February 11, and when finally the federal government was forced to do so on February 14? How did your company escalate its actions in that regard?

[Rachel Curran]

Throughout the convoy protests in Ottawa, we actually saw a very small amount of funds raised in Canada on our platforms. It was under $10,000. So we weren't a big player in the fundraising issue.

That said, as soon as the Emergencies Act was declared, we started analysis of what we needed to do to comply with that. We have a payment processor called Stripe that works with us. We worked with our legal counsel and with Stripe to figure out what our obligations would be.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, but with respect, you're talking about the fundraising aspect. With the misinformation that was being posted on the various pages hosted by your platform, fundraising aside, how did your company escalate its monitoring and intervention when there was a very clear escalation in not only what the convoy was doing to the city of Ottawa, to its residents and its small businesses and workers, but also in the subsequent municipal, provincial and federal responses and interventions?

[Rachel Curran]

We had a 24-7 monitoring effort and operational group internal to Meta that was going right from the moment the protests started.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Rachel Curran]

We had eyes on accounts, pages and material related to the convoy protests around the clock. We were also in contact with the Ottawa police and the RCMP—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

[Rachel Curran]

—and were responding to requests from them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, we will now move into the second round of questions. I did the same calculation: If I cut everybody's time in half, then we'll be right on time.

Mr. Lloyd, you have two and a half minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Kogan, you haven't been asked any questions, so I'll start with you. Do you think the activities of the social media giants to essentially sterilize their platforms from extremist views—I don't disagree, as that is necessary—has an effect of pushing extremist groups onto less regulated or unregulated platforms? What's the impact of that?

[Ilan Kogan]

I'm not an expert on terrorism in particular. However, I will note, from the empirical research that I've seen, that there seems to not be a clearly established causal link between removing such content from social media platforms and public safety. There are a few reasons for that. The first is the reason you mentioned, which is that these users might go into darker enclaves on the web that are greater echo chambers. In addition, it is more difficult for law enforcement to monitor some other regions of the Internet.

Finally, one of the issues that has been raised is the idea that if you kick users off of these platforms inaccurately, it might disenfranchise and marginalize those communities, which could lead to violence as well.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thanks for that.

Following up on that, what do you think can be done as a step before possibly sterilizing this content from these platforms? Do you think there are steps that can be taken? I think we can all agree that we want these people to rejoin society, to end their extremist views and to be contributing members of society. What recommendations would you have to help deradicalize potential extremists?

[Ilan Kogan]

I think a lot of the conversation thus far has been about the algorithms. Unfortunately, I don't think changing the algorithms is a silver bullet. Part of the reason for this is that if these platforms were able to identify terrorist content in the first place, they would take it down. It's very clearly against their policies. The problem is that they have a lot of trouble identifying such content.

What I would suggest instead is more of a focus on due process rights. But if you are interested in modifying the algorithms, I think a digital service—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thanks. I appreciate that.

With my last 30 seconds, I'll go to Ms. Curran and Ms. Austin.

Do you believe, as has been claimed, that your platforms are driving the growth of far-right extremism in Canada or across the world? Is there any evidence to back up those claims—yes or no, to each of you?

[Rachel Curran]

I'll answer that first. Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.

No. There is no evidence to back up those claims as far as Meta Platforms is concerned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

Now I will move to Mr. Zuberi.

Sir, you have two and a half minutes in this round. The floor is yours.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses for being here.

I'd like to start off with Twitter.

A December 2018 report by Amnesty International said that Twitter, as a company, is failing in its responsibility to protect women online. I'd like to know if Twitter has adjusted itself after that report, and if so how?

[Michele Austin]

Thank you very much for that very important question.

We are constantly updating and changing our policies and our product solutions. I don't have the information with regard to whether or not we changed it specifically after December 22, but I would be happy, through the clerk, to answer that question in written form after this meeting.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That would be really appreciated. Thank you for suggesting that. I would have suggested it had you not.

Shifting to Facebook, the U.S. Congress Committee on Oversight and Reform, in February 2022, asked for information around Facebook profiles, in particular the role of stolen and fake accounts in promoting the large-scale organizing and fundraising of the trucker blockade.

At the time, the committee's chairwoman asked for information in writing. Did Facebook respond in writing to the chairwoman of the U.S. Congress committee?

[David Tessler]

Mr. Zuberi, we can also follow up with a specific answer to that question.

I will say that we work very hard to protect our platforms for authentic voices. We know that scammers try to use and abuse hot-button issues, like the convoy blockade and protests. In that instance, we took action against groups and pages related to scammers from various countries around the world, who were trying to use abusive tactics to mislead users off our platform—

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I appreciate that.

If you did table the letter to the chairperson and to the committee, can you also give that to this committee?

[David Tessler]

I'm happy to take that back and check.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

So you can give it to us. That's correct.

I'll end with a concluding remark.

I have heard a lot about the extreme stuff on social media platforms and how algorithms can't capture, for example, hate speech. I didn't have the chance to ask this question, but it boggles my mind that this is on there.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Ms. Michaud, I now turn to you for a one-and-a-half minute question.