Canadian Heritage committee  It is true that most of our revenues are from advertising. That said, I don't think anyone anticipated from the outset that Facebook would be so successful. Thank you, by the way. One thing we have talked about often is the degree to which companies that are operating in the space actually face many competitive challenges.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's good to see you again, sir. Thank you very much for your encouragement with respect to news literacy. I agree, I think we agree, that it is actually a key component of this. It's not an easy thing to do, but it actually requires a broader societal effort. With respect to your question about being the arbiters of truth, as I noted in the opening statement, we certainly do not want to be that.

Canadian Heritage committee  He's my boss.

Canadian Heritage committee  We take our responsibility very seriously, ma'am. You'll appreciate that this is precisely why we've spent so much energy in just the last two or three months to build out efforts to address fake news. Looking to the future, as I said, we're really pleased to be able to work to develop programs and initiatives, a lot of which my colleague Marc Dinsdale will spearhead, to engage further with news organizations in Canada, both to better understand what their product needs may be in the online space, but also to further refine the way we think about how we help in the distribution of content in a way that makes sense for them from the monetization standpoint.

Canadian Heritage committee  We talked a bit about that at the women's science event over the weekend in Toronto. I think letters to the editor are letters to the editor. Many people who are posting and sharing on Facebook are sharing with each other. While I can see why Mr. Greenspon would say that, I don't think that on deeper analysis the comparison is apt.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would just echo the point that what we're looking at initially is content that is clearly not true. Regardless of how one may term it, what we're looking at is making sure that people who see content have a reliable sense that it is authentic content. That's what we're looking to ensure.

Canadian Heritage committee  No. If you click through the flow a bit more, there's one that says, “This is fake news”, or uses some language like that; you can report it. This has been available for a year now in Canada. What we are looking to do is to find ways to make it more prominent; we're testing that out.

Canadian Heritage committee  For the existing reporting flow from a year ago.... I think you'll appreciate that we need to be very careful about how to categorize fake news. We're focused on the worst of the worst, and you have to be careful that you don't capture things such as satire or opinion or that sort of thing.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think you're exactly right, and that is why we have been very careful, especially with the new initiatives that we're pioneering. We're very careful about how wide to draw the circle. The scope will be very narrow at first. We're very much in the testing and piloting phase. We're focused on the most egregious examples of fake news, in which it's clear and easily verifiable that something did not actually happen.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure, I'd be happy to do that. I'm just worried about my 10-minute allocation.

Canadian Heritage committee  I really appreciate that, Madam Chair. Later this spring, we will also convene a gathering in Canada of major English and French news organizations as part of the Facebook journalism project's series of round tables to listen and learn from media organizations and to collaboratively begin designing new products optimized for publishers.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. Madam Chair, members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, thank you for this additional opportunity to present our views as part of your study of the media and local communities. As most of you already know, my name is Kevin Chan and I am the head of public policy for Facebook Canada.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for that, Madam Chair. As I mentioned to Mr. O'Regan, our CEO Mark Zuckerberg is very much seized with the issue. He posted about this on Saturday, and I can certainly circulate it to the committee if folks have not seen it. I think one of the things he has said is that over 99% of the content that people see on Facebook is authentic.

Canadian Heritage committee  Again, Madam Chair, if I may humbly submit, I don't believe that is an accurate way to describe what is happening. Let's say that if I share an article presumably there would be a photo or some kind of caption or some headline. But when the individual I share it with clicks through it, it takes them directly to the website, so obviously that would be a way for them to monetize.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't have that information. Marc can perhaps provide more detail. I suspect that this type of information is something that probably the publishers may know about.