Facebook, Google not ‘arbiters of truth,’ committee hears

OTTAWA — Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Canada told members of Parliament Tuesday they don’t see themselves as “arbiters of truth” in the ongoing challenge to address the problem of false news stories being shared via their respective platforms, but that they are increasing the measures they take to stem the flow. “Facebook strongly believes in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we are approaching this problem carefully, launching tests and learning from our experiences,” Kevin Chan, Facebook Canada’s head of public policy, said at a House Canadian heritage committee meeting as the group continued its study of the media and local communities. Jason Kee, Google Canada’s public policy and government relations counsel, told the committee that “dealing with propaganda and misinformation is a perennial challenge,” one which has been an issue for the past two centuries and that needs to be thoughtfully addressed. “Drawing a line between what constitutes fake news and what is otherwise shoddy or inaccurate reporting, opinion or advocacy can be arbitrary or challenging. Facts are often hard to verify and even reputable sources can provide varied and inaccurate accounts,” Kee said. “Google favours an approach built on maximizing access to information to users rather than acting as arbiters of truth.” In December, Facebook rolled out a series of initiatives to combat what Chan said is the “worst of the worst,” namely hoaxes. These include allowing users to report posts as possible hoaxes, and having posts that are flagged as “disputed” appearing lower in a news feed. He noted, in response to a question from Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin, that the company was being careful to start with a narrow field, to avoid stories being downgraded and flagged as “fake” simply because a user disagrees with their contents. During an event in Montreal in November, Chan said that false news articles account for “less than one per cent” of the content seen on Facebook. As an aggregator, Google News is a “white list service,” Kee said, noting that publishers are reviewed and approved before their content is accessible. He also said Google’s “fact check” feature, which is already available in the United States and United Kingdom, will be coming to Canada, highlighting stories in the Google News feed with a special tag to identify fact-checking by news organizations. Both companies were making repeat appearances in front of the committee, after having been invited back to address issues that have arisen — around fake news, in particular — in the weeks since they appeared last fall. Representatives also briefly touched on calls made recently for changes to Canada’s tax structure to incentivize advertising in Canadian products instead of on foreign platforms. Among the proposals were those made last month by Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and the Public Policy Forum to remove tax deductions available for advertising expenses on foreign Internet-delivered media. “With respect to the issue around the tax treatment of advertising expenses, which is probably one of the more prominent ones that have been raised, we do have concerns about it because of the way it would be implemented,” Kee said. “Long story short, it’s effectively a tax on Canadian advertisers.” Not only does it assume that there’s a relationship between the buyer and the seller, which doesn’t always exist in digital advertising, but “it also assumes there’s a direct substitution in the ability to find something on an online service, like a Google or a Facebook or a Twitter , and a Canadian equivalent you could actually invest in as an alternative, which actually isn’t the case,” Kee said. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

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Facebook, Google not ‘arbiters of truth,’ committee hears

Broadcast | February 15, 2017

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