Heritage committee wants Zuckerberg’s answers

During a hearing on Facebook, Inc.’s relationship with the federal government Monday, multiple members of the House of Commons Heritage committee questioned the social media giant’s Canadian boss, Kevin Chan, on why CEO Mark Zuckerberg has so far declined to appear. While discussing proposed regulations in Australia that were to require Facebook to pay news companies for content posted on its platform and the potential impact of similar rules in Canada, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather highlighted concerns over whether or not Zuckerberg - CEO of Facebook, which has 24 million users in Canada - may be the only person able to properly answer questions about company operations. Housefather said, “since Mr. Zuckerberg takes his responsibility to U.S. lawmakers so seriously, can you explain to us why he repeatedly refuses invitations and indeed summonses from Canadian parliamentary committees?” “It seems to me, based on your testimony, that unless we’re going to do something like Australia did, Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t plan to come to Canada,” said Housefather. He said it was after Australia introduced legislation he didn’t like that Zuckerberg reportedly reached out to lawmakers there. “For me, it entirely changed the way I was going to question Facebook today.” In Australia, lawmakers moved to require Facebook to pay publishers for their news content as it appears on the platform. After Facebook decided to block news-related content from being shared in response, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault called the move “highly irresponsible” and said he would press forward with introducing similar legislation in Canada. Chan said Facebook cut off users from sharing that content for a few days because “exiting the news market was the only response.” “Asking -- or requiring -- that Facebook pay for links, shared onto Facebook, where we don’t have a say in that and we aren’t able to control the volume, means we don’t control the price. It fundamentally breaks the premise of how a free and open Internet works, and that’s the challenge,” Chan said. “What I am humbly suggesting to this committee is that we should be reframing a bit how we look at this . In fact, free platforms drive distribution back to publications directly on their site where they monetize it when traffic is redirected.” Chan said Facebook ultimately wants to support news content and publishers of all sizes in Canada. He also said the original legislation proposed in Australia wouldn’t have allowed Facebook to support smaller publishers the way it wants to. Chan said there’s proof of Facebook’s value to publishers, offering the example of Village Media Inc. in Sault Ste. Marie, , which he said saw millions of page views in January 2021 from Facebook and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, worth almost half a million dollars to the publisher. In his opening remarks, Chan also detailed the company’s plan announced last week to pump another $8 million over three years into its fellowship with Canadian Press that previously created several jobs. He said that makes for a total of $18 million invested in Canadian news over six years by Facebook, including $5,000 (USD) for dozens of Canadian publications to cover unexpected costs to report on the pandemic in communities. Discussing the new announcement of $8 million, NDP committee member Heather McPherson called it an “obviously very small” contribution compared to revenue made by Facebook in Canada. Conservative MP Kevin Waugh was also keen to talk Monday about the possibility of Facebook being put under the regulatory jurisdiction of the CRTC as the committee updates the broadcasting act. Waugh expressed concerns with news “shows” being broadcast by individuals on Facebook who are charging for advertising and aren’t regulated. “They’re taking money from newspapers, they’re taking money from traditional broadcasters, I would say hundreds of thousands of dollars are being taken by platforms like yours, using you as an avenue… and yet they’re not regulated. Should they be regulated?” Waugh asked. “If what you’re describing is an individual going on Facebook to live stream something, that is I think technically speaking, speech. And so we do want to be careful on our end to make sure that we are not imposing certain conditions on people’s speech that aren’t in the area of harm and danger and security,” Chan said. -- Reporting by Hannah Daley at hdaley@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Heritage committee wants Zuckerberg’s answers

Broadcast | March 29, 2021

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Heritage committee wants Zuckerberg’s answers

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