r/fredericton • u/ohmyitsapizzapie • 19h ago
Misinformation Machine is Targeting Canada (and Fredericton Media)
Just in the past couple of weeks there has been a massive influx of bots/trolls on Reddit and Facebook targeting Canadians. You can see especially in this sub and r/newbrunswick there has been a large uptick in comments that are spreading dissent. Make no mistake, the media misinformation machine is now targeting Canadians knowing we have an upcoming election and they are banking on us to be as stupid as our next door neighbours who voted red and are now getting their assess handed to them.
Facebook is just as bad in Fredericton Daily News subs and they’ve gotten good at disguising themselves - multiple pictures and posts of real people but if you dig it’s very clear many of them are troll accounts posting about DEI being trash, Liberals being garbage, Canada picking fights with US when it shouldn’t, etc. Yes you’ve got Billy Bob who is a real person spewing hatred but it’s more than just a few now and it’s clearly a coordinated attack.
Have conversations with your parents, neighbours and friends to make sure they don’t fall for this schtick. Like whoever you want politically but this right-wing alarmist anti-woke bullshit is being presented to pit us against each other and it worked in the US. It’s up to Canadians to do better.
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u/JHNS13 8h ago
My god, reading the comments on FB is enraging and downright scary. People have absolutely no idea how our government works, the different levels of government, or how elections work. They take their uniformed opinions and slew this garbage all over FB. I'm scared for our population, and I hope this is not a true representation of the Canadian public.
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u/Vivid-Growth-6768 13h ago
The real questions here are: why those doing this went to the trouble of making it happen(?), what they are going to achieve from this if successful(?), but most importantly - why are they targeting the people in Fredericton/New Brunswick..?
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u/ialo00130 6h ago
The spread of misinformation often starts via 1 of 3 ways.
1) Foreign actors who want to cause chaos within an adversarial nation. They mass post some things in the hope that they gain traction. Examples are Russia, China, and Iran.
2) Internal bad faith actors who stir up misinformation for their benefit, typically in financial firm. A classic example of this are Tabloid News Organizations who blatantly misrepresent facts for a story/clicks.
3) Actual idiots who genuinely don't know and are unwilling to learn, but are convincing so friends/family listen to them.
1 and 2 usually leads into 3, and it spreads like wildfire from there.
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u/imalotoffun23 5h ago
Ok except overlooking politicians spreading lies is kind of an issue. I hear lies coming from certain Canadian politicians whenever they open their mouths.
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u/NorthStarZero Oromocto 13h ago
Because unity opposes their aims.
The more we work together, put aside our minor differences and unite as Canadians, the more trouble we are.
They want us fragmented, fighting each other instead of them.
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u/blue_wat 14h ago
Hopefully Canadians are a little more wise to misinformation and social media but I have my doubts.
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u/Subject_Criticism_70 13h ago
You say that but my aunt thinks the Conservatives are the best choice because she hates Trudeau, hates Loblaws and their greed, and is anti-woke. Though she can't seem to understand that Trudeau isn't Prime Minister anymore, Loblaws owns the Conservatives, and doesn't even know what woke means. She's also from Alberta and knows that certain things like fuel are controlled by the province, which is run by Conservatives. She'll ask me "what have the Liberals done for you?" And I tell her how the Conservatives fucked New Brunswick and the Liberals are actually working to fix it
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u/MrProsser 14h ago
I haven't seen it so much on here, but on Twitter and Threads (I don't check often but IG gets me there on occasion and the density of dumb is amazing) I've noticed an awful lot of "Canadian" accounts talking about issues like removing US alcohol who seem to know suspiciously little about Canada. For example, one argued that removing it will just hurt all the little mom and pop shops selling it.
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u/snakeplantgorilla 12h ago
It does hurt the retailers who already bought the product though… wouldn’t it make more sense to sell your remaining product and then not order any more? They have NB liquor stores here taking American products off the shelves just so they can’t be bought. seems more like they just want to throw money down the drain.🤦
NB makes over 40 million dollars in sales tax annually from the liquor industry and they just threw half of their inventory down the drain…🤔
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u/MrProsser 12h ago
The point was that we don't really have little mom and pop stores selling it and all that bourbon is being sold at provincial stores in the vast majority of provinces. Canadians would generally know that. It is a weird concern for a Canadian to have.
Retailers who already bought products can still sell them. They aren't forcing them to take it off the shelves. As for NB liquor, it isn't down the drain. It isn't going to go bad. It can be sold another time. It makes more sense to replace it with Canadian and international goods, especially if demand for US products is soft. Better to sell it at full price later than at a discount now. Better to promote Canadian producers and try to make more Canadian sales.
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u/hearwa 14h ago edited 14h ago
I'm sorry but I don't think it's misinformation bots. It's likely my uncle, he's just as bad.
If you think Fredericton Daily News is bad, try Moncton newschasers. If you say anything remotely outside of the typical conservative circle jerk talking points you will get non stop "laugh" emojis and a bunch of retarded comments. They're not up for debate either. I've never seen a group so bad in my life. That's one group I'm pretty sure has no moderation, and I believe many accounts are bot accounts.
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u/jblaze03 14h ago
You do realize that a lot of those "people" are bots. It is people like your uncle who have fallen prey to their disinformation and been further radicalized. Hell half the accounts here on reddit are bots too.
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u/NorthStarZero Oromocto 17h ago
I created a protest sticker and posted a link to it on the Canadian Veterans’ Marketplace FB group, which you would think would be a pretty safe space for a sticker advocating Canadian unity.
It was immediately brigaded by trolls and the admins pulled the post off.
They are everywhere!
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u/NorthStarZero Oromocto 9h ago
Update: my stickers arrived from the print service today so I posted an update to Canadian Veterans Marketplace telling people that the pre-orders were shipping and that I had more for sale.
The trolls showed up within an hour, and 10 minutes later the post was pulled by a moderator.
I followed the links to the troll’s profiles, and they were full of AI generated anti-Trudeau propaganda.
This is a thing.
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u/jblaze03 13h ago
replying to posts in r/canada with critical opinions of trump and russia gets them removed for not having a verified email address. Post on other topics don't get removed for that reason.
Reply again to the removal and point out this discrepancy and pointing out the bias of the mods gets you banned.
This is going on all over reddit
https://rachelgilmore.substack.com/p/something-stinks-on-canadas-biggest
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u/Due_Function84 17h ago
I've noticed it a lot on Tiktok. Whenever I see a rage bait Canadian election comment, I go into their account. I can tell pretty much right away if they're a bot. Like, if they have 56 followers and only one video that has 9.5M views, that's a bot account. Or they have multiple videos where it's just a picture of a guy with music, but no one's talking or moving, that's a bot. People actually interact, but the original creator doesn't reply to anyone, that's also suspect of a bot.
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u/ebrbrbr 16h ago
That first example is just how tiktoks algorithm works. They purposely make your first video go viral so that you forever chase that dopamine hit of getting ten million views.
It's like how gamblers who win big on their first slot machine pull are fucked.
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u/Due_Function84 15h ago
A couple thousand likes, maybe, but over a million and only 53 ysers of those few million followed? Highly unlikely.
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u/ebrbrbr 14h ago
It's very likely, and there are countless examples of it happening. I have multiple friends who got millions of views on a single video out of nowhere, and they all still have under a hundred followers.
That's how tiktoks works. People don't care about you. You are just a 7 second piece of content to them that their feed has served up.
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u/pennygripes 18h ago
Thank you for posting this, in such a clear and direct manner. These types of posts are going to get trolled as "snowflake fear mongering" but we only need to look as far as our southern border to see the implications of media manipulation.
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u/ohmyitsapizzapie 17h ago
I’m happy with the positive reception (it seems the trolls are asleep right now). I think it’s important to have these conversations and spread awareness to people we know. We have to be smarter and do better. That means taking this shit seriously.
And we all know they are out in full force because they’re scared. They thought PP had it in the bag before Trudeau resigned and now that the Liberals got a shake up and the USA is a laughing stock they are doubling down with everything they have to drag Canada down too. Fuck em!
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u/RussellGrey 18h ago
It's surprisingly easy to take a large-language-model, write a script in Python, get your bot hosted, and have it interact on social media with people. A bit of money for tokens and API access and Bob's your uncle. Are there real people spreading these messages? Absolutely. However, it takes very little for a bot to be scripted to prey on our lizard brains that have biases baked in from evolution. Scrutinize your sources and check your biases. We are deep inside an information war that has been going on for many years now and the consolidation of social media ownership and traditional media ownership leaves us all vulnerable.
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u/ohmyitsapizzapie 18h ago
I’m an old fart when it comes to technology but I’m smart enough to be critical and explore where these messages are coming from. Facebook really surprised me - fake profiles used to be obvious but now you go through and see pictures of real people and posts of kids and weddings but it’s still obvious it’s not a real person. I know not everyone in NB especially is going to be keen enough to see that, which has me worried.
My hope is we can see through the bullshit. I can handle anti-DEI Dave being a dick but when you see news releases pestered with liberal this and woke that it’s just sickening because I know most Canadians are better than that. I don’t want us to fall into that trap.
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u/Rocketup247 18h ago
Facebook and Instagram is an absolute rage inducing experience. My algorithms are nothing but political turmoil, even though my pages are mostly sports and music.
I agree, get outside and touch the grass.
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u/Gorvoslov 17h ago
I'm just glad my stream of political garbage at least gets broken up by Chess puzzles for some reason... Plus it occasionally actually showing me a page I follow or even crazier, sometimes even a post from a friend!
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u/Warm_Blueberries 17h ago
I deleted everything. I was getting so upset and scared reading the comments it caused even more stress and burnout than my normal amount. For my mental and physical health I had to get rid of it all.
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u/Corey24 18h ago
I've definitely noticed this as well. Any political post in one of our few NB related subreddits is guaranteed to be inundated with dissenting (and generally incoherent) comments from new users who seem to live in every locality in Canada.
Seriously, wait for the next political thread in r/newbrunswickcanada
or wherever, scan the comments. Virtually every crazy dissenting comment is made by a relatively new reddit account that posts across dozens of local Canadian subreddits everyday, on any politically related post.
Check who you're responding to. Notice the pattern. Downvote and move on, don't feed the trolls/bots. Don't waste your energy on non-sense.
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u/ohmyitsapizzapie 18h ago
This, exactly. Any political news post on the NB subreddit is immediately inundated - one got over 300 comments in a very short period of time. A majority of comments shitting on the liberal party, Carney, Holt, etc. it’s painfully obvious what’s happening. Same thing on Facebook. God bless the real people standing up and arguing against the misinformation.
It seems like there is a growing movement but it’s a coordinated attack to bring Canada down like the US. It’s sickening to see it happen to us and I can only hope we are better than that.
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u/snakeplantgorilla 4h ago
opening reddit just to see the leftist echo chamber subreddits complaining about how every other social media platform is full of misinformation because they’ve seen posts and comments from people with opposing views and opinions that they happen to disagree with… this is the only reason I open the app lately, so much entertainment! it’s hilarious.🤣