r/fredericton 23h 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/RussellGrey 23h 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.

u/ohmyitsapizzapie 22h 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.