"In 2017, the Rohingya were killed, tortured, raped, and displaced in the thousands… While the Myanmar military was committing crimes against humanity, Meta was profiting from the echo chamber of hatred created by its hate-spiraling algorithms." - Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's Secretary General
The Canadian federal election is on, arriving at a time of unprecedented insecurity for Canadian democracy.
We face real-world threats from Donald Trump and his MAGA machine. Efforts to upend the election and hand victory to “MAGA Maple” Pierre Poilievre will go into overdrive. Canada's online space will be flooded with hate, disinformation and, attempts to sow division.
And nowhere will this be more evident than on social media - where the toxic MAGA influence has already taken hold.
Facebook, X, and the MAGA Maple Mob
In the fetid swamp of META, hate has been bubbling up for some time. In Mark Zuckerberg's upside-down world of "sponsored pages" and ads from fake groups, President Zelenskyy is portrayed as a con man, Elon Musk an inspiring hero, and Canadians as whining babies for standing up to Trump.
Then, there's the vicious memes and AI-generated content targeting political leaders like Jagmeet Singh, Mark Carney, and former PM Trudeau.
Even more disturbing, Pierre Poilievre's MAGA Maple influencers have shamefully taken to trying to link Prime Minister Carney to the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
It is a sick but calculated tactic to drive divisions between people.
I have spoken out numerous times about the serious threat that Elon Musk and his X platform pose to Canada's democracy. Efforts to get Elections Canada to take proactive measures have been unsuccessful. I am deeply concerned about the complacency of officials.
More and more, I am becoming concerned about Facebook. This company has a long and dismal record of failing to protect people from the darker elements.
In 2018 digital whistleblower Christopher Wylie released damning documents showing how digital mercenaries were using the Facebook platform to upend democratic elections and promote extremist agendas.
The ease with which digital mercenaries could manipulate voters was frightening in itself. But even more alarming was the failure of Facebook to take seriously the allegations that its algorithms were being used to drive horrific violence in Sri Lanka, Africa and genocide in Myanmar.
At hearings in Ottawa, I pushed Facebook's Canadian representative on their corporate failure to prevent the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar:
"We are talking about the power of one platform to cause horrific harm and death and an unprecedented massacre. Are you equipped to deal with this?"
Their response?
"We have made big commitments to grow our safety team….We are not perfect, but we are on a journey."
"We are not perfect, but we are on a journey" – the most lame response to genocide ever uttered.
The "journey" META promised was to hire more fact-checkers and stay on top of disinformation.
That was then. This is now the age of Trump and MAGA.
Whatever small steps META had taken to limit hate and disinformation have been thrown out the window. No more woke shit on META's watch.
Zuckerberg claimed it was about restoring "freedom of speech." Digital experts point out that this is another weaponization of the Trump ideology at a global level.
João Brant, the Secretary of Digital Policies, warned:
"Meta will act politically at the international level in conjunction with the Trump government to combat policies in Europe, Brazil and other countries that seek to balance rights in the online environment… It signals that the company does not accept the sovereignty of countries over the functioning of the digital environment and sounds like an anticipation of actions that will be taken by the new administration in the US."
Given that the stated policy of the Trump administration is the destruction of Canada as an independent nation, you can bet that we are going to face a hurricane of electoral interference and manipulation.
We’ve seen this playbook before.
Consider the 2022 occupation of our nation's capital by a conspiracy mob.
I was there through the whole convoy occupation. It was ugly. It was threatening, and it was deranged as people driven by falsehood and conspiracy took over a city and threatened the inhabitants.
Following the convoy occupation, the U.S. House of Representatives began an investigation into the role of Russia and other foreign actors in fueling the online hysteria that led so many ordinary Canadians to join a movement that turned into an army of occupation.
It was reported that a hacked Facebook account of a woman from Missouri was used to create several massive "Freedom Convoy" sites that included more than 340,000 combined members, attracted online support from far-right groups and raised millions of dollars in funds.
Democrat Carolyn B. Maloney wrote to Mark Zuckerberg:
"I am concerned by reports that stolen and fake accounts on Facebook are behind large-scale organizing and fundraising efforts related to a blockade in Canada that has impacted vital U.S.-Canada border crossings and cross-border trade. These reports are particularly alarming given Facebook's history of amplifying toxic content, extremism, and disinformation, including from Russia and other foreign actors."
The same tactics are already being deployed in this election. Last summer, a Pierre Poilievre event in my region was falsely amplified by offshore BOTs to create the impression of huge momentum.
In this election, you can bet that the Conservative MAGA machine will be going all in with memes and manipulations while shadowy supporters use BOT farms and influencers to drive the rage politics up to 11.
So, what can you do?
Stay off platforms like X. As for Facebook, ensure trolls do not swamp your feed. Don't take the bait. Block them.
Most importantly, if you don't want to become MAGA North, get out and vote against the local Conservative candidate. They are following the Trump playbook.
Canadians are about to be tested like never before.
Stay strong. Stay informed. We will get through.
after the 2016 election, I got off all social media. it's been glorious.... I don't miss FB in the least....recovered heaps of time for real living. Social media is definitely killing civil society.
I just wrote a message to Elections Canada asking what security measures they are putting in place to ensure that our votes are kept safe and that our next federal election process is not compromised by outside threats whether via technology or people.
You can write to “www.elections.ca” “Contact Us”. I’ll advise on this thread the answer I get.