Report finds over a quarter of Canadians exposed to ‘more sophisticated and more politically polarizing’ fake content
More than a quarter of Canadians have been exposed to fake political content on social media that is “more sophisticated and more politically polarizing” as the country prepares to vote in a federal election, researchers have found, warning that platforms must increase protections amid a “dramatic acceleration” of online disinformation in the final weeks of the campaign.
Canada’s federal election, on 28 April, is the first national vote in which Canadian news is not permitted to be shared on products owned by Meta, including Facebook and Instagram. The ban, which began in August 2023, is a result of a standoff between the tech giant and Ottawa over the Online News Act that forced intermediaries such as Meta and Google’s parent company Alphabet to compensate journalism outlets for sharing their content. Meta described the legislation, Bill C-18 – passed on 18 June – as “unworkable” and argued that the only way to comply with the law is to “end news availability for people in Canada”.
But media researchers found more than half of Canadians still say they get political news from Facebook, despite the platform’s ban on news articles from reputable outlets.
“People using Facebook aren’t often thinking, ‘Am I reading the news?’ But they leave feeling more informed politically, either from comments from friends or family, about the election. They might see a post from a candidate or follow cultural news aggregating types of accounts,” said Aengus Bridgman, the executive director of the MEO.
“But we know this is not the same quality of information they might have accessed before the ban. The richest, densest and most accurate and factchecked information is not making it through any more. Neither is information that might contradict the views they hold. All of that just has been cut really – like, off at the knees.”
But Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (Site) is monitoring the election for disinformation and says it expects increased online political activity following the two closely-watched leaders debates. China, Russia and Iran remain the greatest threats to Canada’s election, according to the taskforce.
Last week, Site officials said they had found an information operation linked to China on Chinese-language social media platform WeChat, the popular news account Youli-Youmian.
“Foreign interference has been top of mind this election, with candidates bludgeoning each other on this issue. We monitor these platforms and our evaluation of that incident in particular doesn’t feel as though it had any material influence or consequence,” said Bridgman.
“We don’t think one WeChat channel posting a couple times about Canadian politics articles consistent with their editorial line amounts to foreign interference.”
Bridgman cautioned that the broader risk of deepfakes comes when a population is uninformed. “If you’ve never heard about this person before, you cannot distinguish audio or video of them in compromising situations or making offensive remarks. And in the context of politics, we worry that with more unfamiliar candidates, the risk of convincing deep fakes escalates,” he said.
Among posts examined by the team were seven deep fake videos falsely showing prime minister Mark Carney promoting the fraudulent investment platforms featured directly in the ads. These deepfakes typically mimic broadcasts by the CBC or CTV, two of the top news outlets in Canada.
A spokesperson for Meta told the Guardian it was “against our policies to run ads that try to scam or impersonate people or brands” adding the company encouraged people to report fraudulent content.
Source: www.theguardian.com