9 ms·
Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism
- CrzyLngPwd 5mo ago[flagged]
- KingOfCoders 5mo agoI'd wish the EU would pay for California separatism as much as the US is supporting breaking up the EU (Orban, AfD in Germany, Farage, ..)
- detectivestory 5mo agoI always find it so interesting how little the topic of Californian independence comes up online. You would think there would at least be a decent amount of organic content around that, never mind external interference.
- roncesvalles 5mo agoSeparatism is born of a sense of ethnoracial exceptionalism: 1) we're a genealogically different ethnic group from the rest of the country 2) we're better than the major ethnic group of the rest of the country Both bits are absolutely essential. I can't recall a single instance of a separatist movement based on purely political differences gaining serious ground, Alberta included.
- api 5mo agoWhy just ethnic? It can also be religious, ideological, or based on some economic interest. The US revolution was a mix of tax revolt and ideology. The British were the same ethnic group as most of the leaders of the revolution.
- roncesvalles 5mo agoMost (serious) separatist movements that appear religiously/ideologically motivated on the surface have a lesser known but critical ethnoracial exceptionalism myth that underpins them (e.g. Kashmir). Again, I don't consider de-colonization movements to be separatism. A rough criteria would be that you must be physically contiguous to the state that you're trying to separate from. Also heed my second criteria: a people who perceive themselves to be inferior to the majority group will never, ever develop ambitions of separatism. It usually goes like: "we're better than these other guys but they keep us under their thumbs, hence we want our own country."
- KingOfCoders 5mo agoIt would be kind of a stretch to argue this as the reasons for separation of the US from the UK - I can see some of it, but I think the argument is a stretch.
- roncesvalles 5mo agoI wouldn't define independence from colonial rule as separatism.
- jeroenhd 5mo agoThe EU would be better off promoting separatism for the redneck states rather than specifically supporting California. Direct trade with California is tough, but if the southern states were to fall off, the east coast of the USA would still provide a decent area to trade with.
- vintermann 5mo agoI've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it. Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual messages. The payload so to say. In particular, when Russian trolls promote both sides in some divisive foreign domestic issue, it's not to "spread chaos", but to gain a foot in the door to promote their actual messages, which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.
- ifwinterco 5mo agoThere's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being Indian people pretending to be British
- TZubiri 5mo agoX famously implemented a feature that revelaed where the posters were from. Sure you can use a VPN, but Musk changed the rules all of a sudden and exposed a lot of accounts posting about issues from other countries. Twitter may have a lot of faults, but they're ahead of Facebook on this one.
- drysine 5mo ago[flagged]
- ifwinterco 5mo agoI think the difference is Elon is actually a Twitter addict and he's genuinely on there every day engaging with this stuff, so he probably saw the memes. I get the sense Zuckerberg is a lot more disconnected from everyday Facebook and Insta content
- gib444 5mo ago[flagged]
- frenchtoast8 5mo agoLet’s put that to the test. Here’s an entire article accusing her of not being Albertan. Where’s the corresponding outrage about xenophobia against this person?
- mrweasel 5mo agoCanada may not have laws against this, but some countries might classify this as "subversive activity harmful to the nation". That is normally punished by imprisonment, losing the right to conduct business and hold public office.
- fg137 5mo agoUsually they couldn't care less about what you say about another country. Unless, of course, if you say bad things about a certain country when you are in another certain country, you get deported. Hmm.
- philistine 5mo agoAnd it should be Facebook who’s held accountable.
- giarc 5mo agoShe lives in a different country, Canadian laws can't do anything about it. I'm not sure what the answer is to this, but it's a real problem.
- mrweasel 5mo agoOh, I was thinking of going after Facebook given that they finance the operation.
- pbiggar 5mo agoFacebook is also paying far right israelis, whose content incites violence against Palestinians. > a new report titled “Monetizing Occupation: Meta’s Financial Enablement of Settlement Activity and Violent Rhetoric Against Palestinians.” The report reveals how Meta allows Israeli far-right pages, settler-affiliated accounts, and extremist media outlets to generate revenue through its platforms, despite publishing violent, racist, and inciting content against Palestinians, and despite many being directly linked to promoting illegal settlement expansion, as well as widespread violence and attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank. https://7amleh.org/post/meta-monetizes-settlements-and-violence-en https://7amleh.org/post/meta-monetizes-settlements-and-viole...
- hsuduebc2 5mo agoMeta is absolutely just bunch of griefers. The only thing they add to society is division, enragement and rage bait content. Fuck meta and their garbage products. But we most keep them that they are indeed visionaries of enshitification.
- andrewstuart 5mo agoAlbrexit? Alberxit? Albexit?
- 2cynykyl 5mo agoAlbertata!
- dkdbejwi383 5mo agoAlbertadieu
- fanatic2pope 5mo agoAlberticide
- swader999 5mo agoDumb and Dumbererer.
- speed_spread 5mo agoHahalberta
- eunos 5mo agoImperial boomerang strikes again
- nextstep 5mo agoWestern governments are so concerned when this happens to them (at arguably a tiny scale) compared to the “interventions” they’ve supported around the world for almost one hundred years. Rules for thee and not for me. Sure, Canada isn’t the CIA, but they’ve been right there with the US from Iran to Ukraine.
- hermitcrab 5mo agoWell done to the journalist that uncovered this. Makes a change from copying and pasting press releases that many 'journalists' seem to do these days (partly because journalist organizations have been so hollowed out by Facebook et al).
- verminator468 5mo ago[dead]
- m-i-l 5mo agoI clicked on the link wondering if the twist might be that it was from state-backed troll farm, but not the country we normally associate with state-backed troll farms... However, from the article: "This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it's much more banal. It's in some ways more depressing, ... People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrage is a profitable niche. I think they may not actually care about Canadian politics at all." I wonder how "free speech absolutists" defend the idea of people in low-income countries using these platforms to spread outrage simply to make themselves a little money (and the platform owners a lot of money), rather than to "exercise their right to free speech" or whatever, given these people aren't saying anything they believe in (let alone have any interest in or even knowledge of). Not that you can really call it free speech if you are being paid to do it.
- sunaookami 5mo agoThis has nothing to do with free speech but giving an incentive (money) for posting which ruined every social media platform in existence (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
- p-e-w 5mo ago> I wonder how "free speech absolutists" defend the idea of people in low-income countries using these platforms to spread outrage simply to make themselves a little money By recognizing that undesirable uses of free speech are the price society pays for having free speech, and by strongly believing that it is a price worth paying. Just like 1.3 million global road traffic deaths per year are the price society pays for having cars, and believing that people should still be able to freely own and drive cars doesn’t make someone a “car absolutist”. The idea that free speech should probably be restricted if it turns out that free speech can lead to unpleasant consequences misses the whole point of free speech – in many cases deliberately, I think.
- SR2Z 5mo agoTo some extent, people also just need to be less credulous. Being saturated with ragebait slop is a good way to get people to associate ragebait with wasting their time.
- rafaelcosta 5mo ago”Facebook is paying out to creators of monetized content because that content is popular” Would also work as a headline. But wouldn’t attract as many clicks I guess. The implication that Facebook is actively promoting a certain view point is disgusting, and old media loves to do that (even though they were historically the ones doing so). I’m all for local filtering (on some level) and preventing foreign interference on local political matters, and social media companies ought to do better. But I twist my nose at old media shamelessly trying to manipulate the views of people on tech. And this is Facebook we’re talking about here…
- account42 5mo agoNATO is not a company that does business in Russia. Facebook is a company that does business in Canada and as a result is subject to whatever conditions Canada imposes.
- pjc50 5mo agoPaying money for a particular viewpoint is promoting it. This is not complicated. (yes, this is a serious problem with content monetization intermediaries; somehow as soon as the topic is sexual everyone immediately understands what the problem is and rushes to condemn the intermediary)
- vrganj 5mo agoNah, that would absolutely miss the point. The point is that Facebook's mechanisms drive poor people in the third world to promoting division in the developed world. Doesn't need to be some sort of evil scheme in order to be dangerous. Often dangerous things come from people not thinking through the consequences of their actions instead of mustachio-twirling supervillains executing elaborate plans.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- b3lvedere 5mo agoAlmost like a digital Cobra Effect[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoIronically comment section is essentially a more meta version of why peddling this content is so lucrative. For every Canadian who might click there's 10x that number of people in the US and Europe who'd either be rage baited or confirmation bias'd into clicking because of how what's going on in Alberta squares with their own ideology politics.
- traxler 5mo agoThe headline is rather misleading, it indicates a specific intent. But all the article reports is that there are overseas accounts that post about Alberta separatism because it creates clicks and hence money. Nothing to do specifically with albertan separatism, it has (and will) happened with plenty of other topics as well.
- vrganj 5mo agoIt doesn't indicate intent. It indicates incentives and outcomes. A system is what a system does, not what a system is claimed to stand for.
- SpicyLemonZest 5mo agoThe original phrase, "the purpose of a system is what it does", was coined as a contrast to people saying "the purpose of this system is X" even though it consistently fails to achieve X. It does not make sense to look at an arbitrary problem and declare that the system is that problem or exists to produce the problem.
- trumpdong 5mo agoFacebook does this consistently though.
- SpicyLemonZest 5mo agoBars consistently serve people who will later drive home drunk, and yet it would be wrong to say the purpose of a bar is to cause drunk driving.
- vrganj 5mo agoIf you reread my comment, you will see that I never said the purpose was what it does. That word choice was not by accident, it wasn't meant to be a simple paraphrase. I said a system is what it does. In this case bars are the cause of drunk driving, just like in my parallel. Not on purpose. But by effect. You mismatched my statement to the famous quote, then pointed out it didn't fit. I know that one doesn't. That's why I said something different. My entire point is that identity and effect are not the same as purpose.
- paganel 5mo agoNATO (of which Canada is a founding member or) actively supports Kosovar separatism, it has even started an unprovoked and illegal war on account of it, at the end of of it all what would be wrong with one of Canada's federal states deciding to split off? If anything, the international community could send some Blue Helmets force there in order to support the local Albertans in the face of Ottawa-led occupation.
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoThe Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that provinces essentially have the right to separate. There are a bunch of conditions, but they have the right to separate, the Federal government is required to negotiate separation in good faith. Canada is not being hypocritical.
- paganel 5mo agoThen why the fuss?
- bryanlarsen 5mo agoThe fuss is because this means it might actually happen, despite the majority not wanting it to.
- tamimio 5mo agoThe root issue is the monetization. If engagements weren’t monetized, no one will be incentivized to post in rage bait or hot topics for the most part, and of course, if you live in a country where $100 a month is a quality of life, you will have thousands of these posters. Look at twitter, if you browse it now you will think ww4 is imminent (as if ww3 started already), everyone is hating and attacking everything and everyone else, ragebait, clickbait, and all sort of baits just so the account owner get paid at the end of the month, a grift. Check this grifter, indian in canada, running a bot to support MAGA to grift and milk engagements, will this bot exist if monetization wasn’t a thing? https://ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa-man-ai-bot-maga https://ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa-man-ai-bot-maga
- Fizz43 5mo agoSame for Datacenters, MAGA and a ton of other things. Algorithms are being abused to manipulate reality for people and people know it. But they still get swept up because it feels so real when you're reading hundreds of comments, seeing countless articles and posts and videos.
- sourcegrift 5mo agoReddit is 49% indian and 27% african and i doubt either groups have an incentive to spread misinformation against trump. But maybe you now something I don't?
- Fizz43 5mo agoMAGA people are easy to ragebait and sell to
- mystraline 5mo agoCorrect. MAGA are mostly inherently dumb, gullible, and afraid. And 'strongman' (fascism) is the answer for dumb, gullible, and afraid. And from an accompanying article https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-emily-hart-revealed-to-be-ai-created-by-a-guy-in-india/ https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-em... > He said he also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much,” he said. We're now solidly in a point of tine that a random 3rd world noodle merchant can make livable money by significantly warping and distorting governments across the world. I dont know the solution for this, but Id have a real hard look at DMCA Section 230, and social media's responsibility in enabling and amplifying.
- everdrive 5mo agoThere's a problem here that people don't necessarily consider. Ignore motives for a bit. Lets say that large groups of people really, really wanted to spread positive, constructive messages on social media. Perhaps about how important it is to read and exercise and not to consume passive content. Or how kind it is to put group differences aside and focus on the things we have in common. Etc. I'd argue that it just wouldn't work. Outrage is what's "engaging" and it is engagement which actually forces these things to go viral and spread. You are therefor limited in what sort of information you can spread on social media, at least in the virality sense. You could not, for instance, use social media to "trick" millions of people into practicing calculus every day. And you could not use social media to coerce people into spending hours meditating. It's of course not that you could never house this content on social media, but instead that this content could never be viral, never make a strong, immediate emotional impression in the eyes of the viewer. Practicing calculus or meditation is much, much more than a strong, quick, (and I'd argue) innate emotional reaction to bare stimulus. It requires focus and participation. So it's not just that there are these little evil troll farms sowing discord around the world. Rather, outrage, and particularly outage about social or tribal topics will always float to the top in any sort of system (algorithmic or not) that preferences engagement. There will always be at least outrage in the general population of posters (whether "natural" or else astroturfed) who are putting out outrage content, and this content will always be treated preferentially in any system that filters for outrage content. It's quite hard to avoid. You actually see this on the "boring" 4Chan boards. There is no algorithm in the modern sense of the word (although of course there is something like an algorithm in the literal sense of the word) and on these boring boards you just cannot get much much traction when starting a thread that is not a "troll" thread. A normal, informative thread gets fewer replies, and so it falls off the front page, and then no one sees, and so it gets even fewer replies. In other words, these systems will always privilege outrage bait, even if they had real incentives to attempt to avoid it. There are only certain topics that get people fired up in a quick, immediate, emotional sort of way -- and the communication systems we've built and have become addicted to will only preference that sort of communication. Identifying these troll farms matters, but why would a crappy little troll farm from far away be able to to write content that captivates you. If they wrote a book, you wouldn't read it. If you directed a TV series, you wouldn't watch it. But one dumb little caption on an image about how a person from the wrong group has trespassed against you and it sticks in your mind forever. People need to think about why that is.
- theopsimist 5mo ago-One screenshot of Nieta Aqila's Meta monetization dashboard, which she posted, showed she made roughly $14 US in a month when she was active in Alberta Facebook groups. So brave CBC making this woman doing this to eke out a few bucks the star of this exposé while the fb executives enabling this get to remain nameless
- swader999 5mo agoI live here, rural and in areas you'd expect this to have more traction. Nobody is even talking about it. It just doesn't come up in conversation. It might get fifteen percent of the vote and only then because only people that care will bother to show up.
- giarc 5mo agoFellow AB resident here.... then what do you make of their claim that 99.2% (or whatever the number was) of residents in Sylvan Lake, Drumheller etc signed the petition? Has to be completely fabricated right?
- jazz9k 5mo agoThe same thing happened with the BLM groups during Covid. It was mostly people from overseas that created the groups and were promoting them.
- dmix 5mo agoAny political issue that is popular or viral will have stuff like this. It’s definitely not unique to this one Alberta issue since it happens all the time. It’s just a topic that has reached beyond a local issue so it gets good traction on social media. YouTube and Tiktok have been paying creators for years. You can guarantee people will post stuff that gets traction, not just nefariously but even regular creators getting pushed in certain directions because it’s a reliable source of views. Many will do it for free just for attention or a sense of power.
- josefritzishere 5mo agoThis feels illegal.
- betaby 5mo agoIf Facebook propaganda is so effective (and cheap) Western democracies should promote democratic values in Belarus/Kazakhstan. Canada should use this channel to promote tariff cancellation in the USA. I doubt that Facebook is efficient on important matter. If I'm wrong then Canadian government is doing very bad job in promoting democratic values in and outside Canada.
- TonyTrapp 5mo agoFacebook is not a universal tool that is used the same way in every country in the world. As a start, there are more Facebook users in Canada both in absolute numbers and percentage of population than in Belarus. Internet censorship also doesn't help. The countries that would need this the most are usually also the countries where it is the hardest to reach their population from the outside.
- wavemode 5mo agoThere is an assymetry cause by the fact that way more foreigners speak English fluently, than Americans/Canadians/British who speak foreign languages fluently. So, they're naturally able to influence the West way more than the West can influence them.
- tencentshill 5mo agoThe US used to have that program (Voice of America). Trump shut it down because promoting democracy is woke.
- nerdyadventurer 5mo agoDemocracy is just a political slogan, if so called democracy is there, why political leadership favor billionaires over public.
- jamwil 5mo agoI doubt it’s an effective channel for promoting liberalism (or even rationality). In North America at least the folks most engaged on Facebook tend to be media illiterate and reactionary leaning. The smart people left long ago.
- ctdinjeu10 5mo ago[dead]
- palmotea 5mo agotl;dr: > [The person they're investigating] even posted about income she generates from Meta's monetization program, which rewards creators for engagement and solicits subscribers on her personal page. Facebook pays people to post content that people "engage" with, outrage is engagement, and tiny amounts of money incentive money are significant to poor people in the 3rd world. It's the same cluster of facts that lead to "Shrimp Jesus" slop: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2024/04/28/facebooks-surreal-shrimp-jesus-trend-explained/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2024/04/28/facebo....
- cameldrv 5mo agoThese incentives are IMO a significant part of the political problems we are having around the world and even the general decline in mental health. Just on a personal level I’ve found it hard for example to get YouTube and Facebook to stop showing me short videos, which I don’t want to see. You can click the “not interested” or “show less” button, and it doesn’t do much. What works though if you apply it consistently is, when you see something on a feed that you don’t want anymore, is to immediately close the app and don’t come back for a while at least. That’s the strongest signal you can send to their recommender.
- mrinterweb 5mo agoThe title is a bit misleading. The title suggests that Facebook is intentionally paying for a political interference campaign targeting Alberta. It sounds more like it is the monetary incentive structure that indirectly encourages this type of behavior. It has been years since I signed into Facebook. The content on Facebook is just vile and disgusting, IMO. I remember signing in 3 years ago, and signing out less than a minute later because I couldn't look at it. It wasn't content from people I knew. It was all the thirst traps, rage bait, weird ads, and other garbage. I don't think normal humans still use Facebook, do they? I can't imagine regularly frequenting a sewer like that.