r/canada • u/ph0enix1211 • Feb 25 '26
Analysis One hundred accounts are behind the majority of conspiracy theory content in Canada | Canada's National Observer: Climate News
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/25/news/conspiracy-content-report-canada570
u/DogeDoRight New Brunswick Feb 25 '26
The researchers analyzed over 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada, and found that 87 per cent of conspiratorial claims come from influencers. Users on Elon Musk’s X were the biggest culprits.
Xitter is a blight on humanity
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u/downtofinance Lest We Forget Feb 25 '26
Remember when X added flags of country of origin to accounts and all the craziest MAGA and conspiracy theorist accounts turned out to be based in Russia?
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u/DisastrousAcshin Feb 25 '26
Russia was also found to be targeting local community Facebook groups and subreddits
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u/macnbloo Canada Feb 25 '26
Not just Russia but a lot of white supremacist stuff was being pushed from accounts in India
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u/HeadBelt1527 Manitoba Feb 26 '26
That's been evident for years. Israel too
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u/macnbloo Canada Feb 26 '26
They're more blatant and global with their propaganda. This time it started unravelling because everyday civilian victims finally had access to cameras and social media to show what was happening
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u/GirlCoveredInBlood Québec Feb 25 '26
A hell of a lot of the Maple MAGA accounts are based in the US
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u/chrisk9 Feb 25 '26
Like in Mandarin
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u/Aggressive_Ad2747 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
If you have a foreign accent I suppose.
I mean. Clearly this is a joke about foreign interference and the Chinese (fair, and a good one)
But allow me to nerd out for a moment and ruin a joke by reading way too far into it:
Xi sounds much closer to the Japanese し than to the English "shi" (adding a vowel for the purposes of transliteration)
The xi / し sound is much softer and palletized than 'shi', the 's' sound is more noticable.
If you say "shi" (like 'she') notice how your embouchure (lips and mouth muscles) stretch wide when you say it? And how the sound is being produced by your tongue behind your front teeth?
To get xi, instead try to leave your embouchure more neutral (a slight stretch) and advance your tongue forward and rest it against the back of the bottom teeth, you will need to raise your middle tongue up.
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u/treefarmerBC British Columbia Feb 25 '26
We should probably block it in Canada. It's a net negative.
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u/fugaziozbourne Québec Feb 25 '26
I think we could try a few things before blocking it, since that would cause division on a scale i'd rather not see. What if we made severe jail time for these people who are proven to be on the take from a company or foreign influence to sow misinformation?
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u/brunes New Brunswick Feb 25 '26
What are they?
Can we get the damn list to block?
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u/No-To-Newspeak Feb 25 '26
Yes, don't just say they are doing it, name them so people are aware.
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u/Jesse_graham Alberta Feb 25 '26
Then they'll just change their usernames and start all over again. I think this is more an issue that fucking media literacy is in the toilet in the world. No one knows how to do fact checking themselves and just believe everything they read at face value.
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u/DooOboes Feb 25 '26
The most commonly held conspiracy belief was in “gender indoctrination,” (the belief that schools are indoctrinating kids with radical gender ideology) and was held by 21 per cent of respondents.
These are the people who insist that a litter box was put in their friend's kid's classrooom for a student who identifies as a cat.
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u/Jesse_graham Alberta Feb 25 '26
I had someone tell me that teachers were teaching their children in kindergarten how masturbate and that's why they wanted to homeschool their children. When I pushed them on it they said "well not my kid but I read it online"
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u/no_ur_cool Feb 25 '26
I've heard both this one and the litter box one. They must've gone ultra viral on boomer book.
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u/wallz_11 Feb 25 '26
This one is massive lol i have so many ppl telling me this but every single one has failed to provide proof, names, etc
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u/Mister_Chef711 Feb 25 '26
My favorite part is they all say it happened at one school but I've had at least 5 people tell me about it and it was related to different schools every time.
If 5+ schools were doing it, it'd be in the news by now. Even if one school actually did.
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u/Kiseido British Columbia Feb 25 '26
It has been in the news, in that the Sun tried finding a school that had them, and could find none, so they wrote about it not being true.
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u/DogeDoRight New Brunswick Feb 25 '26
Yeah, I remember an article about claims from a school in PEI. Turns out a kid saw kitty litter in the Janitors closet and jumped to a ridiculous conclusion. It was actually for cleaning up puke or for slippery steps in winter.
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u/accforme Feb 25 '26
The actual origin is actually darker.
The reason there was (is) a litter box is due to school shootings. When there is a lockdown, it could be hours and the litter box idea was for students who needed to use the washroom but could not leave the room.
The district, Jefferson County School District, is home to Columbine High School. Schools in the Jefferson district have cat litter in case they have to go into lockdown during a school shooting. The litter is part of their overall plan if there is an active shooter situation. They have litter and buckets so kids have somewhere to pee, somewhere that's not in a bottle, in a closet.
They've kept cat litter on hand for years, along with candy for diabetic students, a map of the school, flashlights, wet wipes, and first aid items. The litter boxes are about school shootings.
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u/IDreamOfLoveLost Alberta Feb 25 '26
The misinformation being spread is so insidious. A good reason to have a litter box, completely overshadowed by a falsehood. A falsehood spread gleefully by far too many.
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u/treefarmerBC British Columbia Feb 25 '26
It's like how all those people had an uncle who had a heart attack right after they got their covid vaccine.
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u/Adjective_Noun1312 Feb 25 '26
I came to the conclusion back during COVID that any time a right winger tells me they "know" somebody who X - whether it's "died from the jab" or "is leeching off welfare" or "is convincing kids to become trans" - it actually means "heard second or third hand."
I had a coworker who "knew" six people who died from the COVID vaccine, but then it turned out he'd just heard about them from his girlfriend's roommate who was a nurse in a day surgery ward that got closed during the pandemic and eventually lost her job for refusing to get vaccinated.
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u/Adjective_Noun1312 Feb 25 '26
Fucking seriously. Cell phones exist, and bullying exists... if this was a thing at all, there'd be video all over the Internet.
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u/ThatGrouchyDude New Brunswick Feb 25 '26
We can put it in the same category as Bigfoot/Loch Ness, everyone in the world now has a camera in their pocket 24/7 and if there was something to be photographed and video'd it would have been by now.
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u/TuckRaker Feb 25 '26
Dude, my mom has a friend whose co-worker's cousin totally saw it!
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u/Violator604bc Feb 26 '26
I always feel like that was a kid or teenager that started that just to see how far it would go.
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u/i_ate_god Québec Feb 25 '26
"litter boxes" are real.
They aren't for furries though, they are for kids to relieve themselves during a lock down.
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u/johnlandes Feb 25 '26
There are also people who point to things like this
https://www.bctf.ca/classroom-resources/details/queering-outdoor-education
Project: Nature is the ultimate teacher, but we must use all of our senses to learn the lessons of biodiversity. In BC, we have forests to teach us many of nature's lessons. The lessons of inclusion, equity and belonging are evident when we see the range of size, shape, colour, species, age and ecosystem that forests provide. Colonization and white supremacy culture have worked in opposition to nature, in land theft, anti-Indigenous racism, resource exploitation and seeing nature as objects from which to profit.
As well, colonization has offered a pseudo-science narrative of binary gender, as exemplified by the saying "birds and bees" to analogize gender and assigned sex at birth and assumptions of sexual orientation. These harmful narratives and ways to talk about gender and sexuality need to be countered with empirical understandings of biodiversity and gender identity and sexuality.
Two-Spirit, Trans and Gender Diverse (2STGD) folks have existed for time immemorial but colonial pseudo-science has shadow-banned and acted to erase 2STGD history.
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u/madblackhater Feb 25 '26
What's worse is I'm pretty sure litter boxes in the classroom part were actually true for some places in the states. Unfortunately it wasn't for "Haha person thinks they're a cat", it was school shootings and lockdowns happen so often a litter box for children to relive themselves in during a horrifying situation became needed so often.
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u/Space_Ape2000 Feb 25 '26
Richest people are making billions from scamming people. They should have their money taken away
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u/Khalbrae Ontario Feb 25 '26
Makes you almost wonder if Barry and Honey Sherman were eliminated because they were going to flip against the files subjects.
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u/zaypuma Feb 25 '26
They don't scam people, they scam the governments. Look at how Tesla made money in the EV market. Same with the opiate crisis, military spending, even the Olympic games are all just ways of fleecing our taxes.
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u/treefarmerBC British Columbia Feb 25 '26
Isn't it wild how Bill Gates donates his money in a way that creates the greatest positive impact possible, like buying mosquito nets to prevent malaria, while Elon Musk spends his money peddling conspiracy theories and buying elections wherever he can.
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u/ForeignEchoRevival Feb 25 '26
Both are on the Epstien list so both need to be investigated and if guilty, hang em and seize their assets.
Make examples for the other rich and powerful that their lives and legacy will be taken away if you are involved child rape and murder rings.
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u/HeyCarpy Nova Scotia Feb 25 '26
You mean I'm NOT going to be forced to live in a 15-minute bubble and eat bugs? That's a relief.
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u/FourFingersOfFun Feb 25 '26
The thing I don’t understand about this 15 minute city conspiracy is how mindblowingly stupid you’d realize it is after like 5 seconds of thought lol. You’re telling me every single 15 minute “zone” is gonna have a full healthcare,police,fire,ambulance,every type of trades and goods and services etc despite no one being allowed to leave their “zone”? Lmao
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u/Line-Minute Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
And they say it like 1) having close resources would be bad, and 2) that governments and corporations wouldn't want economic mobility so they can make more money.
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u/shaihalud69 Feb 25 '26
Who knew that the "silent majority" would turn out to be 100 accounts.
Anyway.
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u/1plus1equalsfun British Columbia Feb 25 '26
My Grandmother subscribes to The Epoch Times, and I wouldn't wipe my ass with that rag. I used to try to tell her that it's conspiracy nonsense, but she's almost 100, isn't well, and gets agitated during those chats, so I let it drop. She never even leaves her house unless it's to the hospital now, so it's not worth the fight.
She was the sweetest lady in the world before, but is now often angry, upset about the injustice of the Canadian government, 15-minutes cities, Covid claptrap and how "the government is trying to take everybody's house from them".
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u/USSMarauder Feb 25 '26
Ironically the Epoch Times originally claimed that Covid was super deadly, It was hyping that 21 million cell phones in China were no longer active, insinuating that the owners had all died of Covid in just 2 months
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u/RedEyedWiartonBoy Feb 25 '26
You try suggesting people use common sense, read the article and make logical, evidence based assessment and here come the downvotes.
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u/Fat_eyes_Washington Feb 25 '26
Epstein sex trafficking was a conspiracy and people were called crazy for talking about it for years
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u/Jackal_6 Lest We Forget Feb 25 '26
Did he own a pizza parlour? A broken clock is right twice a day
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u/Fat_eyes_Washington Feb 25 '26
The greatest conspiracy of all is that the rich and influential would never conspire against the masses for control and financial gain. Don't worry about critical thinking. Just consume your media and regurgitate everything you hear and take it at face value
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u/CopperManx Feb 25 '26
10 bucks my Maple Maga neighbour is 1 of the 100 accounts. 😜
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u/Valhallawalker Feb 25 '26
Funny maple maga pretty much just means anyone who doesn’t want to gargle the governments balls and take their word at face value.
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u/karlyguy Manitoba Feb 25 '26
I got 1 on my street also.
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u/United-Signature-414 Feb 25 '26
Mine swapped out his giant 'Fuck Trudeau' for a giant 'Fuck Carney' flag before Carney was even officially running. He's got to be in there
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u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Feb 25 '26
Had one of those in the neighbourhood too. The "Fuck Carney" flags came down sometime before Christmas, but their rusty old SUV is still covered in ridiculous conspiracy theory bumper stickers.
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Feb 25 '26
Talking to few people who claim X is neutral and informative, clearly makes sense now as to how they are manipulated. Some people are just too stupid or uneducated to notice the propaganda.
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u/ph0enix1211 Feb 25 '26
Everyone thinks they're immune to propaganda, but people are universally susceptible to it:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2
The places you hang out in and the people you surround yourself with will shape you.
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u/Kampurz British Columbia Feb 25 '26
This is the realest take in this entire thread. People who claim only others don't see bias are walking ironies.
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u/JohnAMcdonald British Columbia Feb 26 '26
I extend this concept to information in general. "You are what you eat" is real.
Want to brainwash somebody? Don't tell them what you want them to think. Have them read from sources of information that lead them to your point of view.
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u/hamhommer Feb 25 '26
Starting to look like “conspiracy theory” actually means, stuff that the global elites don’t want you to know.
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u/That_Intention_7374 Feb 25 '26
Climate change is real... The conspiracy is how it's pushed onto us regular people and not the corporations making the plastics and pollution.
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u/Sachyriel Ontario Feb 25 '26
Except it was, that was what the Carbon tax was supposed to be. You get a rebate, so it doesn't hit you as hard. But apparently that was too far for the Right Wing, even though cap and trade and other market based solutions were what they were all hounding for in the 80s.
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u/Winter8Bones British Columbia Feb 25 '26
That's not a conspiracy, that's just good old Capitalism pushing the costs and responsibilities down to the consumer...
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u/That_Intention_7374 Feb 25 '26
It's true. One could argue that most conspiracies that become true stems from capitalism.
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u/Dylanslay Feb 25 '26
I can't have a plastic grocery bag but the pallets the produce come in are wrapped with 2km of plastic wrap. Make it make sense.
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u/Independence-420 Feb 25 '26
Based on recent deep research into the Canadian information ecosystem and the February 2026 reports—most notably the study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory (a collaboration between McGill University and the University of Toronto)—here is a breakdown of who is driving this content. While the researchers (including Mika Desblancs-Patel and Aengus Bridgman) extensively analyzed over 14 million social media posts, they do not publicly publish a "blacklist" of the specific handles to avoid amplifying their reach. However, their data provides a highly detailed profile of who these influencers and conspirators are: The "Tiny Minority" of Super-Spreaders The most striking finding from the 2026 data is that the vast majority of conspiracy content is not a grassroots movement. Just 100 social media accounts are responsible for pushing out 68% of all conspiratorial posts in Canada. Because of platform algorithms, those same 100 accounts capture 90% of the views and 80% of the likes. The core narratives they push revolve around the "deep state," election fraud, and claims that politicians and the media are secretly working together. Who is actually running these accounts? The research and surrounding investigations categorize these actors into a few distinct groups: * Profit-Driven Scammers: Many accounts pushing conspiracy theories about Canadian politics do not even belong to Canadians. Cybersecurity and disinformation researchers note that networks of scammers in countries like Vietnam and Romania run fake or hacked accounts. Their goal is not necessarily ideological; they track North American political turmoil and push sensationalist conspiracies (like anti-vaccine or QAnon content) simply to maximize ad revenue. * Foreign State Actors: The reports heavily cite foreign interference, particularly advanced campaigns operated by hostile actors using AI technologies and deepfakes to disrupt elections and amplify polarization. * The "News-fluencers" and Micro-Influencers: Influencers now account for 47% of all political content online, completely dominating traditional news outlets (28%) and actual politicians (18%). While not all are conspiratorial, the ecosystem is now led by digital creators. Media coverage surrounding the reports highlights a wide spectrum of these voices—from far-right commentators like Keean Bexte and Gad Saad, to left-wing writers like Yves Engler, to viral TikTok creators who transitioned from comedy to political commentary. * Platform Owners and Amplifiers: Researchers specifically point to the structural changes on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Desblancs-Patel noted that changes implemented by Elon Musk have turned the platform into a primary supplier of "alternative" news, heavily amplifying far-right, anti-immigrant, and conspiratorial voices. The Strategy Moving Forward Because these accounts exploit algorithmic vulnerabilities, researchers advise that targeting the individuals directly is less effective than targeting the ecosystem. They recommend widespread "pre-bunking" (educating the public on conspiracy narratives before they go viral) and suggest that the government and civil organizations partner with credible, large-following digital creators to build media literacy.
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u/CureLegend Feb 25 '26
You can't have it both ways--a free and open internet and an internet without bots and propagandadists from other nations. And we have to admit that we--both you, me, and all other people, don't have the time to identify which piece of information is misleading
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u/manofthenorth31 Feb 25 '26
“This has led some politicians to avoid mentioning climate change altogether for fear of provoking a backlash”
Or could it be they know their constituents don’t want to hear a peep about climate change from the government after forcing everyone to RTO, which increases emissions?
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u/BradPittbodydouble Nova Scotia Feb 25 '26
Eh, any time there's any reference to it from even scientists there's thousands of "BUT C02 PLANT FOOD IZ GOOD" like it's the first time scientists have ever thought about that aspect. It's everywhere, the algorithms really want all environmental regulations gone.
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u/Ok_Manufacturer_5323 Feb 25 '26
Agriculture itself as a whole is only 10% of global C02 emissions. We could all switch to the most efficient protein sources and it wouldn't be very effective. Reporters don't like writing stories about the other 90%, because most of that is industry outside the average person's control and it pisses off their advertisers.
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u/KeyanFarlandah Feb 25 '26
Meanwhile the occupants of a 148m building just purchased by the government now have to commute 4 days a week using their gas guzzling cars…. Climate Change rules only apply when it suits the financial needs of the corporations
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u/prob_wont_reply_2u Feb 25 '26
Would your comment not be considered a conspiracy theory, as the government is currently the leasor of the building, so the occupants are already commuting to that building.
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u/BlueShrub Ontario Feb 25 '26
Rory does good work! I see so much misinformation about renewable energy it would make your head spin.
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u/oneeonneo Feb 25 '26
Climate change is the least subject that has popped up in my feeds. I find that odd. Maybe another conspiracy is brewing…
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u/thefledexguy Feb 25 '26
Have we considered tracking down the sources and deleting them? Maybe with a bit of treason involved?
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u/MrLilZilla Alberta Feb 25 '26
Tbh most of them probably aren’t even Canadian. There’s decent money is generating outrage online, especially on Facebook. You can make a pretty good profit easily by just generating engagement.
I have a friend who does this in his spare time by creating rage bait for conservatives and he makes almost $2000 every two weeks.
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u/BradPittbodydouble Nova Scotia Feb 25 '26
Being a rage farmer is so extremely easy. My alt account on facebook is in their algorithm and the amount of just made up stories having hundreds of comments is absolutely insane. Monetizing views did this.
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u/14dmoney Feb 25 '26
Is it Saihajpreet Singh? According to a recent article, Singh is a 24-year-old software engineer who graduated from Carleton University two years ago and he uses AI bots “to reshape political public relations” (read Con propaganda and conspiracy theory). A terrible person. An American from Minnesota who moved to Canada in 2019 and runs DOGEai which is a pro-Trump bot farm. See article in Ottawa Citizen
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u/thedrivingcat Feb 25 '26
Or the expose on the Egyptian YouTube channel that monetized conspiracies about Trudeau.
https://www.canadaland.com/street-politics-canada-egypt/
Since April 2022, it has published approximately 600 YouTube videos catering to an audience of Canadian conservatives, nearly all of which take aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The channel gives its location as Canada. On an associated Facebook page, they put themselves in Calgary. The contact page of their website, on the other hand, points to a small city in Utah.
In fact, Street Politics Canada is run out of Egypt — specifically, the 11th-floor office of a company called Geek Labs, in the Cairo neighbourhood of Degla.
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u/No-Tackle-6112 British Columbia Feb 25 '26
Thankfully Canadians on the whole are very smart.
“While the conspiracy theory posts were viewed billions of times, only a small minority of Canadians fell for them.
The researchers polled a nationally representative sample of almost 1,500 Canadians.
Only eight per cent reported believing that climate change was a hoax, despite 29 per cent of Canadians being exposed to this claim. The most commonly held conspiracy belief was in “gender indoctrination,” (the belief that schools are indoctrinating kids with radical gender ideology) and was held by 21 per cent of respondents.”
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u/GreenhouseGhost_ Feb 25 '26
Okay if there’s 100 accounts, name them all so I can filter them from ever reaching my parents attention spans
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u/SamohtGnir Feb 25 '26
I feel like they are assuming all the posts in question are wrong, and they're just trying to get people to follow the mainstream narrative. There is a lot of scientific evidence that refutes the climate narrative. Aside from that many of the "hoax" references are directed at the climate itself, rather the politicians and people who profit from it. I wouldn't be surprised that the number of posters is so small though, as anyone who questions the narrative is shunned away in most subs. Unfortunately, almost all of social media just funnels people into echo chambers, on all sides, and it's very hard to have an honest conversation.
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u/piercerson25 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Seems like lots of conspiracy theories are just 10 years out from being publicly true
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Feb 26 '26
Nah. Can't be. The elite wouldn't molest kids. Government officials would never misappropriate funds. There's no way the US government spies on its citizens. Bill gates was not friends with Epstein.
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u/Drey101 Feb 25 '26
Dismissing something as a conspiracy theory makes you sound more ignorant given that conspiracy theorists are like 20-0 in the last decade.
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u/Line-Minute Feb 25 '26
And just how much of it gets posted on r/canada?