News Is Blocked on Meta’s Feeds in Canada. Here’s What Fills the Void.
A campaign debate among Canada’s party leaders in Montreal last week. Online content around the April 28 federal election has veered into misinformation. Photo by Evan Buhler/Reuters
The New York Times
Mark Carney was just days away from announcing his bid to lead Canada’s Liberal Party in January when his face popped up on a viral right-wing Facebook page.
Two photographs showed Mr. Carney, who became prime minister last month, at a garden party beside Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and former confidante of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. There was no evidence that Mr. Carney and Ms. Maxwell were close friends, and his team dismissed the pictures as a fleeting social interaction from more than a decade ago.
But they were perfect fodder for Canada Proud, a right-wing Facebook page with more than 620,000 followers. For days, Canada Proud posted about the images, including in paid ads that repeatedly said Mr. Carney had been “hanging out with sex traffickers.”
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