Elections Canada has released this resource with some common bits of false or misleading content about elections on social media: https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=dis&document=index&lang=e
We plan on pinning this resource, and we are proposing the following rules:
edit: Thank you for the feedback everyone, these adjusted rules will be enforced:
- Posts or comments with inaccurate or misleading information from this list will be removed, and users are encouraged to report them
- Repeatedly posting such content will result in a ban from the community until April 28 (at a minimum)
So far we haven’t noticed any serious issues, but we want to get ahead of anything that might come up
- https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/online-disinformation.html (my favourite — but be careful with the “fact-checking accounts” video, it is a bit out of date, since people can buy verification tags now)
- https://www.canada.ca/en/privy-council/news/2025/03/detecting-and-reporting-disinformation.html
- https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/how-identify-misinformation-disinformation-and-malinformation-itsap00300
You can also see these guides by the Government of Canada:
- Online Disinformation
- Detecting and reporting disinformation, by the Privy Council Office
- How to identify misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
Can this be unstickied now that the election has passed? My client doesn’t give me the option to hide announcements in some views.
Yes, sorry about that
No worries, thank you!
Sounds good to me.
I fully support any effort to eliminate misinformation ahead of the election and to ban bad actors.
Will we be restricting the posting of links to foreign owned media?
To what extent? Do we have an issue with Reuters or AP now? How about Canadian commentators like Steve Boots on foreign YouTube?
I’m having a hard time envisioning a rule around this that can be enforced equitably, but we can equitably reject content regardless of source, based on established merits of its substance.
Instead of an open ended rule, it’s easier to just blocklist a few repeat offenders like everything owned by Postmedia.
Let’s also add Sun Media and Saltwire Network to the blocklist.
Technically Reuters is not foreign owned
Learn something new every day. 🙂
Well…shit… that’s cool!
We could require a source on claims. It’s not perfect, but it would weed out low-effort stuff.
No decisions have been made on that yet, and I’m happy to discuss more about it :)
Right now, I think a rule like that might be too broad. A big part of this election is about what’s going on outside of Canada, so I can see us having to make exceptions for important news that hasn’t been covered by a local news organization yet. I’d prefer to set some basic rules that we can follow consistently, and deal with problem posts if/when they get posted. Misleading and inaccurate headlines would still be removed under this rule
Just to add to your comment, case in point, The Guardian sometimes covers Canadian news, and has recently published a bit more about current Canadian political events. They operate mainly in the UK but have a US office. They are independent and don’t have a corporate backer, and have been working relentlessly covering the events in the US since the new admin took power.
Digressing a bit, I’d urge people to use tools like GroundNews to find out the political leanings and maybe even the corporate owners of news outlets that you come across, and use that to your own judgement.
True, as Reuters, The Guardian and The Associated Press are not pretending to be Canadian in order to push their oligarchical interests.
They just recently changed ownership, ditching most of their journalists, apparently.
Much more profit-oriented, now, apparently, even if it isn’t their prime-directive…
Here’s a link: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/guardian-slammed-more-70-journalists-174822542.html
I think you’re either quoting the wrong article, or misread the article. The article talks about the new ownership of The Observer, which is a sister publication to The Guardian.
It’s odd that this “The Standard” publication is the only one that seems to talk about the selling of the Observer and how it was handled, with some even smaller publications. That said, The Standard is majority owned by a Russian oligarch, sometimes sensationalize titles and events, and don’t always have their facts right.
I mean, just block things from the Sun network and it’s half the job done. No complicated debates required, no risk of cross-fire with the entire rest of the news world.
I’m sure @AlolanVulpix@lemmy.ca will like to speak up. As they have produced a great guide on foreign media posing as canadian.
No need to, people like you and others have already done so! As was the original hope of creating the infographic!
I’ll take a step back from this. Proportional representation is the real end game.
My understanding is that this covers only disinformation about Elections Canada, not in general, like news about people, politicians, provinces, policies, institutions, etc…
I suggest to also pin + sidebar one of Canada’s guides to identify and report disinformation.
- https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/online-disinformation.html (my favourite — but be careful with the “fact-checking accounts” video, it is a bit out of date, since people can buy verification tags now)
- https://www.canada.ca/en/privy-council/news/2025/03/detecting-and-reporting-disinformation.html
- https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/how-identify-misinformation-disinformation-and-malinformation-itsap00300
That sounds like a good idea to me. I’d say the first link is probably the best/most accessible single-page resource, but the third’s “Learn More” section of links the most comprehensive overall – it even directly links the first resource. Given the length of articles that get traction here, I think this is a community that can handle the comprehensive option.
These are great, thank you! I can link them in this post as well as in our weekly threads.
How about a reminder to not feed the trolls?
Edit: And maybe a pinned daily or weekly (depending on traffic) mega thread?
I think this would be a reasonable step to take. IMO it’s better to have policies in place before things go sideways rather than try to implement things afterwards so kudos for this!
strongly agree! there is so much trouble allready with misinformation, anything to help stop its spread helps
That seems like a good move.
Those are both good rules. I wouldn’t be surprised to see information being weaponized more frequently as we get closer to the election.
They’re also good rules in general, too. Misinformation should be removed and repeat offenders should be banned.
Man I am SO grateful that our election cycle is only a month long.
Good timing as I remember back in the fall that there were some trolls brigading the instance defending their lord of Nechako Lakes.
Cool beans I am all for it.
I’m 100% in favour of this
Can we add a rule about not tolerating insults? Some users in this community have a really toxic attitude. This shouldn’t be tolerated.
It’s ok to disagree with someone and have an argument and debate, but it shouldn’t immediately fall into gratuitous insults when someone has a different viewpoint than yours.
That falls upon the Instance Rule #2: Be Civil, which applies to this entire instance
I think we can find a way to work that in to the updated rules for the community. I’ll copy this into our notes for where we’re working on those
