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Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

cbc.ca

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Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#161

Post by graemep »

firen777 wrote: post #36
gambiting wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I'm not sure it's a meme - this guy literally got rich doing it, to a point where he's selling "self guide" courses on how to do this: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

Similarly: https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-em... Some highlights: > The move made him a mint — and Sam was soon raking in thousands of dollars a month. > “I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” he recalled. > He said he also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so th…

I was wondering how people monetised these things. Selling t-shirts and AI porn is not what I expected.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#162

Post by close04 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #102
close04 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are people with high HN karma, a lot of it for posting or submitting technical discussions. Is that enough to give that much weight to their opinion on political topics?

>Those people are people with high HN karma, a lot of it for posting or submitting technical discussions. Click on a few of those names and see what kind of topics they wade into. I wish you were right. You're not gonna get high karma by having high quality technical discussion. First off no human can likely know enough depth on enough topics to contribute to very many of them. Second off, such commentary only gets p…

> I assure you that a great many of them take great offense when you suggest that they are not experts in whatever they are speaking at a given minute.

That I can believe without question. I see it in action every day. But how are they any different from any social media influencer who has an opinion on everything and millions of followers and who use their existing clout to demand more?

One of the people high on that list once introduced themselves by the karma points from HN. That was the value they saw in themselves, that’s all that matters.

That HN leadership list has in the same page the typical serial posters or panderers, with an opinion on every mundanity under the sun, having 10-20 times the karma of other people in the list who bring genuinely unique and fascinating views of things that normal people never get to see or even know they exist.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#163

Post by throwaway27448 »

vintermann wrote: post #28
throwaway27448 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.

Sure, but that's a good example. They obviously push pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian and probably a good deal of outright anti-Muslim positions. But do you think they push random divisive issues, unrelated to their own interests, just to destabilize countries they don't like? I think the evidence for that is much weaker.

Israel? No. Russia? Absolutely; a country preoccupied with domestic conflict is less likely to interfere with others.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#164

Post by throwaway27448 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #45
throwaway27448 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.

For a country of 8 million to "dwarf by multiple orders of magnitude" a country of 140 million in almost anything requires very lively imagination indeed. Soft power operations are hard to measure. You cannot measure the impact of Israeli activities either.

> For a country of 8 million to "dwarf by multiple orders of magnitude" a country of 140 million in almost anything requires very lively imagination indeed.

I see you've never heard of Hasbara.

Anyway, there's little reason to think that influence scales with the size of the population as opposed to the number of people involved in active influence and funding, especially with Russia locking down access to the global internet. Israel simply has much, much, much, much more to gain from interfering in american culture than russia does (despite its being scapegoated by the least capable of our politicians).

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#165

Post by mrinterweb »

The 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.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#166

Post by swader999 »

giarc wrote: post #125
swader999 wrote: post #97

I 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.

Fellow 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?

Suspect or poorly worded

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#167

Post by throwaway27448 »

tokai wrote: post #31
throwaway27448 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the mass…

Its not about Americans. Russians already owned them and got them to do what they want. Its about Europeans that are much closer to their representatives.

Do europeans vote based on foreign policy?

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#168

Post by throwaway27448 »

pjc50 wrote: post #64
throwaway27448 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the mass…

Rather like the Raytheon adverts in DC airport, the aim of all this nonsense is to alter the worldview of the small number of people who make the actual decisions. It does seem to have some effect - the Trump administration withdrew support from Ukraine.

I suppose. But social media would be a very indirect way of influencing decision makers. Surely it'd be more straightforward to simply bribe or threaten them.

> It does seem to have some effect - the Trump administration withdrew support from Ukraine.

No, they haven't. We just haven't increased support. They still benefit from our existing aid packages and intelligence.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#169

Post by Larrikin »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #52
Paracompact wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who of credit has claimed otherwise, that dictators spread dissent as an end rather than as a means?

>Who of credit has claimed otherwise By my rough estimation a third to a half of these people: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

>Rayiner

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#170

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

vrganj wrote: post #159
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point. Identity and effect are not the same as purpose, but identity also isn't the same as effect. If a news headline read "Bars are encouraging foreigners to drive drunk", and the contents were just that the reporter compiled a list of 14 foreigners who were served alcohol when the bartender knew they drove there, I would say that's similarly misleading.

What if it was a list of 14 foreigners that were given money for drinking even though the bartender knew they drove there?

Still seems impossible to interpret without knowing how many Canadians were given money under similar circumstances.
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