2w ago

Rules for c/Canada during the election season

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(my favourite — but be careful with the “fact-checking accounts” video, it is a bit out of date, since people can buy verification tags now)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

49 comments

Why would repeatedly posting electoral misinformation during an election only result in a ban until the election was over? I don't think these people would become good actors just because the election ended.
- This is true, and we wouldn't want to keep a bad actor around just because the election is over. I'll change the wording to add 'minimum'
  We're also working on updated guidelines, so there will be a bigger call for feedback like this once we have that together. Those guidelines will apply site wide and across the different platforms (pixelfed.ca for example). How we deal with misinformation is an important area that we want to get right
  
  I imagine a "you can apply to be unbanned after April 28" could suffice. Almost certainly these folks (or bots?) will just disappear after the date and not bother to apply.
  Not saying that we should do this - just that after April 28 matters less because most of the bad actors will almost certainly abandon their accounts after the election.
- This was one of the things I really had a issue with on Reddit. People's shitty comments would be removed constantly but the users were usually just warned or only given short bans.
  The whole thing just made all the subs seems desperate for any type of engagement and the mods would continuosly complain about how much work it is but they created a system where they have to babysit a large portion of the user base.
  Lemmy should show all the communities an account is banned on in the user pages.
- I think some spreaders of misinformation are victims and not intentional bad actors. Banning them from legitimate communities only pushes them further from reality which is bad for our society. Telling the difference between useful idiots and bad actors is hard, so i think the general policy should be a warning and a ban until election day, and having the mods reserve the right to be harsher for clear bad actors.
  
  There's definitely people who unwittingly spread misinformation, but the rule wasn't for people who just post once or twice, but people who have posted misinformation and been warned previously multiple times. That's not a mistake at that point, that's a pattern of behavior.

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?
- That seems like a little much - there's plenty of foreign media that produces worthwhile content.
  Blacklisting certain outlets, on the other hand...
  
  That may be a more reasonable and targeted approach. I am mainly suggesting this from a place of concern about US interference in our upcoming election.
  It may be easier to have a specific list of banned outlets.
  
  I certainly wouldn't miss the Western Standard...
  
  Please, please, please, flag all foreign-owned media, especially foreign-owned "Canadian" media, which is part of the strategic-machine they're running..
  ( no, I don't mean as national-operations, I mean as operations intended to highjack the whole damn world, for sake of oligarchy's dictatorship, which now I know to be an actual strategic-operation, .. and I didn't need any more depression-inducing "medication", just now, thanks, world. Bah. Humbug, too. )
- 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.
  
  Technically Reuters is not foreign owned
  
  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.
  
  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.

How about a reminder to not feed the trolls?
Edit: And maybe a pinned daily or weekly (depending on traffic) mega thread?

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.

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.

Good luck to my northern neighbors. It's near impossible to stop the online shitnado.

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.

Cool beans I am all for it.

Good timing as I remember back in the fall that there were some trolls brigading the instance defending their lord of Nechako Lakes.

Man I am SO grateful that our election cycle is only a month long.

I'm 100% in favour of this

I think we also need to remove brigading posts. I am new to lemmy so not sure how much brigading happens here.
- That's fair, can you link some of the posts? You can also DM me, or @admin@lemmy.ca
  There isn't much brigading since it gets dealt with, but it's not impossible
  
  I am new here. I ma basing my comment on observations I have seen in reddit. Please take my advice with the skepticism it requires as I don't understand how moderation in lemmy works.
  My observations based on moderating subreddits have been to institute blanket bans on people who are active on extreme right subreddits and extreme left subreddits. This helps in clearing the brigading and steers conversations towards neutrality.

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.
- 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

CANADA DOESNT NEED A SMALL pp

49 comments