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(my favourite — but be careful with the “fact-checking accounts” video, it is a bit out of date, since people can buy verification tags now)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