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(my favourite — but be careful with the “fact-checking accounts” video, it is a bit out of date, since people can buy verification tags now)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
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.
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.
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
These are great, thank you! I can link them in this post as well as in our weekly threads.
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.
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
Cool beans I am all for it.
CANADA DOESNT NEED A SMALL pp
Good timing as I remember back in the fall that there were some trolls brigading the instance defending their lord of Nechako Lakes.
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.
Man I am SO grateful that our election cycle is only a month long.
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
That falls upon the Instance Rule #2: Be Civil, which applies to this entire instance
I’m 100% in favour of this
- AwkwardBroccolli ( @AwkwardBroccolli@lemmy.ml ) 0•7 days ago
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
- AwkwardBroccolli ( @AwkwardBroccolli@lemmy.ml ) 0•7 days ago
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.
We might need that in the future, but for now I think we have enough moderators to users to deal with brigading and bad faith arguments when it happens. So far users have been excellent about reporting it to us
I also don’t love doing blanket bans based on participation alone. Sometimes people comment on content to call it out, and without following the thread carefully and being familiar with the topic, it’s hard to tell who’s arguing for what. That being said, if it’s clear that someone is a problem in other communities, I think it makes sense for mods or admins to preemptively ban them.
- AwkwardBroccolli ( @AwkwardBroccolli@lemmy.ml ) 1•7 days ago
Blanket bans have sometimes helped me in the past. Lemmy IMO is not at the scale where that would be necessary. A contextual evaluation can still work for lemmy. Your solution of moderating it individually is the right one in this case.