Recommendations:

• Recommendations for the general public: Canadians should be aware that Canadian news content has been banned from Facebook. We invite Canadians to report ads and pages masquerading as legitimate news sources or including deepfakes of politicians or other public figures to the social media platform every time they encounter them to accelerate their removal. Canadians should generally avoid clicking on the links in these ads, given that they could be unsafe. 

• The easiest ways to evaluate whether the content is fake is to check the URL to see if it matches the name of the media organization, search whether other credible sources have reported on the same event, or examine the page of the post creator on social media to evaluate whether it is reliable (is the source known? Does the source have many followers? Was the page created very recently?) 

• Social media platforms must adopt a dramatically more proactive and transparent approach to curbing fraudulent advertising — especially during critical periods such as elections. While some offending content has been removed, the persistent reappearance of deceptive ads indicates a systemic and unacceptable failure in both detection and enforcement mechanisms. We recommend:

• Implementing stricter ad review policies for new advertisers, especially when political figures or news brands are referenced.

• Requiring identity verification for political advertisers and those referencing news organizations.

• Providing transparency into the volume and nature of removed content, to allow for independent auditing and accountability.

• Dramatically strengthening automated and human content moderation to detect AI-generated deepfakes and mimicry of legitimate media outlets in real-time. At a minimum, implement flags for ads masquerading as news outlets (e.g., ads using their name or logo that link to another page).

• In the interest of transparency, particularly during elections, we recommend that Meta clearly disclose—directly within Canadian users’ feeds—that official news content is restricted on its platforms.

• The Canadian government should strengthen and enforce legislation to better protect the public from coordinated digital deception, especially when driven by financial or political motives. At a minimum, we recommend that a newly elected government require full disclosure for all political and financial ads online at all times, not only in elections, —including clear source attribution and verified advertiser identity—and empower regulators to audit platforms for compliance and issue penalties for repeated violations.