An overseas network of misinformation and deception targeting Canadians on YouTube has been uncovered by the CBC, capitalizing on U.S.-Canadian tensions and sewing division. Who is behind the flood of click-bait videos and interconnected AI-derived messaging?
They may sound like engaged Canadians with accounts like "The Canadian Politician," "The David Fraser Report" and "CanadianReporter2025," sharing their opinion and commentary on hot button issues facing Canada.
But they’re voice actors, mostly from the United States. And those who hired them to create YouTube videos under patriotic personas are even further from the Great White North.
"What we ended up doing was finding that at least three of these channels had Dutch connections," said investigative reporter Eric Szeto.
Szeto is a member of CBC News' Visual Investigations unit. His team went down the sensational YouTube rabbit hole when a report from the Media Ecosystem Observatory came out, detailing the sudden rise of videos pushing for Alberta separatism. All using almost identical language and messaging.
That is a movement underway, whose leaders have met with American officials from the State and Treasury Departments, much to the outcry of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney, among others.
But these YouTube channels seemed suspicious to Szeto. Journalists connected the dots using digital forensics on social media, and something was off with the public faces of these accounts.
"One of the big first clues we got was that some of these Twitter accounts associated with these YouTube accounts were created in the Netherlands, and we thought, 'OK, that's interesting, but that's not enough for us,' Szeto told BTPM NPR. "But we tracked down one of these YouTubers that were putting out these videos, and if you've seen them, they are fronted by what you would assume or presume are Canadian, and they're bringing you what they say is news that's unbiased, unfiltered."
When CBC was able to finally put a name to a face, Szeto said one of them was actually Canadian and from Calgary. But he was a voice actor who thought he was applying for gig work.
"He got this script, and one of the scripts as part of his audition was to talk about about Alberta separatism. And from there, he sent the tape in. Nothing happened, but then it ended up getting on YouTube anyways," Szeto said. "When we tracked him down, he said, 'these guys from the Netherlands hired me,' and he shared with us all this information, contacts, scripts."
From there, Szeto said the tale got crazier when CBC tracked down the people on screen for other similar channels.
"These are fake Canadians, because three of the other people we found on these channels that are getting tens of millions of views turned out to be American," he said. "One of the people we reached out to. His name is Paul. He's out of Indiana. We geolocate where he is. We find out he's a former professional golfer. He's now a voice actor. And he tells us a very similar story, right? Like he said he didn't know he was part of this misinformation campaign on the news. And I asked him, was there any connection to people in the Netherlands? And he said, very possibly."
Szeto eventually called the channel owners in the Netherlands. At least one of them admitted to being behind the content, but later denied it.
Why are there so many Dutch pulling the strings for videos about Canadian politics? Well as far as Szeto and his team can tell, it’s not a government-sanctioned propaganda campaign. They were motivated by money, and part of a growing group of entrepreneurs called "Faceless YouTubers" who utilize AI and gig workers to churn out polarizing videos — torquing YouTube algorithms and driving revenue.
"The accuracy, the quality of arguments, is less important to the algorithms than how engaging the content might be," said Yotam Ophir, professor of communications at the University at Buffalo and author of "Misinformation & Society."
While misinformation and deception has been used by foreign groups historically for political purposes, Ophir said there’s precedent for pure monetary gain.
"In 2016 for example, there were groups of teenagers actually in Europe, in Macedonia, who faked pro-Trump accounts for kind of the same reasons," Ophir said. "To drive some online activity, to get people engaged, and eventually to make a little bit of money out of it.”
Ophir said those Macedonian teenagers made hundreds of pro-Trump accounts specifically because they knew pro-Clinton accounts didn’t drive the same level of engagement on social media.
Online engagement equals money.
That tactic is now being used on Canadians amid tensions with the U.S, he believes.
"It skews the public opinion, the perceived public opinion of Canadians, and it incites kind of immediate emotions, especially anger and fear among Canadians," said Ophir. "In the long term, the fact that Canadians now know that some of the discourse on their social media is coming from outside sources, [it] may just yield general skepticism and even cynicism."
Many of the accounts CBC investigated were taken down after their report was aired, but not after making potentially thousands of dollars per month.
A YouTube spokesperson told the Canadian broadcaster that it "doesn’t allow spam, scam or other deceptive practices that take advantage of the YouTube community."
Faceless Education, the Dutch group who offers courses on "faceless" YouTube, denied intent to influence politics or divisions and connections to the Alberta separatist movement.
