Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

You might think, based on the volume of her Facebook posts, that Nieta Aqila is an Albertan who supports separation.

“I signed the Alberta independence petition” because “Canada is not a great country anymore,” an account in her name wrote in a popular Facebook group called Alberta Independence that promotes the movement and has more than 100,000 members. 

In another post, Aqila said she was harassed and had rocks thrown at her as she canvassed for petition signatures.

The account’s posts have generated thousands of reactions, comments and shares in recent months as the issue heated up.

WATCH | Investigating overseas accounts in Alberta separatism groups:

Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

CBC’s visual investigations team takes you inside the overseas industry profiting from Alberta separatism. We find more than a dozen overseas accounts posting in the most popular separatist Facebook groups; in some cases, they steal content from real Albertans and brag about making money via Meta’s monetization program.

But the account owner, according to a CBC visual investigation, was posing as a Canadian and is actually a noodle merchant and content creator from Indonesia, who in some cases was just stealing content from real Albertans.

When contacted by CBC, one Albertan whose content was stolen said they felt “absolutely violated.” 

Nieta Aqila even posted about income she generates from Meta’s monetization program, which rewards creators for engagement and solicits subscribers on her personal page.

Nieta Aqila is among 14 overseas accounts CBC identified in four popular Alberta independence Facebook groups. The accounts have posted politically divisive content about Alberta separatism, Western annexation and other hot-button Canadian topics within the past two months. 

Many of them — which Facebook indicates are run from Indonesia, Pakistan, India, the U.S. and Sri Lanka — are top contributors to Alberta-focused pages and have cumulatively garnered tens of thousands of reactions and comments in posts and cross-posts across more than a dozen Facebook groups. Two users posted images of the money they make from Facebook.

Multiple experts told CBC that the findings show how Facebook’s incentives for creators can harm public discourse around important topics. 

“This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it’s much more banal. It’s in some ways more depressing,” said Matt Navarra, a social media consultant in the U.K. whose clients have included Meta and Google. 

“People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrage is a profitable niche. I think they may not actually care about Canadian politics at all.”

While it’s difficult to determine the level of real-world influence these posts have, they elicited strong reactions from some users. 

“Lock and load Albertans!” wrote one commenter on an image with the text “Mark Carney can’t block Alberta Independence.”

‘I feel absolutely violated’ 

As Alberta debates holding a referendum on whether the province should leave Canada, passion from real Albertans has been evident online — but so has a cottage industry built around exploiting the topic. 

For example, a CBC visual investigation recently found that several YouTube channels with tens of millions of views that promoted U.S. annexation of Alberta were created by people living in the Netherlands to generate income from the platform.

Experts say it appears that a similar economic model, where monetization incentivizes content that is engaging rather than accurate or accountable, has taken off on Facebook despite rules banning deceptive content. 

“There are two beneficiaries of this. One is the grifters who are monetizing. They are engaged in this activity because it is financially profitable for them,” said Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University in Montreal. “The other is the platform itself … the ad revenue monetization around the attention that they’re getting.”

Facebook groups focused on Albertan separatism are very active, with hundreds of posts a day spread across the groups; in this mix are overseas content creators.

In some cases, the accounts employ deception to appear Canadian. In one post, Nieta Aqila — who has racked up more than 2,000 reactions in the Alberta Independence group — claimed to have met people who were canvassing for independence in Calgary and expressed support. 

Not only did CBC find an identical post from a real Albertan made the day before, but photos posted by the Nieta Aqila account also reveal that she was in Indonesia that week — in fact, her profile reveals that she lives in the city of Palembang.

CBC discovered that the person behind the account has multiple profiles under different names, including one that primarily advertises homemade noodles for sale.

In one post, she claimed to have been harassed, saying she had rocks thrown at her while canvassing for the independence movement. “You are a Alberta Patriot. Thank you for your service,” one user commented.

Using Google reverse image search, CBC found the post was stolen from Edmonton resident Brock Ireland.

“I feel absolutely violated. If people are impersonating other people, that is wrong altogether,” Ireland said when CBC informed him his post was copied. “It really hurts to know that there’s scammers out there that want to betray other people. [Facebook] has to do better.”

One screenshot of Nieta Aqila’s Meta monetization dashboard, which she posted, showed she made roughly $14 US in a month when she was active in Alberta Facebook groups.

“It’s low-cost content production,” said Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “It is something that allows them to earn some extra money, which really makes a difference in some parts of the world.”

The accounts did not respond to CBC’s multiple requests for comment.

Another Facebook account with the username Riri Seyer, which Facebook labelled as being run in Pakistan, posts content that is strongly pro-separatism and pro-federal government. “Foreign interference — or Albertans speaking for themselves?” they wrote in a post in the Alberta Separatism Facebook group. “At the end of the day, Alberta’s future should be decided by Albertans.”

“That is a thing that is unfortunately a major issue with social media today,” said DiResta. 

“What Meta is doing is it is incentivizing [users] to find issues that people believe in deeply, that people feel deeply aggrieved about, and to manipulate those audiences for profit. Meta has a responsibility to enforce its authenticity and monetization rules.”

‘Canadians are getting tricked’

An administrator for Alberta Independence who goes by the online pseudonym “Mister Alberta” told CBC that “95 per cent of accounts list Canada as their country of origin” but that they “take the issue seriously and will continue monitoring and removing suspicious activity where identified.”

McGill’s Media Ecosystem Observatory looked at these groups and the top posters for inauthentic activity. A preliminary analysis suggested inauthentic activity about separatism has tripled in recent months — but still only represented a fraction of the content in these groups. 

“Canadians are getting tricked,” said Bridgman. “The big takeaway is these platforms continue to not do enough to ensure that there is a fully authentic conversation.”

Uncovering an organized network

CBC uncovered several more accounts with links to Pakistan, including a number of pages that appear to be part of a co-ordinated network. 

The Legacy Archives, with close to 9,000 followers, says on its profile it’s dedicated to history and philosophy. Yet it frequently posts on Alberta separatist pages, often using highly emotional language.

“Seperation is in result of Liberals/NDP lying and attacking Western Canada. Thinking western Canada needs to be subservient to them,” the Legacy Archives wrote on the Alberta Separatist Movement page.

According to Facebook’s page transparency feature, the Legacy Archives is managed from Pakistan and the U.S., along with several other accounts that frequently post in separatist groups and appear linked.

CBC was able to link the Legacy Archives, Trend Top and History Addicted — which were also from Pakistan, with one page owner listed as being from the U.S. — because they are admins of a small Facebook group called Rise of Alberta.

It’s not clear who runs the pages.

The Legacy Archives said in Facebook messages that they live in Canada, not Pakistan, but did not reveal their identity. 

“I made this page for history but no i think we need our rights first,” the user wrote.

When asked why four other Pakistan-run accounts linked to the page were posting in Alberta separatist groups, the Legacy Archives did not respond and blocked the CBC journalist.

Meta, in an email statement, said it had removed content that violated its “policies on inauthentic behaviour and disabled the accounts behind them.” 

The Legacy Archives, Trend Top and History Addicted are no longer online, in addition to Riri Seyer and five other accounts.

Nieta Aqila’s Facebook account is still active. However, her posts have been removed from the Alberta Independence group.