A wave of misinformation about Canadian institutions is being amplified by dubious bot accounts on social media and pro-Modi media outlets in India, with claims that it could jeopardize Canada’s Sikh-Hindu relations. Concerns are growing.
CBC News has collected hundreds of posts on X and dozens of hours streamed on YouTube in the days before and after clashes outside Hindu temples in Surrey, British Columbia, and Brampton, Ont., in November. I investigated the footage.
The analysis identified multiple posts that had been redistributed by suspicious accounts, including misleading and inflammatory comments about the Khalistan movement, which advocates for an independent Sikh state, and about Sikh Canadians in general.
Some of these claims were subsequently repeated in Indian media sympathetic to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A parallel analysis of pro-Khalistan accounts also revealed a number of unverified claims, but only a small amplification by suspected bots.
Even before last month’s clashes, Global Affairs Canada’s media watchdog said India’s “pro-Modi” media had been “frequently accused of It was reported that the government was promoting reporting on the
Ward Elcock, former director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), said staunch opposition to the Khalistan movement is an integral part of the Hindu nationalist ideology promoted by the Modi government at home and abroad.
“The violence of that demonstration [in Brampton and Surrey] suggests that the topic was pushed [Canada] It was a lot more than any of us expected,” Elcock said.
Anxiety after a collision
Sikh separatists have been protesting outside the consulate at a Hindu temple since Prime Minister Trudeau claimed that the Indian government was involved in the 2023 murder of prominent Khalidistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey. We’re doing a demo.
Although these demonstrations are small, they often take place near the entrances of temples and sometimes raise provocative slogans such as “Who supports the killers of Nijjar: Hindu temples”.
Last month, counterprotesters took part in demonstrations in Surrey and Brampton. The series of clashes lasted 48 hours, resulting in several arrests and condemnation from politicians from all walks of life.
“Almost everyone who has lived here for 10, 15, 20 years thought they never had to face such a situation,” said the host of a Punjabi call-in radio show from his basement. said Balwinder Singh, who is in charge of the project. In Brampton.
“They never expected to feel unsafe in Canada.”
In the days following the demonstrations, social media was flooded with unverified claims of retaliatory violence, government infiltration, and police corruption.
CBC News investigated the activity of six accounts on X during the first two weeks of November. Three of them belonged to prominent Canadian influencers who often criticize the Khalistan movement, and the remaining three belonged to prominent Canadian defenders of the Khalistan movement.
CBC News used publicly available data to count the number of times a particular post was reposted by an account with bot characteristics. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Laboratory, based in Washington, D.C., defines a suspicious account as one that posts 72 or more times per day.
This type of analysis does not determine who is controlling the bots or whether they are working with each other.
Pro-Khalistan accounts in the sample post unverified claims that Indian diplomats are using places of worship to build spy networks. However, there was little evidence that these posts were being significantly increased by what appeared to be bots.
Gurpatwant Singh Panun, a prominent Khalistan supporter, has just 3,600 followers on his account. CBC News detected 13 bots suspected of pushing his content in early November. The content of the other two parent Khalistan accounts in the sample was amplified by fewer than 10 bots.
Suspicious bot accounts push false information
Meanwhile, posts by people criticizing the Khalistan movement show evidence of significant amplification by what appear to be bots.
Two of the accounts received over 1,000 retweets from various suspicious bots, and the third received over 500.
Daniel Boardman, a Toronto-based journalist with the right-wing National Telegraph publication who has 70,000 followers on After expanding the scope, we received nearly 6,000 retweets from nearly 1,800 suspicious accounts. The entire month of November.
Three men have been arrested after a series of violent demonstrations outside a Hindu temple and a Sikh gurdwara in the Toronto area over the weekend. Similar clashes have occurred in Surrey, British Columbia, and come amid heightened tensions between Canada and India.
In at least two instances, these suspicious bots amplified misleading information posted by Boardman.
On November 13, for example, Boardman posted a video of a rally in Surrey, in which a yellow Khalistan flag could be seen.
“Khalistanis marched around Surrey, British Columbia, chanting ‘we own Canada’ and ‘white people should go back to Europe and Israel,'” Boardman wrote. offensive term And it suggests that Khalistani will shape Canada’s foreign policy.
Boardman’s post has received about 1.5 million views, 16,000 likes, and has been reposted more than 5,000 times. As of last week, 469 of those reposts came from suspicious bot accounts, according to a CBC News investigation.
Boardman’s post was cited in coverage of the incident by NDTV, one of India’s most popular television networks, and the Delhi-based business newspaper Mint. Other major Indian media outlets also reported on the incident.
However, contrary to Boardman’s account, the video shows Sikhs singing hymns during a processional religious ceremony called Nagar Kirtan.
“We own Canada” and “white people should go back to Europe and Israel” are heard in the original video by Inderjit Singh Jaswal, a local video blogger who livestreamed the ceremony. It is.
Jaswal said in an Instagram post on November 17 that he was not a “Khalistani” and that his comments in the video were directed at people who were making racist comments in the livestream chat. said.
“Thousands of racists came there. [in the comment section] And abused our God, our culture, our values,” he said in the video, displaying racist comments he received during the livestream.
“Why Daniel? [Bordman] Do you want to hide comments? I was replying to racists,” Jaswal said in the video, and posted another video in Punjabi offering a similar explanation.
Boardman later appeared on a podcast to discuss Jaswal’s explanation. He mocked and imitated Jaswal’s accent and called him a “mentally defective Khalistani”.
In a separate post, backed by more than 370 suspected bot accounts, Boardman said a video of two Surrey police officers performing gutka, a Sikh martial art, at a religious festival included the following: Khalistani police are shown preparing for the next attack on a Hindu temple in Surrey, British Columbia. . ”
Boardman added: “Can we trust these two to be honest arbiters of justice?”
A day later, News XL LiveA Delhi-based pro-Modi news channel aired a segment on the Surrey video, asking whether the officers could be “trusted as impartial dispensers of justice.”
Ottawa says pro-Modi media has scale advantages
According to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, press freedom in India has declined significantly since Mr Modi came to power in 2014.
Reporters Without Borders said in a 2023 report that many of the country’s largest media outlets are owned and operated by Modi supporters, and their reporting is often sympathetic to the government’s goals.
Global Affairs Canada said in a September report that pro-Modi news outlets have a “distinct advantage in amplifying negative narratives about Canada” due to the size of their audience, which includes diaspora communities. said to mean.
Boardman has given multiple interviews over the past year to Indian media, including ANI, which is pro-Modi and known for spreading misinformation.
In an interview with CBC News, Boardman said he was paid for some of his media appearances, but declined to say which ones.
“I never want to take money from the Indian government,” he said.
Boardman said it was not unexpected that bots would repost some of his content, given the size of his following on X.
“Will bots ever retweet me? Absolutely,” he said. “But I don’t think bots are that important in their scope.”
“New normal”
The presence of artificial social media activity in online discussions about Sikh-Hindu relations in Canada is not new.
Researchers at the Media Ecosystem Observatory, based at McGill University in Montreal, found that in mid-October, shortly after the RCMP linked Indian government operatives to murders and other acts of violence, identical anti-Canadian messages We have discovered the remnants of a bot farm that issues . In Canada.
India on Saturday formally protested the Canadian government’s claims that the country’s powerful interior minister, Amit Shah, had ordered targeting of Sikh activists in Canada, calling them “absurd and baseless.” Details: cbc.ca/1.7371969.
Earlier this year, social media company Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) announced They were dismantling a group of fake accounts behind a fictitious pro-Sikh activist movement called Operation K.
The company said the network operating the account is based in China and the campaign is aimed at Sikhs around the world, including Canada.
“This is the new normal,” Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, said of the surge in bot activity on sites like X.
He said policymakers and social media users should expect some degree of manipulation “on every issue.”
When Shin finished another broadcast of his radio program Sargam (means “harmony” in both Punjabi and Hindi) and he worries that the flow of misinformation is driving a wedge between two communities that once peacefully coexisted. He said he is doing so.
He said a “narrative has been created” aimed at making Hindus and Sikhs fear each other.
“I think that’s very dangerous.”
