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by mlekoszek 523 days ago
To be honest, I can't shake the suspicion that a fair share of the talking is not homegrown.

> Facebook stated that they had removed fake users that were set up in overseas content farms, in Romania, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, which were promoting the convoy protests in Canada. (https://ca.news.yahoo.com/u-congress-asks-facebook-role-2258...)

> An Economist/YouGov poll conducted from February 12 to 15 found that 80% of Americans had heard of the convoy protests. [...] Among Republicans, 71 per cent supported the convoy protests, compared to 18 per cent of Democrats. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest#Opinion_...)

When you consider how much attention the convoy got in America, and how sympathies fell on such partisan grounds, it gets more concerning. Suddenly, Canadian politics is a hunting ground for the likes of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, online bot mobs... I think you see where I’m going.

It’s difficult to approach these discussions and not feel like bad-faith actors are artificially making a bugbear out of it. This is especially true when many of the loudest defenders of the convoy weren’t even there, aren't even Canadian, and -- three years later -- may not even be people.

That said, I can agree the Emergencies Act probably shouldn't have been used here, and I have question marks about freezing people's bank accounts -- but this is really a conversation actual Canadians should be owning, since it concerns us most directly.