Bots and Indian TV push fake news about Canada in wake of Hindu temple clashes

Bots and Indian TV push fake news about Canada in wake of Hindu temple clashes

A wave of misinformation about Canadian institutions is being amplified by suspected bot accounts on social media and by pro-Modi news outlets in India, raising concerns it could imperil relations between Sikhs and Hindus in Canada. 

CBC News reviewed hundreds of posts on X and dozens of hours of footage streamed on YouTube in the days before and after clashes outside Hindu temples in Surrey, B.C., and Brampton, Ont., in November.

The analysis identified several posts containing misleading and inflammatory comments about the Khalistan movement — which advocates for an independent state for Sikhs — and Sikh Canadians in general that were recirculated by suspicious accounts. 

Some of these claims were then repeated on Indian media outlets sympathetic to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A parallel analysis of pro-Khalistan accounts also revealed numerous unverified claims, but only marginal amplification by suspected bots.

Even before last month’s clashes, the media monitoring unit at Global Affairs Canada had reported “Modi-aligned” media outlets in India were pushing “often heated” narratives claiming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is beholden to Khalistani extremists.

The steadfast opposition to the Khalistan movement is an integral part of a Hindu nationalist ideology the Modi government has been pushing both domestically and abroad, said Ward Elcock, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

“The violence of those demonstrations [in Brampton and Surrey] suggests that that agenda has been pushed in [Canada] a good deal more than any of us realized,” Elcock said. 

Sense of insecurity following clashes

Sikh separatists have been demonstrating outside consular events at Hindu temples since Trudeau alleged the Indian government was involved in the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Khalistan activist, in Surrey.

These demonstrations, though small, are often held near the temple entrance and can feature provocative slogans, such as “Who supports Nijjar’s killers: Hindu temple.”

Last month, demonstrations in Surrey and Brampton were met by counter-protesters. A series of confrontations ensued over a 48-hour period, resulting in several arrests and condemnation from politicians across the spectrum.

“Virtually everybody who has been here for 10, 15 or 20 years were of the view that they never had to confront such a situation,” said Balwinder Singh, who hosts a Punjabi-language call-in radio show from the basement of his home in Brampton. 

“They never thought …  they would feel unsafe in Canada.”

In the days following the demonstrations, social media was awash in unverified claims about retaliatory violence, government infiltration and police corruption.

CBC News examined the activity of six accounts on X during the first two weeks of November: three belonging to prominent Canadian influencers often critical of the Khalistan movement and three belonging to prominent Canadian advocates of the Khalistani cause.

Using publicly available data, CBC News counted the number of times a given post was reposted by an account that had the characteristics of a bot. The Digital Forensic Research Lab at the D.C.-based Atlantic Council defines a suspicious account as one that posts more than 72 times per day.

This type of analysis does not determine who is controlling the bots or if they are co-ordinating with each other.

The pro-Khalistan accounts in the sample have posted unverified claims about Indian diplomats using places of worship to build a spy network. But there was little evidence these posts were being boosted in a significant way by suspected bots.

The account belonging to Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a leading Khalistan advocate, only has 3,600 followers. CBC News detected 13 suspected bots pushing his content in early November; content from the two other pro-Khalistan accounts in the sample was amplified by fewer than 10 bots.  

Suspected bot accounts push misinformation

Posts by critics of the Khalistan movement, on the other hand, showed evidence of significant amplification by suspected bots.

Two of the accounts received retweets from more than 1,000 different suspected bots, while the third had more than 500.

Daniel Bordman, a Toronto-based journalist with a right-wing publication called The National Telegraph who has 70,000 followers on X, had the most bot engagement in our sample, receiving nearly 6,000 retweets from nearly 1,800 suspicious accounts when we expanded the analysis to include the whole month of November.

In at least two instances, these suspected bots amplified misleading information posted by Bordman.

On Nov. 13, for example, Bordman posted a video of a gathering in Surrey in which yellow Khalistan flags can be seen. 

“Khalistanis march around Surrey BC and claim ‘we are the owners of Canada’ and ‘white people should go back to Europe and Israel,'” Bordman wrote, adding an offensive term and implying Khalistanis shape Canadian foreign policy. 

Bordman’s post has received nearly 1.5 million views and 16,000 likes and has been reposted more than 5,000 times. CBC News found that, as of last week, 469 of those reposts were from suspected bot accounts.

Bordman’s post was cited in reports of the incident by NDTV, one of India’s most popular television networks, and by Mint, a Delhi-based financial publication. Other major Indian media outlets covered the incident as well.

But contrary to Bordman’s description, the video shows Sikhs singing hymns during a processional religious ceremony called Nagar Kirtan.

The voice in the original video saying “we are the owners of Canada” and “white people should go back to Europe and Israel” belongs to Inderjit Singh Jaswal, a local vlogger who livestreamed the ceremony. 

In a Nov. 17 Instagram post, Jaswal said he is not “Khalistani” and that his statements in the video were directed at people who were making racist comments in the livestream chat.

“Thousands of racist people came there [in the comment section] and were abusing our gods, our culture, our values,” he said in the video, while displaying the racist comments he received during the livestream. 

“Why did Daniel [Bordman] hide the comments? I was replying to racist people,” Jaswal says in his video. He posted a separate video in Punjabi offering a similar explanation. 

Bordman later appeared on a podcast to discuss Jaswal’s explanation. He ridiculed and mimicked Jaswal’s accent and called him a “mentally deficient Khalistani.” 

In another post, boosted by more than 370 suspected bot accounts, Bordman claimed a video of two Surrey police officers performing Gatka, a Sikh martial art, at a religious festival showed “Khalistani cops preparing for the next attack on a Hindu temple in Surrey BC.”

Bordman added: “Can we trust these two to be honest arbitrators of justice?”

A day later, NewsXLive, a pro-Modi news channel based in Delhi, ran a segment about the Surrey video, asking if the officers “can be trusted as impartial enforcers of justice.”

Pro-Modi media has size advantage, Ottawa says 

Press freedom in India has dropped significantly since Modi took power in 2014, according to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.

Many of the country’s largest media outlets are owned and operated by Modi loyalists, and their coverage is often sympathetic to the government’s goals, said Reporters Without Borders in a 2023 report.

The size of their audience, which includes diaspora communities, means Modi-aligned outlets have a “distinct advantage in amplifying negative narratives about Canada,” Global Affairs Canada said in a September report.

Bordman has given multiple interviews to Indian media over the past year, including ANI, known for its pro-Modi slant and for spreading misinformation.

In an interview with CBC News, Bordman said some of those media appearances were paid, but he declined to specify which ones. 

“I’d never take money from the Indian government,” he said.

Bordman said it was not unexpected that bots would repost some of his content, given the size of his following on X. 

“Do some bots retweet me? Sure,” he said. “But I don’t think bots are that significant in the outreach they have.”

‘The new normal’ 

The presence of artificial social media activity in online discussions of Sikh-Hindu relations in Canada is not novel. 

Researchers with the Media Ecosystem Observatory, based at McGill University in Montreal, detected the remnants of a bot farm that issued identical anti-Canada messages in mid-October, just after the RCMP linked agents of the Indian government to homicides and other acts of violence in Canada.

Earlier this year, the social media company Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) announced it had dismantled a cluster of fake accounts behind a fictitious pro-Sikh activist movement called Operation K.

The company said the network running the accounts was based in China, and that the campaign was directed at Sikhs around the world, including in Canada. 

“This is the new normal,” said Aengus Bridgman, who heads the Media Ecosystem Observatory, about the proliferation of bot activity on sites like X. 

He said policy-makers and social media users should expect some degree of manipulation “to occur with every issue.”

As Singh wrapped up another broadcast of his radio show Sargam (which means harmony in both Punjab and Hindi), he said he was worried the flow of misinformation is driving a wedge between two communities that once co-existed peacefully.

“A narrative has been created” that aims to make Hindus and Sikhs fear each other, he said. 

“I think that is very, very dangerous.”

Published at Wed, 18 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

U.S. Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by another quarter point

The U.S. Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday by a quarter-point — its third cut this year — but also signalled that it expects to reduce rates next year more slowly than previously thought, with inflation still well above the central bank’s two per cent target.

The Fed’s 19 policymakers projected that they will cut their benchmark rate by a quarter-point just twice in 2025, down from their September estimate of four rate cuts. Their new projections suggest that consumers may not enjoy much lower rates next year for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and other forms of borrowing.

Fed officials have underscored that they are slowing their rate reductions as their benchmark rate nears a level that policymakers refer to as “neutral” — the level that is thought to neither spur nor hinder the economy.

Wednesday’s projections suggest that the policymakers may think they are not very far from that level. Their benchmark rate stands at 4.3 per cent after Wednesday’s move, which followed a steep half-point reduction in September and a quarter-point cut last month.

“I think that a slower pace of [rate] cuts really reflects both the higher inflation readings we’ve had this year and the expectations that inflation will be higher” in 2025, chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference.

“We’re closer to the neutral rate, which is another reason to be cautious about further moves.

“Nonetheless,” Powell said, “we see ourselves as still on track to cut.”

Loonie slides in response to the cut

The Canadian loonie slid further against the U.S. dollar — which continues to outperform other currencies — in reaction to the cut on Wednesday afternoon.

“Jerome Powell was talking about a U.S. economy that is clearly outperforming not just domestic expectations, but also the rest of the world,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay, a payment management company Toronto.

“That means U.S. interest rates are high, and that’s making U.S. markets the best place in the world to park money.”

Several other factors have driven the loonie’s decline over the last few months and years, including the end of a “supercycle” that saw high demand for Canadian energy, as well as high household debt slowing consumer spending and Trump’s threat of a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods.

With that, “you have essentially a deadly cocktail for the Canadian dollar,” Schamotta told CBC News. And the loonie could sink “at least a couple of cents lower” if Trump goes through with his threat.

That would hit the exports sector hard. Consumer sentiment in Canada would sink, and businesses would pull further back on investment, Schamotta said.

“All of that would mean that Canada would very likely topple into a recession.”

Yet Canadian exporters are hurt when the loonie performs too high against the U.S. dollar, Schamotta said. A lower correction could mean that some of those exports “are going to be put in a better position.”

“They’re going to be able to sell cheaper exports to the world, and they’re going to be able to grow,” he said. “So this is a bit of a rebalancing process.”

High inflation persists, pace of hiring cools

This year’s Fed rate reductions have marked a reversal after more than two years of high rates, which largely helped tame inflation but also made borrowing painfully expensive for American consumers.

But now, the Fed is facing a variety of challenges as it seeks to complete a “soft landing” for the economy, whereby high rates manage to curb inflation without causing a recession. Chief among them is that inflation remains stubborn: According to the Fed’s preferred gauge, annual “core” inflation, which excludes the most volatile categories, was 2.8 per cent in October. That is still persistently above the central bank’s two per cent target.

At the same time, the economy is growing briskly, which suggests that higher rates haven’t restrained it much. As a result, some economists — and some Fed officials — have argued that borrowing rates shouldn’t be reduced much more for fear of overheating the economy and reigniting inflation.

On the other hand, the pace of hiring has cooled significantly since 2024 began, a potential worry because one of the Fed’s mandates is to achieve maximum employment.

“We don’t think we need further cooling in the labour market to get inflation below two per cent,” Powell said at his news conference.

While still low at 4.2 per cent, the unemployment rate has risen nearly a full percentage point in the past two years. Concern over rising unemployment contributed to the Fed’s decision in September to cut its key rate by a larger-than-usual half-point.

Trump’s tariff threats heighten uncertainty

On top of that, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has proposed a range of tax cuts and a scaling-back of regulations that collectively could stimulate growth. And his threatened tariffs and mass deportations could accelerate inflation.

Powell and other Fed officials have said they can’t assess how Trump’s policies might affect the economy or their own rate decisions until more details are made available. Until then, the outcome of the presidential election has mostly heightened economic uncertainty.

That was underscored by the quarterly economic projections the Fed issued Wednesday.

The policymakers now expect overall inflation, as measured by their preferred gauge, to rise slightly from 2.3 per cent now to 2.5 per cent by the end of 2025. 

The officials also expect the unemployment rate to inch up by the end of next year, from 4.2 per cent now to a still-low 4.3 per cent.

Published at Wed, 18 Dec 2024 21:39:34 +0000