Bot-like activity targets Canadian political parties and their leaders ahead of election

[Celerity]

Canadian federal election subject to spam messaging from automated X accounts.

https://dfrlab.org/2025/04/25/bot-like-activity-targets-canadian-political-parties-and-their-leaders-ahead-of-election/

BANNER: Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative leader and Leader of the Official Opposition Pierre Poilievre are seen during a campaign stop in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on April 25, 2025. Layered on top are X posts targeting the two leaders. (Source: Reuters, backdrop; Johnny329130938 and bruce_robi23341, left overlay; aaron5656715545 and FactChecke1907, right overlay)

Highly active bot-like X accounts are amplifying political content in a spam-like manner ahead of the Canadian federal election, frequently replying to posts from federal parties and their leaders. The targeting is not limited to official accounts, but also extends to political accounts and pundits. Researchers and academic studies have warned of the presence and influence of bots and bot-like accounts on X, highlighting their use for platform manipulation, spam, and overall detrimental impact on online discourse, especially during elections. Notably, X’s platform integrity and authenticity rules list content spam and engagement spam as inauthentic behavior that “disrupts people’s experience.”

During a critical period, such as a federal election, which will be held in Canada on April 28, 2025, the presence and impact of bot-like accounts can be harmful to information and election integrity. Canada has previously highlighted concerns over the threat of information manipulation and disinformation and how it could impact the country’s democratic institutions. A public inquiry, led by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue, noted that disinformation “is powerful, it poses a major risk to Canadian democracy. If we do not find ways of addressing it, misinformation and disinformation have the ability to distort our discourse, change our views, and shape our society. In my view it is no exaggeration to say that at this juncture, information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy. It is an existential threat.”

The threat is evidenced by several online campaigns that targeted Canadian politicians and party candidates. Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) linked China to a WeChat campaign that targeted former Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland. After Mark Carney won the Liberal Party’s leadership seat and was sworn in as prime minister, SITE reported that the same China-linked network pivoted to spreading contrasting narratives targeting Carney. While in 2024, the New Democratic Party (NDP) requested that Elections Canada investigate a bot network that was found to be artificially boosting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. The CBC also discovered the use of suspicious bots to amplify narratives on X in the days leading up to and following clashes outside Hindu temples in Canada.

Method

To investigate the phenomenon of spam replies, the DFRLab sampled the official X accounts of the most prominent political parties, the Conservative Party, Liberal Party, NDP, and Bloc Québécois, we also examined accounts belonging to each respective party leader, with a prioritization on English-language accounts, resulting in eight total accounts. The DFRLab collected X posts published between January 1 and April 17, 2025, using the social media listening tool Meltwater Explore and obtained 3,507 posts. We identified 4.2 million total reposts, replies, and quote replies to these 3,000 posts; we were able to collect 2.4 million of these interactions for our dataset.

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