Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

Facebook 正在向海外人士支付报酬，以推广阿尔伯塔省的分离主义

A CBC News investigation found a number of Facebook accounts run by people overseas impersonating real Albertan separatists. 加拿大广播公司（CBC）的一项调查发现，有多个由海外人士运营的 Facebook 账号正在冒充真实的阿尔伯塔省分离主义者。

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. 根据 Nieta Aqila 在 Facebook 上发布的内容数量，你可能会认为她是一位支持分离的阿尔伯塔人。一个以她名字命名的账号在一个拥有超过 10 万成员、名为“阿尔伯塔独立”（Alberta Independence）的知名 Facebook 群组中写道：“我签署了阿尔伯塔独立请愿书”，因为“加拿大不再是一个伟大的国家了”。在另一篇帖子中，Aqila 声称她在为请愿书征集签名时遭到骚扰，并被人投掷石块。

The account’s posts have generated thousands of reactions, comments and shares in recent months as the issue heated up. 随着该议题近期持续升温，该账号发布的帖子已引发了数以千计的互动、评论和转发。

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. CBC 的视觉调查团队带你深入了解这一从阿尔伯塔省分离主义中获利的海外产业。我们发现有十多个海外账号在最热门的分离主义 Facebook 群组中发帖；在某些情况下，他们窃取真实阿尔伯塔人的内容，并炫耀自己通过 Meta 的变现计划赚取了收入。

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. 然而，根据 CBC 的视觉调查，该账号的所有者实际上是一名来自印度尼西亚的面条商人和内容创作者，他冒充加拿大人，且在某些情况下只是在窃取真实阿尔伯塔人的内容。

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. 当 CBC 联系到一位内容被窃取的阿尔伯塔人时，对方表示感到“彻底被侵犯了”。Nieta Aqila 甚至发帖炫耀她通过 Meta 变现计划获得的收入，该计划旨在奖励创作者的互动量，并在她的个人主页上招募订阅者。

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. Nieta Aqila 只是 CBC 在四个热门阿尔伯塔独立 Facebook 群组中识别出的 14 个海外账号之一。在过去两个月里，这些账号发布了关于阿尔伯塔分离主义、西部并入美国以及其他加拿大热门话题的政治分裂性内容。其中许多账号（Facebook 显示其运营地位于印度尼西亚、巴基斯坦、印度、美国和斯里兰卡）是关注阿尔伯塔省页面的主要贡献者，并在十多个 Facebook 群组的帖子和转发中累计获得了数以万计的互动和评论。

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.” 多位专家告诉 CBC，这些发现表明 Facebook 对创作者的激励机制如何损害了围绕重要议题的公共讨论。“这可能并不总是那种国家支持的典型外国干预。有时它更平庸，从某种程度上来说也更令人沮丧，”英国社交媒体顾问 Matt Navarra 表示，他的客户包括 Meta 和 Google。“远在千里之外的人们发现，利用加拿大的愤怒情绪是一个有利可图的利基市场。我认为他们根本不在乎加拿大政治。”

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.” 虽然很难确定这些帖子在现实世界中的影响力程度，但它们确实引起了一些用户的强烈反应。在一张配有“马克·卡尼（Mark Carney）无法阻止阿尔伯塔独立”文字的图片下，一位评论者写道：“阿尔伯塔人，准备战斗吧！”

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. 专家表示，尽管 Facebook 有禁止欺骗性内容的规定，但一种类似的经济模式似乎已经在该平台上兴起，即通过变现机制激励那些具有互动性而非准确性或负责任的内容。