Grander, larger conspiracy theories coming to a city council near you. Watch out. Beyond everyone's annoying uncle, what Rory, Zoe and Supriya shared blew my mind. @nationalobserver.com w/ @supriya.bsky.social @zoegrams.bsky.social @rorywh.bsky.social

On their Facebook page, the organizers of Building Caledon Together claim, “We’ve got regular jobs, one goes to school full-time, families, and a shared love for Caledon. We’ve chosen to stay anonymous for now. Not because there’s anything shady.”

Anonymous 'grassroots' community group in Ontario traced back to political operative. New investigative work from @nationalobserver.com's @rorywh.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/02/i...

“When professional PR firms funded by 'anonymous' interests drive political conversations, that poses a real danger to our ability as citizens to engage with each other,” he said. “Generally speaking, legitimate grassroots groups do not hide the identities of their founders and leaders.”

My latest investigation is out. In the town of Caledon, Ont., political operatives thought they could create an anonymous, untraceable "citizen-led grassroots" campaign. But they forgot to scrub the image metadata. www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/02/i...

Anonymous 'grassroots' community group in Ontario traced back to political operative www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/02/i... Fascinating read about finding out who is really behind an “astroturf “ group

One of the more surreal conversations I’ve ever had.

How's your local government doing differentiating what's real and what's AI-generated propaganda. Join me @supriya.bsky.social @rorywh.bsky.social @zoegrams.bsky.social

The people demand shoe scene details!

New from me today for @nationalobserver.com. I submitted an FOI request, which revealed the province’s ad campaign budget for the Ring of Fire. One budget line lists nearly $60,000 for “additional costs as a result of eliminating shoe scene from TV spot.” WHAT IS A SHOE SCENE

Soon artificial intelligence will be redacting government documents. Would love to read the instructions they feed to the LLM.. "Your task is to minimize embarrassment to the department."

At least three federal departments are developing AI tools to help redact sensitive information from documents before they’re released to the public, reports Ben Andrews in his latest. Observers warn it could damage transparency in an already secretive access-to-information system.

Via @rorywh.bsky.social The same firm ran a campaign to save CBC — and Canada Proud's push to defund it www.nationalobserver.com/2026/01/08/i...

As the right-wing meme page Canada Proud was posting calls to "DEFUND THE CBC," the same PR firm behind it was being indirectly funded by CBC journalists’ own union dues. Yeah. And that's not all. So I’m teaming up with my friends at @nationalobserver.com to tell you all about it:

Jeff Ballingall being connected to both the pro-CBC and anti-CBC campaigns at the same time sounds about right

There are actually just 10 real people on the entire Internet in Canada, four of whom are you, me, @ericwickham.ca and Wyatt Claypool The rest are just sock puppet accounts and Facebook pages run by Jeff Ballingall

A PR firm hired to produce ads in support of the CBC is the same firm that has, for years, been calling for the public broadcaster to be defunded through its right-wing Canada Proud Facebook pages, a @rorywh.bsky.social investigation finds.

Must-read, for Canadians We should all be "concerned about the integrity of Canadian democratic discourse when the most influential ideological voices are products for clients, and when transparency erodes through nested corporations." www.nationalobserver.com/2026/01/08/i...

CBC employees’ union dues indirectly funded the same firm calling for their jobs to be eliminated. Likewise, the firm behind Canada Proud — one of Canada’s leading critics of public broadcasting — ran a campaign on behalf of CBC workers. Stunning finding from @rorywh.bsky.social

I called number for the Local Matters campaign from the Canadian Media Guild on Facebook. The call was answered by an employee of the group behind Canada Proud, one of the loudest advocates for defunding the CBC. www.nationalobserver.com/2026/01/08/i...

Across Alberta, municipalities are weighing the pros and cons of hosting AI data centres. I used @nationalobserver.com's Civic Searchlight tool to figure out which towns are looking at data centres and dig into how they are thinking about the costs & benefits www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/16/n...

This story is such a great example of one of the use cases for Civic Searchlight. By searching across municipalities, @natashabulowski.bsky.social was able to build a far more comprehensive picture of data centre debates than we could have done even a year ago.

Civic Searchlight just got more useful. We've added the ability to watch council videos in the tool so that you can see and search the transcript while watching the video, to make sure you don't miss a beat. Let us know how it works for you! civicsearchlight.nationalobserver.com

This is valuable but not at all surprising to me given the frequency with which @indicator.media finds that it is Chinese advertisers behind scam nudifiers and pornbait ads. see for ex: > indicator.media/p/meta-ran-t... > indicator.media/p/meta-ran-4...

We're hiring for a nine-month contract covering federal politics! Posting coming soon, but don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested — jimmy at nationalobserver dotcom

More evidence that chatbots can persuade voters. And most AI companies still let you create a custom chatbot to push your ideology. www.newscientist.com/article/2507...

Inside the AI-powered conspiracy machine selling ‘Truthwear’ to Canadians. More great investigative work by @rorywh.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/08/i...

"Petrakis remains a fan of Mutinni despite now knowing that it is an AI-powered business run by a Pakistani consultant on behalf of a Toronto rapper with the goal of convincing conspiracy theorists to buy T-shirts." What's stranger, truth or fiction? www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/08/i...

There’s an AI-powered conspiracy machine selling ‘Truthwear’ merch to Canadians, and my friends at the National Observer unmasked the person profiting from this account. The story shows what happens when people are given incentives to publish fake information, at scale, all with the help of AI:

Excellent original reporting that cuts through the conspiracies - yes, the truth is still out there but not at Mutinni: www.national-observer.com/2025/12/08/i...

Mutinni began directing users to a Shopify website, selling $50 T-shirts branded as “Truthwear.” “You’re not just buying clothes — you’re claiming a piece of the rebellion,” it told followers. The company has built followings in the hundreds of thousands using AI to pump conspiracy theories.

Amazing work here by @rorywh.bsky.social: an AI slop factory churning out thousands of videos and posts on everything from climate denial to lizard people is, essentially, just going where the money is now. Rory tracked down the Canadian rapper running the page.

Step 1. Use AI to generate glossy conspiracy videos about climate change and Health Canada at scale Step 2. Monetize in a Shopify store selling merch Read my latest investigation into why conspiracy-commerce businesses are the logical endpoint of attention economy.

This is an incredible tool built by @nationalobserver.com that will help foster enhanced transparency at the local level. All CAJ members can join Civic Searchlight....NOW! A big thanks to @jameswsthomson.com for this. Contact him ASAP! HT to @rorywh.bsky.social @davidmckie.bsky.social and team

Enbridge execs have been boasting to shareholders they plan to return $40-$45 billion to them over the next five years supported by gas expansions across the continent. Ontario in particular is a cash cow where they have an opportunity to "over earn." www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/09/a...

@nationalobserver.com launched a great resource to help journalists and citizens hold councils accountable! Kudos to @jameswsthomson.com @davidmckie.bsky.social @rorywh.bsky.social!!

This new tool is the sort of thing I would have loved to get my hands on when I was a community news reporter more than a decade ago. Kudos to @rorywh.bsky.social and the CNO team for their hard work on this asset, and to the publication for releasing it freely to journalists and researchers.

Disinformation about municipal policy and politics is increasing sharply. I see it literally every day. It's misdirecting people, and making them unhappy, angry, and disconnected from reality. #yyj #disinformation #misinformation

As the campaign continues to pop up in communities across the country, Canada’s National Observer has developed an unprecedented new tool that allows us to track the spread of campaigns like this: Civic Searchlight. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/i...

This is very cool and super valuable. Congrats to the team at @nationalobserver.com for launching this important new tool. Check it out folks 👇

This is excellent news and such important work: www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/n...

Canada’s National Observer unveils a powerful tool for fighting disinformation www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/n...

Today, @nationalobserver.com is launching a tool to search municipal meeting transcripts across Canada. The tool has already helped us unearth a climate denial network targeting towns and cities, report on AI data centers, measure our impact and more. Journalists and researchers, sign up for free!

Today we're launching a new, powerful tool for public accountability created by @rorywh.bsky.social. Civic Searchlight compiles hundreds of municipalities' public meetings and makes them searchable for the first time. It's free to use and we hope you journalists and researchers put it to work.

Today we launch Civic Searchlight, a tool for searching local government meeting transcripts across 550 municipalities in Canada. Access is open for researchers and journalists: civicsearchlight.nationalobserver.com

As climate disinformation groups move into the shadows, Canada’s National Observer has developed an unprecedented new tool: Civic Searchlight. To build it, we assembled a database of council meetings in more than 550 municipalities. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/08/i...

Just as adding a filter to a cigarette doesn’t promise cancer-free smoking, pairing oil production with carbon capture doesn’t actually decarbonize the fuel. Here's Catherine McKenna on the grand bargains being discussed and why she sees CCUS as a dead end.

Replaying the Trudeau-era strategy of influencing policy by lobbying high-level officials isn't working for climate groups, who are now pivoting to an outsider game to find leverage in the age of Carney. This past weekend's protests were just a start to shift the political calculus.

Obtained federal planning documents say its "critical" to incorporate climate risks like wildfires for major events like the G7 Summit. That's quite the contrast to the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter issued during the summit that did not include a single reference to climate change.

Imperial Oil’s marketing materials have for years promised that the plant would convert canola oil into diesel using “hydrogen produced with carbon capture and storage technology.” But that isn’t happening. Story from @rorywh.bsky.social www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/19/i...