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Fake photos, stolen content, false stories: We found networks of “Canadian” websites and Facebook pages that are actually run by people in Kosovo, Romania and elsewhere: buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs… #cdnpoli #cdnmedia
These FB pages are run by people in Kosovo and the UK. They recently spread a false story about Toronto’s drinking water being contaminated. We also found a page called “Live in Canada” with more than 2.5 million likes that's managed by two accounts in Israel. 
After we contacted the “Toronto, Ontario News” page to ask about its false content and being based in Kosovo, they altered the Page Transparency info shown on FB to remove the Kosovo disclosure. This is the 1st time we’ve seen this done. FB said it is investigating.
We also found a different network of more than a dozen sites masquerading as Canadian. Their “staff” pages use photos stolen from elsewhere, including those of actors in a recent Stratford Festival production.
We spoke to a guy in Romania who runs some of the sites to make money. This past Sunday one of his sites had a top science story in Google News. It was ripped off from the Toronto Sun. The ripoff got better placement. Google took action on these sites after we reached out.
These sites and pages weren’t pushing political info. But it shows how easy it is to masquerade as “Canadian” online, to generate traffic and FB engagement from that, and to defeat a transparency measure launched by Facebook to stop this stuff. More: buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs…
