Bot campaign backing Pierre Poilievre looks the work of an amateur, experts say [Video]

Academics who study social media say a suspected bot campaign associated with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s recent speaking event in northern Ontario likely was the work of an amateur.

A rapid analysis conducted by Toronto Metropolitan University’s Social Media Lab (SML) concluded the bot campaign does not have the fingerprints of a sophisticated actor, but didn’t say who might have been behind it.

In July, the social media platform X was inundated with posts following Poilievre’s tour of Northern Ontario. 

These posts claimed to be from people who attended Poilievre’s event in Kirkland Lake, Ont. They were actually generated by accounts in Russia, France and other places, and many of them had similar messaging.

Academics at SML manually sifted through an estimated 200 bot accounts associated with the campaign. The lab said some of the accounts were created within the last two months.

“To confirm that this wasn’t part of …