Truth and Information

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer, and a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
—Hannah Arendt, speaking to Roger Errera, 1973

For those of us plugged into the international network of information and facts, also known as the news, the last decade has been a head-spinningly confusing, tragic, and terrifying time. I’ve written on this topic before. Back in the spring of 2018, when it still seemed innocuous, anodyne, at least by today’s standards. Back then, we had Kelly-Ann Conway introducing us to the notion of alternative facts.

In 2018, AI and deepfakes were still largely an idea—at least to the general public. Today? Well. We now know. 

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s de-platforming in mid-September of 2025, I decided to return to my old routine of watching American late-night political comedy. Colbert, Stewart, Meyers. Especially Oliver. But not Fallon, though. Never Fallon. He’s lame.

Normally, when watching YouTube videos, the ever-increasing ad breaks provide a moment to glance at my phone, or find something, anything to distract me for the 30-60 seconds of paid promotional content. (I hear you, YouTube premium users, I hear you. But I shan’t. I’m a millennial who was 14 when YouTube launched. I can’t fathom paying for it.) But something strange happened this week. 

Amidst a Stewart missive, the video cut to the usual 60-second ad break for a longer video. Replacing Stewart's face was Mark Carney’s. Next to him on the screen was a large QR code, exhorting you to scan it. Strange, I thought. Politicians don’t do this. I put my phone down and actually paid attention. It was a deep fake. Not even a good one, all you had to do was watch his mouth speaking and note the desynchronization. Or just listen to the nonsense he was saying. But I did have to concentrate for more than a moment.  

Later, while watching Colbert, another ad break interrupted my “reverie”. This time, instead of Mark Carney, we had noted populist and career politician Pierre Poilievre’s leering face, sneering at me, with a large QR code next to him. Rambling blather about cryptocurrency. Another deepfake. 

This immediately set off my alarm bells. It’s one thing to have the Prime Minister deepfaked by (presumably) a hostile foreign actor. It’s a whole other thing to also have the leader of the opposition deepfaked. 

Concerned, I googled it. “Mark Carney + deepfake + AI”. Literally only one news article in the last month. From CTV, specifically about the Carney deepfake ads on YouTube. The journalist, Kraig Krause, scanned the code, and it took him to a fake CBC news article about the benefits of a specific cryptocurrency. He then contacted the investment company, which, “when pressed about its use of deepfake Carney advertisements, [...] was adamant that it was the prime minister speaking about the product, and that the Canadian government is backing it.”

He contacted CBC, who said the article was fake. As did the Canadian government, noting “The Government of Canada does not endorse this advertisement,” before explaining that Ottawa is working very hard to protect Canadians from scams, deepfakes, and AI tools.

The team at CTV contacted YouTube about the advertisements, and Google said it suspended the advertiser's account for violating its ad policies. “We have zero tolerance for scams on our platform.”

Great, right? 

Well. 

The CTV article was published on September 12th. I watched Carney and Poilievre pitch cryptocurrency to me through a deepfake scam on September 22nd and September 24th. 

Here’s the rub. It’s not a mistake that I could only find one news article discussing these genuinely terrifying deepfake scams in the last 6 months. One. For nearly two years now, Canadians living in Canada have not been able to access truthful information on either Google or Meta. That means YouTube. That means Facebook and Instagram. That means literally any time you google anything, a multi-billion-dollar American corporation is deciding what you’re allowed to see. And in our case, as Canadians, it's not news. 

Think I’m kidding? Go on Instagram right now and look for CBC News. Or perhaps Al Jazeera. Or BBC News. Or honestly, fuck it, Fox News. Go right now. Go look for it. 

CTV spoke with the founder of the Responsible AI Institute, Manoj Saxena. He was unequivocal: “There are projections that by the end of next year, there will be 100 times more social media generated (by) AI—fake ads, fake products, fake accounts, fake posting—than by humans." He went further: “I used to be an AI pragmatist, an AI utopian. No more, I think this is coming at us at a speed and rate which 99.9 per cent of the people don’t know. We truly are stepping into the unknown.”

Despite our fractured information climate, we do still at least believe the leaders of our respective camps. Those on the right of the king during the French Revolution will believe Pierre Poilievre. Those on the left of the king during the French Revolution will believe Mark Carney. Unless they take a moment to actually process what they’re seeing. And how often do we do that when we’re passively watching TV? Especially when a commercial is on, and we grab our smartphone to distract us. And then we see Carney or Poilievre’s trusted face telling us to scan a QR code? And our smartphone is right there? And the link takes you to a reputable-looking website that you trust? 

Yeah. 

We are SO cooked. 

So what can we do in the face of techno-totalitarianism? Talk to humans. Go out into the world. Dance! Sing! Jump! Seek out spaces of collective energy. Seek out other real humans. Exchange ideas. Don’t be so quick to judge, we’ve ALL been lied to. Liberal, conservative, whatever. We’ve ALL been lied to, and we’re ALL being divided and conquered by a rapacious billionaire class that is actively planning for the end of the world. To save themselves. But certainly not us.