FILE PHOTO.

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Most people have given up on at least one social media site because of misinformation or combative posts whether it’s Facebook, X.com, Reddit or another. But it seems social media has become an essential part of politics and some Okanagan social media sites have moderators trying to find ways to foster constructive conversations without censoring opposing views.

“You can’t win without social media,” Vernon-Lake Country-Monashee Liberal candidate Anna Warwick Sears told iNFOnews.ca.

“It's really a way for a candidate to get their name out there. So that's all on the good side and you know it's mixed because on the other side you have all kinds of misinformation and conspiracy theories and interference from other countries.”

Warwick Sears ran for the BC NDP in the fall in Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream but she was defeated by BC Conservative Tara Armstrong. She said this time around she has a bigger team to work on a social media campaign so the experience has been different.

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Many Facebook groups, like one called "Salmon Arm Everything Goes", have been flooded with unmoderated political posts that are often inaccurate, don’t have a source for information or lack context.

Facebook, Reddit and X.com are three sites on different places along a spectrum of moderation.

Reddit has subreddits like r/Kelowna that are effectively moderated, Facebook has community groups with varying degrees of moderation and X.com is virtually unmoderated.

A Facebook post taking a screenshot of a Fox News broadcast to imply that Mark Carney is working with the Chinese Communist Party.

Image Credit: Facebook

Cindy Barbier moderates several Facebook groups in the South Okanagan like “Penticton” and “Summerland Rant and Rave”.

She said it’s important to have some moderation in online spaces so that people have public forums where discussions don’t devolve into name-calling and misinformation.

“People have the right to their opinion. That's the way it is. We live in Canada, you should be able to speak your mind,” she said. “If you just let it go... you know what happens? People just bash everybody, call them every name under the sun.”

She said it isn’t about censoring people she doesn’t agree with, it’s about creating somewhere online where people can have civil conversations with their community.

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“I want to censor people who are just acting like asses,” she said. “I do think some moderation is needed. And I know people don't like moderation because they consider that censorship... I love nothing more than a political debate where everybody knows the facts.”

The subreddit r/Kelowna organized “Ask Me Anything” posts where candidates in the area can answer questions from locals posted to the forum and the forum moderators imposed several rules to ensure the posts are what they are intended for.

Warwick Sears said moderation on social media is helpful around election time since people can seek out moderated communities online that suit what kind of conversation they want to have.

“Reddit moderators are local people in the community who are making standards for different subreddits right? And if you don't like the moderators on a subreddit you can go to a different subreddit,” Warwick Sears said. “You sort of have to trust the moderators and you have to trust the intelligence and sort of sense of public engagement of other people who might be doing it.”

The federal government has made two big efforts to regulate social media through the Online Harms Act and the Online News Act.

The Online News Act had a negative impact by getting news outlets kicked off Facebook in Canada.

“We're kind of in an in-between time where we don't really understand what we can actually do. There's just a wide open field with very little regulation and now that Meta has stopped you know it's no longer fact-checking fake news sources, you have all kinds of things like people posting fake CBC articles,” Warwick Sears said.

A screenshot of an interaction on Facebook where a group moderator questions the authenticity of an unverified audio clip of Mark Carney.

Image Credit: Facebook

A post about a Pierre Poilievre quote taken out of context.

Image Credit: Facebook

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