Governments are Cozying Up With Fascist CSAM Purveyors
Meta's investment and lobbying to avoid paying news outlets betrays the government's amoral pursuit of profit
At the beginning of July, Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced they would spend $13 billion to build a data centre northeast of Edmonton, Alberta. In a CBC News article covering the announcement, they report a quote from Meta's vice-president of data centre strategy and development claiming their annual water use would be "less than a typical Alberta golf course." Placed underneath the section title "Lower water us," this claim is not challenged in any way.
The population of Alberta is not happy with this announcement. During her weekly call-in show, premier Danielle Smith responded to multiple calls criticizing the decision. Smith, of course, defended it at all costs. Approximately two hundred people turned out in Morinville to protest the decision. Meanwhile, while Prime Minister Mark Carney has not been publicly involved with this particular data centre, his government dropped clean-energy regulations that would have hindered data centre construction last November. This came after being lobbied dozens of times by an Alberta power company.
The Albertan and federal governments are keen to provide service, land and resources to one of the world's biggest tech companies despite the untold harm their business perpetuates. In July, BBC News found that Instagram had ran paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in India. Ads including terms like "rape video" and "child video" that linked to CSAM Telegram channels had been approved by Meta ad moderation. When BBC Eye set up an alias account to follow sexualized content, Instagram "began showing adverts of children with adults in sexually suggestive situations" in a matter of days.
In one of the more disgusting examples, when an ad "showing a very young girl in tears, with wording indicating that she had been sexually assaulted" was reported to Instagram, the platform said it had not violated community standards. Now, just this week, a WIRED investigation found that Meta ran AI-Generated CSAM ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads.
Scott Martin
Meta's proliferation of content advertising CSAM means they are directly profiting from this content. While advertisers and specific paid ads reported on by large news outlets are taken down, there is no doubt little chance that ads or providers of this content are being targeted if they are not exposed in a public manner.
Further to this, far-right MAGA news outlet Newsmax announced that Meta had agreed to train its AI tech with their content. While the specific financial details of this deal are not known at this time, the tech company is massively expanding its AI investments to the tune of billions. Regardless of the specifics, Meta is paying a propaganda outlet to train their models to spew far-right talking points.
What does this mean for US tech sector deals with Canadian governments, both provincial and federal? Most likely nothing. Earlier this year, Canada's privacy commissioner found that Grok, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, violated federal law when it generated millions of sexualized deepfakes, many targeting children. Carney's government remains on the platform. No consequence for this breach of law have been proposed. Little has changed.
Meta clearly has a disproportionate influence on Canadian politics. Since they refused to host news on their platforms, since it would mean financially compensating news outlets, news consumption on the platform has changed dramatically. Most Canadians remain unaware of the ban, as news has mostly taken the form of screenshots. Meanwhile, local news gets hammered. Indeed, some studies have indicated that disinformation has taken hold since the ban.
At the beginning of 2026, the federal Liberals confirmed that talks with Meta to restore news to the platform continued. However, as Mickey Djuric at POLITICO reported in recent days, Meta has offered a proposal to the federal government that would restore news to its platforms without paying publishers. This proposal is being considered in the context of broader trade negotiations. If Carney's previous deals with the US are any indication, Meta will have little problem getting their way.
Meta is routinely implicated in directly causing harm to users. Two times in as many months, the company was found by separate investigations to be profiting from posting ads that advertise sexual abuse material. They have made a deal with a far-right, fascist propaganda outlet to train their AI to deliver answers to users. Further, they are investing billions of dollars into a data-centre that residents have made clear they do not want. It remains clear that the priority of the Canadian state, at all levels, is to prioritize profit over anything else.
