Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism | CBC Music
Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism
CBC uncovers 14 accounts from India, Pakistan, Indonesia posting on popular Alberta separatist groups
Eric Szeto, Jordan Pearson, Christian Paas-Lang · CBC News · Posted: Jun 08, 2026 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: 10 hours ago
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Estimated 8 minutes
A CBC News investigation found a number of Facebook accounts run by people overseas impersonating real Albertan separatists. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC; Nieta Aqila/Facebook)
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You might think, based on the volume of her Facebook posts, that Nieta Aqila is an Albertan who supports separation.
“I signed the Alberta independence petition” because “Canada is not a great country anymore,” an account in her name wrote in a popular Facebook group called Alberta Independence that promotes the movement and has more than 100,000 members.
In another post, Aqila said she was harassed and had rocks thrown at her as she canvassed for petition signatures.
The account’s posts have generated thousands of reactions, comments and shares in recent months as the issue heated up.
WATCH | Investigating overseas accounts in Alberta separatism groups:
Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism
10 hours ago|
Duration5:04CBC’s visual investigations team takes you inside the overseas industry profiting from Alberta separatism. We find more than a dozen overseas accounts posting in the most popular separatist Facebook groups; in some cases, they steal content from real Albertans and brag about making money via Meta’s monetization program.
But the account owner, according to a CBC visual investigation, was posing as a Canadian and is actually a noodle merchant and content creator from Indonesia, who in some cases was just stealing content from real Albertans.
One example of a post Nieta Aqila stole from another user. In the left photo, on April 2, Edmonton resident Brock Ireland posted about canvassing for the movement on Facebook. On the right, on April 3, Aqila used the exact text and photos. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC; CBC, Brock Ireland/Facebook, Nieta Aqila/Facebook)
When contacted by CBC, one Albertan whose content was stolen said they felt “absolutely violated.”
Nieta Aqila even posted about income she generates from Meta’s monetization program, which rewards creators for engagement and solicits subscribers on her personal page.
Nieta Aqila wrote on Facebook that ‘Canada is not a great country anymore.’ CBC found she was pretending to be a Canadian supporting the movement in various Facebook separatists groups. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC; Nieta Aqila/Facebook)
Nieta Aqila is among 14 overseas accounts CBC identified in four popular Alberta independence Facebook groups. The accounts have posted politically divisive content about Alberta separatism, Western annexation and other hot-button Canadian topics within the past two months.
Many of them — which Facebook indicates are run from Indonesia, Pakistan, India, the U.S. and Sri Lanka — are top contributors to Alberta-focused pages and have cumulatively garnered tens of thousands of reactions and comments in posts and cross-posts across more than a dozen Facebook groups. Two users posted images of the money they make from Facebook.
The inauthentic accounts identified by CBC were top contributors to many separatist groups. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC; Alberta Separatist Movement/Facebook, Alberta Independence/Facebook, Riri Seyer/Facebook)
Multiple experts told CBC that the findings show how Facebook’s incentives for creators can harm public discourse around important topics.
“This may not always be classic foreign interference in the state-backed sense. Sometimes it’s much more banal. It’s in some ways more depressing,” said Matt Navarra, a social media consultant in the U.K. whose clients have included Meta and Google.
“People sitting thousands of miles away working out that Canadian outrage is a profitable niche. I think they may not actually care about Canadian politics at all.”
Nieta Aqila is a noodle merchant in Indonesia, not an Albertan as she posted in the Alberta Independence Facebook group. (Nita Evin/Facebook)
While it’s difficult to determine the level of real-world influence these posts have, they elicited strong reactions from some users.
“Lock and load Albertans!” wrote one commenter on an image with the text “Mark Carney can’t block Alberta Independence.”
Posts from overseas accounts would sometimes get strong reactions from people online. In this case, one person wrote, ‘Lock and load Albertans!’ (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC; Alberta Independence Movement/Facebook)
In another example, one person wrote that ‘there was a time when traitors were executed,’ in response to an Alberta separatist post made by overseas accounts. (Alberta Independence Movement/Facebook)
‘I feel absolutely violated’
As Alberta debates holding a referendum on whether the province should leave Canada, passion from real Albertans has been evident online — but so has a cottage industry built around exploiting the topic.
For example, a CBC visual investigation recently found that several YouTube channels with tens of millions of views that promoted U.S. annexation of Alberta were created by people living in the Netherlands to generate income from the platform.
Facebook’s monetization program allows for users to earn money on Reels, photos, stories and text posts. (Facebook)
Experts say it appears that a similar economic model, where monetization incentivizes content that is engaging rather than accurate or accountable, has taken off on Facebook despite rules banning deceptive content.
“There are two beneficiaries of this. One is the grifters who are monetizing. They are engaged in this activity because it is financially profitable for them,” said Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University in Montreal. “The other is the platform itself … the ad revenue monetization around the attention that they’re getting.”
Facebook groups focused on Albertan separatism are very active, with hundreds of posts a day spread across the groups; in this mix are overseas content creators.
Inauthentic accounts CBC identified often used posts generated by artificial intelligence to advocate for Alberta separatism. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC; Alberta Separatist Movement/Facebook, Saskatchewan Separation Referendum/Facebook)
In some cases, the accounts employ deception to appear Canadian. In one post, Nieta Aqila — who has racked up more than 2,000 reactions in the Alberta Independence group — claimed to have met people who were canvassing for independence in Calgary and expressed support.
Not only did CBC find an identical post from a real Albertan made the day before, but photos posted by the Nieta Aqila account also reveal that she was in Indonesia that week — in fact, her profile reveals that she lives in the city of Palembang.
