Following in the footsteps of other horrible Twitter ads, it appears that Canadians are getting bombarded with fake ads styled to look like CTV and CBC reports with an AI Elon Musk.

I started seeing the ads a few days ago, and now that I’ve been tracking them, X has been throwing more and more of them into my feed.

The fake stories are marked with an ‘Ad’ tag, but they’re always posted by accounts with human names like ‘Karen Rogerson’ and ‘Willie Yeung. ‘ They often link to websites with really bland names like ‘news headlines.news‘ or ‘health-news.world.’

Mindblowing! Need to see ASAP!

— karen rogerson (@karenrogerson2) February 28, 2025

That being said, the bland URLs are mostly hidden behind fake CBC or CTV News-styled websites or videos. These stories usually revolve around Elon Musk, the Canadian government and getting money.

This situation stems from Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022, where he rolled back a lot of rules and protections, leading to many advertisers leaving. Now it appears that many big-name advertisers are back on the platform, but they don’t seem to be advertising as much.

Then, to fill the gaps between the traditional ads, we’ve been getting a lot of stranger stuff. In early 2024, there were a lot of fake ads around CTV Chef Mary Berg, and then a few months later, there was a separate splurge of fake ads surrounding a made-up Michael Cera scandal.