Following Facebook’s crackdown on QAnon and other fast-growing conspiracy groups, Canadian conspiracy theorists have found another way to share posts that falsely claim COVID-19 doesn’t exist: they’ve made their own Facebook.
Much like Parler, the growing U.S. far-right alternative to Twitter and Facebook, Liberty Network indulges and revels in theories and opinions people are afraid to share on mainstream outlets for fear of judgment from their peers.
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Parler began in 2018, but has gained significant traction following Facebook’s crackdown. In the week following the recent U.S. presidential election, Parler grew to 8 million users and reached the top of the U.S. iPhone App Store chart. In contrast, Liberty Network currently has about 6,500 members, including Vladislav Sobolev, the founder of Hugs Over Masks and an influential speaker at anti-mask rallies across Canada.
“Face masks are too porous to keep out the tiny COVID virus,” one Liberty Network post falsely claims. “They deprive people of vital oxygen, and they contribute to a greater risk of contracting COVID-19. Most importantly they are a sign of subjugation.” (According to the World Health Organization, masks are key to preventing the spread of COVID-19 and save lives.)
“No one has ever proven the existence of the (coronavirus),” another post says.
Racist conspiracy theory discussions aren’t hard to find, either. A recent post says more Europeans than Africans were slaves in the Americas, while another calls Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “clown who supports Islam and sodomy,” both “used to undermine this country and lead us into the NWO (New World Order).”
“We are normal families with knowledge of what is to come,” Vancouver-based Odessa Orlewicz, who runs the site with her husband Norbert, said in an email. “The platform we provide is a social media site without censorship of the doctors and virologists and lawyers that know ‘COVID’ is merely a UN agenda and is just another flu. Facebook and YouTube take anyone telling the truth down as the owners are the same people doing the lockdown ‘to us.’”
Odessa did not respond to questions about how the site deals with racist or sexist comments, but said, “We are a normal, ethnically and religiously diverse crowd who has done the research about what is truly going on.”
The site runs on U.S. site builder Mighty Networks, a subscription-based service that lets people without web developer experience build eLearning sites and small social networks. Mighty Networks did not respond to a request for comment.
The site features two feeds for posts: a horizontal “featured” feed for posts curated by the site’s owners and a continuous personalized feed that changes according to recent user interaction. Posts, whether they contain text, images, or previews to videos linked externally, can be tagged to one or more topics, including “Vaccines & Medical Corruption,” “Human Slavery & Child Trafficking,” and “Occult, Secret Societies, Satanism.”
The site also features a section for online courses and smaller group pages. It has an event organizing feature similar to Facebook’s.
Conspiracy theories have been exploding during the pandemic. Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky, the chair of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol and an expert in conspiratorial thinking, told VICE World News for a previous story it’s not surprising as they provide people with temporary comfort.
“People feel that they’ve lost control and the moment that happens some people turn to conspiracy theories,” he said. “It provides psychological comfort to think that there’s this cabal of bad people out there who are responsible for this.”
While Parler is reportedly partially funded by veteran data thieves from Cambridge Analytica, the U.K. data firm that influenced hundreds of foreign elections between 2013 and 2018, Liberty Network’s funding comes from its own members. There are no third-party ads; every ad is posted directly by the Orlewiczes or people they deem “community hosts.”
Everything on Liberty Network is private and can only be viewed by other members, who must be approved to join. There’s a tiered membership system similar to those used by OnlyFans and Patreon. One closed group, the “Inner Circle,” can only be accessed by those who give a donation.
One Inner Circle agenda from a November meeting, at one point viewable to non-members, called Canada’s Chief Public Health Doctor Theresa Tam a “Communist Nazi Tyrant” and “lizard,” and included a letter-writing campaign to police stations across the country demanding a loosening of public health safety measures. One of the letters erroneously claimed the death rate for COVID-19 in the U.S. is 0.000027 percent. (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), just over 3 percent of confirmed cases in the U.S. have resulted in death.)
The site has had some hiccups. At one point, the founders solicited members for donations because they said the site didn’t have unlimited uploading data and had reached its limit for that week.
The Orlewiczes also host Liberty Network channels on YouTube and Bitchute, a YouTube knockoff popular in far-right circles. Since September, their YouTube channel has faced two two-week suspensions.
Prior to being a content creator with his wife, Norbert worked as an online salesman and sales and networking coach.
Canada is deep in its second wave of COVID-19, reporting a daily record of 6,999 cases on Saturday. As of Monday, the country has reported a total of 423,054 COVID-19 cases and 12,777 deaths.
Follow Dan Collen on Twitter.
