when your audience suddenly isn't yours

 when your audience suddenly isn't yours

Something happened to me on Facebook that I can't quite shake.

And I think we need to talk about it.

I have been online for a very long time. I have blogged, photographed, painted, built websites and shared pieces of my life on the internet for decades.

I have never bought my audience.

Years ago, on Twitter, there were people openly selling follower packages. You could buy a little program, and suddenly you had hundreds or thousands of new followers. Eventually there were limits — I remember hearing that you couldn't add more than 5,000 at a time.

I never did it.

Every follower I earned, I earned the old-fashioned way.

Some stayed. Some disappeared. Some became friends. Some simply moved on. My Twitter account is practically dormant now.

That history matters to me because I recently watched something very strange happen on Facebook.

I reshared an old Facebook Collection post with a short video, some words about losing faith, and Willie Nelson's “Just Breathe.”

That's it.

Suddenly, the post exploded.

Print Screen of Tina Winterlik

Print Screen of Tina Winterlik

The numbers climbed into the tens of thousands of views. My followers jumped to approximately 975. Hundreds of people were sharing it.

And then came the comments.

Amen.
I love Jesus.
God bless.
Religious messages I hadn't asked for.

Many of the accounts seemed to be part of a very different online community from mine.

Then I noticed a follower with the name:

Pay_Me_Now.

That stopped me.

Was it connected? I have absolutely no evidence that it was.

And that's precisely the point.

I don't know what was happening.

But when something changes that dramatically, that quickly, ordinary people should be allowed to ask questions without being told they're paranoid.

My niece was actually shocked that I was upset about the sudden followers.

She said something that really stayed with me:

“Influencers pay big bucks for that.”

And yes — I understand that.

But there is a difference between building an audience and suddenly having an audience appear around you that you didn't seek, don't recognize and didn't pay for.

I didn't buy those people.

I didn't ask for them.

And I didn't create a campaign to attract them.

So what happens when the algorithm suddenly puts your work in front of tens of thousands of strangers?

Who are they?

Why did they arrive?

Are they real people?

Are they bots?

Are they coordinated accounts?

Are they simply people who happened to like a song and a message?

Or is something else happening?

We should be able to ask.

Meta itself has documented networks using fake accounts and coordinated inauthentic behaviour to distribute content and manufacture engagement. And Canada's election-security agencies have documented coordinated amplification and foreign information manipulation on social media. During Canada's 2025 federal election, officials specifically worked with platforms over incidents involving online information operations and inauthentic amplification.

That does not mean my Facebook post was a foreign influence operation.

I am not making that accusation.

It means the technology exists.

It means manipulation exists.

And it means ordinary people — including artists, bloggers, young creators and small businesses — need to understand what is happening around them.

Because the next generation is growing up in an internet where attention itself has become a commodity.

Young entrepreneurs are being told:

Get more followers.

Go viral.

Build your brand.

Engagement is everything.

But perhaps we should also be teaching:

Who are your followers?
Where did they come from?
Are they genuine?
What happens when your audience suddenly changes?
What information are you giving strangers?
And what can somebody do with an audience you never intended to create?

I have already made one difficult decision because of this.

I shut down Adventurez in Mexico and related Facebook pages.

Those pages contained years and years of photographs.

When I created them, social media was smaller. There weren't quite so many strangers, algorithms, bots, scammers, fake accounts and enormous invisible networks moving information around.

Today it feels different.

I don't want my child's photographs, my travels, my art, my personal history and my life sitting indefinitely in a place where I don't understand who is looking at them or why.

And that brings me to something even more serious.

watch the internet

We are entering another period of intense political information and election activity.

Canada has already documented foreign information manipulation and interference, including coordinated and inauthentic activity online. The federal government's election review says Canadians need to remain vigilant about social-media manipulation, fake news, scams and coordinated activity.

That should concern all of us, regardless of political party.

I would say this directly to Prime Minister Mark Carney, to Canada's democratic institutions, to journalists, to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and especially to young people building businesses and audiences online:

Please watch what happens to ordinary people's social-media accounts.

Don't only look at the giant political accounts.

Look at the little ones.

Look at the sudden explosions.

Look at the strange follower patterns.

Look at coordinated comments.

Look at accounts that appear out of nowhere.

Look at people who suddenly find themselves surrounded by an audience they never asked for.

And don't dismiss someone simply because they don't understand the technology.

Sometimes the person who says,

“Something doesn't feel right here,”

is the person who noticed something everyone else was too busy counting to see.

I don't know what happened to my little Willie Nelson video.

Maybe it was simply an algorithmic lightning strike.

Maybe thousands of genuine people really did connect with those words.

Maybe some of the accounts were automated.

Maybe some were simply opportunistic.

I don't know.

But I know this:

I earned my audience.

And I want to know who is standing in the room when the room suddenly fills with 70,000 people.

Because online, sometimes the most important question isn't:

“How many people are watching?”

It's:

“Who are they — and why are they here?”

🎨📱🌎

10 reflective questions

1. Do you know who is actually following you online?

2. What would you do if your audience suddenly grew by thousands overnight?

3. Would you recognize the difference between genuine attention and manufactured engagement?

4. How much of your personal life should be permanently available online?

5. When an algorithm makes something go viral, who is really in control?

6. Should social-media companies be more transparent about where sudden waves of followers and engagement come from?

7. Could fake followers and coordinated accounts influence what real people believe?

8. Are we teaching young entrepreneurs how to build audiences—or how to protect themselves from the audiences they attract?

9. As elections approach, how can ordinary people recognize manipulation without becoming suspicious of everyone online?

10. When something online doesn't feel right, do we investigate—or simply celebrate the numbers?

social media, algorithms, fake followers, bots, digital safety, online privacy, media literacy, election integrity, foreign interference, misinformation

#DigitalSafety #SocialMedia #OnlineSafety #FakeFollowers #Bots #Algorithms #MediaLiteracy #DigitalLiteracy #ElectionIntegrity #ForeignInterference #Disinformation #Misinformation #YoungEntrepreneurs #Creators #OnlineBusiness #Privacy #Facebook #SocialMediaManipulation #ICIJ