A social media outlet implied Mi’kmaw hip-hop artist Tevin Nicholas, who goes by the stage name T3KILLAH, was present at a protest in Potlotek First Nation where police vehicles were later vandalized.
There’s just one problem: Nicholas was reportedly hundreds of kilometres away from the Potlotek protest, attending another outside Sipekne’katik First Nation, on Highway 102 between Truro and Halifax.
On Thursday, April 2, the RCMP raided a trading post within Potlotek First Nation as part of their ongoing cannabis crackdown, brought on in part by the provincial government.
The raid resulted in the seizure of cannabis products and the arrest of two people on site at the time of the search warrant. The protests followed soon after.
During the protest in Potlotek, officers removed their weapons from their vehicles and left the scene on foot.
When they returned for their vehicles on Friday, the RCMP said six of them were damaged: broken windows, flat tires, dents and evidence that someone had urinated on them.
After an RCMP press release about the incident on Friday, April 3, news outlets picked up the story. The Potlotek band responded quickly, with one councillor voicing pride in the protestors who showed up to support their community and disparaging those who inevitably caused a “ruckus”.
One outlet that spread the story is the social media account Wall, whose Instagram account has over 2 million followers as of writing.
Wall‘s coverage was fairly basic, giving a brief overview of the RCMP press release in an Instagram post on Saturday, April 4. However, the image paired alongside the post was of Nicholas, who had been present at the protest on Highway 102, hours away from Potlotek. The image also featured the headline of Wall‘s release rewrite: Protestors Urinate in Police Cars at First Nations Protest.
Nicholas caught wind of this image a few days later, which eventually led to a post from Instagram account Nova Scotia Hip-Hop debunking the photo, insinuating that Nicholas was present and that he was somehow involved.
“I was curious to where [they] got the information from,” Nicholas says in an interview with The Coast. “Where did the picture come from? I don’t even remember no one taking that picture.
“It was a nice picture; I just didn’t like the caption.”
Nicholas was at the protest in a security capacity for the elders, children and any vulnerable people at the protest, a role he’s taken on in several situations over the years and one he says is a legacy passed down from his uncle. He is there in case any community members or law enforcement become rowdy—ready to de-escalate if needed.
He also takes issue with the framing of the release rewrite. Nicholas says it wasn’t a protester who vandalized the vehicles in Potlotek.
“It was just some random guy who doesn’t like cops,” says Nicholas. “Peeing in cop cars? There’s elders and women and children at these things, you know?… It makes no sense to me.”
The media outlet
This left Nicholas with questions about Wall’s coverage of the issue.
A cursory glance at Wall‘s page reveals that most of its coverage is about the war in Iran, Israel, and debates in Canada and the U.S. over antisemitism.
Many of the posts use seemingly AI-generated images, including some of world leaders wearing kippahs, a traditional cloth cap often worn by Jewish men in Orthodox faiths, and stereotypical Hasidic men in different scenarios: reading a bill, standing with military personnel, etc.
Other recent posts show AI-generated images of logos of major corporations wearing a kippah, with captions referencing sponsors that have pulled out of the Wireless Festival in the U.K., which made headlines after Kanye West, who was set to perform, was banned from the country.
The comments on these posts are not for the faint of heart. Antisemitism and racism are rampant. The post regarding the Potlotek protest is no different, with users writing heinous things about the Mi’kmaq community.
“The comments were crazy on that. That’s what really got me,” says Nicholas.
The account is allegedly run by a person named Alexander Elder, whose name is attached to Wall‘s Instagram page. A post made on his subreddit one year ago says that Elder is “a dedicated independent Canadian journalist committed to uncovering the truth and sharing compelling narratives.”
The Coast was unable to find any other information about Elder, the page’s supposed admin, other than the one Reddit post that appears to be an AI-generated biography.
In fact, it seems most of Wall‘s stories, not just the images, are AI-generated. Several posts are made every day, all using the plain language often found in press releases.
Using the online AI checker tool GPTZero, The Coast analyzed five posts from the account, all within the last week, to see if they contained any use of AI.
All of them were marked 100% AI, with the checker “highly confident” that AI was used in the text’s creation. This includes the story about the protests.
Wall responds
Wall might be a rather unassuming media account on the surface. AI-generated content is all over social media, but from what The Coast could gather, Wall specializes in stories about racialized, religious, and queer communities, leading to hateful words in their comment sections.
The Coast reached out for comment on Thursday, April 9, and quickly received a reply from a spokesperson named Sean. This is what they had to say. [Ed Note: This email was also run through the GPTZero AI checker and was marked 100% human.]
“The post in question was removed as soon as it was brought to our attention,” writes Sean. “We take accuracy seriously and have internal editorial processes in place to review content; when something is later deemed to be erroneous by our editors or brought to us by others, we act quickly to remove or correct it.
“In this case, the issue was the result of an editorial error, not an intentional attempt to misrepresent the situation or disparage any individual.
“As the matter has already been addressed and the content removed, we don’t believe an interview is necessary at this time. However, this statement may be used as our official comment.”
After receiving this email, we double-checked the page to ensure the post’s removal. It just so happened that every post, as far back as February 2025, was removed from the account, all of which were the AI-generated news-style posts. This left only screenshots of Elder’s X posts from over a year ago. This mass deletion had been reversed by the evening of Friday, April 10, and the image of Nicholas remains absent.
“Powered by Polymarket”
The profile description of Wall gives way to one theory of why the outlet operates the way it does. It reads, “powered by Polymarket.”
As per Instagram’s branded content policies, content creators on the platform are required to disclose any paid partnerships, sponsors, or affiliations.
Polymarket is a glorified betting service for folks who want to put money on anything: sports, news, culture, politics. It gained notoriety during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, when many sought to place bets on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump would win the country’s top job.
You can even place bets on what days Israel will bombard Beirut.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are wrapped up in Polymarket, a company that has partnered with several news outlets and personalities across the world, including the likes of Piers Morgan and Laura Loomer.
As per a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, it is unknown how Polymarket affiliates benefit from the partnership. It could be through direct compensation from Polymarket, affiliate links, or it could have no financial ties at all. What the Review did find is that many of the accounts that the betting site partners with have a right-wing slant, and some accounts are operated by Polymarket itself.
Hypothetically, fuelling hostile sentiment online could be a money driver for Polymarket and its affiliates. Enticing people to bet one way or another on an issue could lead to big returns for Polymarket and, in theory, those who take the opposing side of a bet depending on the outcome.
When it comes to the photo of Nicholas, we may never be sure what exactly happened.
However, given the nature of the outlet’s posts, we do have a theory. If Wall is using an AI bot to post every few hours, it could be that the bot grabbed a photo from social media of Nicholas at the protest and paired it with the headline about the vandalism in Potlotek—one of several rage-baiting stories the account posts every day that drum up controversy in its comments section.
The Coast responded to Wall’s initial comment, asking for more information on their affiliations with Polymarket, as well as their use of generative AI. We also pushed them for an interview on these subjects. They have not responded as of Monday, April 13.
