AI, ethics, Israel: Chow supporters slam Bradford’s app
· Toronto Sun
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What’s the difference between campaign software from California and Israel? It might depend on who you want to be Toronto’s mayor.
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News articles by an online outlet, Canada’s National Observer, have put the spotlight on the Victory App, a platform Brad Bradford’s campaign uses to organize and motivate supporters. Bradford representative Laryssa Waler took an unusual step last month in sending a pre-emptive statement about Victory App, comparing it to the platform used by incumbent mayor Olivia Chow.
National Observer reported that Victory App supplies AI-generated comments for supporters to copy and paste into social media. Waler denied that, saying volunteers come up with those posts.
The app does suggest comments and can pull from a user’s contacts, which Waler suggested is just how campaigns work in 2026. “It’s no different from a campaign handing out talking points, literature and lawn signs — just faster,” Waler wrote.
The Bradford campaign has told the Toronto Sun they’re using the most “cutting-edge” product on the market. That said, the Sun has found Chow has indeed used her NationBuilder platform in similar ways, offering incentives, suggesting posts for social media and leveraging user contacts.
Progress Toronto, a sort of shadow party founded by Chow’s political lieutenant Michal Hay, has promoted National Observer’s reporting, helping to set off an array of criticism of Bradford. Some of it is about privacy and the way Victory App steers users, some of it is about AI and some of it is about Israel.
Not all of the latter comes from the political fringe.
Chow playing same game?
National Observer editor-in-chief Jimmy Thomson recently wrote that Bradford owed the outlet “an apology” for denying that his campaign offers incentives through Victory App.
The incentives and pre-written comments of Chow’s NationBuilder platform, meanwhile, appear to have gone unnoticed. (NationBuilder, which is based in California, ignored requests for comment.)
NationBuilder’s website says Chow has used its services to “gameify” campaign participation since at least her 2014 mayoral run. Its platform offers optional AI-powered tools and a feature called “ social capital ,” a virtual currency campaigns can award to users — or deduct “for actions you wish to deter.” (It’s unclear which features Chow is using, as requests for comment about NationBuilder were ignored.)
Chow’s 2026 campaign website has a side that’s a secret to the public, featuring profile pages for supporters and leaderboards. Even the ability to log in is hidden.
Chow’s 2014 website also had a gated area for supporters, which used incentives like digital badges to spur engagement. The website prodded users to connect their social media accounts to convert friends to the cause.
“One of the key asks after sign-up was to recruit five friends,” a breakdown on NationBuilder’s website says. “This was a shifting goal, since once you had recruited five friends, you were asked to recruit 10!”
Among other questions, the Sun asked the Chow campaign whether it was appropriate to use the services of a California firm given she frequently used her role as mayor to promote the Canadian economy and rail against U.S.-based companies, from Tesla to Home Depot.
The Sun also asked both Chow and Progress Toronto about the reaction on social media about Victory App’s Israeli origins. (Progress Toronto also didn’t respond.)
‘Serving another country’
Harminder Dhillon, a lawyer who works out of Mississauga, wrote on the social media platform X that Bradford’s “mayoral campaign is (an) Israel influence op .”
Dhillon has the ear of Toronto’s political elite. His 2,000 or so followers on X include council candidate Nate Erskine-Smith , 2022 council candidate Norm Di Pasquale and 2023 mayoral candidate Mitzie Hunter. In his long tenure on the Ontario Review Board, Dhillon helped decide who was and was not mentally fit to stand trial.
In an email, Dhillon suggested the Sun look into “allegations of Israeli companies manipulating elections across the globe. So much has been written about it over the years.”
British newspaper the Guardian has reported about alleged election interference out of Israel in a 2023 report about a team of private contractors, and France accused “ information warfare ” firm BlackCore of meddling earlier this year.
However, there appear to be no links between those operations and Victory App creator LogiVote or its parent company YayaSoft Group. In an email, YayaSoft CEO Yair Chen called Dhillon’s allegation “simply false,” and denied ties to any government.
“We provide campaign technology to clients internationally, regardless of their political affiliation,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Rachel Gilmore, a former Global reporter, put the word “Israeli” prominently in her social media posts. On Instagram , she wrote to her 180,000 followers that Bradford is Canada’s first politician “caught using an Israeli app to feed his supporters AI-generated comments.”
If “caught using an Israeli app” was just a clumsy bit of phrasing, it wasn’t necessarily taken as such by her followers. Many replied with insults against Bradford, some invoking Israel.
One wrote: “Ya wanna bet this software has had a role in genocide?”
Evy Kwong, a former Toronto Star reporter, also complained on X about Bradford’s “ Israeli AI app .” Her X followers include other council candidates: Diana Chan McNally, who has a Progress Toronto endorsement, as well as Michael Mitchell.
A user believed to be a tech adviser to the provincial government, replying to Progress Toronto’s Instagram post on the Victory App, even suggested Bradford was disloyal to Canada.
“Holy Molly (sic),” the user wrote. “I have been commenting everywhere I could that he is serving another country. I was right!” (The Sun is not naming the adviser as it has been unable to verify his identity.)
Rise of the robots
Chow’s campaign told the CBC it has deactivated NationBuilder’s AI features. Spokesperson Zeus Eden told the CBC the campaign hopes that “any online feedback we receive are real people providing real comments.”
However, when the Sun signed up for an annount on Chow’s website, it was repeatedly given prompts to post pre-written messages to Facebook, Bluesky and other platforms. A campaign email equated “helping amplify online” as a duty for supporters, like door knocking.
“I like that this campaign is focused on real things — making life more affordable and continuing work that’s already making a difference in the city,” one pre-written message read.
Meanwhile, Ausma Malik, who has deep ties to both Chow and Progress Toronto, is overtly using incentives in her re-election campaign.
The incumbent councillor for Spadina-Fort York ward recently announced on Instagram a Metropass-themed “Malikpass,” a loyalty card that campaigners can use to collect stickers to earn “ limited run merch ,” as Malik said in a social media clip.
Malik’s campaign told the Sun the “merch” is thank-you cards. In an apparent reference to National Observer’s reporting, a person familiar with Malikpass said the loyalty system is nothing like “being enticed to upload your 2,500 contacts to a campaign’s AI platform.”
Speaking to the Sun on background, Bradford’s campaign denied supporters are being “enticed,” and said allowing users to upload contacts is one of the ways Victory App makes electioneering faster and easier.
Representatives spoke vaguely about other elements of the campaign, saying they did not want to tip their hand mid-race.
In a written statement, they played down talk of incentives, saying t heir “points system” — seemingly similar to Chow’s digital badges and leaderboards — “has no real-world value at all.” While the Sun pressed for specifics on the use of AI, the statement left that unaddressed.
How much power we should give to the tech sector, AI in particular, is the big ethical question of the modern age, and it’s unlikely Toronto’s mayoral race will answer it.
Gripes about AI in campaigning have been a common theme in critiques of Bradford ’ s platform, however, and not only on social media. National Observer even quoted a Norwegian research scientist as calling it “cyborg propaganda.”
YayaSoft’s CEO, for his part, defended AI as a “writing tool.”
“Using AI to help formulate a sentence does not turn the person posting it into a bot,” Chen wrote. “Victory may suggest a response to a user, but the decision always remains with the individual.”