People are once again getting spammed by bizarre fake ads involving CTV host Mary Berg

A Canadian television host has once again fallen victim to a bizarre series of fake ads circulating on X, leaving many users of the website questioning its advertising policies.

Mary Berg is an author and cook who you may recognize as the winner of the third season of MasterChef Canada and as the host of The Good Stuff on CTV.

Berg is known for her easy-to-follow recipes and cheerful demeanour on TV, but recently, she appeared to be trending on X for a very strange reason.

Earlier this month, X users said that they kept seeing ads being posted about Berg.

But the ads were not showcasing Berg’s cooking or her TV show; rather, they were falsely claiming that she had been arrested.

As one X user mentioned, the ads were poorly photoshopped and clearly fake.

Others who weren’t familiar with the chef and host were left to wonder who she was and why she was showing up in these ads on their X feeds.

“My Twitter feed is crammed with really poorly done fake hit pieces about Mary Berg,” wrote one X user.

“If a former MasterChef Canada can get this kind of visibility on this site thanks to paid ads (with really poor Photoshop jobs btw), what does it say about this site?” noted another user.

It appears that Berg is trending on X once again, due to more strange fake ads.

After Elon Musk took over X, several controversial changes have been introduced to the website that many users have called out for lacking transparency and promoting misinformation.

In October, Mashable reported that X rolled out a new “clickbait” ad format that doesn’t allow users to retweet or “like” the advertisement posts. The posts aren’t even marked as an ad and it doesn’t disclose the organization that published them.

In a previous statement to Daily Hive, Bell Medi — the parent company of CTV — said it is aware of the fake advertisements targeting Berg.

“Bell Media actively reports the fraudulent content to ensure swift removal,” a company representative said in an email.

“We encourage social media users to remain vigilant against these deceptive ads and report suspicious content to the platform they’re using.”

According to X’s manipulation and spam policy, users are not permitted to “use X’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behaviour that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience or platform manipulation defences on X.”

X adds that it “does not allow spam or other types of platform manipulation.”

Berg has not yet commented publicly about the fake ads.