In his first address as Labour leader, he attacked pundits, arguing that they did not understanding the discontent among many ordinary British voters, and talked about the "power of social media".
In a statement, it said "A reader-funded investigative unit that is responsive to the requests and demands of The Canary readership is something people have asked us for since our inception.
Rose said the site had survived the "decimation" of its advertising income and "politically-motivated attacks on our staff", and had shifted to a 95% reader-funded model.
[26] In April 2016, Mendoza said in Free & Fearless (a magazine produced by Hacked Off) that "we are attracting an audience of 3.5 million unique users per month.
[26] According to one journalism lecturer, while the website is skilled at promoting its stories, the primary reason for its viral popularity may be its political standpoint.
[31] In August 2019, The Canary emailed users to announce that it would rely more on its team and less on freelance contributors due to a reduced income.
"[33][34][35] The Canary mounted a recruitment drive for one thousand additional subscribers, which it reported it had achieved by early August, saying this had secured its immediate future.
[37] In 2016, Carl Miller of Demos has said that, while the "digital world" has been "democratizing", he believes that sites such as The Canary, which reflect a single worldview, cut down on dissenting information and are likely to make people "even angrier, more outraged, more certain that that [sic] people we disagree with are evil ... which isn't good for reasoned, civil debate.
"[7] In January 2017, Owen Jones told PR Week that the website "promotes conspiracy theories and a lot of things that just aren't right.
"[38] In July 2017, Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite the Union, said to the Morning Star: "The media needs regulating, the control of information shouldn't be in the hands of a few billionaires.
SFFN persuaded Macmillan Cancer Support to suspend advertising on The Canary while it reviewed online ad placement.
[16] In March 2020, advertising for Tom Stoppard's play Leopoldstadt, which is about the legacy of the Holocaust, was removed from The Canary after allegations of antisemitism from SFFN.
[48] In January 2021, Antisemitism and the Alternative Media, a report by Daniel Allington and Tanvi Joshi, academics at King's College London, commissioned by John Mann, Baron Mann, the UK government's independent advisor on antisemitism,[49] stated that The Canary, alongside The Skwawkbox, "promote[s] a negative view of Jews"[49] and views "life [as] a struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, which leaves an in-group of 'socialists' – i.e. those who understand themselves to side with the oppressed – at constant risk of attack from a politically-defined Zionist enemy that must be driven out of the Labour Party."
[49][51] In November 2021, IMPRESS released its findings that the material that they reviewed was "not sensationalist and does not use language that is likely to provoke hatred or put a person or group in fear, nor does it appear to be intended to have that effect.
"[51] IMPRESS dismissed the matter after finding that "of the material in remit, none of it reached the threshold which would engage the discrimination clause and, therefore, further investigation would be unjustified".
Following the 2015 United Kingdom general election, The Canary "dug into assorted expense claims and activities in (target) seats", according to Michael White in The Guardian,[53] after a whistleblower contacted the website to allege illegal telephone push polling by the Conservatives.
[53][54][55] In June 2016, a Canary article saying that the 2016 parliamentary revolt against Corbyn "appears to have been orchestrated" by Portland Communications went viral and was repeated by Len McCluskey on Andrew Marr's Sunday morning BBC programme.
"[59] The Canary reported Craig Murray's view that the petition was probably taken down due to "Establishment pressure",[60] while ethical entrepreneur Ian Middleton wrote in The Huffington Post that "if one looks at the list of comments published ... it's difficult to find anything remotely aggressive or sexist", and the accusations of abuse "may have been part of an orchestrated campaign on behalf of those looking to discredit the petition itself.
"[61] In the fourteen months between the withdrawal of the petition in May 2016 and 20 July 2017, according to Jasper Jackson of the New Statesman, The Canary ran "at least 17 articles criticising Kuenssberg.
In December 2017, the press regulator IMPRESS adjudicated that the website had broken its code by publishing an inaccurate headline, not making sufficient efforts to check the facts, and failing to correct the inaccuracy with due prominence.
[66] In September 2018, The Canary republished an article by Max Blumenthal (originally published by MintPress News) attacking Nicaragua-based Carl David Goette-Luciak, a freelance journalist reporting on anti-government protests for The Guardian, days after the Committee to Protect Journalists warned that that Goette-Luciak was the victim of a "targeted online harassment campaign" by supporters of the government.
[67][68][69] During July 2016, The Canary achieved over 7.5 million page views, ranking 97th in readership among British media organisations, slightly higher than The Spectator and The Economist.