A London man is apologizing after creating a "satirical" website that criticized London mayoral candidate Paul Paolatto.
Shawn Adamsson, who volunteers with several local organizations, admitted this week that he was behind paolattoreport.com, a website that poked fun at Paolatto while imitating his actual blog, thepaolattoreport.com.
The domain, which has since been shut down, was registered in December 2017 and was run anonymously. Now Adamson has come out on his own blog, admitting he was behind the mock website and offering "a number" of apologies.
"My first apology goes to Paul Paolatto and his campaign team for not being more transparent about who was publishing this content, I should have clearly indicated that it was me from the start in the spirit of openness to which I typically aspire," read the blog post. "I should have been striving to make political dialogue better and instead, I dragged it down and in a way that I often condemn."
Adamsson said he decided to claim the domain after noticing it hadn't been registered by Paolatto's team.
"In my rush to do something clever, I ended up doing something stupid and I may have offended Paul and members of his campaign team," he said in the post. "Campaigning for mayor is emotional, exhausting work and nobody needs an anonymous jerk taking cheap shots from the peanut gallery. "
Adamsson also said he has since reached out to Paolatto directly to offer his apologies over creating the website. Paolatto eventually went on to finish runner-up to Ed Holder in the election last fall.
In a similar situation, two other anonymous websites were created during the 2018 election as a smear campaign that attacked Councillor Maureen Cassidy and former councillor Virginia Ridley. Court ordered records provided by GoDaddy, CIRA and Wix.com eventually showed that the websites were registered by Amir Farahi and Ronald Young. Farahi is one of two men who run Blackridge Strategy, a firm that worked on several campaigns during the 2018 municipal election.
Adamsson mentioned both Ridley and Cassidy in his blog post, apologizing for not being forthright about his involvement in a "satirical campaign."
"My third apology goes to Virginia Ridley and Maureen Cassidy for distracting from the real and serious issues at hand today," he stated. "Clearly I couldn’t have seen these other sites coming but my silly, stupid act shouldn’t be distracting anyone from serious questions about our electoral process. I admire your strength and resolve as you struggle to bring these violations into the light."
Adamsson closed off the blog post by admitting he screwed up and vowing to "try to do better, to be better. "