Viral footage of what appears to be dozens of young people running onto a Toronto subway train without paying is attracting praise from Chile, of all places, as a mass fare evasion protest takes place across the South American country.

Re-posted from Snapchat to 6ixbuzzTV on Thursday, the video shows at least 50 frenzied youth moving through Toronto's Runnymede Station in a hurry.

"Yo! Get the Prestos! Prestos! Ahhh!" one teen can be heard shouting as others squeal and laugh. "Cops coming!"

Students evasion Toronto subway pic.twitter.com/EXZpVcIkb1 — FJ Newman (@fj_newman) November 28, 2019

Comments on the clip, which has been viewed more than half a million times on 6ixbuzz's Instagram account alone, suggest that most of the people were high school students and that they were fleeing from the scene of a fight.

Other comments say the group "rushed the station to get on for free."

Whatever happened, people in support of the mass fare-dodging protests taking place across Chile in recent weeks are holding it up as a brave act of political dissidence.

Raise the world emblem of the fight 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 pic.twitter.com/GGxeQby8ZE — Manuel Gutiérrez (@manuelgrrz) November 28, 2019

"October of Chilean students liberación spreads [to] TO Canada," wrote one supporter in response to a copy of the video shared on Twitter. "Welcome brothers!"

"Cheers from Chile!" wrote several other users of the social media platform.

"Youth led mass evasion spreads to Toronto," wrote a New York-based #EvasionMasiva account called Ride Free NYC.

"Evasion is the stuff of life, an undercurrent of subversive care. The tide is rollin in, catch a wave."

Matapacos en Toronto

Esta idea no se puede quemar#ChileNoSeRinde #ChileDesperto pic.twitter.com/ManH1u1Wgr — 🇨🇱 sin miedo (@RodrigoBravo9) November 27, 2019

This is not the first time Toronto has been brought into the Chilean evasion movement, which was sparked by a 4 per cent metro fare hike in Santiago on October 18.

Signs that read "From Chile to Toronto... Power to the fare evaders!" have been spotted on street furnishings around the city in recent weeks, all of them bearing the unofficial Chilean protest emblem, as well as an illustration of a burning Presto card.

"Elected politicians are the real fare evaders," reads a similar poster seen on the streets of Toronto recently. "Fund the TTC!"

Poster in downtown #Toronto.



The fight for Free Transit is growing. It is a fundamental fight for social and environmental justice



See: The "fare evasion" narrative on the #TTC is a total fraud. Here's why https://t.co/QEoTeThbDV #TOpoli #onpoli pic.twitter.com/oeZmzSkAUx — theleftchapter (@theleftchapter) November 25, 2019

Fare evasion has become a widespread and costly problem for the Toronto Transit Commission in recent years, amounting to some $61 million per year in lost revenue, by some estimations.

The TTC has ramped up its fare inspection efforts as a result in an attempt to secure more desperately-needed fare funds for service and maintenance, but conscious fare evasion is only one part of the problem.

The slow and glitchy rollout of Presto is another, with broken fare gates regularly allowing hundreds of people to walk straight through into the subway system without paying — a problem that is said to be costing the TTC millions each year.