Greg Wycliffe - July 14, 2023


Censorship is Here! Bill C-18 ALREADY affecting Canadian Content Creators

Hosted by
Greg Wycliffe
Mentioned
Trudeau Bill C-16 Pierre Poilievre Elon Musk Chrystia Freeland Ezra Levant Bill C-63 Tiananmen
＂Conservative＂ politicians in Canada are pathetic The Dissident Strikes Back, Jeremy MacKenzie's case might expose BIG corruption ｜ Controlled Op 23

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

184.12

Word count

2,478

Sentence count

175

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk about Bill C-18, a bill that would require Canadian internet users to pay for news and information on social media platforms like Google and Metametal. We speak with the creator of The New Guards, a Canadian media outlet that focuses on the intersection of politics and technology.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You've probably already heard of Bill C-18 in Canada, which is going to gravely affect the
00:00:05.840 Canadian internet. It's a liberal bill that is requiring Google and Meta to pay for news content
00:00:11.860 online. Google represents not just Google, but also YouTube, and Meta represents Instagram
00:00:17.980 and Facebook. This represents a lot of news sharing for Canadians online. And, you know,
00:00:25.040 I saw this bill being passed and I thought, you know, I'm really hoping this doesn't affect me.
00:00:29.240 And I'm thinking if it does affect me, it might take some time to actually come into effect.
00:00:33.560 But last night I got a message from a fellow content creator that terrified me. He sent me
00:00:39.580 this screenshot that he received on his Instagram account. Basically, he can't even see his own
00:00:45.620 Instagram account. It says people in Canada can't see your content. He sent this to me last night
00:00:52.000 and I'm chatting with him now. This is Michael from The New Guards. How are you doing today, man?
00:00:58.140 And give us an update on the situation with your accounts.
00:01:03.920 I am good, man. I've relaxed from last night. Last night, I was like, just it woke me up like
00:01:11.180 I was livid when I saw this. I was just confused. And it's scary to see actually come into play.
00:01:18.460 You know, like we've heard, like you said, we've heard about it for a long time. But this is scary
00:01:24.400 stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And for those who don't know, Michael runs The New Guards, which is you're
00:01:30.760 prominently on Facebook and Instagram, if I'm not mistaken. But you post content that's, you know,
00:01:36.600 talking about news and information, the World Economic Forum, that sort of thing. And you're
00:01:43.900 doing very well. I want to emphasize, I mean, 250 posts only and you have 27,000 followers like that's
00:01:50.420 you're making quality content, obviously, that people are enjoying. If you're Rebel News,
00:01:55.820 if you're True North, you're obviously going to be worried about this legislation coming down the
00:01:59.760 pipe. But the fact that they're picking on somebody like you, who's just you're kind of doing this as
00:02:03.940 a hobby, I think you said, that's quite alarming. Have you been able to talk to anyone about this?
00:02:13.780 Have you been able to like, you know, send in an inquiry to Facebook or Instagram? Like,
00:02:18.000 who do you even have to speak to about this to help you?
00:02:20.640 It's so it's so fresh. So I haven't applied for an appeal or anything. But my experience with
00:02:26.360 Facebook and Instagram is anytime you write them to help you with anything, you're getting a bot with
00:02:33.080 an automatic response. The funny thing to point out is that I am not news. Like if you look at if you
00:02:40.520 go through my videos, I rarely go over current events. It's really just discussing a number of
00:02:48.420 topics. I can see why you might say it's news. But like there's I bear I don't even regularly post like
00:02:54.320 I'll post maybe once a day, sometimes I'll skip a couple days. So it's weird to me to see that they
00:03:00.400 first of all classify me as a news publication. But yeah, the really interesting, like you said,
00:03:05.380 it's a hobby for me, I don't make money on this. I, I would like to perhaps one day build some kind
00:03:10.880 of media company, but I'm not there. But it's really worrisome for people like True North and
00:03:17.520 Rebel News. And I actually think that this has a lot to do with Rebel News. You've seen Trudeau,
00:03:22.940 Trudeau's reactions to Rebel News and to Ezra Levant and saying that they're not a media organization.
00:03:28.940 And they Rebel News criticizes them a lot. And he doesn't seem to be able to take it. He seems to be
00:03:34.380 kind of folding under that, that criticism. So yeah, yeah. And so you this screenshot that I showed
00:03:43.280 that I showed earlier, this was on your phone, on your Instagram. Did you see anything like this
00:03:52.900 on your on your Facebook page? No, so I haven't seen it on Facebook. And on my computer, I can still
00:04:00.420 see my Instagram page because I have a VPN, which is putting me in the States, right? So the only
00:04:07.480 reason I can see it on my computer is because of VPN. But so from what I understand, they're doing
00:04:11.160 a test run. So there's I've spoken to a number of friends and other people that have commented on
00:04:17.440 this video, saying that I can still see your content. And that is because they're doing a test
00:04:22.740 run. And it's not going out to all Canadians yet. But the goal is to do it universally to all
00:04:28.380 Canadians. There's an article that said it was 5% of Canadian users of these platforms that are
00:04:34.240 affected by this. So I think they're doing kind of a random, a random test run and seeing what the
00:04:41.660 reaction is going to be. And this is the reaction, right? Like the reaction is like, holy, holy smokes.
00:04:47.780 What what do we become? Yeah. And it kind of reminds me of like the Bill C11 stuff,
00:04:53.560 where like, you know, they're pushing through this Bill C11 thing. And it's like, hey, this is
00:04:57.360 totally not going to affect, you know, user generated content. This is not going to affect
00:05:01.400 the little guy. And like, you know, C18 is happening a few weeks later, it's affecting you,
00:05:05.880 which is in many respects, the little guy in the grand scheme of things. And I'm wondering,
00:05:10.780 because they're kind of doing all these experiments. You know, it reminds me of the shadow
00:05:17.600 banning that Elon Musk, it's exposed at Twitter, you know, what kind of shadow banning exists on
00:05:24.040 YouTube or Google, or Facebook or Instagram, like, it's one of those things that we as the users don't
00:05:29.320 really know, we're just kind of subject to like, wow, my reach has totally declined for no reason.
00:05:35.080 Maybe it's because I was, you know, questioning the narrative when it comes to shots or, you know,
00:05:41.120 climate change, whatever it might be. But I am looking at your, at your Facebook page. And I'm
00:05:47.260 thinking that one of the issues might be simply this, you, you listed your page as a media news
00:05:52.880 company. So I'm wondering if it might just be as simple as Oh, is is your Facebook because you can
00:05:58.000 do this on meta or on Instagram, Facebook, are your pages linked? Like in the background?
00:06:03.900 I believe they are. So that might be the reason. Yeah, it might be something like that. We're
00:06:08.320 just like, we're gonna, we're gonna just start messing with every, every page on meta, that's
00:06:15.000 listed as media or news. In which case, I strongly recommend that you just like start doing comedy,
00:06:21.860 you know what I mean? Or change the label to something else. And I think the point is, even
00:06:27.480 without, without this, all this crazy legislation coming from the Canadian government, even as a
00:06:33.340 creator on these platforms, we're very much subject to whatever these platforms want to do.
00:06:38.620 You know, it's a very insecure place to be. You don't know when they're just, especially when
00:06:43.760 you're talking about the things that we talked about, you don't know when they're just going
00:06:46.500 to totally yank away, you know, your platform, your following, your reach, all of these things.
00:06:52.580 And especially if you like rely on it for income, it's like a super scary place to be.
00:06:56.760 I can only imagine what it's like for Rebel News and for True North. True North seems to
00:07:04.660 skate the line pretty well and just comment on Canadian politics. Rebel News, you know,
00:07:11.120 they go a little deeper with Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum and stuff. And you can see
00:07:17.180 that they kind of have a target on their back. So their whole business model is working on these
00:07:23.760 platforms, right? Working on YouTube and viewership on Facebook and YouTube, right? If they can't get
00:07:29.900 those views, they have to raise funds other ways, which they do do some fundraising, not even just
00:07:34.680 for themselves. They do it for good causes, causes that are, you know, they're fighting to get some
00:07:41.980 person that is wrongly accused, you know, to contribute to that case or whatnot for the lawyers.
00:07:48.600 The monetary aspect of it is one thing. But now the real scary part is, like, think about where we
00:07:55.240 get our news. Elon Musk actually said this on Twitter. I get most of my news from Twitter.
00:08:00.940 That's how we function. What, what, who watches the news on television? Anybody, who, who in our kind
00:08:07.220 of space gets their news from the television? At what age, what age do people, you know, like what age
00:08:14.620 limit are people getting news from television? My mom watches the TV and she puts it on and just
00:08:19.500 listens to it in the background. I come home and she's like, oh my God, you see what's happening?
00:08:23.200 I'm like, yeah, that's probably BS. It's probably propaganda. But so is that what they expect us to
00:08:29.340 do to just go back to the TV, go back to cable? Right. Yeah. Right. People, people, you know,
00:08:35.700 it's going to happen. More people are going to go to alternative platforms like Telegram.
00:08:39.380 And, you know, it's like, it totally speaks to the absurdity of this legislation to begin with.
00:08:46.680 They like to say it's about this or about the people. You're just trying to take money from big
00:08:51.460 tech and that's it. And, you know, that's, that's the sort of surface level reason. But what is the
00:08:57.480 consequence? The consequence is it's going to be very hard for real information to get out there.
00:09:02.700 Because let's, let's face it. A lot of the CBC legacy media is, is like you said, propaganda. It's
00:09:08.540 bloated. It's not, it's not the, like the real nuggets of information that's relevant to people.
00:09:14.180 And in the pursuit of getting money from big tech, they are, you know, stifling the free flow of
00:09:21.080 information in Canada. But right. So it's to promote Canadian content. I don't know if that's C11 or C18,
00:09:28.240 but you see them talking in the house. There's, there's the liberal guy who was talking to Pierre,
00:09:33.220 Pierre Polyev. And he's like, you, the conservatives are worried about cat videos on the internet.
00:09:38.760 And he's like, like really guys, like, is this what, is this what we're, is this what we're doing?
00:09:43.520 This is what we're doing in the house. One small comment about the house commons in Canada is
00:09:47.920 it's really become just a place for them to get gotcha moments, right? Like the speaker of the
00:09:54.180 house is there not as just a mantelpiece to just say your turn to speak, your turn to speak. He's
00:10:00.520 there to, to enforce, to enforce the, the, the rules of the chamber, meaning that the people have
00:10:09.320 to, the politicians have to answer questions legitimately, not just spew out talking points
00:10:15.260 and repeat the same thing over and over again, which is the most frustrating thing to see Trudeau, 0.97
00:10:20.060 Christopher Freeland, all these clowns do. They, they don't address any questions, right? I mean, 0.96
00:10:25.940 you've seen this. I don't have to tell you, but so for, for the CBC, there's two, there's two points
00:10:31.220 to think about. Yes. They're saying that it's for the monetary aspect. And if you look at the CBC,
00:10:37.880 they're not doing so well. They lost 25% of their viewership. And what's their funding from
00:10:42.700 the Canadian government? Do you know what their funding is now? Uh, CBC, I think it's like 1.6 billion a
00:10:48.840 year. 1.6 billion in 2023. I think in 2022 is 1.2 billion. And now it's going up to 1.6 billion
00:10:55.840 dollars. These are the, so Canadian taxpayers are paying for the CBC. And then the government is
00:11:03.720 then stopping the, the broadcasting of CBC on basically the only place you can get it. Google,
00:11:10.980 Google is not a platform. It's a search engine. It is the primary search engine that everybody uses.
00:11:16.360 Google's not posting anything. People aren't posting anything on Google for Google. I mean,
00:11:22.360 I get Facebook maybe a little bit because it is a platform you can find stuff on. Google is a search
00:11:27.700 engine. What is going on? Like it's a, it's a Chinese firewall. This is what's happening.
00:11:32.360 You can no longer in China that you were no longer able to find Tiananmen square, right? They erased it
00:11:37.420 from the internet. They don't have the same internet as us. They have a firewall. They don't have Facebook,
00:11:41.780 Instagram. They have their own versions of it. They're copycat versions. This is what it feels
00:11:47.100 like, right? Yeah. And, and that's the way that people should think about it. They should think
00:11:52.360 about it in, in those very intense terms of comparing it to communist China, where you can't
00:11:57.980 even use Google in China without a VPN. You know, this really, the way with C11 and also with C18,
00:12:05.600 the way in which the federal government is fucking with the internet in Canada is totally 0.84
00:12:12.320 unacceptable. It's dystopian. And yeah. And you know, I, I'll be like a broken record here. Cause 0.98
00:12:17.640 if you watch my content, you know that I'm all about criticizing the conservatives now for hardly
00:12:22.280 really resisting this stuff. They sort of resist it, but it's like, you should be calling Trudeau a
00:12:27.080 tyrant every single day. I love the name of your show actually, but yes. Thank you. It's exactly what
00:12:31.100 they are. I appreciate that. And talk a big game. They talk a big game. They do nothing.
00:12:36.220 They do nothing. That's right. But in the meantime, we need to cross promote people like
00:12:40.140 ourselves and make sure that we survive on here. Let people know where they can find you, uh, to
00:12:44.920 support you and, and, you know, make sure that they can, they can follow you and still, uh, consume
00:12:49.120 your content. The uncensored content, if you want it, Twitter and rumble, uh, you can find us the new
00:12:54.560 guards media or just the new guards. Uh, it might be the new guards underscore one of those. Um,
00:13:01.100 but so, yeah, we're going to start a telegram channel and start putting out information there.
00:13:05.960 Amazing. Well, thanks for joining me, Michael. And, uh, obviously we'll see what happens next with
00:13:10.700 this, with this nonsense legislation and, and we got to stay in touch and, you know, prop each other up
00:13:17.300 because we're going to be the only ones to help each other in this. Thanks for having me, man. Uh,
00:13:21.740 yeah, we'll, uh, I don't know. Get a VPN guys. Get a VPN. All right. Talk to you soon.