Juno News - April 19, 2022


How will Trudeau’s internet censorship bills impact True North？ (Ft. JJ McCullough)


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

199.66057

Word Count

6,784

Sentence Count

211

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 How will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's online censorship bills affect outlets like True North?
00:00:04.880 We'll speak to one of Canada's largest YouTube creators to discuss how this bill will affect
00:00:09.520 online creators. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:24.480 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So we are paying a lot of attention here at True
00:00:28.320 North and at The Candice Malcolm Show to the new and improved or new and worstly improved
00:00:32.860 online censorship bills being proposed by the Trudeau government. I'm very pleased today to
00:00:38.120 be joined by JJ McCullough. JJ is a Canadian commentator on YouTube. He hosts one of the
00:00:43.340 largest channels, political Canadian channels on the platform. JJ is also an opinion columnist over
00:00:49.720 at The Washington Post and he's been a guest several times here on The Candice Malcolm Show
00:00:54.180 on True North. JJ, great to talk to you. Thanks for having me. So let's talk about the new bills.
00:01:00.620 There's two of them that have been proposed so far. Bill C-11, which deals with algorithms and how
00:01:05.720 private tech companies provide content to users, how searchable things are on platforms like YouTube
00:01:13.700 and Facebook. And then the second one has more to do with the compensation. So tech companies paying
00:01:22.640 journalism outlets for their content. I know you have had lots and lots of opinions on these and
00:01:28.200 both of these bills will impact the work that you do directly. So in a nutshell, what was your
00:01:34.140 position on these bills? Well, I mean, I'm against both of them. I mean, I think that this is a classic
00:01:40.440 sort of case of government sort of extending its grip into places where it just doesn't belong. I think
00:01:45.960 frankly, a lot of it is also just a kind of solution in search of a problem. To talk about Bill C-11,
00:01:52.640 which is the bill that would regulate YouTube. I mean, I think what makes this sort of particularly
00:01:57.620 pernicious is just that there's really no evidence that YouTube as a platform, that YouTube creators,
00:02:04.420 that Canadian YouTube creators like myself or like, you know, the over 400 YouTubers from Canada who
00:02:10.020 are more successful than I am. I think there's really no evidence to suggest that these people
00:02:14.040 need a helping hand. I mean, we've all been quite successful just in an unregulated YouTube. And I think
00:02:20.060 that a lot of both creators and consumers of Canadian YouTube have enjoyed, frankly, that for
00:02:25.480 the 16 years that it's existed, it has been a kind of unregulated place, it hasn't been subjected to
00:02:31.000 the kind of heavy handed CRTC content quotas, and, you know, government putting its finger on the scale
00:02:38.240 in terms of determining, you know, what kind of Canadian content you should be watching and sort
00:02:43.700 of promoting certain kinds of Canadian content over others, for largely sort of political ideological
00:02:48.980 reasons. Because that's basically what the bill aims to do what Bill C-11 aims to do, is it aims to
00:02:55.020 basically bring the regulatory regime that I think a lot of Canadians have grown pretty irritated with,
00:02:59.900 as it regulates TV and radio, and sort of imposing that into a previously unregulated realm, which is
00:03:06.020 things like YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and, you know, Netflix and Disney Plus, and who knows how
00:03:12.000 many other sort of areas of online life. It's sort of saying that we no longer trust the user or the
00:03:19.520 creator to kind of enjoy the platform on their own terms, government is going to kind of like wedge
00:03:23.800 itself in between and sort of assume a kind of hectoring position in which they're going to sort of
00:03:29.260 meddle with the algorithms and so forth and say, you thought you wanted to watch this? Well, we think
00:03:34.440 you should be watching this. And so we're going to emphasize this and try to promote this and
00:03:37.840 artificially inflate the success of this. And, you know, it hasn't worked with TV or radio, I think it
00:03:44.300 has just merely made a lot of Canadians pretty frustrated with what they see as, you know, often
00:03:49.140 subpar, heavily government subsidized, heavily government favored can con being sort of shoved down
00:03:54.300 their throats. And I think it's not going to be much of a success on YouTube either. But it is going
00:04:00.640 to cause a lot of annoyance and possibly, you know, disrupt the livelihoods of a lot of Canadian
00:04:05.700 creators. Well, it's interesting that you say it's a solution in search of a problem, because to me,
00:04:11.360 I see it as sort of like trying to validate their whole existence, because that, you know, the CRTC,
00:04:18.480 they sit there and they regulate, like you alluded to, with Canadian content, and they tell us
00:04:22.480 what portion of songs on the radio that we listen to must be Canadian, what portion of
00:04:27.920 television shows on CTV, or even CBC, you know, we have a government funded news channel in the
00:04:35.180 CBC and a whole news agency, and half the time, they're just showing American reruns of old, you
00:04:40.620 know, episodes of the Simpsons or whatever. So, you know, the whole the whole purpose of this document
00:04:45.460 begs the question of like, what is the purpose of the CRTC? Because now so many people are getting
00:04:52.460 their content online, most people, I would say, probably under the age of 40, exclusively get
00:04:57.480 their content online, whether it be music or entertainment or political news, what have you.
00:05:03.080 And so you kind of have a situation, JJ, where like half of the world is regulated by them,
00:05:08.020 that people who, you know, people and outlets still operate in the traditional forms, and then
00:05:12.800 the other half isn't. So it's kind of like, if they don't regulate the internet, then they kind
00:05:17.420 of lose their authority to justifiably say that they have a purpose. And so I sort of see this as
00:05:23.960 them just like asserting their power to say, we're still relevant, we're still useful, don't forget
00:05:27.880 about us. And if they didn't do this, sooner or later, we would probably have to just get rid of
00:05:33.060 the entire regulatory body. Which one do you think is better? Do you think that they should just sort of
00:05:40.440 cease to exist? I know your answer to this, but maybe you can comment a little bit on the purpose of
00:05:45.560 TRTC why it's there and whether they've been at all successful?
00:05:49.360 Yeah, I mean, I think you're, I think you're sort of exactly right in your analysis. I mean,
00:05:52.940 I think that there's basically sort of two motives or sort of factors that are sort of animating
00:06:00.100 this initiative. You know, one of them is, I think, just to kind of, if I can sort of use a
00:06:04.980 generational slur, a kind of boomer ignorance about what the internet actually is. And, you know,
00:06:10.220 I think a lot of these people writing this legislation don't really understand
00:06:13.840 the degree to which Canadians have been perfectly successful on YouTube without any government
00:06:18.760 help. I think the degree to which, you know, on YouTube and other social media sites, there's
00:06:23.140 many Canadians who have become some of the biggest celebrities in the world, particularly in the eyes
00:06:26.740 of the youth without any government help. So when you read sort of the government's sort of official
00:06:31.560 justifications, when you read their press releases for why we need to pass Bill C-11, it's all based on
00:06:37.740 a kind of, you know, condescending premise that Canadian creators are really struggling and that
00:06:42.180 Canadian voices are not being heard. And there's just no evidence for that. And it sort of suggests
00:06:47.600 to me that really no creators, except for kind of like the usual heavily subsidized creators who
00:06:53.060 are producing really sort of sub-tier content and sort of dominate the sort of arts lobby groups in
00:06:58.020 this country, there's really like no demand for this service. And then the other thing is, I think
00:07:03.800 exactly what you sort of said is that I think that in old guard media, the television stations and the
00:07:10.880 radio producers and so on, I think that there's a lot of jealousy of the unregulated internet
00:07:16.460 entertainment sphere. You know, I think that there is a legitimate complaint to be made if you're a TV,
00:07:23.700 if you've run a television network or something like that, to sort of say like, hey, wait a second,
00:07:28.100 I have to jump through all these dumb hoops. Government makes me run, you know, like 60% of
00:07:32.860 Canadian content during primetime hours and, you know, makes me have to sort of sign off on all
00:07:38.880 these criteria to determine whether or not a show is Canadian enough to sort of meet the content
00:07:43.060 quotas. You know, I have to jump through all of these hoops. Why should YouTube be able to get away
00:07:48.340 with just running whatever they want and not being punished? I mean, whether you're watching a video
00:07:52.460 on TV or a video on a computer screen, a video is a video. And if this legislation, if the existence
00:07:57.920 of the CRTC is justified on the basis that government has a right to sort of like control
00:08:03.760 the, as they say in the press release, the cultural sovereignty of the nation, this kind of very
00:08:08.200 nationalistic idea that sort of the character of the Canadian public is harmed if we consume too
00:08:15.480 much foreign media or too much media without identifiably Canadian themes, if that is government's
00:08:21.360 sort of stated press interest, then I think it is fair for the old media, old guard media to sort of say,
00:08:26.840 you know, why does YouTube get a break? But my response to that would be sort of as you perceived
00:08:31.940 would be to just sort of give the kibosh to the CRTC in general, you know, that this is a regulatory
00:08:37.200 agency that I think was always flawed in its conception of what Canadians needed from their
00:08:42.240 media. And I think that now we just live in a, you know, a brave new world of the internet,
00:08:48.560 which is much more consumer focused, much more democratic, I think, in a very good way.
00:08:52.860 And I think that what you're sort of seeing is that this legislation is just so authoritarian
00:08:58.060 in so many ways, and so regressive, it's really without precedent anywhere in the world. And I
00:09:03.880 think that, you know, it's worth asking the question if Canada, you know, wants to go down
00:09:07.820 the path of being the country with the most regulated internet of being the country with
00:09:12.020 the most regulated YouTube, as it relates to things like entertainment and cultural consumption.
00:09:18.140 And I would hope that that is not the kind of country that we want to be. I would hope that Canada
00:09:22.200 is does not become a model of internet regulation that then sort of serves as an inspiration to, you
00:09:27.700 know, China or Russia or any other country that has all these deep seated anxieties about their public,
00:09:32.740 you know, consuming dangerous foreign ideas or ideas that are perhaps not patriotic enough,
00:09:37.960 as the government defines them.
00:09:39.040 Well, and it's not even just as Canadian as possible, because we know that there's another
00:09:44.500 bill forthcoming, the one that will replace Bill C-36, which had to do with hate speech
00:09:49.480 online. And so it's not just about, you know, promoting Canadian content. It's also the Trudeau
00:09:54.960 government trying to essentially silence views that they disagree with or silence dissent, which
00:09:59.760 when that bill does come, we'll have to do another dive into it, because obviously that creates
00:10:05.740 its own set of problems. But JJ, maybe you can walk us through what this bill will do to individual
00:10:12.880 content creators like you. I know you said on Twitter that it would probably benefit you because
00:10:17.480 your channel and your content is so Canadian. Everything about it is Canadian. I mean, I can
00:10:22.660 look at your backdrop and see, you know, you have all kinds of Canadiana stuff. I think that's a
00:10:28.540 little half Canadian, half American flag, which I know some viewers will hate to see that and others
00:10:33.520 will agree and cheer. But, you know, you put out Canadian content. We here at True North are
00:10:38.220 exclusively Canadian news channel. I sometimes laugh because, again, just to pick on the CBC a
00:10:43.240 little bit, you know, there's this government funded media behemoth designed, of course, the
00:10:48.640 purpose of it is to tell Canadian stories, protect our culture, as you mentioned. And sometimes you
00:10:53.240 turn on CTV and like the top five stories will all be foreign news. Even, you know, even this
00:10:58.420 morning, it's like, you know, the budget just came out in Canada, and they're still telling us
00:11:02.560 about, you know, the top five stories are all to do with Ukraine and Russia. During the Trump era,
00:11:07.960 this was a phenomenon where it didn't matter what kind of scandal Trudeau was up to, they would
00:11:12.160 always focus on the Trump scandals on CBC. So they don't even really prioritize Canadian content,
00:11:17.300 even though that's, you know, presumably what they're there for. So in theory, couldn't channels
00:11:24.440 like yours, channel like ours here at True North, benefit from this kind of legislation? And even with the
00:11:30.000 benefit? Why is it that that people like us still criticize this kind of bill?
00:11:35.400 Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a it's a plausible argument. I mean, I was making it somewhat
00:11:39.800 tongue in cheek. But you know, the if you read the government's own rhetoric, they're trying to sort
00:11:43.820 of buy off people like us by saying like, Oh, you're gonna do, you're gonna do great, you're
00:11:47.180 gonna make even more money, like, don't don't sort of bite the hand that feeds you, you know, I mean,
00:11:51.400 to me, that's a kind of sort of somewhat ideologically compromised, cynical argument. But I mean,
00:11:56.600 the bigger problem, though, is that we don't really know what the government's criteria of
00:12:01.820 Canadian will be and what makes your content Canadian enough to be boosted by a sort of rigged
00:12:08.760 algorithm, right? And I know that this is sort of something that the YouTube people themselves are
00:12:12.960 sort of concerned about, right? Because when you when I go to submit a video on YouTube right now,
00:12:17.780 I have to check all of these boxes that say, you know, it's not full of nudity or violence or hate
00:12:22.540 speech or whatever. And that's sort of how YouTube determines whether or not my content is is family
00:12:27.820 friendly for their purposes. And I think what's obviously going to happen is that at some point,
00:12:32.020 YouTube in order to sort of be compliant with this law and not face the you know, millions and
00:12:37.240 millions of dollars of fines that the legislation threatens non compliant streaming outlets, is that
00:12:42.880 they're probably going to have to sort of subject the content to some sort of test as well, whether
00:12:47.060 or not that's a sort of self self administered test, like the current one is, or if there's some
00:12:52.940 sort of bureaucrat behind the scenes that YouTube is going to have to employ to sort of like, look
00:12:57.020 through a checklist that the CRTC has given them and go through the list. And, you know, we know that
00:13:01.640 the legislation or the government has stated a lot of like, quite ideological objectives
00:13:07.520 justifying the legislation, in terms of a desire to emphasize the prominence of marginalized
00:13:13.100 communities, you know, communities of color, the bilingual realities of Canada, you know, you can
00:13:18.980 sort of traditional, I think, identity politics sort of type of hang ups that the Trudeau government
00:13:24.260 is sort of known for. So it with those sort of concerns being the case, and the sort of the ongoing
00:13:30.680 ambiguity of like, exactly how good patriotic Canadian content is going to be defined, it can't
00:13:36.020 necessarily be taken for granted that people like you or me will necessarily benefit from it, you know,
00:13:40.880 it's, depending on how ideological and how narrow and how specific the goal is, you know, there could
00:13:47.480 be a lot of people that are creating Canadian content, but the content is not Canadian enough,
00:13:51.560 right? This is what I think is quite pernicious as well is that I said, for example, I have 700,000
00:13:57.800 subscribers on my YouTube channel, there are over 400 YouTubers who are from Canada who are more
00:14:02.240 successful than me. So we're talking about a very large community. But you know, a lot of the people
00:14:06.540 that are successful don't have channels that are as ostentatiously Canadian as mine, perhaps,
00:14:11.520 you know, they might be cooking channels, they might be, you know, video game streamers, you know,
00:14:15.500 they might be handymen or people offering, you know, tips on how to clean your apartment or care
00:14:21.660 for your dog or do any of these kinds of things. Or, yes, science experiments, there's so much on
00:14:26.320 YouTube, it's like, you can find something for anyone. And it's and it's all it's all relevant to
00:14:31.680 Canadian lives, right? Like, I mean, Canadians need to, you know, learn how to cook and walk their
00:14:37.040 dogs. And they like hearing movie reviews and tech reviews and all sorts of stuff like that.
00:14:41.220 So the problem, though, is that those people, you know, could be harmed by this, you know,
00:14:46.460 like maybe somebody like me, who's so ostentatiously Canadian will benefit. But there's a lot of Canadian
00:14:51.400 creators who are being successful as Canadian creators, they're creating content that is relevant
00:14:55.920 and interesting to Canadians. But perhaps because it's not like ideologically Canadian enough,
00:15:00.740 it's not political enough, it's not kind of like overtly nationalistic enough, then maybe they're
00:15:06.640 going to be harmed by it. So it's just, you know, I really would like to see the press kind of
00:15:10.760 emphasize this a little bit more and like ask the minister and ask the government, like, what is
00:15:15.040 Canadian enough? Like, who gets to decide that? And who is going to be coming up with the definitions?
00:15:20.220 Because I think when we've seen, and you know, people have had a lot of fun with this talking
00:15:23.580 about like, say, movies and TV shows in the past, that might seem Canadian, or might seem very
00:15:28.200 un-Canadian. And yet they pass the CRTC is kind of bureaucratic rules, just because these rules are
00:15:33.600 so, you know, convoluted and, and esoteric.
00:15:37.920 Well, and it's so interesting, because you when you look, when you take a step back and look at
00:15:41.820 like all of culture, all of Canadian, all of the Canadians who are successful in the cultural realm,
00:15:46.040 a lot of them started out being successful in the Canadian cultural realm, like someone like
00:15:50.700 you, Justin Bieber, or Ryan Reynolds, or someone who was like, you know, early in their career,
00:15:56.400 they were they were based in Canada. And then once they become popular, Celine Dion, you know,
00:16:01.020 and any Canadian person that's really famous, it's because they're famous in the US, right? So they
00:16:05.980 kind of start out in Canada. And you could argue, like, if you were trying to steel man, the CRTC,
00:16:11.080 you could say, like, you know, the CRTC creates an environment where Canadians get the opportunity to
00:16:17.000 like test out their product in the Canadian market, or they get to build up an audience here before
00:16:22.080 like going for a broader audience, abroad, you know, the purpose of all this all this legislation
00:16:26.700 is to protect a Canadian identity from like a larger cultural influence to the south. And,
00:16:32.980 you know, you could have a reasonable argument about whether or not that is necessary, whether
00:16:37.960 that's something that's desirable. But it doesn't seem like we've had that conversation at any point
00:16:42.980 in my lifetime. Anyway, these these rules have just sort of always been there. And and now the
00:16:47.400 Trudeau government is kind of like doubling down on that, again, to try to get the next, you know,
00:16:53.040 the next domain that they don't have regulated under their thumb, which is, which is the internet.
00:16:57.520 How would we go about having a broader conversation, national conversation, if you will,
00:17:03.100 about whether or not, it's the government's role to be trying to regulate culture, trying to protect
00:17:09.840 culture, trying to foster culture when just to go back to the point is making about the people like
00:17:15.480 Justin Bieber, Ryan Reynolds, or whoever's the latest big Canadian star, you know, once it once
00:17:20.640 you hit a certain point of success in Canada, it seems inevitable that any any field where sports,
00:17:26.100 music, entertainment, they go to the bigger market, where they where they finish out their
00:17:30.840 career, which is why a lot of the content that starts out being Canadian content is no longer
00:17:34.960 Canadian after a certain point, because it gets, you know, even something like my kids love
00:17:39.720 Paw Patrol, the show, and I know it was Canadian to begin with, I don't really know if you could call it
00:17:43.920 Canadian anymore, because I think it was bought out by Nickelodeon, and it's produced in a Hollywood
00:17:48.680 studio now. But anyway, how do we get this conversation going? But whether this is actually
00:17:53.760 something that Canadians want or need?
00:17:55.920 Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question. And I think on some respects, it's a it's an interesting
00:17:59.760 sort of blind spot on both the left and the right in this country. You know, I think that the left for its
00:18:06.000 part doesn't, you know, the left isn't is in, I think, a little bit of cognitive dissonance, right, in the
00:18:15.480 sort of sense that, like, they are in the left wing in this country is very sort of like nationalistic in many ways,
00:18:21.320 right, like that they push this kind of like heavy handed idea that government should control the culture, that
00:18:26.560 government should control the cultural sovereignty of the nation, that there's sort of like a cultural purity that
00:18:32.000 government has a right to kind of enforce and sort of carry through in a way that like would seem really, I
00:18:38.180 think, abhorrent or distasteful if say, like Viktor Orban's government in Hungary was making those same
00:18:43.520 sorts of arguments. So like the left in this country, I think, are quite hypocritical, like they don't quite
00:18:49.100 understand to what degree that they are on the side of making like quite paternalistic, quite
00:18:54.260 nationalistic, quite sort of regressive, authoritarians, chauvinistic arguments, which I don't think like, like,
00:19:00.960 they basically inherited rather uncritically. And even now, like when you sort of ask a kind of like
00:19:06.300 mainstream center left person about this, they're just kind of like, Oh, yeah, well, I guess it's
00:19:10.140 good for government to sort of control our sovereignty. And, you know, you can always our
00:19:13.860 cultural sovereignty, and you can always sort of like make appeals to kind of like anti Americanism,
00:19:17.400 which will get sort of people's blood boiling. But then the other problem, too, is that on the right,
00:19:22.020 I think that there's such a strong narrative that like the Trudeau government, you know, is unpatriotic and
00:19:29.380 hates this country. And you know, says things like, you know, what, we're like the first post
00:19:34.360 national nation and has no core identity and that kind of stuff, you know, which they do say
00:19:38.800 rhetorically. But on the other hand, they're also pushing this very heavy handed cultural,
00:19:43.780 nationalistic kind of agenda, which I think is a bit of cognitive dissonance for the right as well,
00:19:48.820 like it's kind of hard, and it is hard to square those two things. And it is just complete hypocrisy on
00:19:54.120 the part of the Trudeau government that it can say on the one hand, Canada has no core identity,
00:19:58.120 but on the other hand, we need something like the CRTC to maintain our cultural integrity in the face
00:20:03.560 of, you know, evil foreign corruption, and so on and so forth. So I kind of do think that like, both sides
00:20:08.300 just kind of need to open their eyes a little bit and kind of have a clear eyed understanding of what the
00:20:13.000 status quo is, and why that status quo purports to exist, and whether or not any of us really sort of buy
00:20:19.800 those arguments anymore. Because I think it's true, like, I think that, you know, Canada is a big diverse
00:20:25.980 country. And I think Canadians have, are elaborate and diverse people. And we've got a lot of distinct
00:20:32.140 interests. And we also have a very individualistic culture. And I think that's the thing that's really
00:20:35.580 important to emphasize, is that we're all our own tastemakers, we all have our own preferences,
00:20:41.980 in terms of what kind of culture we want to consume, what we are interested in, whether that's cooking
00:20:47.420 videos, pet videos, gaming videos, whatever, we all have this, we all have a right to our own tastes. And we live in a
00:20:53.900 remarkable time in which it's never been easier to curate an online entertainment cultural experience
00:20:59.980 on your own terms. And I think that the government really has to, you know, should face a much higher
00:21:06.780 standard in justifying why that is bad. You know, I would like to ask, like, you know, ask the Minister
00:21:12.140 of Heritage, why is it bad that when I log on to YouTube, I get to see videos that I want to watch?
00:21:18.300 Why is my freedom of choice to consume the kind of online content that I want to watch? Why is that
00:21:23.740 a problem to be solved? And I think that, you know, can you answer that question without sounding like
00:21:29.900 Victor Orban? Can you answer that question without sounding like a terribly sort of regressive
00:21:33.740 authoritarian sort of type of leader who thinks that, you know, the cultural integrity of the
00:21:38.620 country is sort of like under threat and needs to be sort of cured by a sort of wise, all knowing
00:21:43.500 paternalistic political class? Like, is that really what the Trudeau government wants to go down in
00:21:48.460 history as being right? And I mean, I think I would hope not. And I hope that that this is as a result,
00:21:55.900 that this is perhaps an issue where the Trudeau government could be shamed a little bit more than
00:22:00.060 it is, although it is difficult, because I do think that, again, like a lot of conservatives don't
00:22:05.420 really want to admit that this government is in many ways as nationalistic as it is, because they're
00:22:09.420 very invested in a sort of counter narrative that this government actually, you know, has no respect for
00:22:15.100 the culture of the country at all. Well, it's definitely hypocrisy on the on the end of liberal
00:22:20.300 government. But certainly, to your point, if it was a conservative government that was proposing all
00:22:24.300 these sort of nationalistic barriers and, and promote promoting certain certain pro Canada,
00:22:32.300 pro patriotic, pro nationalistic measures, that I'm sure the tone in the media and the critics would
00:22:38.700 be calling it right wing and far right and all that kind of stuff. So it's super, it's super
00:22:43.660 interesting on that point. I want to ask a question about the sort of the power of these big tech
00:22:48.380 companies, because it's kind of interesting where, you know, you have this algorithm that nobody knows,
00:22:53.100 right? It's secret. We don't know what it is that when I go onto YouTube, a JJ McCullough video is the
00:22:57.820 first thing to pop up. You know, why is that? What is it about YouTube's studying of my habits of video
00:23:03.500 watching that it knows that I want to watch the latest JJ video? So you could say, is that power in the
00:23:10.540 hands of tech companies who are secretive, who have their own political agendas, who are, you know,
00:23:15.180 not not Canadian at all, none of the profits that come from the YouTube ads that I watched before
00:23:20.060 watching your video, go to anything. I mean, I'm sure you get paid for your channel, but the major
00:23:26.620 profits go to Google, which is based in, in San Francisco. So, so you have these really powerful
00:23:32.460 tech companies, and you don't necessarily know what's driving them, what's motivating them,
00:23:37.420 why some political discussion is suppressed and others is promoted. We know that, that they meddle
00:23:42.860 in the political process. We know that, for instance, during the 2020 US election, the Hunter
00:23:48.300 Biden story was, was buried. They, it was written off as, as disinformation. You weren't allowed to share
00:23:53.260 or discuss it throughout COVID. We've seen a lot of issues with YouTube censoring and, and demonetizing and
00:23:59.340 sort of disappearing channels that, that, that take critical positions when it comes to,
00:24:04.140 you know, the, the, the efficacy of the vaccines and stuff like that. So, so it's, it's not like
00:24:09.740 these, these tech companies are benevolent and you hear increasing calls in the US for more
00:24:15.660 government intervention, more, you know, making sure that free speech is protected. So we're kind
00:24:20.460 of having the opposite conversation that, that our American friends are having that, you know, in the US,
00:24:25.420 a lot of conservatives want YouTube and want Facebook and Twitter to be regulated to promote free
00:24:30.780 speech. Whereas in Canada, we have, uh, the prime minister's office threatening to take over the
00:24:35.100 algorithms and conservatives are like screaming, like, no, no, no, that's a terrible idea. So I'm
00:24:38.860 just wondering how, how do you balance the power of these huge tech companies, uh, with the, the, the
00:24:44.620 need to sort of protect everybody's basic rights to, to free speech and free information?
00:24:49.180 Yeah. I mean, it's, I guess I sort of have a kind of somewhat old fashioned, stereotypically
00:24:55.740 conservative view about this. And which is just that these are private companies and private
00:24:59.900 companies have a right to basically do what they want. I mean, I agree that it is,
00:25:04.140 it can be very frustrating and, you know, there's no one that complains about these sorts of things
00:25:07.900 more than YouTubers themselves, the unpredictability of the algorithm and, and, you know, frustrations,
00:25:12.540 particularly like with smaller channels as well, like the difficulty in, in getting the video to be,
00:25:19.340 you know, to be widely seen or to be monetized. And sometimes, you know, videos get demonetized and
00:25:24.060 it seems very opaque, the reasoning for why it is, and people sort of go nuts about this. And, you know,
00:25:28.780 I think I can relate to those, those, those sorts of frustrations, but at the same time,
00:25:32.860 like I am pretty, I am pretty, I suppose, rigid in my defense of, of private industry to have a right
00:25:40.540 to sort of practice, you know, what they want to do on their own terms. And if they, if they,
00:25:45.660 uh, if the consumer base gets irritated enough, and if the creator base gets irritated enough,
00:25:50.620 in theory, we could move on to some other platform. And there are, there are always sort of
00:25:54.380 efforts in the background sort of percolating, you know, attempts to sort of create rival
00:25:58.300 platforms. But the reason why these rival platforms have not taken off is that because
00:26:01.980 for all of the difficulties in dealing with YouTube, it is still the best user experience
00:26:05.740 and the best creator experience out there. It's not to say it always will be, but, you know, for
00:26:10.060 the time being, I, I think it legitimately can make that argument, but, you know, you do get at a
00:26:14.780 good point, which is that at the very least, you know, in America, the argument is that, you know,
00:26:19.740 that these platforms should be even freer, that they should err more on the side of, of, of, uh,
00:26:24.620 of, uh, kind of a user centric, creator centric sort of experience. Whereas in Canada,
00:26:30.300 the understanding is that like, you know, that these things should exist on the terms of the,
00:26:35.900 of the government for explicitly content driven agendas, right? So the government of Canada feels
00:26:41.100 it has a right to dictate the content more than like very specifically the type of content that they
00:26:47.260 believe the viewers should be consuming. Whereas in the sort of the American discourse, it's like,
00:26:51.660 you know, YouTube shouldn't have any regulation over content at all, you know, which I, in my,
00:26:57.820 my opinion, that's going a little bit far, but basically that we should just sort of like trust
00:27:01.500 the audience to curate their own experience. And, you know, just kind of like let the chips fall where
00:27:05.580 they may there. I mean, it does, it does get to another sort of effort is, or another kind of reality,
00:27:10.380 uh, in the difference between Canada and the U S as well is that Canada really tries, I think the
00:27:15.740 Canadian government really wants to sort of like co-opt large influential, uh, institutions and make
00:27:22.940 them cooperate with the state as actively as possible. Right. So like you kind of have this
00:27:27.740 kind of society where the line between government and private entity becomes blurred when that private
00:27:34.220 entity becomes big enough. And I think that's already, you know, what you see with the mainstream
00:27:39.180 press in, in this country, which is now so regulated and so subsidized that, you know, it can be a little
00:27:44.380 bit difficult to tell where the CRTC ends and, you know, it begins. Right. And I think that that seems
00:27:50.060 to be the goal of, of this regulatory bill over YouTube is to make YouTube into a partner as they
00:27:55.900 would call it like a partner with the federal government that doesn't really make any substantial
00:27:59.900 decisions without sort of consulting with their sort of masters in Ottawa and, and just having this
00:28:04.700 very, uh, creating a new consensus. You know, we always talk about the Laurentian consensus. And I guess
00:28:10.060 this is a sort of an effort to sort of bring, you know, the big tech companies into that consensus.
00:28:14.620 And I think people are right to be worried about that. I get your point that they're private
00:28:19.660 companies and they can run in any way they want, but it seems to me that you two, maybe to a lesser
00:28:24.860 extent, although I know they still do de-platform people and channels disappear, uh, comments disappear,
00:28:31.020 even the, you know, disabling the dislike sign so that the sort of democratic feedback is,
00:28:36.060 is, is unavailable. But so many of these tech companies, JJ, they, they just take unbelievable
00:28:41.100 steps in curbing free speech. And it's not uniform is it's not, it's not based on clearly set rules.
00:28:46.780 I, I, I, I hear a lot of people on the right say that, you know, they kind of shrug and they say,
00:28:50.700 oh, well, you know, the first amendment in the United States is only applicable to governments.
00:28:54.620 It's not applicable to tech companies. Uh, I've, I've also had an interesting argument about the fact
00:28:58.620 that people like, like Twitter is a, is a place where we have most of our political discourse is a place
00:29:04.060 where most of the political conversation speech in, in both Canada and the U S happens. And so to,
00:29:10.140 to remove somebody to say, you, you only have access to this public square, uh, you no longer
00:29:14.700 have access to the conversation on politics in this country and, and YouTube as well, you know,
00:29:19.420 losing your ability to have your free speech just because you don't agree with the latest consensus
00:29:24.220 on vaccines or the latest consensus on whatever the popular issue of the day is leaving this power
00:29:30.140 to, to companies, uh, to determine it's, it's not only a freedom of speech issue. It's also freedom
00:29:35.340 of association. Like you have the right to say what you want and to associate with whom you want.
00:29:41.260 And, and the, the reaction to just be to dis platform people and sort of institutionalized
00:29:46.140 cancel culture. And I, I don't see this as a healthy environment, uh, for an underpinning of a free
00:29:54.300 speech and, and a healthy discourse in society. Uh, I, I know this is beyond the realm of just bill
00:30:00.140 C-11 and, and, and C-18 here. Uh, but do you, do you think there is a role for government in, in
00:30:07.500 ensuring free speech and freedom association online? I mean, I don't know. It's, it's just,
00:30:13.500 I've never, I mean, like in theory, like you can say these sorts of things and I like, you know,
00:30:18.060 I'll sort of shrug and be like, yeah, that sounds good. Like obviously more freedom of speech is
00:30:22.540 better than less freedom of speech. It's just, I kind of wonder how that would manifest in practice
00:30:28.380 as a matter of public policy. Right. And whether or not a government that kind of has that sort of
00:30:33.740 power to determine what YouTube has to allow could then in turn abuse that power in basically similar
00:30:40.940 ways to what the government of this country wants to do. Right. Sort of like once you sort of say on
00:30:45.900 some level that, you know, that YouTube or whatever other platform has an obligation
00:30:52.860 in practice to platform channel X, Y, Z, or, or, you know, character X, Y, or Z, you know,
00:30:59.020 how else will those powers be used when there's a government in power that perhaps we're less
00:31:03.420 inclined to support? I don't know. Like I'm, I suppose it would really, I feel like right now,
00:31:10.060 this matter exists mostly as a, as a, as a bit of conservative rhetoric, right? Like right now,
00:31:19.100 I feel like there's a kind of like, obviously there's a sort of populist upswell against the
00:31:23.420 power of the big tech companies. And I agree, the power of the big tech companies can be,
00:31:27.180 can be frightening and does feel like quite unprecedented, like nothing else we've ever
00:31:31.100 really experienced. And I think you're, you're not wrong when you sort of say like when people are
00:31:34.460 silenced on Twitter or, you know, YouTube, it can be remarkable, like how quickly they just sort of
00:31:39.180 like disappear as a person from the public consciousness and public imagination. But again,
00:31:43.740 like, I just don't really know what the legislative fix to that would look like and whether or not the
00:31:48.860 cure would be, you know, better than the disease as opposed to being worse than it. And I, I, you know,
00:31:54.620 because actually this is one of the things that, um, is in bill C-11 is that the government can
00:31:59.820 obligate the, uh, YouTube or any other platform to carry a channel regardless of if it violates
00:32:06.380 YouTube's own internal policies. So, you know, for example, you know, RT was just recently banned,
00:32:12.940 right? Like in theory, the government of Canada could obligate YouTube that they couldn't do that,
00:32:17.980 that they have to pass, they have to keep that channel in place, even if it violates YouTube's own
00:32:22.300 internal guidelines, because they would sort of say that YouTube's, uh, YouTube's guidelines take a
00:32:27.260 sort of second tier to government's priorities. Right. And so I don't know, like this, to me,
00:32:32.300 this kind of meddling in a private business's ability to make money on their own terms and to
00:32:37.580 do what they view as being right for their consumer base. Maybe that, that is not as persuasive an
00:32:43.180 argument as it, as it used to be in an era where we have much more sort of monopolistic power in the
00:32:48.300 tech community. And that sort of monopolistic power is being used to regulate more of the realms of,
00:32:53.340 of sort of public discourse that is essential in any democracy.
00:32:56.540 But I just kind of feel like until I see a clear legislative agenda,
00:33:00.220 as opposed to just rhetoric that I can judge, I'm inclined to sort of still side with the,
00:33:05.500 the sovereignty of, of free enterprise.
00:33:09.020 It was certainly, and, and I, I don't think I would trust the true government to draft any
00:33:12.700 kind of legislation that I would feel comfortable with, as is the case with these ones. Well,
00:33:16.620 really interesting conversation, JJ, we appreciate your insights and all of your very entertaining
00:33:21.420 content over on your own YouTube channel. So thank you so much for joining us.
00:33:24.300 JJ McCullough Thanks for having me.
00:33:25.580 JJ McCullough Hey, that's JJ McCullough. I'm
00:33:27.740 Candice Malcolm. And this is the Candice Malcolm show.
00:33:33.420 Hee up.
00:33:36.340 Yeah .
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00:33:38.780 Yeah.
00:33:39.700 Yeah .
00:33:41.940 Yeah.
00:33:44.000 Yeah .
00:33:44.980 Yeah.
00:33:46.180 Yeah.
00:33:49.100 Yeah.
00:33:49.900 Yeah.
00:33:51.700 Yeah.
00:33:52.220 Yeah.
00:33:53.060 Yeah.
00:33:53.780 Yeah.
00:33:54.260 Yeah.
00:33:55.160 Yeah.
00:33:55.420 Yeah.
00:33:58.160 Yeah.