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

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, 0.91

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 0.98

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 1.00

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 0.93

00:18:49.100 understand to what degree that they are on the side of making like quite paternalistic, quite 0.73

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 0.98

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 .

00:33:38.060 Yeah.

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.

Juno News - April 19, 2022

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

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