Regulating Canadians' ＂incorrect＂ opinions
Episode Stats
Words per minute
141.94464
Harmful content
Hate speech
1
sentences flagged
Summary
The Liberal government wants to create a Digital Safety Commission of Canada to regulate harmful content on the internet, including pornography, child sexual exploitation, hate speech, and child sex trafficking. In this episode, Lindsay Shepard explains why this is a bad idea.
Transcript
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The Liberal government has released a technical paper and discussion guide that lays out how they
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propose to address harmful content online, and that is by creating a Digital Safety Commission
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of Canada. This proposed commission will be regulating five things on the internet.
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Terrorist content, content that incites violence, child sexual exploitation content,
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the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and hate speech. Specifically, Canadian
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Heritage says what they're calling online communication services, OCSs, will be regulated,
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and OCSs are what you and I would refer to as major social media platforms. So if one of these major
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social media platforms has content on their website flagged that falls under one of these five
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categories, they will need to have a system in place to review and possibly remove that content
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within 24 hours. If they do not, they can receive a financial penalty. And with this Digital Safety
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Commission, there will also be a whole bureaucracy in place with monitoring, reporting, complaints,
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tribunals, etc. According to the government, these are their examples of online communication service
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providers. We've got Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and apparently Pornhub.
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Now, when I think of social media, I think of somewhere where you connect with friends and
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family, you participate in public discourse, you can create a page for your business, you can organize
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and promote an activist or community group. Pornhub does not facilitate those things. I have my
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judgments about individuals who visit pornographic websites, but those judgments are not within the
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purview of this video. But we do know that the House of Commons Ethics Committee was studying MindGeek,
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which is the parent company of Pornhub. And we know from investigative reporting and the Ethics
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Committee hearings, that Pornhub does not have proper age verification checks on their website.
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They profit off of child abuse and sex trafficking and child sex trafficking. And as a company, they
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are flippant about having non-consensual recordings on their website, and they are happy to profit off of
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non-consensual interactions, some of which involve minors. One of the testimonies given at the Ethics Committee
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was by Serena Flaites, who had a sexual video of her non-consensually uploaded to Pornhub when she
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was 14 years old. And Pornhub would repeatedly allow this video to be re-uploaded. So in light of all this,
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Germany actually recently banned Pornhub. Now here's what I'm getting at though. Let's say you hold a
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perspective or belief or opinion that doesn't fit in with the progressive leftist narrative. So let's say
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you have a Twitter or a YouTube account where you talk about how trans women are not real women,
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or how immigrants to Canada should be screened for their cultural values. Engaging in these kinds of
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discussions is seen by many government officials and academics and other authoritative figures to be
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hate speech. And so inevitably, you know, having these open conversations is going to be lumped into
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the same government purview as child sexual exploitation and distributing non-consensual
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images. So this is just so weird and it doesn't make sense. And frankly, when I look at the things
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that the commission wants to crack down on, like child exploitation, I am in absolute agreement that
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we need to crack down on this more than we already do. I actually personally just prefer Germany's
1.00
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approach, which was to ban Pornhub because why try to regulate something that is so corrupt that it
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just needs to be shut down. But going after potentially offensive opinions that are posted on Twitter
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and Facebook, that is simply not something that needs a dedicated government commission. You know, let's not
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pretend that free thought and open inquiry, which are seen as hate speech by the leftists and liberals,
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have anything to do with the rest of the things that this Digital Safety Commission wants to cover.
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Heritage Minister Stephen Guibo told CTV News that we need this because what we're seeing and what
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we've been seeing over the last few years is that violence and hate speech have been on the increase
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on social media platforms. Canadians have been asking us, the government, to intervene and that's
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exactly what we're doing. However, according to Blacklock's reporter, Stephen Guibo's office,
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when they were asked about how much correspondence they have gotten about, you know, from people asking
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for more internet censorship or regulation, they haven't received any such correspondence. So don't
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let Stephen Guibo fool you. This is not well thought out legislation and we most certainly do not need
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free thought, critical thinking, open inquiry, and free discussion lumped in with criminal activity.
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I'm Lindsay Shepard with True North. Thanks so much for watching. If you like our coverage and
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commentary, please consider becoming a supporter at donate.tnc.news. Bye for now.