Liberals Extort Facebook And Wonder Why Canadian News Got Blocked
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
196.44185
Summary
The liberal response to Bill C-18 causing news stories to disappear on Facebook and Google from Canada is absolutely infuriating from someone who actually works in the independent media space. The basic argument to people like Pierre Pouliot and others like him is that somehow it's not their fault because they should have just gone along with the stupid regulations.
Transcript
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The liberal response to Bill C-18 causing news stories to disappear on Facebook and Google
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from Canada is absolutely infuriating from someone who actually works in the independent
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media space. The basic argument to people like Pierre Polyev who are accusing them rightly of
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effectively causing media to disappear on Facebook is that somehow it's not their fault because
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Facebook is taking down the stories as if Facebook should have just gone along with the stupid
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regulations in Bill C-18. If you don't know yet, what effectively Bill C-18 was doing was
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demanding that big tech platforms like Google and Meta pay journalists to post their news
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onto their platforms. Basically, I, as one of the operators of the National Telegraph, post
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National Telegraph stories onto their platform. It's a free platform. I'm not paying any money
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for it at all. I'm just posting my stuff on the National Telegraph's page. People can read
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it. People can comment, share. They can do anything they want. Now, Bill C-18 would say
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that Facebook now owes me 50 bucks every single time I post a story or they owe me money per
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click that I generate for on my story. It's absolutely insane to think that that was at
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all reasonable to do to Facebook and Google. These companies usually don't run on massive
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margins in terms of what they get per click on people's articles. If anything, they actually
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want you to stay on the website. They don't want you leaving the website to go read stuff
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on my website or someone else's. They want you to stay on Facebook as long as possible.
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So it doesn't even necessarily benefit them for the National Telegraph to be posting article links.
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They benefit more from us posting videos directly on the platform. But the liberals are responding
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to this by basically saying that Facebook should have incurred all the extra costs that they
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were forcing them to take on. And because Facebook is basically opting out of Canadian news in
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general because they don't want to have to pay any of that stuff. Now it's their fault that news
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isn't there. It's like if you triple the taxes on companies in whatever given province you live in,
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and then the government tries to blame those companies for packing up and moving to a different
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place because the taxes are too high. It's not their fault for just looking at the financial benefit
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behind keeping Canadian news up in the aftermath of Bill C-18 and deciding that they don't even want to
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host it anymore. It's the liberals fault for even putting those costs on them at all. And now the
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liberals are even going after a conservative leader, Pierre Paglia, for basically accusing Justin
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Trudeau of passing a law that makes like news from the internet disappear and then making a quip
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later on that, you know, this kind of does reflect Justin Trudeau's admiration of the basic
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dictatorship of China. And they're basically saying, oh, well, he doesn't understand what he's
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talking about. Bill C-18 is actually meant to get journalists paid, but it's just those greedy
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corporations who don't want to pay journalists. And it's like, you don't have to like big tech
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companies. You don't have to like Google or Meta or any other big tech company to be able to say that
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it's kind of absurd that journalists who are already freely using the platform because it helps them
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distribute their material so that people read it. So they maybe get money on ads on their website,
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or they maybe get donations or they get subscriptions that because they're, or while
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already using this free platform, that's enabling them to reach people. They're also owed money for
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using this free platform. Having not had to pay any of the costs that Facebook or Google incurs
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to operate their platforms, you're still owed money for using their free platforms in which they give
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you lots of options to connect to your audience. It's, it's just like, again, every single time the
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liberals have a stupid policy that backfires, they always make it someone else's fault that it somehow
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is just greedy businesses. When they pass new carbon taxes, when they raise the current carbon
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tax, when they raise corporate taxes, when they raise income taxes, it's never the fault of them
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for having businesses shut down because of all the new costs incurred. It's just, you know, corporate
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greed. That's why, that's why, you know, that's why prices are increasing. It's just, you know,
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there's just like, there's just not enough like support for small businesses or small businesses go
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under or whatever that the government needs to now subsidize them or somehow they went under for
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completely different reasons. It must've been a bad business model, not the fact that we
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saddled them with millions of dollars and more taxes, but whatever, it's getting frustrating to
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live in Canada, especially as an independent media journalist. But hopefully this does get wrapped up
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soon. I would love for Bill C-18 to get removed before Trudeau's out of power. But unfortunately,
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I do think I'm going to have to wait two years until Trudeau's out of power in 2025 because his new
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current heritage minister, I forget what her name is. It doesn't even matter. They're all
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effectively just Trudeau with a different name and face. She said she's going to still hold her
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ground on Bill C-18 and she's not going to back down. And again, it's because their motivation was
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never actually to get journalists paid. Their motivation was to force Google and Meta's hand
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into removing all Canadian content because the less Canadian news content that's moving around Facebook
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and Google, the less criticism Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party is going to get. Because when
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you don't hear anything about what the Liberals are up to, most people are just going to assume
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that they're not up to anything nefarious or scandalous. And whenever you do hear about the
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Liberals, because it's usually negative, it's better for them just to tap down on the distribution of
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news and then just increase subsidies to their legacy media partners who back them up and try to
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bolster their reputation. But anyways, that's pretty much it for this video. Maybe help me out with my
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Give, Send, Go campaign I'm running for legal funds. I never require anyone to give me money. I'm still
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going to stick around even if people don't give me money for my legal case. But I've had to pay more
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than $15,000 into defending myself from a Chinese billionaire. It's an absolutely ridiculous case.
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The evidence that his party submitted as to how TNT had wronged him was ridiculous. It was like four
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pieces of evidence that didn't actually prove anything. And we in response produced like 10
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or 12 pieces of evidence that directly showed that all of our reporting from our guest writer
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was completely accurate. So if you're able to donate to that, that's great. And make sure to
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follow the National Telegraph on Twitter. You can just go to the search bar on Twitter and type in
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the National Telegraph or at Nat Telegraph to be able to actually see our articles
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because of the tamp down on both Facebook and Google.