Podcasts about online news act

After a hiatus, we've officially restarted the Uncommons podcast, and our first long-form interview is with Professor Taylor Owen to discuss the ever changing landscape of the digital world, the fast emergence of AI and the implications for our kids, consumer safety and our democracy.Taylor Owen's work focuses on the intersection of media, technology and public policy and can be found at taylorowen.com. He is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications and the founding Director of The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University where he is also an Associate Professor. He is the host of the Globe and Mail's Machines Like Us podcast and author of several books.Taylor also joined me for this discussion more than 5 years ago now. And a lot has happened in that time.Upcoming episodes will include guests Tanya Talaga and an episode focused on the border bill C-2, with experts from The Citizen Lab and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.We'll also be hosting a live event at the Naval Club of Toronto with Catherine McKenna, who will be launching her new book Run Like a Girl. Register for free through Eventbrite. As always, if you have ideas for future guests or topics, email us at info@beynate.ca Chapters:0:29 Setting the Stage1:44 Core Problems & Challenges4:31 Information Ecosystem Crisis10:19 Signals of Reliability & Policy Challenges14:33 Legislative Efforts18:29 Online Harms Act Deep Dive25:31 AI Fraud29:38 Platform Responsibility32:55 Future Policy DirectionFurther Reading and Listening:Public rules for big tech platforms with Taylor Owen — Uncommons Podcast“How the Next Government can Protect Canada's Information Ecosystem.” Taylor Owen with Helen Hayes, The Globe and Mail, April 7, 2025.Machines Like Us PodcastBill C-63Transcript:Nate Erskine-Smith00:00-00:43Welcome to Uncommons, I'm Nate Erskine-Smith. This is our first episode back after a bit of a hiatus, and we are back with a conversation focused on AI safety, digital governance, and all of the challenges with regulating the internet. I'm joined by Professor Taylor Owen. He's an expert in these issues. He's been writing about these issues for many years. I actually had him on this podcast more than five years ago, and he's been a huge part of getting us in Canada to where we are today. And it's up to this government to get us across the finish line, and that's what we talk about. Taylor, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. So this feels like deja vu all over again, because I was going back before you arrived this morning and you joined this podcast in April of 2020 to talk about platform governance.Taylor Owen00:43-00:44It's a different world.Taylor00:45-00:45In some ways.Nate Erskine-Smith00:45-01:14Yeah. Well, yeah, a different world for sure in many ways, but also the same challenges in some ways too. Additional challenges, of course. But I feel like in some ways we've come a long way because there's been lots of consultation. There have been some legislative attempts at least, but also we haven't really accomplished the thing. So let's talk about set the stage. Some of the same challenges from five years ago, but some new challenges. What are the challenges? What are the problems we're trying to solve? Yeah, I mean, many of them are the same, right?Taylor Owen01:14-03:06I mean, this is part of the technology moves fast. But when you look at the range of things citizens are concerned about when they and their children and their friends and their families use these sets of digital technologies that shape so much of our lives, many things are the same. So they're worried about safety. They're worried about algorithmic content and how that's feeding into what they believe and what they think. They're worried about polarization. We're worried about the integrity of our democracy and our elections. We're worried about sort of some of the more acute harms of like real risks to safety, right? Like children taking their own lives and violence erupting, political violence emerging. Like these things have always been present as a part of our digital lives. And that's what we were concerned about five years ago, right? When we talked about those harms, that was roughly the list. Now, the technologies we were talking about at the time were largely social media platforms, right? So that was the main way five years ago that we shared, consumed information in our digital politics and our digital public lives. And that is what's changing slightly. Now, those are still prominent, right? We're still on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook to a certain degree. But we do now have a new layer of AI and particularly chatbots. And I think a big question we face in this conversation in this, like, how do we develop policies that maximize the benefits of digital technologies and minimize the harms, which is all this is trying to do. Do we need new tools for AI or some of the things we worked on for so many years to get right, the still the right tools for this new set of technologies with chatbots and various consumer facing AI interfaces?Nate Erskine-Smith03:07-03:55My line in politics has always been, especially around privacy protections, that we are increasingly living our lives online. And especially, you know, my kids are growing up online and our laws need to reflect that reality. All of the challenges you've articulated to varying degrees exist in offline spaces, but can be incredibly hard. The rules we have can be incredibly hard to enforce at a minimum in the online space. And then some rules are not entirely fit for purpose and they need to be updated in the online space. It's interesting. I was reading a recent op-ed of yours, but also some of the research you've done. This really stood out. So you've got the Hogue Commission that says disinformation is the single biggest threat to our democracy. That's worth pausing on.Taylor Owen03:55-04:31Yeah, exactly. Like the commission that spent a year at the request of all political parties in parliament, at the urging of the opposition party, so it spent a year looking at a wide range of threats to our democratic systems that everybody was concerned about originating in foreign countries. And the conclusion of that was that the single biggest threat to our democracy is the way information flows through our society and how we're not governing it. Like that is a remarkable statement and it kind of came and went. And I don't know why we moved off from that so fast.Nate Erskine-Smith04:31-05:17Well, and there's a lot to pull apart there because you've got purposeful, intentional, bad actors, foreign influence operations. But you also have a really core challenge of just the reliability and credibility of the information ecosystem. So you have Facebook, Instagram through Meta block news in Canada. And your research, this was the stat that stood out. Don't want to put you in and say like, what do we do? Okay. So there's, you say 11 million views of news have been lost as a consequence of that blocking. Okay. That's one piece of information people should know. Yeah. But at the same time.Taylor Owen05:17-05:17A day. Yeah.Nate Erskine-Smith05:18-05:18So right.Taylor Owen05:18-05:2711 million views a day. And we should sometimes we go through these things really fast. It's huge. Again, Facebook decides to block news. 40 million people in Canada. Yeah.Taylor05:27-05:29So 11 million times a Canadian.Taylor Owen05:29-05:45And what that means is 11 million times a Canadian would open one of their news feeds and see Canadian journalism is taken out of the ecosystem. And it was replaced by something. People aren't using these tools less. So that journalism was replaced by something else.Taylor05:45-05:45Okay.Taylor Owen05:45-05:46So that's just it.Nate Erskine-Smith05:46-06:04So on the one side, we've got 11 million views a day lost. Yeah. And on the other side, Canadians, the majority of Canadians get their news from social media. But when the Canadians who get their news from social media are asked where they get it from, they still say Instagram and Facebook. But there's no news there. Right.Taylor Owen06:04-06:04They say they get.Nate Erskine-Smith06:04-06:05It doesn't make any sense.Taylor Owen06:06-06:23It doesn't and it does. It's terrible. They ask Canadians, like, where do you get people who use social media to get their news? Where do they get their news? and they still say social media, even though it's not there. Journalism isn't there. Journalism isn't there. And I think one of the explanations— Traditional journalism. There is—Taylor06:23-06:23There is—Taylor Owen06:23-06:47Well, this is what I was going to get at, right? Like, there is—one, I think, conclusion is that people don't equate journalism with news about the world. There's not a one-to-one relationship there. Like, journalism is one provider of news, but so are influencers, so are podcasts, people listening to this. Like this would be labeled probably news in people's.Nate Erskine-Smith06:47-06:48Can't trust the thing we say.Taylor Owen06:48-07:05Right. And like, and neither of us are journalists, right? But we are providing information about the world. And if it shows up in people's feeds, as I'm sure it will, like that probably gets labeled in people's minds as news, right? As opposed to pure entertainment, as entertaining as you are.Nate Erskine-Smith07:05-07:06It's public affairs content.Taylor Owen07:06-07:39Exactly. So that's one thing that's happening. The other is that there's a generation of creators that are stepping into this ecosystem to both fill that void and that can use these tools much more effectively. So in the last election, we found that of all the information consumed about the election, 50% of it was created by creators. 50% of the engagement on the election was from creators. Guess what it was for journalists, for journalism? Like 5%. Well, you're more pessimistic though. I shouldn't have led with the question. 20%.Taylor07:39-07:39Okay.Taylor Owen07:39-07:56So all of journalism combined in the entire country, 20 percent of engagement, influencers, 50 percent in the last election. So like we've shifted, at least on social, the actors and people and institutions that are fostering our public.Nate Erskine-Smith07:56-08:09Is there a middle ground here where you take some people that play an influencer type role but also would consider themselves citizen journalists in a way? How do you – It's a super interesting question, right?Taylor Owen08:09-08:31Like who – when are these people doing journalism? When are they doing acts of journalism? Like someone can be – do journalism and 90% of the time do something else, right? And then like maybe they reveal something or they tell an interesting story that resonates with people or they interview somebody and it's revelatory and it's a journalistic act, right?Taylor08:31-08:34Like this is kind of a journalistic act we're playing here.Taylor Owen08:35-08:49So I don't think – I think these lines are gray. but I mean there's some other underlying things here which like it matters if I think if journalistic institutions go away entirely right like that's probably not a good thing yeah I mean that's whyNate Erskine-Smith08:49-09:30I say it's terrifying is there's a there's a lot of good in the in the digital space that is trying to be there's creative destruction there's a lot of work to provide people a direct sense of news that isn't that filter that people may mistrust in traditional media. Having said that, so many resources and there's so much history to these institutions and there's a real ethics to journalism and journalists take their craft seriously in terms of the pursuit of truth. Absolutely. And losing that access, losing the accessibility to that is devastating for democracy. I think so.Taylor Owen09:30-09:49And I think the bigger frame of that for me is a democracy needs signals of – we need – as citizens in a democracy, we need signals of reliability. Like we need to know broadly, and we're not always going to agree on it, but like what kind of information we can trust and how we evaluate whether we trust it.Nate Erskine-Smith09:49-10:13And that's what – that is really going away. Pause for a sec. So you could imagine signals of reliability is a good phrase. what does it mean for a legislator when it comes to putting a rule in place? Because you could imagine, you could have a Blade Runner kind of rule that says you've got to distinguish between something that is human generatedTaylor10:13-10:14and something that is machine generated.Nate Erskine-Smith10:15-10:26That seems straightforward enough. It's a lot harder if you're trying to distinguish between Taylor, what you're saying is credible, and Nate, what you're saying is not credible,Taylor10:27-10:27which is probably true.Nate Erskine-Smith10:28-10:33But how do you have a signal of reliability in a different kind of content?Taylor Owen10:34-13:12I mean, we're getting into like a journalistic journalism policy here to a certain degree, right? And it's a wicked problem because the primary role of journalism is to hold you personally to account. And you setting rules for what they can and can't do and how they can and can't behave touches on some real like third rails here, right? It's fraught. However, I don't think it should ever be about policy determining what can and can't be said or what is and isn't journalism. The real problem is the distribution mechanism and the incentives within it. So a great example and a horrible example happened last week, right? So Charlie Kirk gets assassinated. I don't know if you opened a feed in the few days after that, but it was a horrendous place, right? Social media was an awful, awful, awful place because what you saw in that feed was the clearest demonstration I've ever seen in a decade of looking at this of how those algorithmic feeds have become radicalized. Like all you saw on every platform was the worst possible representations of every view. Right. Right. It was truly shocking and horrendous. Like people defending the murder and people calling for the murder of leftists and like on both sides. Right. people blaming Israel, people, whatever. Right. And that isn't a function of like- Aaron Charlie Kirk to Jesus. Sure. Like- It was bonkers all the way around. Totally bonkers, right? And that is a function of how those ecosystems are designed and the incentives within them. It's not a function of like there was journalism being produced about that. Like New York Times, citizens were doing good content about what was happening. It was like a moment of uncertainty and journalism was doing or playing a role, but it wasn't And so I think with all of these questions, including the online harms ones, and I think how we step into an AI governance conversation, the focus always has to be on those systems. I'm like, what is who and what and what are the incentives and the technical decisions being made that determine what we experience when we open these products? These are commercial products that we're choosing to consume. And when we open them, a whole host of business and design and technical decisions and human decisions shape the effect it has on us as people, the effect it has on our democracy, the vulnerabilities that exist in our democracy, the way foreign actors or hostile actors can take advantage of them, right? Like all of that stuff we've been talking about, the role reliability of information plays, like these algorithms could be tweaked for reliable versus unreliable content, right? Over time.Taylor13:12-13:15That's not a – instead of reactionary –Taylor Owen13:15-13:42Or like what's most – it gets most engagement or what makes you feel the most angry, which is largely what's driving X, for example, right now, right? You can torque all those things. Now, I don't think we want government telling companies how they have to torque it. But we can slightly tweak the incentives to get better content, more reliable content, less polarizing content, less hateful content, less harmful content, right? Those dials can be incentivized to be turned. And that's where the policy space should play, I think.Nate Erskine-Smith13:43-14:12And your focus on systems and assessing risks with systems. I think that's the right place to play. I mean, we've seen legislative efforts. You've got the three pieces in Canada. You've got online harms. You've got the privacy and very kind of vague initial foray into AI regs, which we can get to. And then a cybersecurity piece. And all of those ultimately died on the order paper. Yeah. We also had the journalistic protection policies, right, that the previous government did.Taylor Owen14:12-14:23I mean – Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can debate their merits. Yeah. But there was considerable effort put into backstopping the institutions of journalism by the – Well, they're twofold, right?Nate Erskine-Smith14:23-14:33There's the tax credit piece, sort of financial support. And then there was the Online News Act. Right. Which was trying to pull some dollars out of the platforms to pay for the news as well. Exactly.Taylor14:33-14:35So the sort of supply and demand side thing, right?Nate Erskine-Smith14:35-14:38There's the digital service tax, which is no longer a thing.Taylor Owen14:40-14:52Although it still is a piece of past legislation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It still is a thing. Yeah, yeah. Until you guys decide whether to negate the thing you did last year or not, right? Yeah.Nate Erskine-Smith14:52-14:55I don't take full responsibility for that one.Taylor Owen14:55-14:56No, you shouldn't.Nate Erskine-Smith14:58-16:03But other countries have seen more success. Yeah. And so you've got in the UK, in Australia, the EU really has led the way. 2018, the EU passes GDPR, which is a privacy set of rules, which we are still behind seven years later. But you've got in 2022, 2023, you've got Digital Services Act that passes. You've got Digital Markets Act. And as I understand it, and we've had, you know, we've both been involved in international work on this. And we've heard from folks like Francis Hogan and others about the need for risk-based assessments. And you're well down the rabbit hole on this. But isn't it at a high level? You deploy a technology. You've got to identify material risks. You then have to take reasonable measures to mitigate those risks. That's effectively the duty of care built in. And then ideally, you've got the ability for third parties, either civil society or some public office that has the ability to audit whether you have adequately identified and disclosed material risks and whether you have taken reasonable steps to mitigate.Taylor Owen16:04-16:05That's like how I have it in my head.Nate Erskine-Smith16:05-16:06I mean, that's it.Taylor Owen16:08-16:14Write it down. Fill in the legislation. Well, I mean, that process happened. I know. That's right. I know.Nate Erskine-Smith16:14-16:25Exactly. Which people, I want to get to that because C63 gets us a large part of the way there. I think so. And yet has been sort of like cast aside.Taylor Owen16:25-17:39Exactly. Let's touch on that. But I do think what you described as the online harms piece of this governance agenda. When you look at what the EU has done, they have put in place the various building blocks for what a broad digital governance agenda might look like. Because the reality of this space, which we talked about last time, and it's the thing that's infuriating about digital policy, is that you can't do one thing. There's no – digital economy and our digital lives are so vast and the incentives and the effect they have on society is so broad that there's no one solution. So anyone who tells you fix privacy policy and you'll fix all the digital problems we just talked about are full of it. Anyone who says competition policy, like break up the companies, will solve all of these problems. is wrong, right? Anyone who says online harms policy, which we'll talk about, fixes everything is wrong. You have to do all of them. And Europe has, right? They updated their privacy policy. They've been to build a big online harms agenda. They updated their competition regime. And they're also doing some AI policy too, right? So like you need comprehensive approaches, which is not an easy thing to do, right? It means doing three big things all over.Nate Erskine-Smith17:39-17:41Especially minority parlance, short periods of time, legislatively.Taylor Owen17:41-18:20Different countries have taken different pieces of it. Now, on the online harms piece, which is what the previous government took really seriously, and I think it's worth putting a point on that, right, that when we talked last was the beginning of this process. After we spoke, there was a national expert panel. There were 20 consultations. There were four citizens' assemblies. There was a national commission, right? Like a lot of work went into looking at what every other country had done because this is a really wicked, difficult problem and trying to learn from what Europe, Australia and the UK had all done. And we kind of taking the benefit of being late, right? So they were all ahead of us.Taylor18:21-18:25People you work with on that grant committee. We're all quick and do our own consultations.Taylor Owen18:26-19:40Exactly. And like the model that was developed out of that, I think, was the best model of any of those countries. And it's now seen as internationally, interestingly, as the new sort of milestone that everybody else is building on, right? And what it does is it says if you're going to launch a digital product, right, like a consumer-facing product in Canada, you need to assess risk. And you need to assess risk on these broad categories of harms that we have decided as legislators we care about or you've decided as legislators you cared about, right? Child safety, child sexual abuse material, fomenting violence and extremist content, right? Like things that are like broad categories that we've said are we think are harmful to our democracy. All you have to do as a company is a broad assessment of what could go wrong with your product. If you find something could go wrong, so let's say, for example, let's use a tangible example. Let's say you are a social media platform and you are launching a product that's going to be used by kids and it allows adults to contact kids without parental consent or without kids opting into being a friend. What could go wrong with that?Nate Erskine-Smith19:40-19:40Yeah.Taylor19:40-19:43Like what could go wrong? Yeah, a lot could go wrong.Taylor Owen19:43-20:27And maybe strange men will approach teenage girls. Maybe, right? Like if you do a risk assessment, that is something you might find. You would then be obligated to mitigate that risk and show how you've mitigated it, right? Like you put in a policy in place to show how you're mitigating it. And then you have to share data about how these tools are used so that we can monitor, publics and researchers can monitor whether that mitigation strategy worked. That's it. In that case, that feature was launched by Instagram in Canada without any risk assessment, without any safety evaluation. And we know there was like a widespread problem of teenage girls being harassed by strange older men.Taylor20:28-20:29Incredibly creepy.Taylor Owen20:29-20:37A very easy, but not like a super illegal thing, not something that would be caught by the criminal code, but a harm we can all admit is a problem.Taylor20:37-20:41And this kind of mechanism would have just filtered out.Taylor Owen20:41-20:51Default settings, right? And doing thinking a bit before you launch a product in a country about what kind of broad risks might emerge when it's launched and being held accountable to do it for doing that.Nate Erskine-Smith20:52-21:05Yeah, I quite like the we I mean, maybe you've got a better read of this, but in the UK, California has pursued this. I was looking at recently, Elizabeth Denham is now the Jersey Information Commissioner or something like that.Taylor Owen21:05-21:06I know it's just yeah.Nate Erskine-Smith21:07-21:57I don't random. I don't know. But she is a Canadian, for those who don't know Elizabeth Denham. And she was the information commissioner in the UK. And she oversaw the implementation of the first age-appropriate design code. That always struck me as an incredibly useful approach. In that even outside of social media platforms, even outside of AI, take a product like Roblox, where tons of kids use it. And just forcing companies to ensure that the default settings are prioritizing child safety so that you don't put the onus on parents and kids to figure out each of these different games and platforms. In a previous world of consumer protection, offline, it would have been de facto. Of course we've prioritized consumer safety first and foremost. But in the online world, it's like an afterthought.Taylor Owen21:58-24:25Well, when you say consumer safety, it's worth like referring back to what we mean. Like a duty of care can seem like an obscure concept. But your lawyer is a real thing, right? Like you walk into a store. I walk into your office. I have an expectation that the bookshelves aren't going to fall off the wall and kill me, right? And you have to bolt them into the wall because of that, right? Like that is a duty of care that you have for me when I walk into your public space or private space. Like that's all we're talking about here. And the age-appropriate design code, yes, like sort of developed, implemented by a Canadian in the UK. And what it says, it also was embedded in the Online Harms Act, right? If we'd passed that last year, we would be implementing an age-appropriate design code as we speak, right? What that would say is any product that is likely to be used by a kid needs to do a set of additional things, not just these risk assessments, right? But we think like kids don't have the same rights as adults. We have different duties to protect kids as adults, right? So maybe they should do an extra set of things for their digital products. And it includes things like no behavioral targeting, no advertising, no data collection, no sexual adult content, right? Like kind of things that like – Seem obvious. And if you're now a child in the UK and you open – you go on a digital product, you are safer because you have an age-appropriate design code governing your experience online. Canadian kids don't have that because that bill didn't pass, right? So like there's consequences to this stuff. and I get really frustrated now when I see the conversation sort of pivoting to AI for example right like all we're supposed to care about is AI adoption and all the amazing things AI is going to do to transform our world which are probably real right like not discounting its power and just move on from all of these both problems and solutions that have been developed to a set of challenges that both still exist on social platforms like they haven't gone away people are still using these tools and the harms still exist and probably are applicable to this next set of technologies as well. So this moving on from what we've learned and the work that's been done is just to the people working in this space and like the wide stakeholders in this country who care about this stuff and working on it. It just, it feels like you say deja vu at the beginning and it is deja vu, but it's kind of worse, right? Cause it's like deja vu and then ignoring theTaylor24:25-24:29five years of work. Yeah, deja vu if we were doing it again. Right. We're not even, we're not evenTaylor Owen24:29-24:41Well, yeah. I mean, hopefully I actually am not, I'm actually optimistic, I would say that we will, because I actually think of if for a few reasons, like one, citizens want it, right? Like.Nate Erskine-Smith24:41-24:57Yeah, I was surprised on the, so you mentioned there that the rules that we design, the risk assessment framework really applied to social media could equally be applied to deliver AI safety and it could be applied to new technology in a useful way.Taylor Owen24:58-24:58Some elements of it. Exactly.Nate Erskine-Smith24:58-25:25I think AI safety is a broad bucket of things. So let's get to that a little bit because I want to pull the pieces together. So I had a constituent come in the office and he is really like super mad. He's super mad. Why is he mad? Does that happen very often? Do people be mad when they walk into this office? Not as often as you think, to be honest. Not as often as you think. And he's mad because he believes Mark Carney ripped him off.Taylor Owen25:25-25:25Okay.Nate Erskine-Smith25:25-26:36Okay. Yep. He believes Mark Carney ripped him off, not with broken promise in politics, not because he said one thing and is delivering something else, nothing to do with politics. He saw a video online, Mark Carney told him to invest money. He invested money and he's out the 200 bucks or whatever it was. And I was like, how could you possibly have lost money in this way? This is like, this was obviously a scam. Like what, how could you have been deceived? But then I go and I watched the video And it is, okay, I'm not gonna send the 200 bucks and I've grown up with the internet, but I can see how- Absolutely. In the same way, phone scams and Nigerian princes and all of that have their own success rate. I mean, this was a very believable video that was obviously AI generated. So we are going to see rampant fraud. If we aren't already, we are going to see many challenges with respect to AI safety. What over and above the risk assessment piece, what do we do to address these challenges?Taylor Owen26:37-27:04So that is a huge problem, right? Like the AI fraud, AI video fraud is a huge challenge. In the election, when we were monitoring the last election, by far the biggest problem or vulnerability of the election was a AI generated video campaign. that every day would take videos of Polyevs and Carney's speeches from the day before and generate, like morph them into conversations about investment strategies.Taylor27:05-27:07And it was driving people to a crypto scam.Taylor Owen27:08-27:11But it was torquing the political discourse.Taylor27:11-27:11That's what it must have been.Taylor Owen27:12-27:33I mean, there's other cases of this, but that's probably, and it was running rampant on particularly meta platforms. They were flagged. They did nothing about it. There were thousands of these videos circulating throughout the entire election, right? And it's not like the end of the world, right? Like nobody – but it torqued our political debate. It ripped off some people. And these kinds of scams are –Taylor27:33-27:38It's clearly illegal. It's clearly illegal. It probably breaks his election law too, misrepresenting a political figure, right?Taylor Owen27:38-27:54So I think there's probably an Elections Canada response to this that's needed. And it's fraud. And it's fraud, absolutely. So what do you do about that, right? And the head of the Canadian Banking Association said there's like billions of dollars in AI-based fraud in the Canadian economy right now. Right? So it's a big problem.Taylor27:54-27:55Yeah.Taylor Owen27:55-28:46I actually think there's like a very tangible policy solution. You put these consumer-facing AI products into the Online Harms Act framework, right? And then you add fraud and AI scams as a category of harm. And all of a sudden, if you're meta and you are operating in Canada during an election, you'd have to do a risk assessment on like AI fraud potential of your product. Responsibility for your platform. And then it starts to circulate. We would see it. They'd be called out on it. They'd have to take it down. And like that's that, right? Like so that we have mechanisms for dealing with this. But it does mean evolving what we worked on over the past five years, these like only harms risk assessment models and bringing in some of the consumer facing AI, both products and related harms into the framework.Nate Erskine-Smith28:47-30:18To put it a different way, I mean, so this is years ago now that we had this, you know, grand committee in the UK holding Facebook and others accountable. This really was creating the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And the platforms at the time were really holding firm to this idea of Section 230 and avoiding host liability and saying, oh, we couldn't possibly be responsible for everything on our platform. And there was one problem with that argument, which is they completely acknowledged the need for them to take action when it came to child pornography. And so they said, yeah, well, you know, no liability for us. But of course, there can be liability on this one specific piece of content and we'll take action on this one specific piece of content. And it always struck me from there on out. I mean, there's no real intellectual consistency here. It's more just what should be in that category of things that they should take responsibility for. And obviously harmful content like that should be – that's an obvious first step but obvious for everyone. But there are other categories. Fraud is another one. When they're making so much money, when they are investing so much money in AI, when they're ignoring privacy protections and everything else throughout the years, I mean, we can't leave it up to them. And setting a clear set of rules to say this is what you're responsible for and expanding that responsibility seems to make a good amount of sense.Taylor Owen30:18-30:28It does, although I think those responsibilities need to be different for different kinds of harms. Because there are different speech implications and apocratic implications of sort of absolute solutions to different kinds of content.Taylor30:28-30:30So like child pornography is a great example.Taylor Owen30:30-31:44In the Online Harms Bill Act, for almost every type of content, it was that risk assessment model. But there was a carve out for child sexual abuse material. So including child pornography. And for intimate images and videos shared without consent. It said the platforms actually have a different obligation, and that's to take it down within 24 hours. And the reason you can do it with those two kinds of content is because if we, one, the AI is actually pretty good at spotting it. It might surprise you, but there's a lot of naked images on the internet that we can train AI with. So we're actually pretty good at using AI to pull this stuff down. But the bigger one is that we are, I think, as a society, it's okay to be wrong in the gray area of that speech, right? Like if something is like debatable, whether it's child pornography, I'm actually okay with us suppressing the speech of the person who sits in that gray area. Whereas for something like hate speech, it's a really different story, right? Like we do not want to suppress and over index for that gray area on hate speech because that's going to capture a lot of reasonable debate that we probably want.Nate Erskine-Smith31:44-31:55Yeah, I think soliciting investment via fraud probably falls more in line with the child pornography category where it's, you know, very obviously illegal.Taylor Owen31:55-32:02And that mechanism is like a takedown mechanism, right? Like if we see fraud, if we know it's fraud, then you take it down, right? Some of these other things we have to go with.Nate Erskine-Smith32:02-32:24I mean, my last question really is you pull the threads together. You've got these different pieces that were introduced in the past. And you've got a government that lots of similar folks around the table, but a new government and a new prime minister certainly with a vision for getting the most out of AI when it comes to our economy.Taylor32:24-32:25Absolutely.Nate Erskine-Smith32:25-33:04You have, for the first time in this country, an AI minister, a junior minister to industry, but still a specific title portfolio and with his own deputy minister and really wants to be seized with this. And in a way, I think that from every conversation I've had with him that wants to maximize productivity in this country using AI, but is also cognizant of the risks and wants to address AI safety. So where from here? You know, you've talked in the past about sort of a grander sort of tech accountability and sovereignty act. Do we do piecemeal, you know, a privacy bill here and an AI safety bill and an online harms bill and we have disparate pieces? What's the answer here?Taylor Owen33:05-34:14I mean, I don't have the exact answer. But I think there's some like, there's some lessons from the past that we can, this government could take. And one is piecemeal bills that aren't centrally coordinated or have no sort of connectivity between them end up with piecemeal solutions that are imperfect and like would benefit from some cohesiveness between them, right? So when the previous government released ADA, the AI Act, it was like really intention in some real ways with the online harms approach. So two different departments issuing two similar bills on two separate technologies, not really talking to each other as far as I can tell from the outside, right? So like we need a coordinating, coordinated, comprehensive effort to digital governance. Like that's point one and we've never had it in this country. And when I saw the announcement of an AI minister, my mind went first to that he or that office could be that role. Like you could – because AI is – it's cross-cutting, right? Like every department in our federal government touches AI in one way or another. And the governance of AI and the adoption on the other side of AI by society is going to affect every department and every bill we need.Nate Erskine-Smith34:14-34:35So if Evan pulled in the privacy pieces that would help us catch up to GDPR. Which it sounds like they will, right? Some version of C27 will probably come back. If he pulls in the online harms pieces that aren't related to the criminal code and drops those provisions, says, you know, Sean Frazier, you can deal with this if you like. But these are the pieces I'm holding on to.Taylor Owen34:35-34:37With a frame of consumer safety, right?Nate Erskine-Smith34:37-34:37Exactly.Taylor Owen34:38-34:39If he wants...Nate Erskine-Smith34:39-34:54Which is connected to privacy as well, right? Like these are all... So then you have thematically a bill that makes sense. And then you can pull in as well the AI safety piece. And then it becomes a consumer protection bill when it comes to living our lives online. Yeah.Taylor Owen34:54-36:06And I think there's an argument whether that should be one bill or whether it's multiple ones. I actually don't think it... I think there's cases for both, right? There's concern about big omnibus bills that do too many things and too many committees reviewing them and whatever. that's sort of a machinery of government question right but but the principle that these should be tied together in a narrative that the government is explicit about making and communicating to publics right that if if you we know that 85 percent of canadians want ai to be regulated what do they mean what they mean is at the same time as they're being told by our government by companies that they should be using and embracing this powerful technology in their lives they're also seeing some risks. They're seeing risks to their kids. They're being told their jobs might disappear and might take their... Why should I use this thing? When I'm seeing some harms, I don't see you guys doing anything about these harms. And I'm seeing some potential real downside for me personally and my family. So even in the adoption frame, I think thinking about data privacy, safety, consumer safety, I think to me, that's the real frame here. It's like citizen safety, consumer safety using these products. Yeah, politically, I just, I mean, that is what it is. It makes sense to me.Nate Erskine-Smith36:06-36:25Right, I agree. And really lean into child safety at the same time. Because like I've got a nine-year-old and a five-year-old. They are growing up with the internet. And I do not want to have to police every single platform that they use. I do not want to have to log in and go, these are the default settings on the parental controls.Taylor36:25-36:28I want to turn to government and go, do your damn job.Taylor Owen36:28-36:48Or just like make them slightly safer. I know these are going to be imperfect. I have a 12-year-old. He spends a lot of time on YouTube. I know that's going to always be a place with sort of content that I would prefer he doesn't see. But I would just like some basic safety standards on that thing. So he's not seeing the worst of the worst.Nate Erskine-Smith36:48-36:58And we should expect that. Certainly at YouTube with its promotion engine, the recommendation function is not actively promoting terrible content to your 12 year old.Taylor Owen36:59-37:31Yeah. That's like de minimis. Can we just torque this a little bit, right? So like maybe he's not seeing content about horrible content about Charlie Kirk when he's a 12 year old on YouTube, right? Like, can we just do something? And I think that's a reasonable expectation as a citizen. But it requires governance. That will not – and that's – it's worth putting a real emphasis on that is one thing we've learned in this moment of repeated deja vus going back 20 years really since our experience with social media for sure through to now is that these companies don't self-govern.Taylor37:31-37:31Right.Taylor Owen37:32-37:39Like we just – we know that indisputably. So to think that AI is going to be different is delusional. No, it'll be pseudo-profit, not the public interest.Taylor37:39-37:44Of course. Because that's what we are. These are the largest companies in the world. Yeah, exactly. And AI companies are even bigger than the last generation, right?Taylor Owen37:44-38:00We're creating something new with the scale of these companies. And to think that their commercial incentives and their broader long-term goals of around AI are not going to override these safety concerns is just naive in the nth degree.Nate Erskine-Smith38:00-38:38But I think you make the right point, and it's useful to close on this, that these goals of realizing the productivity possibilities and potentials of AI alongside AI safety, these are not mutually exclusive or oppositional goals. that it's you create a sandbox to play in and companies will be more successful. And if you have certainty in regulations, companies will be more successful. And if people feel safe using these tools and having certainly, you know, if I feel safe with my kids learning these tools growing up in their classrooms and everything else, you're going to adoption rates will soar. Absolutely. And then we'll benefit.Taylor Owen38:38-38:43They work in tandem, right? And I think you can't have one without the other fundamentally.Nate Erskine-Smith38:45-38:49Well, I hope I don't invite you back five years from now when we have the same conversation.Taylor Owen38:49-38:58Well, I hope you invite me back in five years, but I hope it's like thinking back on all the legislative successes of the previous five years. I mean, that'll be the moment.Taylor38:58-38:59Sounds good. Thanks, David. Thanks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.uncommons.ca

On today's episode of The Candice Malcolm Show, guest host Kris Sims takes on two of the most pressing issues facing Canadians: the Carney Liberals' unrealistic electric vehicle mandate and Ottawa's stranglehold on Canada's media. A new Leger poll shows Canadians are rejecting the 2035 EV ban. Nearly 70% say it's unrealistic, while 71% say the mandate should be rolled back. Even among Liberal voters, most oppose it. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has warned the mandate would cost at least $300 billion in grid upgrades and charging stations, while destroying rural communities and wiping out Canada's auto sector. Kris is joined by Dan McTeague, President of Canadians for Affordable Energy and a former Liberal MP, to break down exactly why this policy is unaffordable, unworkable, and damaging to the auto industry. McTeague explains that quotas begin in January 2026 — just four months away — and will hammer car dealers with penalties while driving up prices for consumers. Kris also exposes to the government's media agenda, recently criticized by no less than the US State Department. The Online News Act was supposed to “save journalism,” but instead gutted independent outlets as Meta blocked Canadian news. Google cut a $100-million deal, yet most of the money flows to legacy outlets like the CBC, already swimming in $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding despite rock-bottom ratings. The result: Canadians get less access to news and more government-funded propaganda, while everyday families brace for higher costs under a $300B EV fantasy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quebec's ruling Coalition Avenir Québec is projected to lose all of its seats in 2026, after another byelection win by the Parti Québécois in Arthabaska signalled a growing sovereigntist wave. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has blasted Canada's Online News Act in a human rights report, saying it undermines press freedom. And a new Angus Reid poll shows most Canadians oppose criminalizing so-called “residential school denialism.” Tune in to the Daily Brief with Isaac Lamoureux and Walid Tamtam! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're looking at President Trump's comments about how the U.S. tells both Canada and Mexico 'what to do' when it comes to border security. Plus, the U.S. State Department is taking aim at Canada's Online News Act, criticizing the legislation for being an Orwellian censorship on press freedom. And finally, a new poll has found that older Canadians are hoping to see immigration levels lowered by the federal government.

TIFF's whiff and the legacy of Trudeau's media policies. Carney is reversing course on the Liberal's approach to media, but can the Canadian media ecosystem exorcise the ghost of Trudeau? Host: Jesse BrownCredits: James Nicholson (Producer), Lucie Laumonier (Associate producer and Fact Checking) Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), max collins (Director of Audio), Jesse Brown (Editor)Guest: Ronit NovakAdditional music by Audio Network Further reading: TIFF pulls documentary about Oct. 7 attack from lineup over security and rights concerns | CBC News Carney's Digital Recalibration: How the Government is Trending Away from Justin Trudeau's Digital Policy - Michael Geist Carney suggests he's considering rescinding Online News Act | National PostSome U.S. Republicans want Canada to axe its Online Streaming Act | CBC News Google sends $100M in funds to journalism collective in exchange for Online News Act exemption 23-year-old charged with assaulting Jewish man at Montreal park | CBC News Sponsors: Douglas: Douglas is giving our listeners a FREE Sleep Bundle with each mattress purchase. Get the sheets, pillows, mattress and pillow protectors FREE with your Douglas purchase today. Visit douglas.ca/canadaland to claim this offeroxio: Head over to canadaland.oxio.ca and use code CANADALAND for your first month free!If you value this podcast, support us! You'll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You'll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you'll be a part of the solution to Canada's journalism crisis, you'll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Carney is considering pulling the online news act Guest: Blaise Boehmer, Senior Director, Government Relations and Public Affairs, National public relations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Free For All Friday - Hour 1 Amanda Galbraith breaks down the biggest stories of the day with Canada's top newsmakers. On today's show: It's been a full week since the U.S. struck Canada with 35 percent tariffs. We still don't have a new trade deal with the Trump administration. So where do we go from here? We pick the brain of David McLaughlin, a former Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre plans to pressure the Carney Liberals to implement the Canadian Sovereignty Act. What exactly does this act entail? Adam Chambers, the Conservative MP for Simcoe North, pays us a visit. Canadian teenage tennis star Victoria Mboko wins the National Bank Open in stunning fashion. How about those Toronto Blue Jays?! They steamrolled the Colorado Rockies in a 3-game series earlier this week, and are now preparing for a pair of measuring-stick matchups. Free For All Friday - Hour 2 Hosts from all over the country join The Roundtable to discuss the five biggest stories of the week. Today's edition features former Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke and Crestview Strategy Vice-President Deirdra Tindale. Topic 1: The latest developments on the Canada-U.S. trade war. Topic 2: Should the Carney Liberals repeal the Online News Act? Should they at least consider it? Topic 3: In the midst of today's concerning wildfire risks, should Canadians stay out of the woods at all costs? Topic 4: Teenage tennis phenoms, public manners, and points programs.

Tech analyst and journalist Carmi Levy can be heard regularly on Montreal Now with Aaron Rand as well as CTV News.

On today's episode of the Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by Canada's #1 TikTok influencer and political commentator Mario Zelaya. They start the show by talking about how conservatives are winning the culture war in the U.S., but what about in Canada? Candice shares a few examples of how common sense is prevailing and how we still have our work cut out for us in fighting the extreme woke ideology. Next, they talk about a reporter's question to Prime Minister Carney about why he's putting his elbows down against President Trump. Carney provides a careful, corporate-speak response that Mario critiques as a “word salad.” Finally, they discuss Carney's answer to the question of whether he'll kill the Online News Act, how young people are becoming more conservative and why Liberals need to censor the internet in order to survive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elias Makos Andrew Caddell, a town councillor in Kamouraska, and President of the Task Force on Linguistic policy, and Paul Gott, Lead singer and guitarist for Montreal Punk Rock band the Ripcordz and a journalism professor at Concordia. Prominent Canadian pundit Paul Wells is pulling no punches in his latest column, under the headline “Let’s Admit It: Canada is losing the trade war with Trump.” Unable to get any important meetings with officials in Washington, D.C., Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Foreign Minister Anita Anand headed to Mexico and met with President Claudia Sheinbaum. Mark Carney is thinking of changing the Online News Act, or getting rid of it all together. This, two years after Meta “banned” news on its platforms. 42 giant 18-metre gold masts put up on Pierre-De Coubertin Avenue in front of the Big O are causing a lot of conversation. What do you say? Ugly or not?

Rolling ER closures in BC are hitting a crisis point! What can be done to stop this? PM Mark Carney is hinting at the possibility that he'll be rescinding the Online News Act. What does this mean for Canadians? Did you know Canada geese are protected under Migratory Birds Convention Act? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Political commentator James Mennie is a reporter, columnist and editor at the Montreal Gazette. He can be heard weekdays at 4:05 p.m. on Montreal Now with Aaron Rand.

Harbinger Showcase is a weekly podcast featuring highlights from Canada's #1 coast-to-coast community of politically and socially progressive podcasts. On this episode we explore the absence of the role of international law in the context of Israel and Palestine on GREEN PLANET MONITOR, unpack the effect of the Online News Act on pushing Canadian news habits to the right on THE NORTH STATE, make the case for fare-free transit on PULLBACK and look at the working-class and socialist response to the deep depression and government inaction of the 1930s that led to the founding of the CCF on THE ALBERTA ADVANTAGE.The Harbinger Media Network includes 83 podcasts focused on social, economic and environmental justice and featuring journalists, academics and activists on shows like The Breach Show, Tech Won't Save Us, Press Progress Sources & more.Harbinger Showcase is syndicated for community and campus radio and heard every week on CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal, at CFUV 101.9FM in Victoria, on CJUM 101.5FM and CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg, at CiTR 101.9FM and CFRO 100.5FM in Vancouver, at CJTM in Toronto and at CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Nova Scotia. This episode is brought to you by the national independent journalism community unrigged.ca.Find out more about the network, subscribe to the weekly newsletter and support our work at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Harbinger Showcase is a weekly podcast featuring highlights from Canada's #1 coast-to-coast community of politically and socially progressive podcasts. On this episode we explore the absence of the role of international law in the context of Israel and Palestine on GREEN PLANET MONITOR, unpack the effect of the Online News Act on pushing Canadian news habits to the right on THE NORTH STATE, make the case for fare-free transit on PULLBACK and look at the working-class and socialist response to the deep depression and government inaction of the 1930s that led to the founding of the CCF on THE ALBERTA ADVANTAGE.The Harbinger Media Network includes 83 podcasts focused on social, economic and environmental justice and featuring journalists, academics and activists on shows like The Breach Show, Tech Won't Save Us, Press Progress Sources & more.Harbinger Showcase is syndicated for community and campus radio and heard every week on CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal, at CFUV 101.9FM in Victoria, on CJUM 101.5FM and CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg, at CiTR 101.9FM and CFRO 100.5FM in Vancouver, at CJTM in Toronto and at CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Nova Scotia. This episode is brought to you by the national independent journalism community unrigged.ca.Find out more about the network, subscribe to the weekly newsletter and support our work at harbingermedianetwork.com.

A bill in the Oregon Legislature would set up a structure for social media companies to compensate local news producers whose content is shared on those sites. SB 686 is based in part on bills in California and New Jersey, as well as a law that recently went into effect in Canada. It was meant for the largest social media companies to compensate local news media organizations whose content is shared on the platforms — thus supporting news outlets, many which have seen advertising revenues plummet. But the law has had some unintended consequences, including Meta simply deciding not to allow news to be shared at all in Canada.  Joining us to talk about the law's intentions, its unintended consequences and possible solutions is Ryan Adam, formerly the vice president of government and public relationships for the Toronto Star. He led efforts to pass the country’s Online News Act, also known as the C-18 law, and testified in Salem in April about Canada’s law.  OPB is among the news media organizations that testified in support of the Oregon bill.

Today, we're looking at news that Google has dished out $22.2 million to over 100 different Canadian media outlets following the rollout of the Online News Act, with top recipients including Postmedia, the Globe and Mail, Metroland Media Group, La Presse, Coopérative nationale de l'information indépendante, Black Press Group and The Canadian Press, according to The Canadian Journalism Collective. Plus, Premier Doug Ford took aim at the federal Liberals over failed efforts at bail reform, pledging to take a stronger stance on crime in Ontario and calling out judges for acting like activists. And finally, with the balance of power in the House of Commons teetering towards a Liberal majority, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is campaigning to become the Speaker of the House.

Canada's liberal party and its leader Mark Carney are set to remain in control after the country held federal elections Monday. They were the first since Canada adopted the Online News Act in 2023, which requires online content providers — like social media platforms — to negotiate some sort of "fair" payment to news publishers in exchange for using their content. They can also do what Meta did — block news from their Facebook and Instagram platforms altogether. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Marketplace Senior Washington Correspondent Kimberly Adams, who's been reporting on the election from Canada, to learn more about that law and what happened to the online news environment after it passed.

Canada's liberal party and its leader Mark Carney are set to remain in control after the country held federal elections Monday. They were the first since Canada adopted the Online News Act in 2023, which requires online content providers — like social media platforms — to negotiate some sort of "fair" payment to news publishers in exchange for using their content. They can also do what Meta did — block news from their Facebook and Instagram platforms altogether. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Marketplace Senior Washington Correspondent Kimberly Adams, who's been reporting on the election from Canada, to learn more about that law and what happened to the online news environment after it passed.

Of all the outrageous things that Mark Carney has said in this campaign, promising to increase the CBC's budget and make that funding statutory is not just stupid but offensive. We need to defund the CBC and Radio Canada because state control of the media doesn't make Canada stronger but more oppressed by government.Mark Carney's CBC agenda threatens Canadian culture and independence. Is government-owned media the answer, or a political catastrophe in the making? In this video, we expose how Carney's push to enshrine CBC funding risks censorship, undermines free speech, and prioritizes political control over real Canadian values. Can we trust a system that subsidizes propaganda at taxpayers' expense? From the Online News Act to the erosion of independent journalism, this is about more than just CBC—it's about resisting a dangerous shift towards state-run narratives. We dive into the real impact of these decisions on Canadian culture, identity, and freedom. Why does Carney admire China's dictatorship, and what does that mean for Canada's future? The answers may shock you.Stay informed. Subscribe now, hit the notification bell, and join us in the fight against censorship. Support independent journalism—grab your merch and wear it with pride. Together, we can push back and stand for a free and informed Canada. Let's make change happen. Your voice matters.#pierrepoilievre #markcarney #news #cbcnews #canadaelectionCHAPTERS:00:00 - Mark Carney's Marxist-Leninist Ideology01:38 - Mark Carney's Propaganda Machine10:15 - Mark Carney's Media Subsidies13:24 - Mark Carney's Love for Ch1na21:54 - Patrick Bet-David's Advice for Poilievre25:25 - Poilievre's Campaign Manager Resigns29:34 - Internal Divide in the Conservative Party32:35 - The NDP's Decline35:07 - Renegotiating USMCA36:49 - Can Pierre Poilievre Win?38:59 - Closing Thoughts...UPPORT INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM JOIN THE KRAYDEN'S RIGHT RESISTANCE:-Stand on Guard Store Merch with a Message: https://standonguard.store/-Join my Newsletter for FREE or Paid Subscription: http://www.kraydensrightnews.com/-Buy Me a Coffee (1 time support): https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kraydensright-Join YouTube Membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1ED4fuuXo07MoobImXavaQ/joinLocals / Rumble Subscriber Option: https://kraydensright.locals.com/Pay Direct on Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/standonguard...SUBSCRIBE & HIT THE BELL TO KEEP SEEING THIS CHANNEL, FOR ALL THE NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW-Please SUBSCRIBE & HIT the bell. This is FREE and it will help you get notifications on my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KraydensRightwithDavidKrayden -Subscribe and hit the notifications on my Rumble channel to keep informed of the latest news https://rumble.com/c/KraydensRightwithDavidKraydenNEW!! You can now find Stand on Guard with David Krayden on most podcasts: Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Youtube music, Substack.

Publisher Rudyard Griffiths and editor-at-large Sean Speer discuss Friday's call between Mark Carney and President Trump and how it might influence the election campaign. They also cover The Hub's decision to donate the funding that it received under the Online News Act and why other news outlets should disclose how much funding that they are receiving. If you liked what you heard, please consider becoming a Hub Hero (https://thehub.ca/join/hero/). Hub Heroes also gets our premium paid newsletters featuring our best insight and analysis along with all our paid content on TheHub.ca. All these benefits are conferred for one year. Sign up now!

Send us a textMonths ago, proponents of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, dismissed warnings from Meta and Google, believing their threats to remove news links from their platforms were mere bluffs. But inevitable has occurred with Meta taking action recently by actively blocking news links and sharing on Facebook and Instagram.The situation appears dire, leaving little hope for resolution. In this episodes Canada's leading legal expert on this topic, Michael Geist explains what's happened and if there's a possible disentanglement for this mess.Guest: Michael GeistMichael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.https://www.michaelgeist.ca/Read Michael's blog on Bill C-18Listen to Michael's podcast Law BytesGardiner Roberts website https://www.grllp.com/Email Gavin Tighe gjtighe@grllp.comEmail Stephen Thiele sthiele@grllp.com

On this special episode of Hub Dialogues, publisher Rudyard Griffiths speaks with Maxime Cohen, Scale AI Chair in Data Science for Retail at McGill University, about his in-depth study about the Online News Act, its negative impact on Canadian newsrooms, and the future of news and journalism in Canada.  You can read the in-depth study on the Online News Act here: https://www.analysisgroup.com/globalassets/insights/publishing/2025_digital_disruption_in_news_media.pdf The Hub Dialogues features The Hub's editor-at-large, Sean Speer, in conversation with leading entrepreneurs, policymakers, scholars, and thinkers on the issues and challenges that will shape Canada's future at home and abroad. If you like what you are hearing on Hub Dialogues consider subscribing to The Hub's free weekly email newsletter featuring our insights and analysis on key public policy issues. Sign up here: https://thehub.ca/join/.

Welcome back, everyone, to the latest episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast! This week Spencer and Jared talk about some of the biggest headlines, they share some inspiring side hustles, and they reveal some very lucrative weird niche sites.   They discuss how Meta is getting rid of fact-checkers - https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/07/tech/meta-censorship-moderation/index.html They talk about how people are leaving Facebook and Instagram - https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/09/google-searches-for-deleting-facebook-instagram-explode-after-meta-ends-fact-checking/?guccounter=1 They discuss Google's launch of Gemini 2.0 - https://blog.google/technology/google-deepmind/google-gemini-ai-update-december-2024/ They mentionGoogle's exemption from the Online News Act -  https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/google-online-news-act-exemption-1.7422690 Jared's weird niche site - https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/ Spencer's weird niche site - https://en.akinator.com/   Ready to join a niche publishing mastermind, and hear from industry experts each week?  Join the Niche Pursuits Community here: https://community.nichepursuits.com Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links?  Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

Important correction: During this episode, Line editor Gurney utterly brain cramped and repeatedly referred to Jeff Simpson when he meant Lawrence Martin. No excuses. Just a mortifying flub. Mea culpa.In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on August 2, 2024, your hosts Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney discuss Jen's column this week, but they also discuss the broader problem with Canadian governance these days: disasters aren't to be learned from, they're to be blamed on someone or something else. There are undoubtedly things we should learn from the recent devastation of Jasper. We should learn them before something terrible happens to Banff, just to cite one example. But will we? Of course not. The fire in Jasper, like everything else, is just an opportunity for us all to convince ourselves that we're perfect and the other bastards are to blame again.They also discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, and wonder if something even more awful will have happened by the time anyone actually ends up listening to it. They also make a heartfelt appeal to Canadians, in response to the latest wave of awful antisemitism: maybe don't firebomb and deface Jewish sites? Like, you know, just ... don't? It's not helping! Just a thought!They wrap up with a chat about the latest media news. Matt is less than impressed with a column he read recently, though he thinks we should put it into a museum as a perfect example of how selfish, petty and petulant many Canadians remain. We are, he says, a very spoiled and childish country. They also talk about a new report on the first year for the Canadian media since the Online News Act passed. It hasn't gone great!All that, and more, in the latest episode of The Line Podcast. Take care, and as always, like, subscribe, share, and visit our website at  ReadTheLine.ca.

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. This week we're joined by University of Ottawa Professor and host of the Law Bytes podcast Michael Geist. We discuss the latest in Canadian digital legislation, including some of the most controversial acts of the past few years, the hotly debated Bill S210, and what Canadians should be concerned about as far as the digital landscape. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist discusses the Online News Act and the Online Streaming Act and what they represent in terms of the evolution of internet regulation, as well as the rise of antisemitism following the October 7th terrorist attacks in IsraelThe Hub Dialogues features The Hub's editor-at-large, Sean Speer, in conversation with leading entrepreneurs, policymakers, scholars, and thinkers on the issues and challenges that will shape Canada's future at home and abroad.If you like what you are hearing on Hub Dialogues consider subscribing to The Hub's free weekly email newsletter featuring our insights and analysis on key public policy issues. Sign up here: https://thehub.ca/free-member-sign-up/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of The Alex Pierson Podcast, we first start off with free speech. After a group of law students signed an open petition against Israel, they are now starting to understand why free speech isn't free from repercussions. Alex speaks with Robyn Doolittle, an investigative reporter with the Globe And Mail who has been covering this issue and helps to explain why the letter was first penned, and why some of these students thought they would be safe. GUEST: Robyn Doolittle - Reporter with the Globe & Mail X(formerly Twitter): @robyndoolittle Next, Alex sits with a landlord and board member of the Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario (SOLO), Varun Sriskanda about new proposed bylaws coming to Toronto which could force landlords to ensure ALL units have A/C in extreme heat. Varun tells Alex that all landlords are not the same, and this bylaw could cause rents to skyrocket...or landlords to leave the city. GUEST: Varun Sriskanda - Member of the Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario X(formerly twitter): @VarunSriskanda And finally, Alex speaks with the former vice chair of the CRTC and current Sr. Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Peter Menzies about why big tech are able to circumvent the Online News Act and freely access Canadian news. Peter explains why our tech laws are decades behind, and how this could hurt the news industry even further. GUEST: Peter Menzies - Sr. Fellow w/ MLI & former Vice-Chair of the CRTC X(formerly twitter): @Pagmenzies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Paul McLeod joins host Jeff Douglas to talk about how the federal Online News Act is moving closer to putting money into the bank accounts of news outlets. But he's thinking there's a better way to address the dominance of Google and Meta in online advertising.

On Episode 42, we dig into the new details about how the government plans to regulate your expression through the Online News Act, the Online Streaming Act and the Online Harms Act. Plus we tell you about a lawyer who got in trouble for calling TMU law a 'clown school.'Stories and cases discussed in this week's episode: Peter Menzies: Say goodbye to Netflix, Canada? Why the Online Streaming Act might just run them (and other international streamers) out of the country Joanna Baron: The Liberals claim to be the ‘Charter party.' Nothing could be further from the truth 'Is this legal?': Elon Musk questions UBC hiring practices Peter Menzies: Google shuns the big media moguls in decision over news fund—but it's Canadian consumers who will pay the heaviest price Once incarcerated, this Toronto activist was accepted into TMU Law's inaugural year. Now, he's suing the school for $300KHamza v. Law Society of Ontario et al, 2021 ONSC 2023Canadian judge Beverley McLachlin to step down from top court in July – announced days after 2 UK judges quit What's stopping Ontario from passing a law to oust misbehaving councillors?Not Reserving Judgment is a podcast about Canadian constitutional law hosted by Josh Dehaas, Joanna Baron, and Christine Van Geyn.The show is brought to you by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a non-partisan legal charity dedicated to defending rights and freedoms. To support our work, visit theccf.ca/donate.

Meta may have won out in its battle against the Trudeau government's Online News Act, according to a new study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory. Plus, convicted terrorist Omar Khadr's appeal to drop war crime convictions and reverse a guilty plea for crimes he committed when he was 15 years old was shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court. And instances of antisemitism stemming from anti-Israel protests across Canada have prompted a petition aiming to outlaw popular slogans heard at anti-Israel rallies as hate speech. Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Noah Jarvis! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this interview, Peter Menzies, Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, former newspaper executive and past vice chair of the CRTC, discusses the state of the media in Canada. Menzies talks about how the industry is at a point where it needs to adapt or die, how it got to this point, who is to blame, the federal government online legislation, the CBC, and the growth of alternative news publications. Below is a column Menzies wrote for The Hub. By Peter Menzies, November 22, 2023 Twenty years ago, it should have been obvious to all that the jig was up for newspapers and journalism was going to need a new ride. Print had a good run—almost 600 years—but the invention by Tim Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web meant the era of massive presses and the power they bestowed on their owners was coming to an end. The only question, once Craigslist and Kijiji began boring holes in classified advertising, the economic foundation of newspapers, was whether there would even be time to save the furniture. Since the turn of the century, there have only been two alternatives for legacy news organizations: adapt or die. While there has been some evidence of success in terms of the former, public policy support has ignored new ideas in favour of propping up the ones everyone knows won't make it. The results have ranged from inconsequential to catastrophic. In Canada, as author and academic Marc Edge has detailed in his most recent book, The Postmedia Effect, the possibilities for newspapers to adapt have been severely limited by the nation's largest and dominant chain's business and ownership structures. Thousands of jobs have been cut to ensure high-interest debt payments can be made to its U.S. hedge fund owners. Easy to blame management, one supposes, but hedge funds gotta hedge and the primary fault for the mess that is Canada's news industry belongs squarely at the door of the nation's public policymakers. Sadly, outdated foreign ownership regulations restricted the supply of qualified buyers for media organizations, which depressed the cost of acquiring newspapers to a level that facilitated their acquisition en masse by Southam, then Hollinger, then Canwest, then Postmedia. With every step, competition was suppressed through increasingly consolidated ownership only to find the nation's largest newspaper chain owned by Americans. You can't make that up. Piling on, the Competition Bureau in 2015 inexplicably approved Postmedia's acquisition of Quebecor (Sun) Media's newspapers based on the “lack of close rivalry” between newspapers such as the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun and “the incentive for the merged entity to retain readership and maintain editorial quality in order to continue to attract advertisers.” All said with a straight face. Anyone who had actually worked in the business—I put in shifts at both the Calgary Sun and the Calgary Herald in their halcyon days—would know that this is sheer nonsense justified only by the extreme narrowness of the analysis the Bureau undertook. Today, the only distinguishable difference in content between the Herald and the Sun is that Don Braid writes a column for the Herald, and Rick Bell writes one for the Sun—a pretense of competition that appears to have allowed both to extend their careers well beyond those of thousands of their colleagues. “No solutions can be found until the issue of the CBC is dealt with.” Thirty years ago, Bell and Braid shared more than 250 newsroom colleagues covering events in a city of fewer than 800,000 people. Today, reflective of their business's demise, a couple of dozen survivors cling to the Herald/Sun lifeboat in a city approaching 1.5 million. Their presses and even their buildings have been sold to feed the hedge fund. Implementation of policies designed to sustain business models that produce results such as these in the hope of “saving journalism” is self-evidently unwise. We live at a time when innovation and entrepreneurship—virtues that are fuelled by competition and suppressed by consolidation—are desperately needed. While those are clearly lacking in the newspaper industry (laudable exceptions apply at the Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, and a plethora of digital startups) it's just as unlikely journalism can find salvation in the arms of Canada's heavily regulated broadcasting industry. For it, with exceptions acknowledged, the provision of news has always been primarily a regulatory obligation and not a core business proposition. Broadcasters are in the business of entertaining people with music, drama, chat, and related programming and have long acknowledged there is little or no money in them for news. All too often, it's just regulatory rent. For those who may believe, though, the ponderous regulatory processes in place at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) make the entrepreneurship and innovation needed to adapt in an era of massive technological change almost impossible. But all that is now as may be. Rear view mirrors may help protect from encroaching harms but they are not at all useful in terms of actually going places. And journalism clearly needs a new car and new drivers if it is to thrive as a public good. Any doubt that societies require trustworthy and shared sources of information to maintain a peaceful social compact should have been erased by the events of the past few weeks. It is clear from the protests and virulent antisemitism that erupted in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel that large numbers of Canadians are forming their opinions based not on differing interpretations of the facts but on very incompatible understandings of current reality. In these circumstances, and in this instance at least, the common ground necessary to establish a healthy public square of ideas simply doesn't exist. Without such a venue, societies collapse into warring tribes. But before we can even begin to explore the complexity of THAT problem, there needs to be a sustainable path forward for fair, balanced, and accurate news gathering and delivery. The federal government's best efforts to make that happen have been disastrous. The Online News Act has done more harm than good, with news providers losing access to audiences through Facebook and Instagram while an even more disastrous Google news boycott hovers menacingly over the industry. The five-year-old journalism labour tax credit hasn't stopped newsrooms from continuing to shrink. And while the Local Journalism Initiative has created temporary employment opportunities in news “deserts”, it didn't stop the Alaska Highway News, as just one example, from folding last month. Worse, there is increasing evidence to suggest that the more the public becomes aware of direct government funding to journalism organizations, the less likely it is to trust those organizations and label reporters as toadies with labels such as “#JustinJournos.” Should the government change, they would no doubt be #Pierre'sPravda. None of this ends well. What Canada desperately needs instead is a multi-pronged, coordinated national strategy based on current economic and market realities that will allow journalism to flourish again. A few months ago, Konrad von Finckenstein and I tried to get the ideas rolling with our policy paper for the Macdonald Laurier Institute, “And Now, The News”. Its two flashiest recommendations called for the establishment of a truly independent journalism sustainability fund supported by contributions from web giants such as Meta, Google, and others and, vitally, the de-commercialization of the CBC. The CBC, already government-funded, would not be eligible to draw from this fund, which we proposed should be supported by reasonable levies on tech companies and would only be available to companies whose primary business is the production of news. I have some sympathy for those who would argue that such a fund would best be used to support entrepreneurship as opposed to simply propping up what commentator Jen Gerson has labelled “zombie” newspapers that refuse to either adapt or die. But our proposal would nevertheless eschew such distinctions and make the fund accessible to all industry-verified news organizations solely on a per capita/journalist basis. News providers would still be free to make deals with social media to build readership and make other commercial deals with digital platforms as both parties see fit. But that, on its own, doesn't solve the problem. In fact, no solutions can be found until the issue of the CBC is dealt with. It is one thing to have a public broadcaster. But today's CBC is not that. It has evolved into a publicly funded commercial broadcaster and online content provider. Even its radio content, while broadcast free of advertising over the air, is repurposed to build online audiences and revenue in direct competition with news startups and legacy media attempting to transition into vibrant digital platforms. No industry can survive, let alone prosper, when the government subsidizes one commercial entity—in this case with $1.2 billion annually—to the detriment of all others. There certainly can be an important role for a national, truly public news provider. But CBC must be de-commercialized everywhere it operates, its mandate sharply re-focused, and its content made available at no charge through a Creative Commons license to other domestic news organizations. The removal of the CBC's ability to sell advertising would immediately free up $400 million in revenue for which news organizations could compete. As an added benefit, Canada would get a re-focused public broadcaster, and free access to its news content would allow all journalism providers to benefit from, instead of being punished by, government funding of the CBC. Our other proposals include making subscriptions to news organizations 100 percent tax deductible—a move that would subsidize the consumption of credible news with a market-based incentive for those providing it. We also proposed that: All expenditures by Eligible News Businesses that involve investment in digital transformation technology are eligible to be claimed in their first year as capital cost allowances. Phasing out of the current labour tax credit over a period of five years, declining in value by 20 percent annually in order to wean news organizations from it gradually while they adapt to a more permanent policy framework. Phasing out of the Local Journalism Initiative over a period of five years, declining in value by $4 million per year and with adjustments that would make it available only to news organizations serving market areas of less than 100,000 people and limited to easily defined core coverage beats such as public safety, courts, school boards, and municipal councils. Phasing out of the Canada Periodical Fund, which is no longer relevant in the digital age, over the course of three years. Ensure that the CRTC is engaged in the development of national news policies so that it considers the entire scope of the news industry when contemplating conditions of license for broadcasters. To those, I would add maximizing the value of tax credits for contributions to news organizations structured as not-for-profit businesses. Neither I nor my policy paper co-author, who these days is occupied as interim federal ethics commissioner, pretended to have all the solutions. As we wrote when our paper was published, building a national news industry policy is a tricky business. What we believed was that the pattern of ad hoc subsidies, willful ignorance of the impact of a commercial CBC, fear of failure, and the ill-conceived Online News Act were nothing but trouble and that a thoughtful, multi-pronged national news industry policy was called for. It still is. When it's done—when all the ideas are out there and the best of them are implemented—news organizations will still only survive through the quality of their work. Not all companies will, or should, survive and, frankly, some need to get on with their dying and get out of the way of those building a future for journalism. Fretting over and attempting to preserve the past and its icons is emotionally tempting. But it will not give news organizations the fighting chance they need to transition from unstable business models to those capable of sustaining quality journalism in the years ahead. We are at the end of the end of an era. It's time to embrace a new genesis. Peter Menzies is a Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a former newspaper executive, and past vice chair of the CRTC. Mario Toneguzzi is Managing Editor of Canada's Podcast. He has more than 40 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist, and editor. He was named in 2021 as one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the World by PR News – the only Canadian to make the list About Us Canada's Podcast is the number one podcast in Canada for entrepreneurs and business owners. Established in 2016, the podcast network has interviewed over 600 Canadian entrepreneurs from coast-to-coast. With hosts in each province, entrepreneurs have a local and national format to tell their stories, talk about their journey and provide inspiration for anyone starting their entrepreneurial journey and well- established founders. The commitment to a grass roots approach has built a loyal audience on all our social channels and YouTube – 500,000+ lifetime YouTube views, 200,000 + audio downloads, 35,000 + average monthly social impressions, 10,000 + engaged social followers and 35,000 newsletter subscribers. Canada's Podcast is proud to provide a local, national and international presence for Canadian entrepreneurs to build their brand and tell their story. #business #CanadasNumberOnePodcastforEntrepreneurs   #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #Media #news #Newspapers #smallbusiness

Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise in Canada - but if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that teenagers becoming radicalized and making homemade bombs is not okay. Plus, the latest on how Bill C-18 the Online News Act continues to screw over independent media…this time with Google's $100 million exemption pie for Canadian broadcasters to scrap over.Host: Jesse BrownCredits: Jess Schmidt (Producer), Caleb Thompson (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Annette Ejiofor (Managing Editor), Karyn Pugliese (Editor-in-Chief)Guest: Jan Wong Further reading: Rex Murphy: An antisemitic menace stalks Canada and Trudeau couldn't care less - National PostRupa Subramanya's response to the Hanuman statue at the Hindu Sabha Mandir in Brampton - XScanner Price Accuracy Code - Retail Council of CanadaAri Ben-Menashe says his car insurance was cancelled because Trudeau doesn't like his business - National PostPeter Menzies: The government surrenders to reality with rewritten Online News Act—and pleases no one - The Hub Sponsors: Douglas, Article, If you value this podcast, Support us! You'll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You'll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you'll be a part of the solution to Canada's journalism crisis, you'll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amid years of decline in news ad revenue and a rapidly changing media landscape, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-18, the Online News Act. This controversial piece of legislation requires Google and Meta - the company behind Facebook and Instagram – to pay Canadian news outlets for linking their content to these social media sites. Meta responded by blocking all Canadian news content from Facebook and Instagram, while Google has recently agreed to pay $100 million to Canadian publishers, indexed for inflation. Our guest on this Munk Dialogue is Michael Geist, one of the legislation's fiercest critics. Michael is an expert in Canadian technology law and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, and argues that far from helping Canadian news outlets, media organizations – unable to drive users from social media – will not only suffer from a loss of revenue, but they will become more reliant on government subsidies to stay afloat and thus become less objective in their reporting. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to podcast@munkdebates.com.   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, access to our Friday Focus podcast, a free Munk Debates book, and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch

Welcome back to News from the EDGE! Host Erin Sparks was out this week, so the pivot man Mordy Oberstein, and 3D-printer extraordinaire Jacob Mann took the reins. The northerners prevail as Google agrees to fork up a hefty sum to Canadian publishers in light of the Online News Act. Google complies to U.S antitrust lawsuit, revealing how many websites are actually indexed on the web. OpenAI is under notable changes, revealing an early 2024 release date of GPT Store shortly after the return of CEO Sam Altman. Plus, Google's November core update is now complete, and the results may surprise you. Stay connected this week as we walk you through everything going on inside of SEO, right here on The EDGE!  News from the EDGE: [00:03:52] How Many Web Pages does Google Actually Index? [00:08:49] EDGE of The Web Sponsor: Hostinger [00:10:13] Spotify Slashes 1,500 Jobs, CEO Cites Economic Challenges [00:17:05] EDGE of the Web Title Sponsor: Site Strategics [00:18:13] Google will pay $73 Million in a Deal with Canadian Publishers AI Blitz: [00:19:33] OpenAI Welcomes Back Sam Altman As CEO With New Board [00:19:58] GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After ‘Unexpected' Delays AI Tools: [00:21:39] Dubbing AI- Change your voice in real-time with AI [00:22:44] Rizzpad- The first build-in AI toolkit for flirting on any dating app [00:24:50] Plus AI Google Analytics Reports- AI-powered presentations with your Google Analytics data  [00:25:54] EDGE of the Web Sponsor: InLinks Barry Blast from Search Engine Roundtable: [00:27:19] Google November 2023 core update rollout is now complete  [00:28:00] Google Search now supports discussion forum and profile page structured data [00:29:24] Google May Be Testing Removing Cache Link From Search Results [00:30:30] Google officially drops Mobile Usability report, Mobile-Friendly Test tool and Mobile-Friendly Test API Thanks to our sponsors! Site Strategics https://edgeofthewebradio.com/site     Inlinks https://edgeofthewebradio.com/inlinks Hostinger https://edgeofthewebradio.com/hostinger Follow Us: Twitter: @ErinSparks Twitter: @MordyOberstein Twitter: @TheMann00 Twitter: @EDGEWebRadio #StandwithUkraine edgeofthewebradio.com/ukraine

Welcome back everyone! It's Friday, which means it's time for another episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast.  A lot happened this week so there's a lot to talk about. Join Spencer and Jared as they discuss and analyze the latest happenings in the SEO, AI, and content creation space. The first news item they cover is the Google Core Update and the fact that it has finally finished rolling out.  How long did it last in the end? What kind of movement did Jared and Spencer see? Was there a reversal from the HCU? Are there any updates currently underway or coming in the future? Tune in and find out! Then Spencer and Jared shift the conversation to a slightly more controversial topic: Sports Illustrated allegedly published a ton of content written by AI-generated writers.  When the articles were deemed as potentially AI-generated, the team at Futurism pressed Sports Illustrated, which then deleted all of the content and issued a response. What did they say? What do Spencer and Jared think about the situation? And how does EEAT play into all of it? The next topic is how the Canadian government has reached an agreement with Google on the Online News Act. Google has agreed to pay online Canadian publishers around $100 million a year to publish their news content on Google.  This is clearly a win for news publishers, who are going to get paid, but it raises some interesting questions. Why did Google agree to pay? Will other countries follow suit? Will it go beyond news publishers at some point? In more Google news, the number of companies who have blocked Google from crawling their sites and using their data for Bard has increased by 180%. Jared and Spencer have talked about this situation previously, but in that case it was the GPT OpenAI bot; now it's the case with Google-Extended. What about this article really riles up the hosts? Spencer gets especially riled up sharing that Google Bard is now summarizing YouTube videos. Not only can you get a summary, but you can also get a transcript. Spencer gave it a test drive with one of his videos. What was the result? Was the summary accurate? The result is pretty funny, so check out the episode to see why.  Moving along, the next topic is X (formerly Twitter), and how some brands have paused their advertising campaigns while others have stopped altogether. As a result, the platform may lose up to $75 million in ad revenue by the end of the year.  This is attributable to the fact that Elon Musk is a bit of a loose cannon, he's making offensive statements, and there are also lots of changes to the platform.  What does this mean for other advertisers? Could this be part of Musk's overall strategy? Last but not least is news from Amazon, which has launched a new AI chatbot for companies. This chatbot is not a competitor for consumer-facing chatbots but, rather, for companies to use for their businesses. Think financial projections, policies, and procedures. What is AWS and how is it involved? And what might the name of the chatbot be a reference to? Listen to the podcast to hear what Spencer and Jared think about it. Moving into the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Spencer talks first about his progress with the Amazon Influencer Program. With 954 videos currently published, how did he do during Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Jared then shares his progress with the program. Currently, he has 982 videos live, but how did he do during the big shopping days? After talking with other members of the program, Jared also has an interesting theory about how to increase earnings during this period next year.  He also talks briefly about Weekend Growth, progress, and new developments.  As for their Weird Niche Sites, Spencer goes first with Katie Goes Platinum—a site that's more unique than it is weird. Katie documents the process of letting her hair gray gracefully and seeks to inspire others.  She's got ads and digital products, not to mention a YouTube channel and a section featuring her web stories. A little research shows that back in 2020, she was earning $6k per month from her site—a figure that has most likely increased since then. Jared's Weird Niche Site is Hood Maps, which creates funny maps for different cities. He and Spencer take a closer look at a few of them and share some of the entertaining descriptions. This DR41 website doesn't have any display ads but it does rank for 50k keywords. But how does it collect the descriptions for so many maps? And is it making any money? And that brings us to the end of a jam-packed episode. See you next week when Spencer and Jared tackle the latest headlines and serve up more information and inspiration.    Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links? Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

On Wednesday, the federal government announced an agreement with Google over Bill C-18: The Online News Act. The tech giant had threatened to limit Canadians' access to news on its platforms — similar to the one Meta imposed. Under the deal, Google will pay news companies $100 million annually. But is it enough? Who got the better deal? And what does it mean for the future of journalism in Canada? Alfred Hermida, a digital media scholar and professor at the UBC School of Journalism and the co-founder of The Conversation Canada, explains. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Federal government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act Google DeepMind researchers use AI tool to find 2mn new materials Some Pixel 8 Pro displays have bumps under the glass Reflecting on 18 years at Google Google's new geothermal energy project is up and running AWS Unveils Next Generation AWS-Designed Chips Amazon Introduces Q, an A.I. Chatbot for Companies Does Black Friday and Cyber Monday Matter? Adobe's $20 Billion Purchase of Figma Would Harm Innovation, U.K. Regulator Provisionally Finds Elon goes full Pizzagate. How does this end? A new low in manels Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers OpenAI Made an AI Breakthrough Before Altman Firing, Stoking Excitement and Concern Hugging Face CEO on What Comes After Transformers Hinton vs LeCun vs Ng vs Tegmark vs O Anthony Levandowski Reboots Church of Artificial Intelligence Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral Google Slides getting built-in presentation recording tool Google Will Start Deleting Old Accounts This Week. Here's How to Save Your Google Account Google's .meme domain is here to serve your wackiest websites Some Google Drive for Desktop users are missing months of files Picks of the week (Paris) The 2000 cinematic masterpiece Chicken Run (Paris) Pentiment (Jeff) Jezebel to Be Resurrected by Paste Magazine (Jeff) After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine (Ant) City Nerd on YouTube (Jason) No Ads in Albania, Ethiopia and Myanmar Hosts: Jason Howell, Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT mylio.com/TWIT25 hid.link/twigdemo

Federal government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act Google DeepMind researchers use AI tool to find 2mn new materials Some Pixel 8 Pro displays have bumps under the glass Reflecting on 18 years at Google Google's new geothermal energy project is up and running AWS Unveils Next Generation AWS-Designed Chips Amazon Introduces Q, an A.I. Chatbot for Companies Does Black Friday and Cyber Monday Matter? Adobe's $20 Billion Purchase of Figma Would Harm Innovation, U.K. Regulator Provisionally Finds Elon goes full Pizzagate. How does this end? A new low in manels Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers OpenAI Made an AI Breakthrough Before Altman Firing, Stoking Excitement and Concern Hugging Face CEO on What Comes After Transformers Hinton vs LeCun vs Ng vs Tegmark vs O Anthony Levandowski Reboots Church of Artificial Intelligence Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral Google Slides getting built-in presentation recording tool Google Will Start Deleting Old Accounts This Week. Here's How to Save Your Google Account Google's .meme domain is here to serve your wackiest websites Some Google Drive for Desktop users are missing months of files Picks of the week (Paris) The 2000 cinematic masterpiece Chicken Run (Paris) Pentiment (Jeff) Jezebel to Be Resurrected by Paste Magazine (Jeff) After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine (Ant) City Nerd on YouTube (Jason) No Ads in Albania, Ethiopia and Myanmar Hosts: Jason Howell, Jeff Jarvis, Paris Martineau, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT mylio.com/TWIT25 hid.link/twigdemo

Morse code transcription: vvv vvv George Santos Embattled Republican faces third vote to expel him from Congress Perfect solar system found in search for alien life Israel Gaza live news 12 more Gaza hostages and 30 more Palestinian prisoners released under truce Vermont shooting It was every mothers nightmare Germany teens held for alleged Christmas market attack plot US charges Indian man in alleged assassination plot Liat Beinin Atzili US citizen among 16 Hamas hostages released COP28 president denies using summit for oil deals US military plane carrying eight crashes off Japanese coast Google and Canada reach deal to avert news ban over Online News Act

Alex Pierson speaks with Dr. Brett Caraway, Associate Professor with the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology  at the University of Toronto, about the Online News Act - and what this deal means for consumers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your Heard Tell Show for Friday, October 13th, 2023 is turning down the noise of the news cycle and getting to the information we need to discern our times by having some grown folk talk about inflation, consumer prices, and the constant narratives about the economy that have a real disconnect between the numbers, the talking heads, and the folks at the cash registers. Then, we dive into the usage of "this is Israel's 9/11" in reference to the ghastly terrorism of Hamas, how the comparison is and isn't applicable, and how folks appealing to "how you felt" on that day need to also consider the days that followed. Our guest is Canadian journalist and Young Voices contributor Joseph Bouchard who describes Canada's latest efforts to regulate online news media, how the "Online News Act'' compares to what other countries are trying to do, the Trudeau government's questionable history on free press and free speech, and how the turbulent political atmosphere north of the border is hanging over everything coming out of Ottawa. Also, historian and Ordinary Times writer Eric Medlin has a new book out on the rise, fall, and return of the furniture industry, and how there are plenty of lessons both economically, in how technology changes businesses, cultural and societal impact of industrial change, and how oversimplifying things as just "change" or "globalization" misses what is really going all.All that and more on this episode of Heard Tell.--------------------Heard Tell SubStack Free to subscribe, comes right to your inboxQuestions, comments, concerns, ideas, or epistles? Email us HeardTellShow@gmail.comPlease make sure to follow @Heard Tell, like the program, comment with your thoughts, and share with others.Heard Tell SubStack Free to subscribe, comes right to your inboxSupport Heard Tell here: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/4b87f374-cace-44ea-960c-30f9bf37bcff/donationsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/heard-tell/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

"That could never happen in my country!" Famous last words said by countless members of the developed world. As authoritarianism is on the rise, it is important to remain vigilant and be aware of all attempts by the leaders of the world to take power away from the people. Join Mark as he dives deep into the rise of authoritarianism in Canada through a look at the different policies and rhetoric pushed forward by the Canadian government.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ezra Levant breaks down new documents obtained exclusively by Rebel News showing the appalling lack of research conducted by the Trudeau government before the Liberals passed their latest censorship legislation, the Online News Act (or Bill C-18), which saw Meta block news on its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. GUEST: Lorne Gunter on Sask. Premier Scott Moe's fight for parental rights.

Chris Dinn joins Nikita Roy to talk about building AI bots for his Toronto news startup, Torontoverse. Chris also explores the Online News Act's effects in Canada and AI's potential impact on the news industry.Chris is the Emmy award-winning founder and publisher of Torontoverse, a Toronto-based digital news startup harnessing cutting-edge technology for local news delivery. He earned his Emmy in Technology and Engineering for his contributions at mDialog, an innovator in integrating live video streams with advertisements, later acquired by Google.At 19, Chris entered the media realm, selling ads for his college newspaper. His zeal for innovation guided him to mDialog, where he was instrumental in reshaping the video ad landscape. Following its acquisition by Google, Chris dedicated six years as a software engineer focusing on publisher ads. In 2022, he launched his publishing venture, torontoverse.com.Referenced in the episode: Meet TorontoBot: Torontoverse's AI-powered municipal budget analystTry out TorontoBotHow Torontoverse built their AI-powered newsletterThoughts or questions? You can reach us here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, August 3rd, 2023. Isn’t it about time to take action on how you're going to give your children and grandchildren a good music education? Moses, David, and all the Saints of the church have worshiped God with musical might, so let’s be confidently found doing the same. Bohnet Music Academy instructs children and adults in how to be musically literate. That’s everything you need to know and do as the musician God made you to be. Lessons are available locally in Moscow, ID and online. What’s great is that in addition to getting vocal training, you can also study the piano, guitar, violin, cello, drums, or the trumpet. Visit Bohnetma.com/crosspolitic for more information on how to equip your family to serve God’s musical commands. B-O-H-N-E-T MA.com/crosspolitic http://bohnetma.com/crosspolitic Listen to this! Some good education news… https://www.theblaze.com/news/hs-seniors-con-vs-lib High school senior boys nearly twice as likely to be conservative as liberal: Survey A University of Michigan survey found that boys in their senior year of high school are almost two times more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. However, for twelfth-grade girls, they are even more likely to consider themselves liberal than conservative. On the Monitoring the Future survey, which is considered a scholarly endeavor that dates back to the 1970s, according to The Hill, political differences that were once somewhat close have drifted farther apart. For high school senior boys, the shares of conservative versus liberal were nearly identical between 2014 and 2016, around 19% for both factions. By 2022, that number had shifted to 23% for conservative, which was actually down three points from 2020. Since that 2016 marker, boys identifying as liberal in grade twelve have plummeted to 13%. The 2020-2023 numbers are the highest they've been for conservatives since the early 1990s, although the figures have nearly always hovered around the 20% mark, save for 1998-2002. Just a reminder that while this is positive, conservatism without Christ is what got us to this point where we are now. Now an update from Budlight. https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/31/distributors-bud-light-beer-dylan-mulvaney-anheuser-busch/ Distributors Giving up on Bud Light - No Longer Expect Beer Giant to Recover The embarrassment is real for Bud Light. Several distributors of Anheuser-Busch beer say they have accepted the fact they’ve lost money — and a lot of it — due to consumers boycotting Bud Light. And not just that, but they’ve also given up completely on trying to win back customers who have been negatively affected by the anti-American beer’s Dylan Mulvaney campaign, according to the New York Post. Hiring freezes and layoffs have been going on for four months, while some beer truck drivers have been slammed with hecklers and other harassment while Bud Light’s sales have tanked over 25%. As a result, wholesalers of Anheuser-Busch have resigned to the large number of customers they’ve lost permanently, and in response, they need to focus on a new set of beer drinkers. “Consumers have made a choice,” an unidentified executive from a Texas-based beer distributor told the New York Post. “They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.” Other Anheuser-Busch branded beers such as Budweiser, Busch Light and Michelob Ultra have also been tanking in sales since Bud Light decided to disastrously partner with Mulvaney. The executive went on to say that customers have most likely found out that Bud Light competitors including Miller Lite and Coors Light “are a very similar product.” Reigning victorious in the beer war all comes down to “whoever is best at marketing,” the executive told The Post. https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/meta-starts-blocking-canadian-news-content-5437258?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Meta Starts Blocking Canadian News Content Meta has announced it has started blocking news content for Canadian users on its platforms, following months of threats to strike back against the Online News Act, which mandates that major tech companies pay Canadian media outlets for news content linked on their platforms. Starting Aug. 1, Meta begins the process of ending news availability in Canada, the company said in a statement. Over the next few weeks, all users accessing Facebook and Instagram in Canada will no longer be able to view news links and content posted by Canadian news publishers and broadcasters. Meta said the news outlets to be affected will be identified based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18. The bill received royal assent on June 22. Tech giant Google also said it would retaliate against the the new law. The company announced on June 29 it would remove links to Canadian news from its Search, News, and Discover products, while users in Canada will no longer be able to operate the Google News Showcase. After being appointed the new heritage minister, Pascale St-Onge said her door is "always open" to negotiate with the tech companies, but that her government would not back down. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the issue a "dispute over democracy." On July 10, Heritage Canada said it would propose regulations to implement the act, which would include establishing a financial threshold for the contributions of tech companies. The Epoch Times reached out to Heritage Canada for comment but didn't immediately hear back. Meta says the new legislation is based on an "incorrect premise," that the company gains unfair benefits from news content shared on its platforms. The company also emphasized that the primary usage of its platforms doesn't revolve around news consumption, arguing instead that news outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and bolster their financial standing. "The Online News Act is fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of the people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers," Meta said. "As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, how we choose to comply with the legislation is a business decision we must make, and we have made our choice." The company assured users that despite the changes regarding news content availability in Canada, their products and services would remain unaffected. Users will continue to have the ability to connect with friends and family, grow their businesses, and support their local communities as before, Meta says. Speaking of Canada… https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-wife-18-years-announce-separation Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, wife of 18 years announce separation Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday announced that he and his wife Sophie are separating after 18 years of marriage. Trudeau made the announcement in an Instagram post. "Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate," Trudeau wrote. Sophie Grégoire, a former television reporter in Quebec, married Trudeau in 2005. They have three children together. In an interview with Maclean's magazine in 2005, Trudeau shared that he and Grégoire-Trudeau met as adults two years prior, when they co-hosted the Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ball. Before, Grégoire had been a childhood friend of Trudeau's youngest brother, Michel — who died in an avalanche in 1998 at the age of 23 — and had spent time at the Trudeau family's home. The couple became engaged in October 2004 and married on May 28, 2005, at a ceremony at Montreal's Sainte-Madeleine Church. Trudeau has spoken glowingly of his wife in public in the years since. In April, the prime minister posted a pair of selfies with his wife on social media on her birthday. "From this, to this, and everything in between, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side," he wrote. He also praised her on Mother's Day in May, calling Sophie and his mother "two of the strongest, bravest, and greatest people we know." The prime minister's office said in a statement that Trudeau, 51, and Sophie, 48, have signed a legal agreement making their separation official. https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/russia-ukraine-war/2023/08/01/id/1129190/ Russia Accuses Ukraine of Moscow Drone Attack Russian authorities accused Kyiv early Tuesday of yet another attack on Moscow and its surroundings with drones, one of which hit the same building in the capital that was damaged by a drone just days ago in a similar attack. Russian officials have claimed that the intensified attacks on the capital region reflect failures in Ukraine's counteroffensive, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over the weekend that "the war is gradually coming back to Russian territory," but stopped short of taking responsibility for the attacks. The repeated drone strikes underscore Moscow's vulnerability as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month. The Russian military also said that Ukrainian forces tried to attack two of its warships in the Black Sea overnight, using maritime drones. Three drones targeted two patrol vessels, Sergei Kotov and Vasily Bykov, 340 kilometers (210 miles) southwest of the Russian-controlled city of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, the Defense Ministry reported. All three drones were destroyed, the report said. https://www.outkick.com/los-angeles-dodgers-host-faith-night-after-sisters-of-perpetual-indulgence-disaster-chris-pratt-clayton-kershaw-attend/ LOS ANGELES DODGERS HOST FAITH NIGHT AFTER ‘SISTERS OF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE’ DISASTER; CHRIS PRATT, CLAYTON KERSHAW ATTEND On Sunday, the L.A. Dodgers hosted their first “Christian Faith and Family Day” at Chavez Ravine since 2019 and nearly two months since LA honored “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” an LGBT group whose past digs at religion drew criticism. Following a loss to the Cincinnati Reds, hundreds of Dodgers fans remained seated to partake in the team’s “Christian Family and Faith” event. Sunday’s postgame festivities included testimonies — emphasizing the importance of faith in God — from Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, third baseman Max Muncy, utility player Chris Taylor and movie star Chris Pratt. Pratt was in charge of throwing Sunday’s ceremonial first pitch. Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts also made an appearance. Roberts, like much of the Dodgers personnel in attendance for the event, identifies as Christian. “My relationship w/ Christ is the most important thing in my life,” Roberts previously shared, when discussing the impact of faith on his life. Kershaw drew the most attention from the media once the event was announced. The Dodgers pitcher objected to the celebration of the “Sisters” when the Pride Night event was first publicized in May. Clayton Kershaw’s critics saw the revival of “Christian Faith and Family Night” — originally canceled due to COVID in 2020 — as a countermeasure to the Pride Night event featuring the “Sisters.” The ace called it coincidental timing. OutKick’s Ian Miller attended the event on June 16 and noted that the Dodgers seemingly buried noise around it as 2,000 or so Dodgers fans showed up to protest. While June’s event was met with backlash due to the “Sister’s” mockery of the Christian and Catholic faith, Sunday’s event was met with delight. The LA team has long been worshipped by the Latino community of Southern California, so naturally the fanbase has a strong Catholic representation. As detailed by Los Angeles Times’ Helene Elliott, fans in attendance for the event adamantly cheered Dave Roberts for his appearance at the faith-based event. Elliott called it a “very forgiving crowd,” considering the team had just lost, 9-0, to Elly De La Cruz and the Cincinnati Reds. To a degree, the Dodgers fans’ adoration after a deflating loss was emblematic of the idea of “grace”.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, August 3rd, 2023. Isn’t it about time to take action on how you're going to give your children and grandchildren a good music education? Moses, David, and all the Saints of the church have worshiped God with musical might, so let’s be confidently found doing the same. Bohnet Music Academy instructs children and adults in how to be musically literate. That’s everything you need to know and do as the musician God made you to be. Lessons are available locally in Moscow, ID and online. What’s great is that in addition to getting vocal training, you can also study the piano, guitar, violin, cello, drums, or the trumpet. Visit Bohnetma.com/crosspolitic for more information on how to equip your family to serve God’s musical commands. B-O-H-N-E-T MA.com/crosspolitic http://bohnetma.com/crosspolitic Listen to this! Some good education news… https://www.theblaze.com/news/hs-seniors-con-vs-lib High school senior boys nearly twice as likely to be conservative as liberal: Survey A University of Michigan survey found that boys in their senior year of high school are almost two times more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. However, for twelfth-grade girls, they are even more likely to consider themselves liberal than conservative. On the Monitoring the Future survey, which is considered a scholarly endeavor that dates back to the 1970s, according to The Hill, political differences that were once somewhat close have drifted farther apart. For high school senior boys, the shares of conservative versus liberal were nearly identical between 2014 and 2016, around 19% for both factions. By 2022, that number had shifted to 23% for conservative, which was actually down three points from 2020. Since that 2016 marker, boys identifying as liberal in grade twelve have plummeted to 13%. The 2020-2023 numbers are the highest they've been for conservatives since the early 1990s, although the figures have nearly always hovered around the 20% mark, save for 1998-2002. Just a reminder that while this is positive, conservatism without Christ is what got us to this point where we are now. Now an update from Budlight. https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/31/distributors-bud-light-beer-dylan-mulvaney-anheuser-busch/ Distributors Giving up on Bud Light - No Longer Expect Beer Giant to Recover The embarrassment is real for Bud Light. Several distributors of Anheuser-Busch beer say they have accepted the fact they’ve lost money — and a lot of it — due to consumers boycotting Bud Light. And not just that, but they’ve also given up completely on trying to win back customers who have been negatively affected by the anti-American beer’s Dylan Mulvaney campaign, according to the New York Post. Hiring freezes and layoffs have been going on for four months, while some beer truck drivers have been slammed with hecklers and other harassment while Bud Light’s sales have tanked over 25%. As a result, wholesalers of Anheuser-Busch have resigned to the large number of customers they’ve lost permanently, and in response, they need to focus on a new set of beer drinkers. “Consumers have made a choice,” an unidentified executive from a Texas-based beer distributor told the New York Post. “They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.” Other Anheuser-Busch branded beers such as Budweiser, Busch Light and Michelob Ultra have also been tanking in sales since Bud Light decided to disastrously partner with Mulvaney. The executive went on to say that customers have most likely found out that Bud Light competitors including Miller Lite and Coors Light “are a very similar product.” Reigning victorious in the beer war all comes down to “whoever is best at marketing,” the executive told The Post. https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/meta-starts-blocking-canadian-news-content-5437258?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Meta Starts Blocking Canadian News Content Meta has announced it has started blocking news content for Canadian users on its platforms, following months of threats to strike back against the Online News Act, which mandates that major tech companies pay Canadian media outlets for news content linked on their platforms. Starting Aug. 1, Meta begins the process of ending news availability in Canada, the company said in a statement. Over the next few weeks, all users accessing Facebook and Instagram in Canada will no longer be able to view news links and content posted by Canadian news publishers and broadcasters. Meta said the news outlets to be affected will be identified based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18. The bill received royal assent on June 22. Tech giant Google also said it would retaliate against the the new law. The company announced on June 29 it would remove links to Canadian news from its Search, News, and Discover products, while users in Canada will no longer be able to operate the Google News Showcase. After being appointed the new heritage minister, Pascale St-Onge said her door is "always open" to negotiate with the tech companies, but that her government would not back down. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the issue a "dispute over democracy." On July 10, Heritage Canada said it would propose regulations to implement the act, which would include establishing a financial threshold for the contributions of tech companies. The Epoch Times reached out to Heritage Canada for comment but didn't immediately hear back. Meta says the new legislation is based on an "incorrect premise," that the company gains unfair benefits from news content shared on its platforms. The company also emphasized that the primary usage of its platforms doesn't revolve around news consumption, arguing instead that news outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and bolster their financial standing. "The Online News Act is fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of the people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers," Meta said. "As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, how we choose to comply with the legislation is a business decision we must make, and we have made our choice." The company assured users that despite the changes regarding news content availability in Canada, their products and services would remain unaffected. Users will continue to have the ability to connect with friends and family, grow their businesses, and support their local communities as before, Meta says. Speaking of Canada… https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-wife-18-years-announce-separation Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, wife of 18 years announce separation Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday announced that he and his wife Sophie are separating after 18 years of marriage. Trudeau made the announcement in an Instagram post. "Sophie and I would like to share the fact that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate," Trudeau wrote. Sophie Grégoire, a former television reporter in Quebec, married Trudeau in 2005. They have three children together. In an interview with Maclean's magazine in 2005, Trudeau shared that he and Grégoire-Trudeau met as adults two years prior, when they co-hosted the Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ball. Before, Grégoire had been a childhood friend of Trudeau's youngest brother, Michel — who died in an avalanche in 1998 at the age of 23 — and had spent time at the Trudeau family's home. The couple became engaged in October 2004 and married on May 28, 2005, at a ceremony at Montreal's Sainte-Madeleine Church. Trudeau has spoken glowingly of his wife in public in the years since. In April, the prime minister posted a pair of selfies with his wife on social media on her birthday. "From this, to this, and everything in between, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side," he wrote. He also praised her on Mother's Day in May, calling Sophie and his mother "two of the strongest, bravest, and greatest people we know." The prime minister's office said in a statement that Trudeau, 51, and Sophie, 48, have signed a legal agreement making their separation official. https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/russia-ukraine-war/2023/08/01/id/1129190/ Russia Accuses Ukraine of Moscow Drone Attack Russian authorities accused Kyiv early Tuesday of yet another attack on Moscow and its surroundings with drones, one of which hit the same building in the capital that was damaged by a drone just days ago in a similar attack. Russian officials have claimed that the intensified attacks on the capital region reflect failures in Ukraine's counteroffensive, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over the weekend that "the war is gradually coming back to Russian territory," but stopped short of taking responsibility for the attacks. The repeated drone strikes underscore Moscow's vulnerability as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month. The Russian military also said that Ukrainian forces tried to attack two of its warships in the Black Sea overnight, using maritime drones. Three drones targeted two patrol vessels, Sergei Kotov and Vasily Bykov, 340 kilometers (210 miles) southwest of the Russian-controlled city of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, the Defense Ministry reported. All three drones were destroyed, the report said. https://www.outkick.com/los-angeles-dodgers-host-faith-night-after-sisters-of-perpetual-indulgence-disaster-chris-pratt-clayton-kershaw-attend/ LOS ANGELES DODGERS HOST FAITH NIGHT AFTER ‘SISTERS OF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE’ DISASTER; CHRIS PRATT, CLAYTON KERSHAW ATTEND On Sunday, the L.A. Dodgers hosted their first “Christian Faith and Family Day” at Chavez Ravine since 2019 and nearly two months since LA honored “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” an LGBT group whose past digs at religion drew criticism. Following a loss to the Cincinnati Reds, hundreds of Dodgers fans remained seated to partake in the team’s “Christian Family and Faith” event. Sunday’s postgame festivities included testimonies — emphasizing the importance of faith in God — from Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, third baseman Max Muncy, utility player Chris Taylor and movie star Chris Pratt. Pratt was in charge of throwing Sunday’s ceremonial first pitch. Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts also made an appearance. Roberts, like much of the Dodgers personnel in attendance for the event, identifies as Christian. “My relationship w/ Christ is the most important thing in my life,” Roberts previously shared, when discussing the impact of faith on his life. Kershaw drew the most attention from the media once the event was announced. The Dodgers pitcher objected to the celebration of the “Sisters” when the Pride Night event was first publicized in May. Clayton Kershaw’s critics saw the revival of “Christian Faith and Family Night” — originally canceled due to COVID in 2020 — as a countermeasure to the Pride Night event featuring the “Sisters.” The ace called it coincidental timing. OutKick’s Ian Miller attended the event on June 16 and noted that the Dodgers seemingly buried noise around it as 2,000 or so Dodgers fans showed up to protest. While June’s event was met with backlash due to the “Sister’s” mockery of the Christian and Catholic faith, Sunday’s event was met with delight. The LA team has long been worshipped by the Latino community of Southern California, so naturally the fanbase has a strong Catholic representation. As detailed by Los Angeles Times’ Helene Elliott, fans in attendance for the event adamantly cheered Dave Roberts for his appearance at the faith-based event. Elliott called it a “very forgiving crowd,” considering the team had just lost, 9-0, to Elly De La Cruz and the Cincinnati Reds. To a degree, the Dodgers fans’ adoration after a deflating loss was emblematic of the idea of “grace”.

On Thursday, Google joined Meta in saying it will remove Canadian news from its platforms in response to Bill C-18 aka the Online News Act. In addition Google will end existing deals with Canadian news publishers. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, unveiled the Ripple music creation app that can generate instrumental music based on your humming. And the company's streaming music app Resso is in talks with dozens of music labels in an attempt to enter new markets. And Molly Wood explains why your right to repair is good for the climate.Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Molly Wood, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.Link to the Show Notes. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/dtns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Friday, June 30th, 2023. Page50 ad read concepts: Page50 is a distinctly Christian marketing company striving to help Christian-owned businesses grow and succeed in our digital age. They don’t want to just make a paycheck, they want to change the world, and that means building it alongside you. The mission is bigger than just Sunday. Page50 wants to help Christians recapture the work week, economic and political influence, and the public square. Page50 doesn’t work with just anybody, but if you’re a believer they want to work with you. Visit pagefifty.com (ya gotta spell it out, because i don’t own the page50.com domain) and see what they can do for you. That’s pagefifty.com. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/supreme-court-affirmative-action-race-conscious-college-admissions Supreme Court bans affirmative action in ruling against race-conscious college admissions The Supreme Court ruled to ban the consideration of race as part of admissions decisions at colleges, including Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, ending the decadeslong practice known as affirmative action. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the six-member majority to undo the lasting impacts of the landmark 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which upheld race-conscious admissions at universities. "Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment," the majority held in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented and was joined by Justice Elena Kagan. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in the UNC case, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan. Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case due to her past service on the university board. Justices have been mulling since November over two cases brought by the nonprofit group Students for Fair Admissions, headed by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, a staunch critic of affirmative action policies. The majority held that "nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent's assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today." Justice Clarence Thomas added that he would "highly doubt" universities could carry on with considering race in admissions policies with the new test that was established Thursday. “In the future, universities wishing to discriminate based on race in admissions must articulate and justify a compelling and measurable state interest based on concrete evidence. Given the strictures set out by the Court, I highly doubt any will be able to do so." During oral arguments in October 2022, the court's inclination to ban affirmative action was evident. The court's six conservatives expressed skepticism toward the practice, even as attorneys for Harvard and UNC, along with U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, implored the court to permit the practice to continue. Another case filed in 2014 alleged the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill unlawfully discriminates against white and Asian American applicants. That suit accused the university of violating the Constitution's 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law. Banning the use of affirmative action will force elite colleges to reinvent their policies and find new ways to ensure diversity in their student populations without using race as a consideration. Several universities have expressed concerns in legal briefs that a decision to overturn affirmative action could result in fewer minority students on campuses. But ahead of the high court's opinion release, legal experts speculated colleges might attempt to maintain a superficial vision for diversity on campus without taking race into consideration. The matter of race-neutral admissions policies that are implemented for racially conscious ends could find its way to the Supreme Court soon. A group of parents, alumni, and community members at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, sued the school for changing its admissions process to increase the number of black and brown students and decrease the number of Asian students. The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the school's new process did not violate federal law. The case's next stop would be the Supreme Court. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1185087587/google-says-it-will-start-blocking-canadian-news-stories-in-response-to-new-law Google says it will start blocking Canadian news stories in response to new law Google said on Thursday that it will block all links to Canadian news articles for people using its search engine and other services in the country in response to a new law that would compel tech companies to pay publishers for content. It comes a week after Meta vowed its own blackout of Canadian publishers on Facebook and Instagram, calling the law "fundamentally flawed." The two tech giants have been battling the Canadian government over the law that would force them to negotiate compensation deals with news organizations for distributing links to news stories. The law, called the Online News Act, passed last week. But it could take months for it to take effect. Once it does, Google and Meta say they will start removing news articles by Canadian publishers from their services in the country. Supporters of the legislation have argued that it could provide a much-needed lifeline to the ailing news industry, which has been gutted by Silicon Valley's ironclad control of digital advertising. Under the law, platforms like Meta and Google would have to come to the negotiating table with news organizations and hammer out compensation deals. Government estimates predict that the law would result in a cash injection of some $329 million into the Canadian news industry, which has been beset by news staff layoffs and other downsizing in recent years. Canada's law was modeled on a similar effort in Australia, where Meta did block news articles for nearly a week before tense negotiations led Meta and Google to eventually strike deals with news publishers. A bill to force tech companies to pay publishers is also advancing in California, where the tech industry has levied similar blackout threats. In Canada, both tech platforms have long been against the law, saying the companies are already helping news companies by directing web traffic to their sites. On Facebook and Instagram, news represents a tiny fraction — on Facebook, it's about 3% — of what people see every day. Google, too, does not consider news articles as essential to its service. So both companies have wagered that it is simply easier to block links to news articles than to start paying news organizations. While most major publishers in Canada back the new law, outside media observers have not been so sure. Tech writer Casey Newton has argued that a tax on displaying links would "effectively break the internet" if it was applied to the rest of the web. Other critics have pointed to the lack of transparency over who actually would receive cash infusion from the tech companies. Some fear the programs could be hijacked by disinformation sites that learn how to game the system. Yet press advocates insisted that tech companies retaliating by threatening to systemically remove news articles will be a blow to civil society and the public's understanding of the world. "At a moment when disinformation swirls in our public discourse, ensuring public access to credible journalism is essential, so it's deeply disappointing to see this decision from Google and Meta," said Liz Woolery, who leads digital policy at PEN America, an organization that supports freedom of expression. Woolery continued: "As policymakers explore potential solutions to the challenges facing the journalism industry, platforms are free to critique, debate, and offer alternatives, but reducing the public's access to news is never the right answer." https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2023-06-28/taiwan-russia-warships-passage-china-10574003.html Taiwan tracks pair of Russian warships off island’s eastern coast Taiwan scrambled aircraft and dispatched ships late Tuesday to monitor the passage of two Russian warships off its eastern coast, according to the island’s Ministry of National Defense. Two Russian frigates traveled northward along the coast toward the East China Sea around 11 p.m. Tuesday, the ministry said in a news release Tuesday. It did not specify how far offshore the ships were. In response, Taiwan’s military used “joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance methods” and “dispatched mission aircraft, ships and shore-mounted missile systems to closely monitor” the Russian vessels, according to the release. The ships continued on course and left Taiwan’s “response area” southeast of Suao, a city on the island’s northeastern edge that is also home to a logistics support naval base, according to the Defense Ministry. While Taiwan reports near-daily activity from the Chinese military off its western coast in the Taiwan Strait — 49 Chinese aircraft and 20 ships have been reported in the waterway since Sunday — Russian activity is less common. The warships’ passage comes less than a week after the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary outfit, organized a brief, two-day rebellion against the Russian government that began Friday with the group taking over military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and concluded Saturday after they stood down and withdrew from the city. It also comes just over a week after Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing to meet with high-level Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, which Blinken described as “candid and constructive” but failed to secure the United States’ top priority of renewed communication between the two countries’ militaries. Beijing considers Taiwan, a functionally independent democracy, to be a breakaway province and aims to reunite it with the mainland. China and Russia remain close allies, with the two countries regularly coordinating military exercises together, although Beijing has not openly endorsed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Thursday, Google joined Meta in saying it will remove Canadian news from its platforms in response to Bill C-18 aka the Online News Act. In addition Google will end existing deals with Canadian news publishers. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, unveiled the Ripple music creation app that can generate instrumental music based on your humming. And the company's streaming music app Resso is in talks with dozens of music labels in an attempt to enter new markets. And Molly Wood explains why your right to repair is good for the climate. Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Molly Wood, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe. To read the show notes in a separate page click here! Support the show on Patreon by becoming a supporter!