UK Column Radio
UK Column News Special: Taking The Fight To The Censors
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If you were watching yesterday's news programme, Wilsie was talking about, we had a bit of a clip from his comments at the UK Column on location on Saturday when he was talking about the fact that the talk radio had had their YouTube channel cut, taken down for whatever reason, and of course, that this may have helped push the idea that particular news applications needed to be protected in light of the censorship regime which is being imposed at the moment. This was the report at the time from January 2021, talk radio urgently six answers from Google after his YouTube channel was shut down. That was almost immediately reversed because of the intervention of MPs amongst others. Now, of course, at around the same time, or at least within a month or two of that, the UK Columns YouTube channel was also shut down, but surprise, surprise. There were no MPs writing to our rescue that day, Brian. So, the point is that as the online safety legislation developed, in fact, from the earliest stages, it was the idea that they wanted to protect journalistic content, so-called journalistic content, from the mainstream media, and well, this was part of it. There were a number of categories, we'll talk with Wilsie about this in a second. The idea of democratic content, so ministers added a new and specific duty to the bill for category one services, and category one services are the likes of YouTube and Facebook and so on, all the big organizations to protect content to find us democratically important. So we'll talk about what that means in a second, but they then talked about journalistic content, and this, they said content on news publishers' website is not in scope. So, on the telegraph, or the BBC, or any of the big media news media organizations on their own websites, it's not in scope of this legislation, it's only what appears on the social media channels. This includes both their own articles and user comments on these articles, but they said that articles by recognized news publishers, and this was at that time, the first time we heard this term of recognized news publishers shared on in-scope services, will be exempted from the restrictions placed, the censorship restrictions placed by the online safety act, and category one companies will now have a statutory duty to safeguard UK users' access to journalists' content shared on their platforms, and it went on to say that this means they will have to consider the importance of journalism when undertaking content moderation, have a fast track appeals process, and will be held to account by Ofcom. So that looks good. Now, of course, it doesn't rule out the possibility of content being taken down entirely, but what it's very clear, what it was very clear about and still is very clear about, is that if content is being removed, that there has to be a way to fast track any appeal that a recognized news publisher puts in, and to deal with it appropriately, and it appears that that probably means actually having face-to-face, obviously not a face-to-face conversation, but at least a human-to-human conversation rather than just relying on the AI. Now, the question is, what is a recognized news publisher, and well, this is from the legislation itself. So this is part 56. In this part, recognized news publisher means any of the following entities, the British Broadcasting Corporation, top of the list, of course. S4C in Wales is the second on the list. The holder of a licensed under the Broadcasting Act 1990 or 1996, who publishes news-related material and connection with broadcasting activities authorized under the license. So that would be Sky News, GB News, these kinds of organizations. And any other entity which, and the first one of these, is meets all the conditions in Subsection 2, which we'll have a look at in a second, is not an excluded entity in Subsection 3, and they have specifically mentioned anybody that might be perceived as promoting prescribed organizations in Subsection 3. And then the final point here is it's not a sanctioned entity, so it can't be RT and it can't be any Iranian or other similar news organization. So let's look at Subsection 2, which goes into more detail here. So the conditions in order to define yourself as a recognized news publisher are these, that you have a principal, as a principal purpose, the publication of news-related material, and such material is created by different persons and is subject to editorial control. So this can't be an individual who's simply running a news blog on the internet. It has to be an organization with multiple people working for it and with an editorial mechanism there. Publishers such material in the course of a business, whether or not carried on with a view to profit, so you don't have to be a profit making organization, but you do have to be running a business. It's subject to standards code, has policies and procedures for handling and resolving complaints, has a registered office or other business address in the United Kingdom, is the person with legal responsibility for material published by it in the United Kingdom, and finally it publishes its name, and it publishes the name and address of any person who controls the entity. So those, as we'll discuss in a second, aren't beyond most people to organize if they want to, but certainly there are many independent news organizations in the UK that would fall under that situation. Now, of course, another aspect of the Online Safety Act was the idea of false communications, excuse me, but false communications are, they define it as such, a person commits an offense. If the person sends a message, the message conveys information that the person knows to be false. At the time of sending it, the person intended the message or the information to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm. I'm not sure how they know that, and the person has no reasonable excuse for sending the message, but guess what? If you're a recognized news publisher, you cannot commit an offense under Section 179, and that cannot be committed by the holder of a License Under the Broadcasting Act 1990. So there we go. Let me pass over or welcome at least our colleagues here, and ask for any comment that you might have. We'll see if you've got any thoughts on this as we've covered so far. In detail, what the requirements are, and I'd urge anyone who wants these protections to try and sign up for them, because they are actually quite easy to jump through. They're very simple loops. I mean, for some people, it might be difficult with the business address, for example, if they're worried about being, you know, docs and there's some sort of whistleblower or some sort of undercover journalist. But apart from people like that, I think most people will be able to meet these requirements. I mean, it does create essentially a two-tier system, but then when you look at articles 17 and 19, you've got more broad definitions, which do protect people, and I think it's time to start using this against the people who want to censor us. Charles, any thoughts? Yeah. I mean, I think Wilson's absolutely right. And I think we've said this before, we've came out on Saturday, the on-location event. We have to take it at face value, and as it stands at the moment, but I do think like all legislation, and this is a constant theme on UK column, it is drawn up in such a way that it can be subject to almost any interpretation. And I think that there are ways in which we have to be alive to the possibility that goalposts will either be moved, or at least we will find that certain organizations, the smaller, and what was it, please, Kyle, decide to describe them as small but risky organizations might find themselves, you know, defined as, for example, supporting a prescribed organization. I mean, I think it's no coincidence that we're seeing the terrorism legislation used with a very heavy hand now, sending a clear signal with arrests of multiple people, no, specifically with regard to Palestine and the link to Hamas, which causes a prescribed organization. So it is as though there is groundwork being laid now in order to set traps further down the road, which is not at all to say that we shouldn't be pursuing this, but I think we really should be mindful of the ways in which it can be manipulated in future. Yes, indeed. Have you any comments? Well, totally agree with Charles there, but I look at this and I think there is something very interesting here because it gives, we'll say it gives us, let's say, free press the opportunity to actually mix it with the bigger companies and also to be arguing within the law. Now, we could have lots of discussions about the fact the law is biased or the law is designed to squeeze people out, or as Charles has just said, the law is going to ultimately change and work against us. But there are too many people in my opinion who see things utterly black and white and they just want to do nothing or move away from the system. But here, we've got an opportunity to get into the system and not only for the UK column, other news organizations or maybe individuals who want to set up a news organization, have got the opportunity to do it under the existing rules and then get stuck into a real debate with other media organizations over why we lead free and unrestrained press. So it's a loophole, it would appear, but I think it's one that as many people as possible should pour through that chink in the wall in order to take the battle to the heart of the established media that of course in general the law works to protect. So it's a loophole, but the question is, does the loophole work? And so in order to test this, we, the UK column, who we had our YouTube channel shut down in 2021, as everybody knows, sent a letter followed up by an email to the YouTube legal team. And in response, we got this. Hello, if you feel that your channel was blocked or removed in error, you can learn more about how to appeal your suspension. And they included a PDF document which had some nice photographs of them receiving our legal letter. And well, that didn't seem terribly optimistic. However, sometime later, we went through the appeals process and we cited the online safety act and the fact that we are a recognized news publisher under the online safety act. And before we knew it, this happened. After taking another look, we can confirm that your channel does not violate our community guidelines. Thank you for your patience while we reviewed this appeal. So that was within two hours of the email being or the subsequent appeal being entered into. And so at that point, we couldn't really say for sure whether there was the letter that we had sent that was responsible for this. And I suppose at this point, we still can't really say for certain that that is what has happened. But just today, there's been a new development, and that is this, that that email, as you can see, was dated Friday the 4th of October 2024. And since that point, we have noticed that YouTube has taken down. I think about half a dozen or eight videos from our YouTube channel on the basis of medical misinformation. And I'm thinking to myself, Oh, well, maybe this hasn't worked after all. So I decided I would challenge one of these takedown notices. And well, this is this is the email that they had originally sent to us. We wanted to let you know that our team reviewed your content. We think it violates our medical misinformation policy. And the video I'm concerned, excuse me, was UK called news from the 31st of March 2021. And well, within an hour of the appeal going in, this is what came back after another look. We can confirm that your content does not violate our community guidelines. And so they took the action to reinstate the video again. So that again, in this case, I again cited the online safety act. And I again said that we are the online safety act obliges YouTube to protect the content of recognized news publishers. And that really they should restore that video, which they immediately did. So since this is the first time, Charles and will see that you have heard this piece of news, I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. Charles, would you like to go first, or shall I go? No, you go. I think this is amazing positive news. I think they are scared of this, because this will be going to an individual reviewer. That review is going to be sitting there. They're going to be looking at all of this, you know, legal jargon that you've put in there. And they may be intimidated. The only thing that's of the concern is how have they been given any information on this? Have they been given guidelines? Or have they just seen all of this legal information in a quick Google search and gone? Oh, that seems to check out. If regardless, whether they've been given information from, you know, up on high management, it does seem like this works. So I mean, using this against the reviewers, citing this to the reviewers should hopefully intimidate them. But what we need to see is we need to see YouTube giving specific guidance to all of its reviewers, where there is a recognized news publisher, where it is of journalistic importance. And when it is of democratic importance, they need to maintain free speech and they need to keep a level playing field as explained by the acts. So, I mean, this is good. But again, we don't have full confirmation that they've really changed their policies. It seems to be more a change in culture or tone. Charles? Well, I think the first, the main positive to draw from this is that challenging does yield results. And I would say that this should apply to absolutely everything. It doesn't matter what it is, what it concerns, but challenge it always challenge this, this stuff. And I'm not just talking about censorship and online safety or so called online safety. So challenge, I think, as with so many instances, we are where we are. But we talked about this a little bit in extra yesterday. Of course, it is absurd that we exist in an environment where control of our content is subject to the decision making process of either an individual or a corporation. Nonetheless, that is where we are. But what I think this demonstrates is the tendency to censor first without due process and, in effect, hope for the best and just expect that you're not going to be challenged on it. But of course, the moment you are, you realize that you're on thin ice. The only thing I would say is that within the, within the Act, section 18, within the online safety act, it does just show how, in effect, the government has set the conditions to sort of pass the buck because we've got the specific clause about liability, criminal or civil liability. And the owners, it's saying if the provider of the service judges that they may incur criminal or civil liability, then they should take content down immediately without going through the steps that have been set out. But of course, why should they be the arbiter when it concerns criminal or civil liability? I mean, it's, again, in terms of manipulation, it's all too easy for them to remove something and say, well, we thought that it was, you know, too close to the line or whatever it is. But of course, we see now in terms of challenging things that are, you know, make a different situation, different time. But the problem is that the provider of the service does still have a huge amount of power. And then, of course, with it, again, within section 18, we've got the issue of still there, you know, of course, a recognized news publisher being banned from using a service. So we wait to see sort of how that will play itself out. And indeed, what challenges can be made against that sort of circumstance. But no, I mean, I think this is fantastic. And this is the whole point, you know, again, something we talked about on Saturday is that this has to be done across the board, you know, the whole idea of a non-partisan coalition of all providers, of all editorial lines, getting together to take this on. Absolutely. So we want, again, to extend the invitation to anybody who is running an independent media organization of whatever political persuasion or whatever, whatever your editorial position is on anything. This doesn't really matter. We are all experiencing, are all going to have to operate within this regime. And as I've comma said, this regime really will begin an earnest towards the end of this year. And so we would invite everybody who's involved in independent news production to get in touch with us. Let's get together and see what we can all do to push back on this agenda. And that means it might involve anything up to and including formal legal action. And the other point to make here is that this is not just about YouTube. YouTube has been particularly egregious when it comes to what they described as medical misinformation. But in many, many other areas, they are quite liberal. So, you know, there's quite a lot of content on YouTube, which other platforms have been shelling down. As I mentioned on Saturday, I think the worst case of censorship that we have for any of the platforms that we're involved with is TikTok, which they're just constantly shelling down channels. And don't give any explanation as to why they're shelling them down. There's no appeals process possible and so on. So, since younger people are on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, these are important platforms for anybody that's putting out news. And so we need to not just be considering YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, but also TikTok and Instagram and these kinds of platforms is right across the board. And anybody that wants to contact us on this and get involved with this, please use the email address online safety@ukhome.org. And we will put this in the show notes under this program later on. So, yes. Well, we could come on to this a little bit later, but I want to say the other thing that's going on in parallel with this is that we've clearly got some concern beginning to arise within legacy mainstream media over the fact that journalists are being targeted in their own homes. There's been a number of raids and people's computers and equipment taken. The National Union of Journalists has actually made a little bit of comment. They probably haven't spoken out in public as strongly as many people would expect them to defend journalists and free speech. Nevertheless, I sense that there's an undertone of increasing concern within the journalistic community that journalists are being raided by the police on minimal evidence of any real crime. And of course, this is a very, very serious position for UK to be in. And so I see these two things together. We've got the censorship being imposed by the big controlling platforms, but also we've got censorship, which is being imposed by the state using the police in order to silence people who are carrying out but bona fide journalistic work. I don't know what your thought on that is Charles. Yeah, well, I think, absolutely. I mean, like I sort of mentioned earlier, specifically with the terrorism on the terrorism front and the link, especially with Hamas. And of course, when we think, you know, if you want to consider the fact that Hamas was only prescribed in November 2021. So in effect, it looks a lot. I mean, even if there were perhaps specific reasons to be able to make that prescription, nonetheless, it's very timely now for the authorities to have that with which to hang people on. So I think we have to be very mindful of that bit. I think the other thing that I would say is the sort of boiled frog element to it, which I think is really significant in that, you know, people who are, we talk about the younger audience. And I think a lot of younger people will just accept that content gets taken down and that in some senses, that's okay. And that the, you know, the situation has been inverted in that the responsibility has shifted from the individual to be able to discern either what they want to watch or listen to in the first place, but certainly far away from them now is the decision as to whether they want to pay anything, any attention. And we live in this extraordinary inverted world, where now on the receiving end of this, we have several layers of bureaucracy and sort of corporate influence that are deciding what we should be watching and how we should be thinking. And I think that's the bit that we really need to keep concentrating. And I mentioned this again on extra yesterday. And I think what would be really interesting at some point during our discussion today is to have you and Mike talk about the way in which this has drifted certainly in the over the lifetime of UK column, because it has built and built and built to this crescendo, but it's, you know, it's not like it hasn't come from somewhere. And I think this is the thing that we really need to consider. It is outrageous. Well, yeah, well, we can talk a little bit. We can go back a number of years that we've mentioned the whole app for situation in the past. And that actually, it's worth just touching on that again, because that gives an indication as to what the motivation behind this is. Now, if you remember back in 2018, 2017, 2018, Matt Hancock, who was at that time was Secretary of State for Digital Media and Sport, because the, sorry, no, just for Media Culture Media and Sport, because the digital hadn't come in yet. That's right. So he ran the Caron Cross Review, because he, as he described it, he was concerned about the future of the mainstream press. And he was wanting to make sure that there were some kind of solid foundations that the mainstream press could operate, because without a free press, as he described it, even though it's not free, there is no democracy. So it was clear in 2018 that there was some concern in government circles about the situation with the mainstream press. But actually, when we go back to 2013, when Atvod was attacking us, Atvod at that time, for those who don't know, was the authority for television on demand. We had an up-and-coming YouTube channel. And their main concern was that our content was two television-like, right? This was the term they used. You are two television-like. And so, and in the course of the communications with them, it was clear that their concern was that we were in somehow competing with the BBC or other mainstream news channels. And I said to them at the time, first of all, they said to us that we are running a video on demand service. And I said, no, YouTube is running a video on demand service. We're just putting content on YouTube's video on demand service. And they tried to tell us, and it was us that was running the video on demand service. And so I said to them, well, what you're effectively doing is that you're taking an organization with thousands of pounds in the bank and putting it against an organization with billions of pounds in the bank. And you are attempting to say that those two organizations should be operating on an equal regulatory playing field. And that they were absolutely clear that that's exactly what they were doing. And that has been one of the features of this legislation, as it has developed, in my opinion, is that it is there to try and make sure that anybody that's coming along to so-called disrupt, the mainstream media, isn't actually going to be able to manage to do it in an effective way, because the mainstream media is the voice of the government, and there's to be no kinder narrative out there. So that's what I would say about that, Charles. I'd absolutely agree. I'd be really interested to hear Wilsie's thoughts on where this has all come from. Well, I was just a yesterday, actually. I believe Matt Goodwin was talking about it. People get 30% of their news on average from the internet. That's only going to grow. As people get older, as a lot of the older generation who watch television begin to unfortunately die off, we're going to end up in a world where realistically 50, 60, 70, 80% of people get their information from social media. For the mainstream news outlets, it's a bit difficult for them, because they're now trying to do this transition, and they want these special protections, because now there's a huge amount of competition. There's loads of different people. Every Tom Dick and Harry can get a camera, go out, report things, report on things. A lot of the time, it is individuals, and they'll be able to come in, do commentary, and do commentary much better than anyone else. Back in the day, you used to often have reviews within newspapers of movies. That's not really a thing anymore. People go to the critical drink one, YouTube. What they're doing is a sort of gate-keep diversion of what we can have now, which is a beautiful amount of competition, and then people can discern in a free market of ideas. You can find the truth, and I think the truth will win in a free marketplace, which is why they're trying to stop it. We've talked a lot about bands and strikes and everything like that. What we have to remember in addition to the bands and the strikes, there are other things that are quite insidious, like the shadow bands. I really want to pop the lid on the shadow bands and see what's happening there, because we've seen with the Twitter files, I mentioned this at your fantastic event, the Twitter files show that governments are getting involved in order to sense a content behind the scenes. Without any official state power being used, they say, "Oh, do you know what? It would be very useful if you did this. It would be a great favor to us if you did that." They're complying. I want to see what is the level of compliance. Let's bring this to daylight, pause some sunlight on it. I think if there are any other journalists out there who are maybe a little bit worried, but they're not super concerned because they haven't been hit with too many strikes yet or anything like that, what about the shadow bands? What about the shadow bands? Have you noticed your views start to drop off? Have you noticed that there was a period after which suddenly not as many people were engaging? You've got people who aren't getting notifications from YouTube. You've got people who are being unsubscribed. That's just one platform. Like Mike said, and Brian said, "There are plenty of platforms. Really, we need to be putting pressure on all of them and we need it as many different news outlets come on board as possible, because they're more than Mary, and left and right." Yeah. Again, I just add to that, we'll see that we've got a double opportunity. There's to get in amongst the system and fight it from within in a reasonable professional manner. We're already seeing that that has power. And then we've got a whole parallel system of censorship, which you've called shadow banning, which needs bringing to the surface. I remember the morning that Mike and I were here in the column, and we watched for a very short period of time the viewing numbers on our YouTube channel drop. So people had unviewed apparently, and that was just fascinating to watch. And then I could go the other way and say we've got the BBC, which is top list in the law itself that we've seen on screen at the start of today's discussion, operating a department called BBC Verify. And when somebody asks a perfectly legitimate freedom of information question as to how many people work in that department, how much money, obviously, of licensed fee payers' money, does it suck up? And other questions about how it came into being, the BBC arrogantly says we don't need to tell you because we've got exemption from replying to freedom of information requests, which are asking about our creative business. This is outrageous. And the big way, not just the UK column, but all of the smaller free and independent media should be ripping the BBC to pieces over this because it's outrageous. So again, I think there's two areas, but certainly anything to do with shadow banning. What are the activities of 77 brigades these days? They declared their hand during lockdown. Their department, well, their brigade system in the British Army hasn't gone away. It's actually swallowing more money, even though it has a tiny number of people. But the public need to know what they're doing and why and who's controlling them. So I think that with some really measured questions and some standing ground by the free and independent small media, we can really start to throw some very big rocks into this censorship bond. I've just- Exactly. Just after that, because although everybody talks about 77 brigades, we should remember that that's only one agency of the UK government, which is doing this kind of thing. There are at least two or three other departments within the cabinet office. There's a department within the department for digital culture media and sport. So there are actually quite a number of departments of the British government that are actively watching what people are saying and doing on social media. And of course, at this point, we have no oversight or no way of discovering exactly what they are doing and how many requests are going into- I mean, how would you even generate a freedom of information request? Because you don't know the department, you don't know the terms involved. I have a massive fight going on with the Ministry of Defence at the moment, because Ben Wallace had made a statement about the activity of 77 brigade in the House of Commons. And he used a particular term. And in order to avoid answering the freedom of information request I put in, they said they had no records using this particular term. Now, their response is clearly not in the spirit of the act, because I was quoting directly from Hansard what Ben Wallace had said that day. So they were absolutely splitting hairs in order to avoid answering that question. And that's now subject to an information commissioner's office investigation. But the point is, unless you know the precise terms, it's going to be practically impossible to find out exactly through freedom of information what they're doing in terms of shadow banning. So if anybody's got any other ideas, then we're very keen to hear those. Sorry, Welsie. I interrupted there. I just want to say how toxic shadow banning is, because you don't even know yourself the degree to which you're being shadow banned. And you can sit there and you go, well, is this me? Have I made an unpopular video? Is it I'm now as title? Should I be interviewing someone else? Yeah, what am I doing wrong? And I think a lot of people who do get shadow banned will become demoralized and give up, because they might not know this shadow ban. But you can see when they do it sometimes. I mean, the most clear example for us, and obviously we believe we're shadow banned across a lot of platforms, but Instagram, every single day, we're putting up just little stills from our videos of people holding signs of this, that from the protests. And we were gaining over 100 a day, over 100 a day, hundreds and hundreds of likes and everything. And suddenly, one day, there's over 100, over 100, over 100, two, three, one, two, three. And that's it. That overnight, overnight. And I know someone else who was growing exponentially on Instagram, and then they got to about seven, eight thousands, and breaks immediately on, and they're stuck. And I mean, Instagram seems to be the most overt, but are they doing it on YouTube, or are they making sure stuff doesn't go out beyond the people subscribe to you? So you sort of trapped in your own little bubble, talking to yourself. You can't actually reach out and speak to other people, but people of the mainstream opinion, yes, you'll constantly be barrage with their opinions, try and bring you around to their point of view. It's insidious, the way that they do it. And it's like a slow suffocation, because you can't say, Oh, I've got a strike here. Look, they've done this. They've done that. People go, you say, I'm being shadow banned. I think I'm being shadow banning. They go, prove it. And it's really hard to prove. But I mean, if it did come to core or something like that, or at least lawyers being involved, I think there's an opportunity to say, well, you need to disclose this. You need to disclose whether you're shadow banning. If you lie to us and say, you're not shadow banning, well, then you know that you are breaking the statue. No, please. Sorry. I was just going to say, Brian, this idea of shadow banning, of course, is an expression of a principle that was all the way through the online harms online safety discussion from 2017 right up to the present day. And that is this notion that the online safety act is going to protect freedom of speech. Don't worry about that. You can say what you want to say. But of course, you have no right to be heard. And so, you know, you can post your video, but you have no right for that video to be distributed anywhere. And that is one thing that, you know, there is no protection against shadow banning in any legislation that exists. And for, as far as the government is concerned, a good reason they would be certainly viewing that in a positive light, I would say. Yeah. Well, this was expressly stated by the Chief Executive of Twitter. I mean, why people persist in celebrating Elon Musk's ownership of that platform? I cannot understand because as soon as the Chief Executive, who I think is called Linda Yacarino, was hired, she she referred. I mean, here it whilst it was still the online safety bill, we had the phrase legal, but harmful, harmful, but legal. And she describes it, her phrase is lawful, but awful. And she specifically said that content exactly like you say, content just would not go anywhere. And the phrase she used was that, yes, we, you know, we will sustain freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. So I mean, she made it absolutely perfectly clear what they do. And if Twitter are doing it, then I mean, of course everybody's doing it. So they are explicit in that regard. And just like you say, well, you know, how do you know? How do you actually sort of prove that? Can I also mention, I've just got section 17 here from the Act, part eight of section 17 or article 17. In this section, the reference to taking action against the user is to give is to giving a warning to user or suspending or banning a user from a service, or in any way, restricting a user's ability to use a service. So I think that's actually quite broad. So this is one of the most beautiful things, I think, about this act here. It actually says in any way. So that, I believe, is the silver bullet against shadow banning. If we can demonstrate that there's shadow banning taking place and can challenge them in that way, yes, that would be right. You were going to say something? Well, I was just going to mention my experience of being retrained or refrained by YouTube. So I had one video in my Walking the Dog series on YouTube taken down because in it, I had inserted a little audio clip where I was speaking to Piers Corbin and Piers Corbin talked about jabs. And as a result, that video was taken down. And I had to attend a YouTube retraining online retraining session, which was truly appalling because what it really meant is you were ticking boxes to agree with opinions of YouTube that were clearly incorrect, wrong, biased and misleading. But you had no way of engaging with that. You had to be retrained with that incestuous mess that Google had decided was their opinion on jabs. So this is something else, which I think should be brought into the public arena. Otherwise, we can have these huge corporations simply making up the rules themselves in the shadows. So, or exactly. And I mean, if you look at this mandatory retraining, I mean, Jordan Peterson, point blank refused to do the retraining when it came to Twitter, or he refused to click through because you had to admit, and he just refused to go through with it. So, I think this is another form of suspending a user or essentially banning a user by getting people to do this sort of reeducation cam course. And I think we need to be questioning those as well. And just to clarify, you did it because you wanted to know what the process was. Oh, indeed. Yeah. And I did it. And I captured the questions and responses. And I included those in a news so that I could do my job as a journalist and inform the public of what what YouTube was doing in the background. But I found it appalling because it was so, I could say childish, but that might be doing it disservice because the actual implications are very serious. But I found it very underhand. It was reframing me to make it to to make me believe something which I couldn't believe because, you know, what what they were talking about was misleading and untrue. And I'm very happy to say that. So, but of course, a lot of the public, if if you're somebody who watches YouTube and you never post videos yourself, you would never come into this subterranean world of YouTube's rules and regulations. Somebody in the chat box, they're saying it sounds like Chinese-style re-education. I think it's very unfair to China. I mean, frankly, we are doing China in every way at this point in time, it seems to me. And so, yeah, I understand the sentiment, but I think we've got to recognize the regime that we are all operating under. And on that, I mean, I think again, I've said this before and I'm not just wanting to continually pork old water, but I think another thing we have to be very mindful of is that now that the primary legislation exists, and let's say for the sake of argument that there is a ground swell of a response to effectively the appeal to have a multi-denominational advance in the area of recognized news publishers and that there are many more small people who stand up and they are therefore counted as such, and it makes it as it stands much more difficult, therefore, to censor the small but risky organizations. But of course, once that's the case, a statutory instrument, any piece of secondary legislation potentially could be wielded to direct those recognized news publishers to do a certain thing. And I think that's something that we need to be mindful of and the example I gave, which I think is an obvious one, is let's say, you know, public health, which of course we've all had more than enough of over the last few years, but were we to be cast into a situation that we found ourselves in in 2020, it's easy to see how the government could put out a notice to instruct recognized news publishers to broadcast a particular thing pertaining to what they're calling public health. For example, and I think I just think that's one of the things that we need to be aware of. I think that's absolutely right, but what I would say there is that that in itself is why it is important that we encourage every possible independent news organization to get involved with this because we, you know, no matter what we think about any particular issue of the day, we are all going to be subject to this type of regime. Now, there's two things would happen there, Charles, in that event. Of course, in taking an action like that, government exposes itself for being the totalitarian censor that it is. And of course, once they are themselves in that way, there's no real way to go back from that. They're then added for being that. But, you know, as well as he said, the first time we spoke together on this issue, and I think he mentioned it on Saturday as well at the UK column event, it's practically impossible for them to put a definition on the type of media that they want to protect, that doesn't include smaller organizations unless they put some kind of definition on which is related to size, in which case, no problem. We've just, we've got to get together with others and build a bigger organization. You know, we'll find some creative way to get roundy or to get round to challenge these types of efforts. I don't see how they actually don't see how they can win in the long term, because the more they try to shut down, people that are getting themselves organized, the harder it is to do. And the more obvious it is to the general public that that's what they are doing. And so it, and of course, if we've got a significant number of independent news organizations on side all looking out for each other, and all publicizing what's happening to each other, then it becomes very hard. It's, you know, it becomes very, very hard to keep that lid on that kind of information. So, so I, I'm not quite as somewhat more optimistic about, about the end goal here. I absolutely take your point. They can bring secondary legislation. This, this, the Starmer regime has already said that they don't think that the online safety act goes far enough. So I've no doubt whatsoever that it is absolutely on the radar. But, you know, we've got to keep in mind what they're up against. And that is us and people like us. And we are, we are determined, will they, aren't we? Yep. And we've got a window right now. So if they are going to try and make it even worse, we've got a window and we have to exploit it as soon as possible. So the more organizations that come on side, the better, and the sooner it's challenged, the sooner we push back, the better. Because we know they have malevolent intention. So at the end of the day, if we do have a success with this, then they'll probably try shutting it down in two, three years, because it takes time to draft things, committees, to go through Parliament. And regardless, they'll probably end up doing something towards the end of the Parliament to try and stop all of the, you know, so-called far right who exists to a criticizing them, you know, anyone who believes that we should have borders, basically. But for the moment, this window, we can use this to, you know, put them apart and we can weaken their support base. And like I said, the other day, you're wonderful, but we can actually build a huge critical mass on the mainstream platforms and try and bring them off of their onto alternative platforms. You know, it's talking, you know, Odyssey, we're talking whether it's Rumble, whether it's Twitter, whether it's another platform, or whether it's, you know, a brand new platform that starts up, we need to get people off of the mainstream. So we've gotten an avenue here, we've got an opportunity, we've got a loophole, and I don't believe it's going to last forever. No, we've got to take it, we've got to stick together. And I mean, if they go for you, I am Spartacus. Yeah, you're spot on that. We also need to remember that, you know, we're talking YouTube and platforms, but but the press, the existing press in this country is also in bed with the government in helping to produce this legislation. And the big names newspapers also need challenging because they are certainly not standing up for free speech in any way. I mean, Guardian comes into my mind, but times in the telegraph and even the red tops are also helping the government by, you know, their articles screaming that the public are this and that and we mustn't, you know, whatever it's going to be, we mustn't have race, hate speech or this. So we shouldn't let the existing press get away. They're clearly struggling because they say so on their own websites that they've got a huge falloff in the people buying the newspapers. And if we can help that process, then that would be a really good thing to do. But I think we also need to challenge the press themselves. And obviously, we can think back to when the times did that appalling article where it attempted to say that, well, it didn't attempt it. It made the outrageous claim that we, the UK, call them were in business with Resistance GB. And we challenge that behind the scenes. And okay, we've got recognition of our challenge. But my next point from that is that when we've got viewers who say, well, yes, get stuck in, there are going to be more and more occasions where to get in where to get stuck in against the really big players means that it's going to be a core process. And if we, as an individual organizations or even a group of organizations, are going to really take the battle on in that way, and I believe that if the opportunity presents itself, we should do that. It is going to cost money. And this is one of the things that we have to say to not only UK column viewers, but viewers of any of the independent media channels. If you support those channels and you want to protect them from this censorship, at some point, it's going to cost money to go through the legal system. And before somebody says, Oh, yes, but the legal system is completely biased and you can't win. I don't actually believe that yet. And so I'll echo back to you. We'll see that there's a window here and we've really got to get stuck in. But I can see the time coming where we are going to be saying to the broadest audience, you value what we're doing. We need to fight this battling court. And it's going to cost whatever it does, 100,000, 200,000 pounds. And to me, to fight that battle would be money well spent. Well, I think it would be money well spent, but it's also a great opportunity to actually expand our reach in terms of the number of people we're communicating with. And because, you know, 200,000 pounds, sounds like a lot of money, but it's only a pound across 200,000 people. And really, we should that shouldn't be beyond the ability of an independent media organization or a group of independent media organizations to do. So, you know, this is all absolutely doable and possible. And we seem to be getting an indication that we should be heading in this direction. And I can I just say, obviously, you know, there are all the criticisms of Eden on Musk, but if Elon Musk spent 42 billion, I believe it was, or something like that, or 40 or billion, you know, by Twitter, then 200 grand to try and return free speech to most platforms in this country for people in this country, at least seems like an absolute steal. So yeah, I would I would recommend everyone to donate to you pickle them if you can, because these guys, obviously, you guys are fantastic and you need support with this. So the more money that comes in, the more this stuff you can do while you're just struggling along. Yeah, I would just just say, yes, we do need support. And of course, we we absolutely would encourage anybody to make a contribution to UK column, if you if you can. But but I think for this, this needs to be treated somewhat separately. So we need to build the team first. So the first thing to do, as you said, on Saturday, Wilsi is for everybody that's watching this program, to contact any other independent media that they watch and get them to watch this discussion. And let's let's get together and have a chat about what we what our next steps are. Yeah, absolutely. We reach out whether that's the Lotus Eaters, whether it's UNN, whether it's anybody else who you think actually classifies as a journalist who can meet these requirements, then email them, email them on YouTube. Usually there's a public email, if not, on the website, often there's an email, go bring those people on board and let's work together. And I think it's the viewers who are really going to bring people over. I mean, we can go and try and speak to people. We can try and pitch it to them. But if their own viewers are coming to them and saying, Look, you need to do this. I'm your viewer. And this will help you. This is what we want to see you do. We want to see you standing up for this. I think that's going to spur people forward. Charles, I think the only point I was going to make is just really to extend what Willsy and indeed Brian have said. First of all, the trend towards accessing content online, regardless of generation, but obviously very much in the younger audience. And then of course, the other is the declining audiences of legacy mainstream media. And I think this just reinforces the timing aspect of it, but also the strength, the relative strength of our position. And we see this in the mainstream to an increasing degree now, the lashing out against organizations like ours and the sort of besmirching that's going on continually as a sort of desperate plea to the audiences to stick with them. But of course, we know that the reality is that in actual fact, they are all losing ground and therefore they are forced to turn to the very platforms that we have had so much trouble staying on. So that of course is to our advantage because if we do get this right, we are in effect all in the same boat. And they don't have any primacy through their own channels because people are not going to those channels. People are going primarily to the platforms that we've been talking about. So I think that's a point really worth bearing in mind. Can you agree more? Willsy, have you got any other comments on this before we go? I'd just like to say, people reach out, try and bring as many people over as possible to this campaign and we'll try and make it happen. I mean, we're straight behind you guys and you guys are doing fantastic work. So donate to UK Parliament support. And how do people see your work? People can find us on resistance gb.org. Obviously, I've made major platforms on YouTube. We could do with a lot more people on Twitter now that Twitter's become the sort of center of the internet. So anyone who wants to share out our clips on Twitter or on Telegram as well, and we've got a live event coming up at the end of this month with Caitchen Ronnie, if I can actually get one of the leaflets out of the packet, which I can. So please do come down to our live events because we use these to support our journalism that's on Halloween. So anyone who wants to listen to a spooky podcast and hear Humbaya, fantastic freedom band, right, then please do come down into part night out five thirty doors open. Okay, details will be in the show notes. Just to emphasize that all media outlets can work together, you'll understand that UK Parliament's been quite dog orientated, you know, Vanessa's keen on our dogs. I've been doing walking the dog, but you, of course, have got a cat in the studio and we're still very happy to do business with you. Well, that's that's lovely to hear. To be fair, I've actually got two of them. So I'm not sure if we're a second one, but you are. And my house may keep feeding the fox, so it might get even worse. Good. Excellent. Okay. Well, look, Charles, any final comments? Yes, just one. No, we've spent an entire hour talking about things that are completely valid and completely legitimate. And our focus has been on smaller news organizations. But of course, actually, the focus is on you, the individual that is watching this, because if this doesn't work out, you are the one that suffers. You don't get access to the content to which you should have access. So that, I think, is how this must be looked at. These attempts to censor are denying the end consumer, the person who should have unrestricted access to all journalistic content. And I think that is the message that needs to be spread. Perfect. A perfect way to end the program. Thank you very much. Brian, Charles, Willsy. And well, we'll be back at 1 p.m. tomorrow for another normal UK Call of the News channel, if any of them are normal. But join us then. Bye bye. 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Mike Robinson, Brian Gerrish, Charles Malet and Willsy from Resistance GB discuss the Online Safety Act and its implications for independent media. https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-special-taking-the-fight-to-the-censors