On this Episode of Coffee Breath Conversations, Podcasts are they misinformation machines? According to the Legacy Media they might be and they probably need gatekeeping.
Joining me to discuss is Brian from the Memory Hole Show. As well Andy Lee from the Andy Lee Show brings the receipts that show that the people that wrote the article might be doing some fibbing of there own.
Ways you can support the Show
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On this Episode of Coffee Breath Conversations, Podcasts are they misinformation machines? According to the Legacy Media they might be and they probably need gatekeeping.
Joining me to discuss is Brian from the Memory Hole Show. As well Andy Lee from the Andy Lee Show brings the receipts that show that the people that wrote the article might be doing some fibbing of there own.
Ways you can support the Show
I would like to thank my Sponsor Resistance Coffee a Saskatchewan Company that believes in freedom. A percentage of all Coffee sales goes to Organizations fighting for your freedoms. Go to resistancecoffee.com and use discount code COFFEE at checkout for a 10% discount and a small kickback to my show.
Help keep my show ad free and support independent media. Consider subscribing for a low fee and get access to by subscriber only content at my website
On this episode of Coffee breath conversations, podcasts are they misinformation machines, according to legacy media, they might be in probably need gatekeeping joining me to discuss is Brian from the memory hole show, as well. Andy Lee from the Andy Lee show brings the receipts that show that the people that wrote the article might be doing some fibbing of their own. As usual, if you like this content, please follow us on social media. Like, comment, and subscribe, drop a review on Apple and Spotify to appease the almighty algorithm. Content Creation is hard work, and it's a passion of ours. If you get value from our content, please consider supporting us financially. For my show, you can go to coffee breath conversations.com and go to donate. Or you can become a premium member of my substack at coffee breath conversations.substack.com. Finally, I would like to thank my sponsor resistance coffee, a Saskatchewan company that believes in freedom, a percentage of all coffee sales goes to organizations fighting for your freedoms, Use Discount Code coffee, at checkout for 10% discount and a small kickback to my show. Your support helps pay the bills and keeps up motivation to produce more content. And with that, let's get started. Welcome back, everyone to coffee breath Conversations. I'm your host, Russell. And today in the studio, I have Brian from the memory hole show. Hi, Brian, how are you? Not too bad. And I have Andy Lee from the Andy Lee show here. Thank you very much for joining me, thank you for having me. It's gonna be fun. I've got a lot of good stuff. I think we're gonna reveal a few interesting facts today. But before we get started with that, I'll have you do a brief introduction. So we'll start with Brian, if you want to introduce yourself. Hi. So my name is Brian from the memory Hall Show. I just have a humble little podcast that I try to get my voice and the voice of the silent majority out really not? Not too complicated. Just an everyday person. Thanks, Brian. Andy, tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I ran the last federal election. You know, I covered the freedom Conboy and, you know, a lot of foreign corporate things like that. So I like to look for the funding sort of what I do. So I do a show with Mark Patrone, from saga 960 am, you know, again, not, you know, just sort of a concerned citizen, right. It's not a money making machine or anything like that. So, you know, it's just something that we, we put together, you know, to try to inform people, because we've, I think we've had some massive failures in our media to inform people. So yeah, that's why I agreed to do the show today, I want to deconstruct this article, and, and, you know, sort of show the funding and, and the agendas behind this and the people behind this. So, yeah, anyways, let's just get the article, and then we can start talking about it. So I have the article pulled up here. So this article is by global news, Rachel Gilmore, and it's how podcasts have become misinformation machines, and what can be done about it. So we won't go through line for line. But I think one of the key things they bring up right away in the article is that because podcasting has become so popular, they're claiming that some of them become machines for spreading misinformation, experts on the subject warn people podcasts for many different reasons. From sports, to fashion to politics, at the end of the day, it's entertainment. And you can choose whether or not you listen, or move on to the next show. There seems to be this idea that this industry needs need some gatekeeping from the alleged fact checkers. So what are your thoughts on that? If I could jump in real quick? I mean, really, the mainstream media has had or has been the gatekeeper of information, or misinformation, depending on how you look at it for many, many years. And there's a reason why so many people are leaving watching mainstream media and going to shows like this or to blogs or other kinds of things, right. People desire to find the truth. And you can't necessarily find the truth from mainstream media anymore, that they used to hold the government's feet to the fire, but they don't anymore. You know what I mean? That's kind of a problem. Yeah. I mean, if I can debate I totally agree with that. I mean, that's why I'm here. Right? I was here because I started looking for, for the truth. Um, you know, I don't believe that our mainstream media monopoly on the truth and longer. And so that's why, you know, I think we're seeing more and more podcasters jump up, because, you know, people are searching for alternative news sources, because there is intense distrust in the media right now. And, you know, there's good reason for that. You know, I'm not saying don't trust them altogether, right. There's good journalists out there. There's still people who do good work out there, but there are people who are putting out propaganda style things. The the authors and the people quoted in this article are some of those people who've done it right. Rachel Gilmore. I'm not gonna say that all of her work is bad. She's done some good work. But she has done some harmful things right, she spread the Ottawa arson hoax. And she said that she knew the people who, you know, were in that building personally, and that they were good people. I'm sorry, they weren't good people. They propagated a hoax that was used in to enact the emergencies act against protesters. And that was completely blown out of the water was just proved by myself and Jonathan Kaye, very, very quickly, and anybody who wanted to dig into it could have very easily disproven it, she spread it, you know, so she is part of the misinformation machine that she says that she's fighting against, that's been brought up in the emergencies act inquiry in the House of Commons. They're not responsible for some reason for you know, what they've done. Along the same lines. Justin Lang, Justin Lang was was responsible for saying that there were loaded guns found at the protests. So he was quoted in the article, right. You know, he said that there were loaded guns found at the protests. While I'm sorry, there was never any loaded guns at the protest. He said that it was a tip from police. Nobody ever followed up on it. He was actually called out personally by MPD, annoyed several times on social media saying, Where did you get the story from? Because again, this was a story that was used by the Liberal government to say that the emergencies Act was justified against protesters. So it's really really dangerous. Like it's not, you know, when they do it, it it wasn't benevolent. Right. What happened, people had real world repercussions from these fake stories that were put out. And yeah, I mean, so you know, here's western standard saying there was no load of guns found. But you know, they never had to answer for that. So, I mean, that's why, you know, people like us are here looking for the real information, right. And looking to podcast it. It's not the first time that this has happened. It's not unique to not unique to the convoy like I was looking at. I looked at press progress a lot. Press progress, see that there are fact checkers, right there funded by the Broadbent Institute's NDP, Reg, they've put out a lot of things saying that they were going to fact check articles. Right. So this was one that they did less than Louis. So conservative leadership candidate less than Lewis claims, Bill Gates is behind a plot against Canada. That's the headline. So this is lesson Lewis talking about the WHO pandemic treaty. So I came back to pres progress. They said, you know, press, did you guys even look to see if anything that she said was legitimate? Did you even have a check? Right. And I had a check. I had a check long before actually less than Lewis was even talking about this. So you know, the fact of the matter is, is that there is a who pandemic treaty, that's a fact anybody can look it up isn't necessarily a nefarious thing? No, we don't know because it hasn't been drafted yet. So we don't know what's going to be in it. But it's definitely worth keeping an eye on because there's no doubt that the who made serious missteps and how they handled the pandemic. So of course, if they want us to sign on to some sort of, you know, an international treaty, we should approach it with caution, right. That's fair. The other thing is that it's funded by the National Institutes of Health Research. Those are the consultants. The consultants are mostly founded by Bill Gates. That's a fact anybody can look it up. It's right on Wikipedia. Press progress didn't even bother to look at it, though. And after I pointed all of this out and said no, no lesson news is not a complete nutcase. Let's not, you know, let's not freak out yet. But let's follow this with caution and understand what we're signing into if we're gonna sign up for it. And they promptly blocked me afterwards. Right. And so press progress is widely retweeted by a lot of liberal and NDP members and members of our house of commons. Right. So it's a huge concern that they're not even fact checking their own their own articles when they're supposed to be the fact checkers. So they are checked their own articles, but they need to get keep the podcasting industry because of alleged misinformation in our industry. Yeah, basically. Right. So I mean, you know, who's fact checking the fact checkers now? I mean, the podcasters are, right, that's what we're here doing today. So, you know, I can I can fact check this article on podcasting for you. And, and we can go through it, but I mean, you know, it just it's a little bit ironic that to people that, you know, we're known misinformation, spiders, are saying that, you know, podcasters are, you know, the basis of all evil and the source of disinformation in our country, it's a little bit wild, for them to come out saying that right. When their stories were used in in a very, very harmful way by the government to crack down on protesters. That's pretty dark place to be going. Right. Well, do you think that because there's such a low barrier to entry for podcasting that these journalists feel a little, I don't know, I want to say intimidated but they they see that anyone with a microphone own in some software in an RSS feed can get a podcast and talk about things where they went to journalism school and they applied for a job. And they are, you know, working for this big legacy media corporation. Do you think that they feel threatened by all the podcasts out there? I mean, look at Joe Rogan's podcast. They even in this article, they talk about Joe Rogan and his explosion in popularity. Do you think that there's some sort of, you know, professional animosity here? Yeah, I would say it probably would be I mean, it's a threat to their monopoly of information they keeping, right like, for them, this is not really, you know, this is not what they would want competition, you know. But the one thing that I found interesting, what Ling said, was that it's very cheap, just like you said earlier. So it's very cheap to get into this. You just have to have a microphone. It doesn't cost a lot of money. But, I mean, if you think about it this way, it's really almost the most democratic time in history where anybody's voice can be heard. I mean, you have to have listeners, obviously, but you don't have to go through the gatekeepers. You don't have to go through the narrative. Anybody can speak. Right? So to me, it's like, can you get a more every voice counts? Can you get a more democratic way than this? You know, what do you think, Andy? Do you think that journalists feel threatened by the podcasting industry? Yeah, I mean, I think absolutely, because there's so many of us now, right? There's so many alternative media news sources. So absolutely, it's threatening, because we're pulling away from their audience. They're losing their their revenue, right? They're struggling, right. They're relying on government handouts and subsidies, just to operate. But I mean, the stunning thing in all of this, I think, is that it's just a complete lack of self awareness, you know, in the case of this article is, why are people seeking out alternative news sources? Right, Why could it be because we're not doing the kind of reporting that, you know, that people want to hear, right, is that why? So I mean, you know, they have to understand that they've actually created this phenomenon. Right. And, you know, it's not something that people did, like I said, I didn't ever think it was going to be here, right. But here I am. But I mean, it was created out of a need and a desire for, you know, deeper digs into news and things like that. So I mean, they have to understand that they've actually feel this machine, right. And by feeling this machine, they've actually injured their own industry, because people are turning to podcasts like this. Right and not turning on the six o'clock news. So, I mean, yeah, and I just want to read a quote about just laying because of course, after So Justin, of course, after the convoy, you know, journalists held a pity party for themselves. You know, they called it journalist under siege panel that did So Justin Link was there. So I'm just gonna read what Justin link said, after he put out misinformation. And he also put out misinformation about the Ottawa arson, right? He spread that story far and wide that truckers tried to burn down a building and commit a mass murder. And you know, now of course, we know that the truckers had nothing to do with it. Right. These were two individuals who acted on their own. So anyways, this is what Justin link said. So just to link freelance investigative journalists agreed with Trent link specializes in covering extremist groups, like say diag along, maybe. And from this experience, he said he understood the convoy had nothing to do with anti Vax groups. Instead, he said the convoy supporters were from extremist and conspiracy theory groups. So what he said is that these people don't believe the media. And that's what makes them so dangerous. So he thinks that if you don't believe every word that he says, You're dangerous, but you know why you shouldn't believe every word that he says, You shouldn't believe every word that I say, or every word that Russell says, or any word that anybody says, right? You should always be doing your own assessments, you know, and trying to, you know, find truth, right? And like I said, truth isn't a monolith, right? Somebody else's truth might be different than my truth. Yes, I did say diag Alon, oh, my God. And we can talk about diagonal on if you want. I saw that comment. So, you know, truth isn't a monolith. You were constantly searching. I'm always searching for my own truth, right? I'm not just taking anybody's word for granted. I don't take anybody's word for granted. I'm always researching. I'm always fat checking to find my own truth. Right. And I think that the truth that I've constructors pretty good. So you know what, just a link. I'm not dangerous, because I'm searching out alternative media sources. Right. And that doesn't make journalism under siege that makes the people being holding, you know, journalists to account that way that we used to do, right. And if journalists were doing their jobs properly, if they were holding government to account right, like they used to, they wouldn't be in the situation that they're in right now. They wouldn't be under fire. They wouldn't be under siege and they wouldn't have any competition from podcasters that here we are All right, like I said, they created it themselves. It comes to this idea, you know, COVID-19 misinformation. I have a couple of episodes where I talked about COVID-19 with some other people. And I noticed that when I go into Spotify, it says find out more information about COVID-19. And it kind of puts this label on the on the episode. So an AI bought at some point scan through either my entire episode, or probably most likely my show notes and tagged it, and then tagged it for this sort of this quote at the bottom of the episode. When it comes to COVID-19, everyone has got something wrong at some point about COVID-19. So why does it seem to be that some creators and podcasters no Joe Rogan, for example, talks about it, and there's this incessant need to fact check. But other people, you know, they talk about it. And even though later on there, what they talked about was proven to be false, whether through ignorance or through purposeful, their episodes aren't being censored. Is there like a double standard that you find? Yeah, for sure, there is, I mean, mainstream media doesn't seem to have the same scrutiny as smaller platforms, like our podcasts or whatever, you know, the idea, though, I mean, you can have misinformation. From mainstream media, you can have misinformation from podcasts, we still have to think and be critical thinkers, but that seems to be lost nowadays, you know, and that this is one of the problems, you know, I should be the only source of information, I'm the authority, you know, it's really a call to authority, in a sense, like, I'm the only good source, it's very futuristic, you know, I don't understand why people can't critically think and take the good pieces from everything. And also accept that, you know, along the path of finding out what the truth is, you're gonna make mistakes. You're not always born, you're not you're never born knowing everything perfectly 100%. So in order to discover the truth, you really do need to make mistakes and risk making mistakes, you know? Yeah. I mean, the, you know, the COVID. Censorship is, it's real, right? You know, and it's coming at lawsuits in the States. Now. You know, of course, I was de platformed, along with Michael singer, Michael Sanger was somebody who was suing Twitter, and the United States. So we talk a lot about that, and what's going on? So, we know, I mean, Joe Rogan, I haven't agreed with everything that Joe Rogan said, you know, some things are just kind of like, whoa, whoa, you know, hold it. But again, you know, that's me, being able to that shows that people are able to self police, what information they accept, and what information they reject, right? We don't need a framework, we don't need people saying, you know, this is the Ministry of Truth, we're gonna tell you what the Absolute Truth is, right? I'm able to look at this podcast and say, Oh, Joe, don't go there. Right. But, you know, he does also do great work, right. Like, he had Mark Zuckerberg on there from Facebook. And, you know, we heard that Facebook was altering algorithms to suppress, you know, the, you know, some stories during election time. So, I mean, you know, there's, there's great value and stuff like that, and what he does, and like I said to me, you know, I think you have to understand you don't have to go along for the whole ride. Right? But try the ride. Right, um, see, see, if you glean what you glean from it. And I think it's really important is that, you know, we are able to self police, right, um, to filter out what we determine, you know, what we think is misinformation, what we think is true information. I mean, I get a lot of stuff sent to me where I'm like, No, I'm not buying into that. Right. But, you know, we were told that sort of, you know, the government and big tech, colluded with governments, obviously, to censor some COVID information that they felt was misinformation, you know, that's now been later, you know, proven to be true, right? Things like, I mean, we, you know, we were told what the vaccines didn't, they were gonna prevent transmission, right? You weren't gonna get it? All of these things, you know, and these people were called conspiracy theorists, the scientists who said that that's not true. They were deep platformed they were censored. And, you know, who benefited? Well, I mean, again, when that happens, you know, legacy media benefited from it, right? Because, you know, every time that somebody gets deep platformed, or censored for misinformation, you know, that's one less person that's got their voice pitching in saying, Hold on here. And I mean, like I said, you don't have to buy into everything right? Like, don't don't take everything as big as Joe Rogan is don't take everything he says as God's given truth. Right? Because it's not, but he's finding truth. He's looking for it at least. Right and a lot of people aren't looking for it. What they're doing is they're being spoon fed it and then they turn around and they spoon feed it to us. And they exactly, they expect us just to swallow it right? And take it at at at face value and, and be like I'm not going to question this because it comes from a trusted source, our mainstream media live. Sorry, that's just not the case anymore. Anyways, I'm gonna leave it there. But we can go more into that. And I can show you why you shouldn't trust necessarily the studies or the journalists, because there's an agenda. There's funding, and it's not always correct. Well, I think when it comes to the legacy media, I look back at the riots back in 2020. And you would see, there would be a riot going on, and there would be the media. And they would be converging on a safe location, again, nice sanitized statement from the police chief. And they would be kind of in the background, just listening to what the police chief and the mayor and everyone else has to say. And meanwhile, you have independent journalists and bloggers and podcasters that would have body cameras on and they would go into the actual riots, and they would actually film what was actually going on there. Then these news agencies would then try to buy that footage from them. So really, at the end of the day, who's doing all the work anymore, because you have the media that were supposed to be a trusted source of, you know, information. And they're just getting canned political statements, you know, that have been sanitized run through PR. But then you have these independents, they're going in there, and they're actually getting the real story. They're actually getting on the ground footage. That's actually making the difference. That's that's taking this narrative and turning it on its head. So the legacy media to me when they turn around, they say, well, podcasting is misinformation. Well, if you sit there, and you simply just absorb what government and city officials are telling you, and you take that at face value, that's not really reporting. That's just that's just being a mouthpiece for those government agents. But imagine that right? My competition is bad and wrong and whatever, like, obviously, you know, that's what they would want to play it out, as, you know, competition is taking away their market share. So, you know, but there's a reason why people are leaving mainstream media and going into podcasts. You know, that's the whole point. People aren't trusting them. There's more and more people that are becoming distrustful of MSM. Right. So what do you expect to happen? Yeah, I mean, I agree. I'm just gonna read this quote from Justin link in the article. So it says the proliferation of a bunch of these podcasts touting everything from COVID-19, misinformation, to pro Russian propaganda to just general sort of far right agitation. It's exploded in recent years suggested link, a freelance investigative journalist who covers disinformation extremism, I'm not sure how great of Justin is doing at covering the extremism. I've seen what he's putting out. You know, I'm not gonna say I'm a member of diag Alon, but I will say that there's a lot more to it. And they have to understand that they're being trolled at this point by this group. I don't necessarily agree with what the group does. I'm not a fan of Jeremy McKenzie. You know, I think that what he does is borderline, you know, dangerous stuff. And he has faced, you know, some serious charges. So, but you know, all of that, I mean, they've just taken this, and they've just run with it. And again, this was used, as you know, this was an extremist group that was running the convoy. And this was information that was used to enact the emergencies act. I mean, this is a bunch of dudes who ate edibles and dreamed up and imaginary country one night called the egg Alon. Right. And they're calling them a far right militia now. So I mean, like, I'm not sure you know, that this is, should be our trusted news source, right. I mean, Jonathan Kaye wrote wrote a great article on it was really funny. I think he called it like, the diet diagonal Lloyds or something like that. I'm talking about this. Right. And so again, I'm not gonna say that I agree with it. But I mean, you know, you know, this is what our mainstream media is running with. Right. And a lot of this, you know, it has this, you know, there's a common thread and it's always about the far right, it's always about anti hate, and it always ends in censorship. Right? That's, that's, that's the that's like the stream of events, right? Here's the proof that there's a far right extremist group. And now we need to send to the internet and information. And you know, what, who benefits from censor shills? Guess what legacy broadcasters benefit from them? You know, when you take down podcasters, and things like that, when you want to control the stream of information, legacy media benefits, right. And we know that our legacy media is struggling right now. And are there podcasts that are disinformation? Yeah, absolutely. Right. Sure. There are. But but, you know, we have free speech. And again, I think it's really important that people are able to do their critical thinking for themselves, especially in light of the fact that we have massive failures in our media as of late So, yeah, anyways, that was just I thought that was interesting that that, you know, he said that, you know, if he's a specialist and extremism, you know, I don't know what does far right even mean anymore I keep I always hear far right far right far right, you know radio fire right agitation well what about far left agitation and that I mean, we saw plenty of it we saw the results of far left agitation, you know, for last couple of years. It's unbelievable that every single time there's something that someone disagrees with the boogeyman is brought out alt right far right. Those words have lost all meaning the actual the actual extremists out there are laughing because these these, what these labels are associated with have absolutely no bearing anymore on reality. Exactly. And I mean, even referenced in the article. Oh, my God, Alex Jones is profiting. Well, who just got $600 million a few years ago, the legacy media so everybody's kind of making their money somehow, in a way, right. But it's not like there's a monopoly anyways, is what I'm getting at, which is good. Yeah. So I just wanted to I wanted to go through. So this is some of the fact checking that I wanted to do on this article. So I want to go into somebody who's quoted here, this is going to be a little bit of a dive guys. Sorry, just try to stick with me. It's a pretty tangled little web. So the guy is called Ahmed al Rawi. And so what he does is he runs something called the disinformation project. Okay. So this is what he does. He studies this information. So here's what he said. And here's what they quoted in the article. So he said many podcasters and livestreams, will post links to their broadcasts across various social media platforms, but the actual content and the misinformation is hosted on another platform, which social media giants will find very difficult to moderate. So I think it's very clear what what al-rawi thinks, right? He thinks that all of this should be regulated. Well, I'm going to tell you a little story about al-rawi. Okay, so I'll Robbie's like I said he funds something, he runs something called the disinformation project. It is study. I'm sorry, I've got to just find the study here. Where are we? Okay, so here it is. This is a study. Okay. So he does a study, it's called the methodology, methodological challenges of studying fake news. Okay, so he did the study, and he particularly targeted rebel news. He targeted two groups. He targeted a rebel news and he targeted global research. Now global research, of course, also employed lathe Maroof, who was, you know, wrapped up in the controversy? Because, you know, obviously, he made some awful anti semitic comments, but still hasn't been taken to task by our Ministry of Truth, or the ministry of heritage, however you want to refer to them. I prefer to refer them as Ministry of Truth nowadays, because it seems like that's what they want to do. So anyways, so this is his study. And so in this study, what he did is he targeted rebel news, he said that he analyzed 400 tweets between rebel and global. And he ranked them as to whether or not they were just informative and disinformation. And so the finding of these studies in a nutshell said that 71% of rebels top news stories examined contain some sort of falsehood. Okay. And so in his study, he quoted a specific tweet that rebel news put out. And so I've got a tweet here. So this is it. I hope you guys can all see this, but I'm going to read it anyway. So this is the tweet that they quoted specifically in this study. And they use this as an example as proof of disinformation. So the tweet is shocked video, Ezra Levant, just a market are on his Air Canada flight. And the Halifax police threatened to arrest him if he didn't shut up about it. And so the essence of this tweet is that the assumption was that Omar was on a no fly list. Right? And you know, his sister was on a no fly list. We already know that. So the assumption was that he was on a no fly list. So this study determined that this tweet was misinformation. Because Omar was presumed to be on a no fly list. Here's the problem, though. It's not misinformation at all. Because Maclean's wrote an article on it. And here it is. And in the article, they specifically say it's entirely possible, if not probable that the 29 year old is on Canada's no fly list. And his own lawyer Omar Coronavirus lawyer goes on to say, Hold on, let me just find it. Hold on here. Even his own lawyer thinks he likely fits the criteria for notes Fly list. Okay, at least technically speaking, I am guessing, frankly that Omar is on the no fly list. Whittling tells Maclean's. So this is his own lawyer saying he's likely on a no fly list. So this was a perfectly reasonable assumption for Ezra to make. Right? Even when Omar Clara's own lawyer said he's on a flat earth. And so this is what the study based it's it's facts on right saying that these tweets are misinformation. Rebel news is putting out misinformation. I'm sorry, it wasn't misinformation at all. on record, ours own lawyer confirmed it. And so did Maclean's. They thought the exact same thing that he was on a no fly list, it was a perfectly reasonable thing for people to think. So this is who they're quoting in. Global News is article, right? The guy that does this study, who apparently is a disinformation expert, right, this is the guy who's supposed to be fact checking, disinformation, totally missed that blew that off, slandered rebel news, when it was a totally reasonable thing for them to think. Right. So I have huge issues, when they quote these so called experts, who are supposed to be fact checking. They didn't even fact check their own facts here. Right? I mean, it's, it's bonkers, I'm sorry. So what happens in that gap, then really, like see, this is what I find is interesting. They get to operate in this gap, where they can see something that is potentially false or partially false. And then it gets disseminated through their channels. And then by the time it's proven to be not true, or partly not true? Well, it doesn't matter. The story has moved on, right, so that they get away with this gap where they can send out this kind of garbage, you know, and get away with it. No, I mean, I don't know, like I said, this, this study was specifically quoted, this exact study was quoted in the global news articles. So it said in a peer reviewed article, our role we co co authored, he analyzed a sample of the top 400 articles from outlets, global research and revenues that were shared on Twitter and Facebook, right. And then they said 71% of them are false. So I mean, you know, I just went and prove to you that I have huge issues with the study. I don't know what 400 tweets they analyzed, but the one that they chose as the Hallmark, they only chose to to put in their study. So the one that they chose for rebel news was basically information that was actually put out by Maclean's, and overdose own lawyer. Right. So I'm sorry, these are the experts. Now, here's the fun part about the study. Okay. I'm gonna tell you more about the state. So the study is funded by of course, the Ministry of heritage, right. We all knew that was coming. So the study was funded by the Ministry of heritage, right. So, you know, Pablo Rodriguez. It was also funded by there's two other there's two other bodies that funded it. So there's SSHRC. So the SSHRC here's what they do. So it's a government body, right? Social Science and Humanities Research Council. There they are, right. So this is who's funding this apparent, you know, disinformation in fact checkers. And you know, this is what they do. They research online disinformation, right. The other body that did it is the digital citizens initiative. These guys. So the digital citizens initiative, this is a really fun, fun, fun thing. So what they do so they received$20 million in the last budget or to start up, they keep on receiving more money. So it's hard to figure out exactly how much they've received. So the digital citizens initiative, funds, something called the Digital Democracy Project. And there's other subgroups what they do. So they dole out funding to fund disinformation studies, things like this, right, which I just proved was probably not right. Okay. So, the digital citizens initiative is run by a man called PR Mark perot. So PR Mark perot. He's funny. He testified with the ethics in front of the ethics committee by Stephen Geebo side when Stephen give us side ran the Ministry of Truth, and he tends to he testified on behalf of censorship Bill C 10. So he thought that this was a good thing, right. He was right by Stephen DeBose. Side, testifying in front of the ethics committee saying that the censorship Bill was 100% ethical. So really, really interesting that you know, this funding and black Lux did a fantastic story on this digital scissors as well. They she found that they were funding our mainstream media journalists, to go on vacations to get training on how to properly cover our elections. Right properly it right because there's a proper way to cover elections. And so they were getting these funded vacations, right to go away and get this election coverage, education or re education is what I would call it. Anyways. And so you know, this is all funded by the Ministry of heritage. There's so many of these groups, right? It's just bonkers. Now, when you look at the digital citizens initiative, most of their funding, I tried to find out where they're actually doubling their money out. So a lot of it goes to Concordia University and their journalism project. So the fun thing about Concordia University, is that their dean of political science actually has attended state dinners with Justin Trudeau, he actually set his table at a state dinner, like, that's weird. I'm sorry. You know, he's setting his leaky, like, literally set his his table for him to have dinner at a state dinner. So I mean, this is this is where the money goes, this is where it flows, right? And like I said, it's all circular, it all comes back to the same thing. They want to regulate stuff like this, right? What we're doing right now, they don't like it. Right? They don't want it out there. They want it regulated, they want to be able to take this stuff down. Right, if they deem it's harmful. Well, when they were, you know, I talked with Maxine, Bernie, about Bill C 10. At the time, and, and I've talked with a few other people about, you know, Bill C 11, as the new iteration. And one of the things that was said is that they want to promote Canadian content that I believe it said something about social cohesion, something about, you know, promoting Canadian values and social cohesion, I'd have to look that up. But it's, it really, really reeks of, we will decide what is going to be promoted? And what won't. I've heard you with a few a few artists, saying that, you know, if my content is content that doesn't necessarily tow the government line, am I going to get D boosted on these platforms, YouTube, and Facebook and will rumble an odyssey even be allowed on? You know, in Canada, there's a lot of talk, you know, about digital gatekeeping. And, and soft blocking Canadian content out from the world. I watched some of the proceedings with Bill C 11. And it was like a feeding frenzy. All these media companies were lined up, wanting more money wanting more influence, and talking about how they they hate having to compete with these other places. Jg makalah was up there. And he was the only one that was actually up there that I could see that was actually defending independent content creators, everyone else it was like pigs at the trough up there, just you know, trying to get their extra money talking about how they need to make sure that Canadian content, you know, the content that they put out, is is, you know, ranked higher on, you know, different media platforms and things like that. And it it all ties back, I agree to this whole idea that podcasting because it's so decentralized, anyone can start a podcast, anyone that's listening right now, if you have a microphone, you can make an account, and you can start podcasting. And you can gain a following and go from there. The media, they have to go to school, they have to get regulated by CRTC, although they're pretty much Toothless to actually do anything. And they are in a way bound by certain rules that podcasters aren't. Yeah, the one the one interesting thing, too, that you saw, I mean, kind of along the line here was how mainstream media, not sorry, not mainstream media, but social media teamed up with the government and becomes a circular thing. That, Oh, you don't want to be regulated, you better do something about this. I don't like what's being said. Then things get censored, let's say. But you can bypass what the laws of the country are just by getting the private company to do it. But I mean, when you link private companies with the government, I mean, there's a term for that. It's pretty much the definition of fascism, right? So it's, it's pretty much a very dangerous path to go down where no voices can be heard, and only the approved voices can be heard. And not only that, in this article that Rachel Gilmore wrote, she mentions about am radio being the original source of misinformation disinformation, and how it leads to all sorts of you know, radicalization, well, when I was younger, I used to listen to am radio and every night coast to coast came on that show was all about people talking about aliens, people talking about secret government agents, you know, all sorts of crazy stuff you know, lizard people. Audrina chrome All that sort of stuff, right? Everyone knows that's for entertainment. Anyone that's an adult, that is of sound mind knows that, you know, you can listen to it. And if you agree or disagree, you know, you can kind of go from there, you're an adult. But this whole idea that well, it's misinformation, and we have to police it. Well, again, you're you're again, your your nanny, stating, you're taking away my ability to listen to something and say, Okay, well, this guy's talking about how all the presidents are lizard people. I can look at that and say, well, they're probably not. And I can say, Okay, this is entertainment. I got a good laugh out of it. But I know it's entertainment. And if someone chooses to believe that all the major political figures are actually lizards crawled up from the sea, then that's, that's on them. And they'll have to be able to justify that. Well, that'd be lizard people. Or something. All right. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in. Yeah, I can remember that remark about social cohesion. And I remember Blacklock says, Holly don't said, I haven't heard that term social cohesion since I was reporting in China. So it is, you know, it's a very dark term, you know, it means, you know, we want you to conform to this, you know, you know, don't don't step over the line, don't think for yourselves, right. You know, we know best basically, right, don't think for yourselves. I mean, it's really, I find it really, it's the destruction of critical thinking. Right? You know, because, like I said, I mean, if I, you know, if I didn't think critically, like, if I didn't look at some of these articles, I mean, I never would have found out that you know, that there was a study, you know, that was actually, you know, the tweet that they use by by rebel news was actually confirmed by Maclean's magazine as well. So, you know, you know, it's not that you shouldn't, again, you shouldn't take everything at face value, right. Like they mentioned, Jordan Peterson, I like Jordan Peterson, of course, he went to bat for me. But I don't take everything he says as the word of God, either. You know, what they're saying, when they're saying, you know, we want social cohesion and things like that, you know, what they're really saying is, you know, we want to destroy critical thinking, we want to be your Ministry of Propaganda, right? And, you know, you're gonna get the sole source of truth from us. And that's a very, very dangerous place for any democracy to go. So Justin, what else to just some laying here, he said, you know, challenge their ideas as necessary, call them out, in some cases, for being what they are, in many cases, they're just charlatans who are doing this to make a buck? Or in some cases, dangerous ideologues that need to be called out. So I mean, you know, I would agree with some of that, I don't think that most podcasters are charlatans looking to make a buck? You know, if if you're making a living off of podcasting? I'm sorry, you're, you're doing much, much better than I'm doing. You know, and good for you. You know, you know, and I don't think I think that most people who do what they do, I don't think that they're trying to spread dangerous ideologues necessarily, I think that there are a lot of people like, like us who are looking for, you know, for an alternative source of media, for some truth, right. Yeah. And it was interesting to that other quote by Justin link about the pro Russian propaganda. And this is something that we've really seen ramping up in our country, and in our mainstream media is all this pro Russian propaganda. Of course, we all know that I was put on a study, unfortunately, saying that my accounts on Twitter was linked to pro Russian propaganda. I had some good talks with the author. And he agreed that perhaps I was put on that list incorrectly. But yeah, I mean, so this is another funding initiative that went out from the Ministry of heritage Pavlo Rodriguez just shot out$2.5 million to combat Russian propaganda in Canada. I mean, CBC has been the most widespread Disfarmer disseminator of Russian propaganda, as far as I can tell. I mean, they said a flood out that the convoy was caused by they thought it was Russian agents, maybe. So I mean, this is a little bit funny, right? These are supposed to be our trusted news sources. So yeah, it's really, really interesting. They're coming up really hard on that. And they started the the onset funding right after this study was put out. And the study is full of independent journalists, right? People like me, and I kind of left it off at first I thought, yeah, whatever. I'm a Russian propagandists, right. I mean, I'm Ukrainian family and Ukraine, for Pete's sakes. I certainly don't put out a pro Russian propaganda. But you know, when I actually looked at it, I thought, you know, this is actually a little bit darker than you know, you shouldn't really be laughing it off, because they're going to use this study. And they did use this study and now they're putting out funding to fight Russian propaganda, which apparently I'm a part of, and so is Rupa Superman. Levant. Maxine, Bernie, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, we're all on this list. Right. So I mean, and the other thing, I mean, is this really the biggest concern in our country? You know, we've got it. Now we've got a Russian propaganda, anti Russian propaganda campaign going. I mean, we've never looked at the Iran lobby in Canada, which is extensive, you know, I just pointed out some of the Iran propaganda being put out the other day, some of our people from the MacDonald Laurier Institute, have been fired at by this, this Iranian group that, you know, parrots hominis, you know, talking points. And, you know, the other I mean, we've got a huge, you know, Chinese propaganda issue as well, when I put out the weaker report that the UN put out, you know, I put out sort of the, you know, the most shocking excerpts from it. The most horrifying details from that report in the report was horrifying. You know, a whole group came after me, they're called the keel collective. And they have a huge following. They've got 36,000 followers on Twitter. So they're basically as big as me. And they started putting out all these probating talking points on that post. And, you know, saying that the Uighur genocide is is a myth. They gave me all these articles that they wrote. And I was like, Who is behind this group? Right? This is a huge issue. These people have a massive following. And it's all pros, Beijing, right? It's very, very scary. And, you know, nobody's even looking into these groups. Right? And I'm sorry, I haven't seen anything of that magnitude on the Russian side of things. But this funding coincidently came out, right after this study came out, right. So it's like, okay, we've got Russian propaganda, our independent journalists are on it. Let's fund an anti Russian propaganda, you know, you know, initiative in our country to hunt down these independent journalists and find out what they're doing. And let's totally ignore, you know, the, you know, the, the Iranian and Chinese propaganda that goes on in our country. And that influence even though it's much, much greater and magnitude, so it kind of wild, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, CCP is. Yes, I agree with you. I'm not going to repeat that word. But absolutely. So you know, there's so many of these groups out here. We're attacking, you know, JJ McCullough. Okay. That's what we're doing in our house of commons. We're not even looking at these massive groups that actually are disseminating very, very harmful disinformation. Right. And they're out there. There's a lot of them that are doing it. But no, no, let's say, let's pick on independent broadcasters. Right? Let's pick on podcasters. Even talking, you know, about this idea of picking on podcasters. Well, generally, the picking seems to be on one side of the political spectrum, the right side of the political spectrum. They're the ones that need to be policed. They're the ones that need to be reined in there. The Russian disinformation, propagandists because they have an ideology that doesn't meet the current mainstream narrative. You look at Ben Shapiro, for example, he co founded daily wire, daily wire goes to pod movement 2022, where they paid for a booth. So they've paid a sum of money to be there, he shows up, and next thing, you know, pod movement. 2022 is putting up this big thread saying, We're so sorry, we'll never have him here ever again. Well, you were happy to take his money. You're happy to open the door, as long as he didn't walk through it. And that's the problem is that this whole policing of podcasting, and that, it just puts people into different camps more and more, because the podcasting that gets policed is the more right leaning conservative podcasting. So then they go and they join daily wire, or some more right leaning podcasting network, and the information just becomes more and more of an echo chamber. And that to me, worries me because I think that's where the extremists can actually slip into. Because when everyone's operating over an echo chamber, that's not good for anyone. No, you're right. If you shove somebody into a closet, it doesn't change who they are, they're still going to be what they are, but they're not going to have their voice heard. They can't be part of society. It's not a good thing. But you're right. They always want to seem to make the far right, as the boogeyman, like we said earlier, and anything that doesn't follow the narrative, oh, there you go. You must be a Trump person like like what they're doing with polio, right? Oh, he must be a Trump like he's a Trump guy. You know. It doesn't even matter what the truth is. He may be he may not be but doesn't matter what the truth is. We don't like him. He has potential to defeat us. So he's Trump or he used the far right or whatever the the label of the day is. It's pretty sad. Well, they seem really, really worried about gatekeeping like, right right here in the article. Your message could go right to the listeners ears about gatekeepers. Why do we need gatekeepers who are the gatekeepers? Why do we need them? I as the listener, I can listen to something. And I can say, You know what? This is a little too far for me. I'm not gonna listen to this anymore. Or maybe I listened to I'm like, This person is absolutely out to lunch. And it's hilarious. I'm gonna keep listening to it. Because I can't believe anyone could be this far out to lunch. That's my that's my right. As someone that's utilizing the internet that's utilizing that spheres to listen to these things and say, Yeah, that's for me, or it's not for me, I don't need Justin laying, I don't need Bill C 11. I don't need anyone to police. What I'm going to listen to on the internet. And you're now we already have laws. We have hate speech laws. We have slander laws, we have libel laws. We don't need anyone else there. If something truly is hate speech, then already falls under that legislation. Is something really is slander libel, well, we have civil recourse. And guess what, it's part of a podcast, you can take a copy of it, you can bring it to court, and then have the judge decide from there. I don't understand why we need to have these journalists and these organizations funded by the Canadian government telling us what we need to listen to or not listened to. Even in the article a little lower, there, you have Carmen selfesteem, saying, you know, and it doesn't matter what you do, you can seep back into the platform and heighten that, find who you want, you know, imagine being able, being free to associate and listen to what you want, like, how was that a bad thing? I don't understand why they're like, Oh, my God, they're there. You know, we need to stop it. But they're gonna be able to find this again, and then we can't control it. And as well, guess what? We're grownups. We can make our own decisions. You know, if it becomes a problem, there are laws in place, like you just mentioned. So I don't know. It's mind blowing. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, I you know, I think the reason that they've latched on to this, again, is, you know, it's a government agenda. They want to regulate the internet. You know, and like I said, It all leads back to Bill C 11. And, you know, Bill C 11 just leads back to, you know, benefiting legacy broadcasters, right. So, they've had a very vested interest in seeing, you know, these, these, this legislature pass, you know, so that they can, you know, become more of a sole source of news, you know, other competitive podcasters are taken down, right. If you do something controversial, if you step over the line, you know, if you make a mistake, or you know, if you say something incorrect, you could get your, you know, your podcasts pulled. So, I mean, that's all very, very beneficial. So that's why they're, they're pushing it right. It always comes back. Whenever they use these polls. I mean, I deconstructed a lot of polls, almost all the pollsters in Canada have blocked me. There's only one who didn't block me and 48 didn't block me. He actually did block me, but he unblocked me because I said, Hey, what's up? You pulled me on the federal election, right? Like what's going on here? And I've never come out at your pulls actually so unblocked me. And you actually did unblock me. Good guy. But anyways, yeah, I mean, Nick Nanos, I looked really extensively at that next post. So Nick's done a lot of work with these race based groups that really save a lot of funding. There's one called the CRRF. So they did a pool with the anti hate network. You know, they're run by somebody who was chosen, the director was chosen by of course, the Ministry of heritage, or the Ministry of Truth. So as I like to call them, so what they did is they ran polls, and their polls were like, Do you believe that online hate is the problem? And of course, you know, a majority of respondents said yes. And so they use this information to say, well, yes, and we need to please the internet. Well, who benefits? Well, guess what Nick Nanos, who runs Nanos research, who does this pool, who did this pool? He's an expert for CTV, right? So he gets paid to be an expert for CTV, CTV then runs the polls. And, you know, guess who benefits when, you know, if you say that we need online hardened legislation, again, Legacy broadcasters benefit? So you know, it's just a big circular swamp. And whenever you look at these experts, these studies, these polls, like I said, I looked into, you know, Ahmed al Rawi, his disinformation project, his study, very, very quickly debunked it so that there are massive problems with it. But you know, nobody is looking at it in mainstream media, they just go, Oh, does this benefit me, you know, does this information benefit really? Does the study, say something in it that I wanted to say? Yes. Okay. Let's run with it. Right. Let's actually look at it. And like I said, I have serious questions. I'm going to ask, I actually tried to request all 400 tweets that they analyzed. I want all 400 tweets that they went through, that they said were disinformation, from global research and rebel news, because I think it would be really interesting to go through those tweets, and find out how much of them were actually disinformation. And I'd like to do my own study and see if 71% were just disproven or untrue like they said, because like I said, their hallmark tweet, right? The one that they decided to put in the study, that was massive information was confirmed by Maclean's. Right, so I'd love to do that. But you know, I mean, this is the sort of stuff that nobody does anymore, you know, they just don't look at it. You know, they just are like, does this information work for me, okay, I'm gonna plop it into my article. Because, you know, massage is my confirmation bias tells me what I want to hear. I'm not going to even read the study or look at study that closely, I'm not going to question it, because it's an expert. Right? And, you know, it works for me, and it works for my agenda, and it works for my industry. So I'm gonna use it. Well, they come to the conclusion first, and then they find the evidence that backs up their conclusion, they do it, they go the opposite direction. One of the last things I kind of wanted to touch on was, they say, what can be done about to stop the spread of misinformation? That was kind of one of the things they said and, and they, you know, there's a lot of talk about reporting and, and things like that. But I want to ask you a different question. And that is, what do you think we need to do to keep the Internet open and free for everyone? That's a tough call, actually, I think there's going to be a lot of VPN sales coming along here. Hard to say, it really is hard to say. I mean, when the government is pointing their gun at you, and controlling everything you can have access to, then you're having a really tough battle. You know, your your reach as a person can be maybe only verbally with other people you can run into. But the internet is such a big platform, that little people can get a big voice. If they take that away. I mean, I don't know how you're gonna get around it. What do you think, Andy? Yeah, well, I mean, he No, I think it's really, unfortunately, we're just gonna have to see where these bills go. I don't think that they get a gig gonna give up. You know, we know I said, of course, immediately after the convoy that Justin Trudeau is number one priority, because of all the, because of the way that mainstream media totally, in my mind, like they completely blundered and butchered the news for the freedom protests. You know, and independent journalists, we had sort of a David and Goliath battle going on, but you know, the little people really won the day in that misinformation war. You know, we really did we, you know, we just proved most of their stuff. So I said, you know, his, his number one priority after that was going to be to center the internet, I wrote an article on it, I said, it's, he's made it very, very clear, throughout his European tour, as he talks about misinformation and things like that. So you know, of course, now, you know, it is their number one priority, it's gonna be the first thing that they want to do. So, you know, I mean, it's really up to our parliamentarians, we've got a lot of great MPs who are standing up, you know, we have to be, you know, I am not sure if they're going to be able to defeat this bill or not, you know, we will see, but, you know, Michael guys, great. I'm really, really at the forefront, you have to understand how deep to and, you know, we can almost do a whole show on this just on the lobbying behind this bill. Right. Like, we've got, Mr. Ma, who works for Facebook, lobbying behind this bill. You know, there's just there's so many big tech is lobbying, you know, you know, rallying behind sort of the spill a little bit so, because, you know, the thing is, is that when, you know, government says that we're going to create our own, you know, our own disinformation expert, our own, you know, our own panel that will please the internet for us, you know, then big tech gets off the hook a little bit. What a terrifying thought of paying people to, to police the internet, like, that doesn't reek of Commissar type type of, you know, sanctioning of what's appropriate and not I don't know, what does. Did you ever see the show on Netflix? How to how to become a tyrant. It's like six episodes talking about some of the biggest, you know, evil people from the last century or whatever. And it's unbelievable when you see what they did then. And they have updated versions with the internet and everything now that they didn't have those tools back then. But it's there are so many parallels it's really uncanny. I did an episode on that one. And I said, Holy Moly, I watch the episode with my kids. And, you know, it's, it's remarkable what common things are happening between the past and the present, like history does repeat itself in that sense. No, definitely 100% My advice is if you want to support for free and open Internet is you should always follow and like and subscribe to your favorite content creators. Online. Definitely give them reviews and help them with their exposure because the more exposure they get, the more difficult it is to wipe them from the face of the internet. So definitely want to thank you, Brian, for coming onto the show today. Andy Lee, thank you so much for doing all the background information. And that I'll give you each a minute to plug your social medias and kind of any last words. And then we'll, we'll end the show, Brian, starting with you. Awesome. Thank you. I mean, you can find me you can see the handle there on my screen section there at memory hole show. And I put the website up memory a whole show.com You can see my show notes there and just listen to podcast episodes or subscribe wherever whichever podcast brand you listen to. Yeah, so most of you probably follow me on Twitter, that's my you know, that's my platform, it's my home. So I'm a real Andy Lee show. And I also have a YouTube channel. It's very, very small right now, this will be on it and all of our videos go on at the videos that I do with my persona. So that's the real Andy Lee show on YouTube. I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe. Because I do this for free. And you know, I might be able to get some ad revenue one day to fund my journeys. I've got some journeys coming up, you know, so, so that would be really, really great. If people could go to my channel and subscribe. I really appreciate that. And yeah, you know, I mean, this was really fun. It was somebody said, I just want to say this comment. Thanks for having these conversations while we still can. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, you know, let's hope that our parliamentarians do our job. They uphold democracy. I just want to end with a quote from from this article. And again, this is from Justin Lang. So he says that these podcasts have the real potential to destroy the fabric of not just American democracy but of democracy everywhere. So I mean, that's that's a pretty stunning statement. So I asked you all to tune in. You know, I asked people to come and to discover for themselves if podcasts are misinformation so I hope that you know, if you watched I hope that you know, you made your own deductions was this podcast misinformation? What do you think? Anyways, Goodbye, guys.