00:18:20.540Obviously, you know, the government is not moving forward on pharma care in the way that they suggested.
00:18:25.320Meanwhile, we're spending a ton more money on the military.
00:18:27.620Where is the NDP on criticizing the way that Mark Carney is going around the world and basically ignoring human rights in order to try to get economic deals, whether it's in the UAE or India or Saudi Arabia or, you know, of course, what, you know, our deals with Israel and our continued support for that country and what they're doing.
00:18:46.000There was just a report in the UK this morning that apparently the IDF, there were signs of
00:18:49.780torture on a little toddler who was returned to their family.0.74
00:18:53.040Like, you know, so this is like, I don't know, it's just all ridiculous to me.
00:18:57.320There's so many opportunities for the NDP, but like, can they seize it?
00:19:06.580It's entirely possible that because they haven't had a permanent leader, you know, there has
00:19:11.600just been less interest in what the NDP has to say.
00:19:13.920and maybe that will start to shift when they do have a permanent leader. But again, how are you
00:19:17.360going to take advantage of that? Which policy positions are going to hit? I definitely think
00:19:21.480there's an opportunity for an Avi Lewis with a policy program that is going to be very distinct
00:19:26.540from what the liberals are offering to maybe make an impact on some of those issues. But is he going
00:19:32.960to choose the right policies to try to push, to try to have people pay attention to? Should the
00:19:40.300federal government be setting up grocery stores? Maybe I'm a little skeptical that that's the
00:19:44.140level to do that on. What can the federal government do on data centers? I want to see
00:19:48.620more flesh on the bones of the policies that he's offering. But I definitely think there's
00:19:53.060an opportunity. The question is how they go about it and whether they can make the media care,
00:19:56.920really. Yeah, definitely. And I appreciate that you laid out the laundry list of things that
00:20:03.520aren't getting, you know, the attention or the debate that and this is the byproduct
00:20:09.220of lacking a strong progressive voice, not having that in Parliament and not having the
00:20:14.560media attention as a result, I mean, things like the discussion about Bill C9 has been
00:20:19.600driven by like Andrew Lawton, instead of, you know, the criticisms that we've heard
00:20:26.600from organizations like CJPME, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East who are
00:20:31.100concerned about the criminalization of protests against genocide. And, you know, there's like the
00:20:37.380conversation around Bill C-12, which is going to severely restrict the rights of refugees and
00:20:43.960asylum seekers in Canada. And, you know, we're going to see a tightening on that front that
00:20:50.520I think would make Trump blush. So it's, it's, yeah, I don't know. It's pretty, pretty gnarly.
00:20:57.140Well, there's no question that this this referendum that Alberta is putting forward is going to further affect the kind of national discourse on immigrants, because a lot of their questions, you know, refer to immigration, right?
00:21:09.720Even though everyone's paying attention to like the possibility of the separatism vote and whatnot, whether Alberta might try to leave Canada, which I think is very unlikely.
00:21:18.920Really, what they're going to be doing is kind of ginning up a lot more hatred toward refugees and immigrants.
00:21:23.580yeah well polyev's new line is fake refugees which is great and he said that on joe rogan
00:21:30.580the uh performance when you know everyone was saying that he's uh turning a new leaf and you1.00
00:21:36.180know showing this new version of himself um i'm sorry i forgot to bring you a kettlebell today
00:21:41.320yeah what the hell i i'm actually pissed that's the whole reason i do a podcast i thought i was
00:21:46.460gonna be getting all these kettlebells but next time in montreal uh yeah thank you jesus um
00:21:51.860uh speaking of which you know i did actually want to talk about that and um i think this is a good
00:21:57.460time to bring it up um is the the rogan poly of it all because you know and i know paris you're
00:22:04.620really excited to talk about rogan more um but um you know i actually watched the whole thing
00:22:12.060oh my god why do you do this to yourself how did you do that i was unwell like it's not a fun thing
00:22:20.280to do i actually i at one point i was just curious so i like made sure to hold the face that i knew
00:22:26.860i naturally had on i was like don't move don't react and i opened the photo booth on my imac and0.64
00:22:31.920just clicked a picture and fuck it was bad like i looked like i hated everything and everyone around0.74
00:22:38.340me but it's because i did um so you know that but the thing is is you know i understand it's a two0.96
00:22:44.820and a half hour thing most sane people aren't going to want to watch that um do they like pause
00:22:50.980for a bathroom break or something like no they just go okay and like you know they i wonder if
00:22:56.180they had to pee pee at the end um but you know yeah probably um but no i'm increasingly convinced
00:23:04.580that a lot of the people who kind of shaped the national conversation around this didn't actually
00:23:09.900bother to watch the whole thing. Or if they did, maybe their attention was divided. And then they
00:23:14.020had to kind of circle back and see what people were saying on Twitter. Because honestly, it was
00:23:18.040also really boring at times. So I could see like, you know, if I get back to when I was, you know,
00:23:22.020reporting in a national newsroom, you have a deadline, you're trying to watch a two and a half
00:23:25.300hour thing, you you zone out, and all of a sudden, you've lost like 10 minutes, and you can't afford
00:23:31.160to lose that 10 minutes so um but you know i i genuinely think that that had a real impact on the
00:23:38.600discourse around that interview like why the hell were so many pundits framing this as a job well
00:23:46.280done when poliev literally did the bare minimum and because that's it that's his bar his bar is
00:23:52.120bare minimum like everybody had an incredibly low bar for him like the fact that you know joe rogan
00:23:59.320is like oh videl castro justin drew justin's dad and he's like no no actually pierre is his dad
00:24:06.440um and everybody was like whoa masterful wow how amazing he didn't take the bait wow and it's yeah
00:24:13.400what why is that the bar like and they're like oh you know he said canada will never be the 51st
00:24:18.680state it's like yes good for him of course but like support the annexation of our country yeah
00:24:25.160and it's like what did you want him to say like of course he's gonna say that and of course he
00:24:29.000should have been saying it a whole heck of a lot more probably during the election that
00:24:33.320he lost right like i don't know like it's it's very bizarre to me that wasn't there a
00:24:38.680point where rogan asked like why he lost and he just kind of like laughed
00:24:43.560yeah i actually don't remember what his answer was on that okay but yeah i think he just like
00:24:48.840they kept saying uh rogan kept mentioning the 51st state stuff as being a contributing factor
00:24:53.480and polly up was like oh that was so dumb that whole thing like so he kind of handled it like
00:24:59.160that but like i just i don't think his like normalcy or whatever because i mean that's how0.87
00:25:03.800i characterized it the reason why everybody was like taken aback and like oh great job is because
00:25:08.280he just sounded like a normal guy talking normally like i i don't think that's gonna last i think
00:25:13.000he'll revert to how he's been for the last you know 20 odd years or whatever that he's been a
00:25:18.360politician but like i i don't know like it's just um the bar to your point was like on the floor
00:25:27.400and he walked over it so people are like oh so great it's so great prime ministerial
00:25:32.760yeah absolutely yeah and like his bloomberg interview was actually better in my opinion
00:25:37.960his answers were a little bit more substantive you got uh i did watch that one yeah you got more
00:25:42.920insight into what his thinking would be um but like i don't know like in general like was he
00:25:53.720better performed in like was he performing better in the us on his american tour than he has in the0.60
00:25:59.000last little bit yeah probably but he wasn't like munching on an apple like a jackass and shouting
00:26:04.360three-word slogans at people but he was laughing about the fact that he did that you know let's
00:26:09.640It's just like these are the things that also like weren't necessarily clipped by, you know, things like Trending Politics, which is a new Clipper account.
00:26:18.260And the person who's the editor of it worked for Pierre Polyev right up until she became the editor of it.
00:26:25.460And, you know, and she's tied to like that person.
00:26:29.000There was an announcement that she joined Mobilize Media, which is just Jeff Ballingall of Canada Proud fame's firm.
00:26:34.980So, you know, it's just like, I feel like people need to be aware of like, who is cutting the clips that they're basing their opinions on and what kind of narrative they might be looking to drive because like, yeah, they're not going to cut the clip of Polyev agreeing with Joe Rogan that the COVID mandates are ridiculous.
00:26:51.240Poliev literally used the word ridiculous in response.
00:27:07.120Like it's just the amount of disinformation and misinformation that was spread
00:27:12.960just because Poliev didn't bother to push back,
00:27:16.140bait he did take because he explicitly agreed with things that would leave people.
00:27:20.700you didn't expect him to push back like why would he push back you know i know but it's just like
00:27:25.980but it's like that's not a new pierre to me is the thing you know and and i feel like
00:27:31.980and if our bar is that you know oh we reached a point where we thought maybe he would be chill
00:27:36.780i guess with the annexation of canada and now all of a sudden he's not giving that vibe like that
00:27:42.140you know it's like we let him swing here and then just because he inched like two inches back
00:27:47.820doesn't mean that he's all of a sudden this different dude it's blowing my mind and i just
00:27:52.860feel like it's kind of malpractice on the part of the media because at the end of the day like
00:27:56.780trans people are still getting hurt he's posting today uh sharing jk rowling's tweet about iman
00:28:03.180khalif who isn't even trans celebrating the ioc decision to ban trans athletes and it's just like
00:28:11.260i don't understand what the hell we're doing here because every time a pundit goes on air and says
00:28:16.940that you know he's doing this rebrand and you see him continually attacking trans people and their
00:28:22.380basic human rights which are enshrined in our laws like i i i don't see how that's not an
00:28:29.340abdication of your responsibility so again i rachel i don't disagree but like oh i know yeah
00:28:34.940it surprised you like the media ignored all of his stuff until he started plummeting in the polls
00:28:40.460right like everybody was like like the main consensus after that apple video came out0.98
00:28:44.860was like nobody's gonna care that he's a jerk because people don't care people aren't gonna0.95
00:28:49.020care about that and then and then all of a sudden people did care because they're like oh who is this0.99
00:28:53.980jerk you know what i mean so it's like i i they there has been an abdication of responsibility0.96
00:29:00.540because there is this this notion of you know because he is not just um the leader of the
00:29:07.420official opposition but like the leader of you know and no shade to the ndp or the block here
00:29:13.340but like one of only two parties that's ever really in contention to form government right
00:29:18.780so there's like an automatic sense of like normalcy that that he gets um and like sane
00:29:24.620washing and normal washing that he gets um that like if he was let's say the leader of the ppc
00:29:31.340he wouldn't or if he was a leader of like a a more of an upstart you know right-wing party um that
00:29:39.500and he said the exact same things he would not be given the same sort of uh coverage that's just i
00:29:44.460think that's i don't know like it's just a it's not a it's not a bug it's a feature of the system
00:29:50.380you know what i mean i guess yeah it's a normalcy bias yeah people want to have this normal i guess
00:29:56.380two-party system they're so used to where like that that falls within the overton window that
00:30:01.900when you know someone is beating at the edges of the overton window and shunting it further to the
00:30:07.020the right like they they just act like it's all all in a normal day i don't know paris do you have
00:30:12.960any thoughts yeah i i think i would just add that you know obviously pierre polyev's leadership
00:30:18.040was in part an attempt to kind of euthanize the ppc right and and to bring those ideas into
00:30:23.780the conservative party itself and and represent them more and certainly we've seen that with
00:30:28.220his leadership and you know in a sense you know canada is not unique in this sense we've seen
00:30:33.720this in a lot of kind of Western countries, you know, a lot of our allies where the political
00:30:40.340right has gone more to the right, right, you know, has gotten more extreme and is doing the types of
00:30:45.100things that Polyev is doing. And he's kind of brought that brand, or, you know, kind of revitalized
00:30:50.580that brand of, you know, right wing politics in, in Canada, you know, on the Rogan interview and
00:30:57.420stuff, obviously, I didn't really care about it. And I was wondering why, why the media was obsessed
00:31:02.780with talking about it like constantly um I can understand like you know doing a bit of comment
00:31:08.740on it doing a report you know uh Pierre Polyev was on this big podcast down in the states but like
00:31:13.480the fact that like every news show had to talk about it and like in some cases yeah exactly and
00:31:18.840like some cases talked about it for multiple days and stuff like I was like what is going on with
00:31:22.340you people is there really nothing better to talk about or to report on happening within Canada um
00:31:27.600and as you said Supriya like I you know I didn't watch the Rogan interview but I did watch the
00:31:32.500Bloomberg interview. And I did find that he did seem to be more like, have a better message and
00:31:40.560be more on top of the facts and stuff than I had heard in a while. The kind of figures that he was
00:31:47.200throwing out about the US dependence on Canada in different sectors and things like that,
00:31:51.500I thought was actually very effective in a way that I hadn't really heard him make those kinds
00:31:56.280of arguments in the past. And that I even thought Mark Carney could probably pick up some of this
00:32:01.380stuff in a sense to like uh you know better yeah but you know but like to better make the argument
00:32:06.800for you know why you know the u.s needs to depend on canada why canada should get a good deal you
00:32:12.180know what can be done against the u.s you know if there was any kind of fudging in the numbers on
00:32:16.280on polyev's case i don't know because i didn't look into it too closely but you know i did think
00:32:20.340that he was more effective than we have seen him be in a while um but that doesn't mean that he's
00:32:25.140not still like kind of not sometimes right you know as he's given these speeches you know even
00:32:30.140beyond the rogan uh interview as he's given these speeches in um the u.s and in germany and in the
00:32:36.480uk i believe recently like he said some totally wild shit in those speeches as well like uh i0.75
00:32:42.620think it was when he was in the uk he was talking about robin hood and how uh robin hood is like0.95
00:32:47.940you know not the marxist that he's been portrayed as but uh was actually against the tax man or
00:32:52.680something like that it's like you know he's still crazy right like yeah yeah yeah it's almost like
00:32:58.780I guess, uh, he's putting his best foot forward, but it doesn't mean he still doesn't have that
00:33:03.820other foot. Um, yeah. Um, okay. Speaking of absurd shit, Supriya, you had a piece in the
00:33:13.200National Observer. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes I have some decent transitions. Um, you had a piece1.00
00:33:20.040in the National Observer this week about how the RCMP's top cop, uh, told Vashti Capellos on CTV
00:33:27.840question period recently that basically they have no evidence transnational repression and
00:33:33.120foreign interference is happening yeah yeah what's going on there it's kind of wild so um let me put
00:33:41.120like let me read the exact quote i have it up here on doc okay so it said what he said after
00:33:46.020bashi had like pushed him a few times on this like is is it still happening i'm saying that based on
00:33:52.220the totality of the files that we have on foreign interference or transnational repression what we
00:33:57.300have in our holdings is we have people that are intimidating people, harassing people,
00:34:02.580but connecting the dots to a foreign entity, regardless of the country, emphasis mine,
00:34:08.120we don't have that, regardless of the country. So he's not even just saying India isn't interfering
00:34:13.500or doing transnational repression anymore. He's saying all countries just magically stopped.
00:34:18.220And look, I think that's, in fairness to the RCMP commissioner, I can certainly understand what he
00:34:25.540was trying to get at. I understand what he was trying to say. And it's not in and of itself
00:34:31.300scandalous that CSIS would have a different assessment than the RCMP would. They look at
00:34:36.440different things. And the main issue is that for the RCMP, you know, they're looking at evidence
00:34:43.060and there's like a standard and there's a bar that has to clear, right? Whereas Intel, and we know
00:34:48.320this, it was discussed at length during the public inquiry into foreign interference. Intel is not
00:34:53.760evidence and there's issues with using intel as evidence so all of that is is is you know deserves
00:35:00.080uh to be considered and i think you know we can give um the the top cop of the country a a bit of
00:35:08.720grace there with the clumsiness of his words but the problem now is that this is now effectively0.75
00:35:15.360like every single foreign interferer is now going to use that narrative to their own means to say
00:35:22.080that they're not doing anything especially india who this entire time has basically said that the
00:35:26.640allegations are completely made up including by the rcmp and now he's saying that well now we don't
00:35:32.480have anything going on and it's all just it's very weird because he's also talking about transnational
00:35:37.120repression but transnational repression by definition has to involve another country
00:35:42.160otherwise it's just regular old criminal right like so it's it the whole thing's very weird
00:35:48.800the carny government has been super muddled and weird about um not just india but china as well
00:35:57.120and then now you factor in with the war that uh with iran that the us and israel have started
00:36:04.000you'd have to imagine that there's going to be some iranian shenanigans that are happening with
00:36:08.880diaspora communities right and for the top cop to basically say no we don't have anything like0.97
00:36:14.480it's it's very bizarre canadians deserve to know what the is happening
00:36:18.640and i i i refuse to believe that if if this was impacting regular white canadians to the degree
00:36:25.440that it's impacting diaspora communities that we would collectively be treating it the way that we
00:36:30.880are sorry that was a long rant no it was perfect you just like covered the whole thing and nailed
00:36:36.560it and i think and i think that that the impact on the diaspora communities and like how offensive
00:36:42.480it is to like tell them that what they're living through it doesn't exist like i just feel like
00:36:46.960it's gaslighting on an institutional scale and it's it's really messed up like i just you know
00:36:52.400their their struggles and the things that they're facing deserve to um be honestly and uh adequately
00:37:01.440addressed by the institutions that are supposed to keep them safe while they're here in this
00:37:05.680country so yeah i just um and also can i just add one little nugget in there absolutely it's also
00:37:11.520really weird that the conservatives have been so muted on this particularly as it relates to india
00:37:17.280and then you consider the fact that there have been allegations made you know there was a
00:37:21.840unclassified nsi cop report that made the rounds to suggest that india interfered in the conservative
00:37:28.400leadership election uh in in the race right that's not to suggest that they change the
00:37:34.400outcome of of you know the the vote and it's not to suggest that pure palya would not have
00:37:39.040one-handedly on the way he did on first ballot um but we do know that at least there are credible
00:37:44.400allegations that they would have interfered why is peer quality of silence on this this has the
00:37:48.480trifecta of conservative um you know check boxes of accuse the liberals of being soft on crime
00:37:55.040accuse the rcmp of running political cover for the pmo and then micro target that message to
00:37:59.680various diaspora communities so i think it's like worth questioning why it is that the conservatives
00:38:06.480have decided to just like not be conservative about this yeah yeah um paris i don't know i know
00:38:14.480this isn't really your wheelhouse so we can pivot to uh talking tech if you want after this um i just
00:38:20.080want to make sure you didn't have anything to add before i move on no i i think sapria said it very
00:38:25.920well right and yeah i think it just goes back to what i was saying earlier that like i think there's
00:38:29.600a lot of concerns with how mark carney is handling human rights abuses but you know also what's
00:38:35.280what's happening within our own country because he doesn't want to piss off countries that
00:38:38.640uh he wants to have good relations with right and obviously we see that in the case of of india1.00
00:38:43.340very clearly china to a certain degree as well you know the one of the floor crossers uh from0.89
00:38:48.080the conservatives to the liberals was out yesterday kind of or in recent days kind of uh you know
00:38:53.120questioning whether uh there had been uh you know abuses against the the uyghurs in in western china
00:38:59.080um which is like kind of wild right um and but then even beyond that i would say like you know
00:39:04.540we, you know, we're focused on these particular countries, but we also tend to downplay the
00:39:10.460interference from the United States. We focus on that more at the moment, not to mention the
00:39:14.760influence from Israel within our politics as well, right? You know, these are considered
00:39:19.640allies, so we don't pay as much attention to that. We're trying to make these other countries allies
00:39:23.960or closer friends and economic partners. So now we're downplaying what they are doing as well.
00:39:29.240And, you know, I think that we need to be much more clear-eyed about what's happening here.
00:39:33.460And I feel like most Canadians are not really on board with ignoring these things as well. Like, I feel like when Carney was going to India, and we were seeing this kind of downplaying of, you know, the actions that India was taken within Canada, that I feel like there was a lot of kind of like, I don't know, public, I don't know the right word, but like the public seemed quite frustrated with what was actually going on there, the discourses that were coming from the government, you know, that the briefing that really kind of
00:40:03.340blew up right as Carney was going over there. You know, I think that Canadians had a lot of
00:40:08.820problems with seeing that, you know, agents of India had actually killed a Canadian citizen
00:40:13.120on Canadian soil. And I don't think that has really gone away, even though we need,
00:40:19.500you know, new economic partners in this new world order or whatever, right?
00:40:24.560Yeah. Okay, I'm going to pivot to tech, because we've only got a few minutes before
00:40:30.080we turn to audience questions and a lot has been going on on that front this week
00:40:34.400first off um you know open ai is shutting down sora which is its video ai app apparently amid
00:40:40.800rising concerns about deep fake and deep fakes and consent um i just wanted to get like your
00:40:46.960general reaction to this i mean i i i've had deep fakes made of me and it is a very violating
00:40:55.120experience um but i i'm also like i'm curious about how the degree to which this will address
00:41:01.040the issue uh it'll certainly i guess raise the barrier to entry but you know is this also going
00:41:05.920to make it harder for um like is this as a practice video ai apps um are they going to be
00:41:14.000too legally uh dicey because of copyright issues because of abuse issues um for any company to
00:41:20.240willingly kind of put their name on um i don't know what do you guys think of this development
00:41:24.560Paris maybe I'll go to you first I'm I think I'm I'm kind of skeptical of that narrative actually
00:41:29.560uh I think that's a narrative that's very useful for for open AI um and certainly we saw that when
00:41:35.440Sora initially launched there was a lot of um use of it because you could use uh you know
00:41:41.780copyrighted characters and then they very quickly rein that in and the interest and use of the
00:41:46.840platform uh quite quickly declined after that um you know yes there is concern around deep fakes
00:41:52.420there is concern around the use of copyrighted characters and kind of the legal liability that
00:41:56.540can come with that. Certainly, that's part of what the deal with Disney tried to address,
00:42:01.520a deal that is now basically dead. So sure, that is there, right? But the reality is that
00:42:08.720if we're certainly talking about explicit deep fakes and things like that, I'm not sure that
00:42:12.640Sora was the tool that most people would have been using for that kind of a practice.
00:42:16.280um for me i think what they don't want to say which is the reason why we're hearing that
00:42:23.660it's legal liabilities about copyright is about defakes is that sora was incredibly expensive to
00:42:29.620run it was costing them a load of money um and they are not making any money they are in fact
00:42:35.640losing money hand over fist um and we're in a period now where they are trying to figure out
00:42:42.660uh how they are going to try to turn that around um and certainly the war in iran and the pressures
00:42:47.880on energy prices and semiconductors all that kind of stuff is just kind of putting that more
00:42:51.880uh into the forefront um so we saw them ditch sora we saw them ditch another product they said
00:42:57.260they're not going to make the kind of like erotic chatbots uh anymore just the other day um so yeah
00:43:03.640to me it's much more of a cost thing like this company does not have a business model that makes
00:43:08.120sense um this is their you know this was their most expensive product no question in the sense
00:43:13.460of like expensive per per use obviously i'm sure chat gpt is the most expensive because
00:43:17.840of the degree of usage of it um but they need to cut costs right uh and they also need to make
00:43:23.660more money so they're bringing in ads in the chat gpt which is something they're in the process of
00:43:27.420doing right now and they're also looking where looking at where they can kind of cut the fat
00:43:31.660um and i think sora was an obvious place where certainly i'm sure they would love to have a
00:43:35.880video generator that everyone is using that they're making money off of um but they can't
00:43:39.960really support that right now uh and so yeah i think that's the real reason why that that tool
00:43:44.820was gone yeah that's 100 right i and i think the the fact that you're hearing this stuff about
00:43:52.000you know liability um it's pushed for a reason because otherwise if you more people paid attention
00:43:59.820to what paris just said then it would bring into question um just the you know the viability of
00:44:05.700of the company i think long term um and it just like the liability would still be there
00:44:10.740yeah chat gpt with dolly yeah with the image generator and stuff so it doesn't really fit for
00:44:17.260me yeah yeah wait it's about money it's all about money what the hell i thought it was about ethics
00:44:24.140and they were doing the right thing just kidding and like i don't think we should sleep on the
00:44:30.540the added pressures that like the war with iran is gonna do for like parts that you need like
00:44:37.740there was one early infographic um when the strikes had first occurred of like what each
00:44:43.100gulf country um was known for exporting or what their and like helium was one of them i i forget
00:44:48.460which country it was and like somebody was like oh so what we're not gonna get balloons and i was0.99
00:44:52.860like you idiot like is that what you fucking think helium like you were like and it was just like so0.99
00:44:59.100it's like you know it's obviously it's used in a bunch of stuff that we that these companies need1.00
00:45:03.820and it's like okay um so i think there's going to be a ton of you know down effect downstream
00:45:10.140effects that we can't even really begin to see like what happens when those chips stop coming
00:45:14.220through for all these companies like i i don't i genuinely do not know it sounds like a pop but i
00:45:19.900interesting and you know it's not the only uh you know big tech trouble that we're seeing lately um
00:45:29.500the obviously uh we just saw a big uh decision in los angeles a jury there found that meta and
00:45:37.420youtube were liable and let me just pull this up for our video uh watchers um were liable in
00:45:44.620a trial that dealt with social media addiction they found specifically that the companies were
00:45:49.420designed to addict young users without worrying about their well-being francis hoggan might have
00:45:54.700something to say about that um this case apparently um well the company now has to pay millions in
00:46:02.300damages to the young woman at the center of it and um obviously like they're gonna look at their
00:46:07.580options for appealing the decision but this case uh could influence the outcome of thousands of
00:46:13.100similar cases and supria i know you did a lot of work on this file so i wanted to just get your
00:46:19.260reaction to this decision i'm seeing some mixed stuff online but i don't know if it's just because
00:46:24.620of certain voices like who have feelings about free speech um relative to you know the internet
00:46:30.860but um blah blah blah yeah but supria what are your thoughts on this so just to give folks a
00:46:37.740little bit of background i think it's worth also noting that the last few weeks there have been a
00:46:41.100couple of other judgments that are really important to take into context there was one in new mexico
00:46:45.660that basically um established that metas platforms aren't uh safe for children and the design
00:46:52.780essentially effectively enabled the exploitation of of children that ended up with a pretty large
00:46:59.500civil penalty as well like in the tune of like 375 million dollars or something like that and then
00:47:04.540a few weeks prior to that this is where it's really interesting for like nerds out there
00:47:09.260but delaware a court ruled that um the insurance companies for meta don't actually have a duty to
00:47:15.020defend meta or cover its costs uh in these lawsuits that are playing out uh particularly
00:47:19.900in california because under california state law if a company um is uh causing harm through
00:47:27.260what's defined as like intentional acts rather than just you know um it being an accident or
00:47:32.460something then the insurer has no uh obligation legally to defend that company and because now
00:47:38.540these these uh these trials or these judgments have brought forward this notion of intentional
00:47:46.060action of designing your products specifically so that they cause harm um now you've got insurers
00:47:53.900off the hook for paying for it so it's like i think the entire legal landscape right now is
00:47:59.340kind of shifting underneath us and where these um you know companies like meta have gotten off in the
00:48:07.180last little bit is by using this free speech um stuff but this this what this lawsuit was not
00:48:12.940about content it was not about speech it was specifically the design of their products it
00:48:18.060was intentionally designing your products so that you could then cause harm um even to children
00:48:23.980right and i think for a lot of um folks out there that are on the side of like well this is really
00:48:30.460just about censorship it's like well we should always be careful right about censorship i'm not
00:48:36.780going to deny that um and we should always of course fight for freedom of expression but there's
00:48:43.180no right to design a product that's going to bombard children with self-harm content right
00:48:49.980and this is something that i think canada is lagging you know in terms of our peer jurisdictions
00:48:55.500um and i'm not going to sit here and pretend that the uk has done it all right i think a lot of the
00:48:59.340stuff that they've done is batshit crazy i think they propose a lot of stuff that goes way too far
00:49:03.660but the core reason why the uk kind of uh had the wake-up moment that they did years and years ago
00:49:09.980way before we did is because of the notion of instagram in particular was was the case
00:49:16.780of harming a young girl there was a young girl named molly she was 14 years old and the algorithm
00:49:22.620figured out that molly was depressed so what did the algorithm do it started pummeling that little
00:49:27.260girl with self-harm content and she took her own life and the coroner in the uk established that
00:49:33.260um the algorithms have essentially played like a causal role in her death and this caused like
00:49:39.180you know a wake up kind of societal moment for all of them to be like and this was a tory government
00:49:44.460that had first passed it right so um and they got to where where they are but in here we just can't
00:49:51.580get our act together and i think that's bad but i've talked for long enough so now you go parents
00:49:56.140No, it was all very important words, so talk away.
00:49:59.220No, but I think what you're saying is like why it pisses me off so much to like see these people who as soon as a case like this comes out or as soon as some like proposed legislation come out, they start talking about free speech.
00:50:10.420And it's like, do you really not care about the impacts that these platforms are having on people, the way that these companies are designing these products intentionally to try to drive engagement, not caring about the broader ramifications, the broader effects that they are having on the people who are using them?
00:50:24.440that can be young people, but it can also be people of any age, right? You know, it's not just
00:50:30.360use, it's not just people under 16 years of age. And to me, like, these people who throw out these
00:50:37.380free speech arguments, they like to present themselves as being very critical of the tech
00:50:40.700industry. But they very often do the job of defending the tech industry from accountability
00:50:45.500for what they're actually doing. And I think we really need to start waking up to that and really
00:50:50.080shifting the discourse that we have on these tech platforms, on the kind of, you know, activism that
00:50:55.300happens around it, on the way that we see policy and those sorts of questions, right? You know,
00:50:59.720the Trudeau government was actually doing good work and moving forward on these sorts of things.
00:51:03.800And unfortunately, we've seen a reversal on that, you know, under Mark Carney. And so I would just
00:51:08.300add, you know, on this, on particular, on what we're seeing in the US in particular, I do think
00:51:14.700it's an important development, especially because, you know, we do have thousands of more cases
00:51:19.500working their way through the system with a similar lens. And part of the reason why this
00:51:25.980case worked, as Supriya was saying, is that it didn't focus on the content, right? It didn't
00:51:31.080focus on what the platforms were serving up because in the United States, they have a law
00:51:36.000called Section 230 that makes that like a very difficult kind of terrain to do legal work because
00:51:41.200it effectively lets the platforms off the hook for that. And there's a lot of debate as to whether
00:51:46.320that should still be the case. But, you know, for the moment, that's kind of like parked, right?
00:51:51.160But because it focused on design, that meant that, you know, these are like intentional decisions
00:51:55.920that platforms are making to make their platforms work in a certain way. And this is actively
00:52:00.580causing harm to people, right? They're actively making these decisions. And this is not something
00:52:04.500new. This is something people have been reported on, researchers have been doing work on for a
00:52:08.360very long time. We've known this for a long time. And it's about time that they start to feel
00:52:12.440the accountability for what they are doing. Maybe the other kind of wrinkle I would add to it is on
00:52:18.760the policy front, right? You know, what is this going to mean for policy on tech platforms moving
00:52:23.840forward? I should mention, you know, you noted and as many of the stories note, this was particularly
00:52:29.360against Meta and YouTube, but Snapchat, TikTok, and I believe one other were also involved in
00:52:37.080they just settled before it kind of went to trial, right? So that's why they're not included
00:52:42.960in all these stories. But if we think on the policy level, we have been having these discussions
00:52:47.540for the past couple of years, really because of what has been happening in Australia about whether
00:52:52.360we need an age limit on social media, right? Whether it's going to be 16 years old or whatever,
00:52:57.140there's already sort of an age limit of 13, but it's pretty easy to get around. A lot of people
00:53:02.280tend to forget that, I feel like. And kind of the argument has been, okay, these platforms can be
00:53:08.260really harmful for young people. They're serving up this content that can make them feel really
00:53:12.720bad about themselves, especially young girls. And so if we just put an age limit on it, then when
00:53:17.500people reach a certain age, they can start to use these platforms safely or being aware of what's
00:53:22.560happening. And I think kind of part of the value of these cases is to really push back on this
00:53:27.740notion that the age limit is what we need or the right way to respond to this, because I would
00:53:32.320argue that these harms can affect everybody across society. And what we really need to look at is
00:53:37.080the design decisions, the way that they're doing algorithmic amplification of content of different
00:53:42.520posts, the incentives that are driving the design of the platform in the first place that affects
00:53:48.620absolutely everybody, not just people under 16 years of age. And I think that we are already
00:53:54.400seeing movements in that direction. Certainly, you know, the UK and European governments are
00:53:57.820talking about it. The e-safety commissioner in Australia is talking about it, even though they
00:54:01.800moved forward with the age limit. The age limit was something that came more from the politicians
00:54:05.920down there and less so from the e-safety commissioner who was looking more at design,
00:54:10.620you know, approaches as I understand it. But even in Canada, you know, the attorney general in
00:54:17.600British Columbia has been talking about this recently. And, you know, I noticed the kind of
00:54:22.080media reporting often focused on, you know, kind of said like the attorney general in BC is pushing
00:54:27.400for an age limit on social media, blah, blah, blah. And certainly, you know, she has been talking
00:54:31.700about that. But if you listen to what she's actually saying, she's also talking about,
00:54:35.580we need to affect the design of these platforms that affect everybody across society. It's not
00:54:39.200just about young people. And I would hope that that comes much more to the fore, especially as
00:54:43.420we're having the government talking about some new kind of online harms bill or what have you,
00:54:47.700what that is going to look like. It's very hard to say. And certainly we haven't been getting a
00:54:51.260lot of a lot from mark miller on on what the government approach government's approach is
00:54:55.200going to be um but yeah i think that is it's it's it's a harder challenge to start looking at how
00:55:02.720the platforms are designed than to just say oh let's put a higher age limit on on the use of
00:55:07.760these things and make that age limit more strict um but ultimately i think this is the way that
00:55:12.700we're going to have to go um and if a platform like meta if a company like meta starts saying
00:55:18.420oh we don't like this law we're just going to pull out if uh you know if you guys make us kind
00:55:23.240of change the way that we design our platform or whatever you know in the way that they took news0.99
00:55:26.580off their platforms in response to the online news bill um then we just say uh okay go fuck0.99
00:55:32.360yourselves leave the country i don't care you know yeah also like they're not going to do that0.99
00:55:37.840because they are subject to a duty to act responsibly in other jurisdictions right um which
00:55:42.320is essentially the fact that they would have to then take into consideration the risks of their
00:55:47.120product and then take active steps to mitigate those risks so like if they didn't do that in
00:55:50.960uh with respect to the eu they didn't do that in the uk they didn't do it in us like you know what
00:55:54.400i mean it's like they could possibly you're right i think they will probably maybe threaten it but
00:55:59.200i think it's probably a bit of an empty threat um yeah so let's let's see but and to and to your
00:56:06.080point about like not hearing a lot from this government i mean i was heavily involved in the
00:56:10.720last effort like it's we've got stuff copy paste good to go man like let's go what are we waiting
00:56:15.760for her. Like, and I'm not saying reintroduce the entire bill. I think it needs to be a much0.99
00:56:20.320slimmer, much more focused bill focused on platform accountability, focused on a narrow
00:56:24.480duty to act responsibly. But all the principles, all the tenants are there. So I just, I really
00:56:30.120don't understand what the holdup is. I also wonder like if there's an opportunity to use
00:56:34.520the anger around Tumblr Ridge and, you know, kind of the stories around open AI there to finally
00:56:38.780try to push the government to do something like, obviously, you know, Evan Solomon realized that
00:56:43.280he couldn't be Mr. Pro-AI-ra-ra for a few weeks. In the aftermath of that, whether they're just
00:56:51.140going to revert to course or whether there can be some pressure applied to really make them
00:56:54.900start to see things differently, I would certainly like to see that. Obviously,
00:57:00.260early in the Trudeau government, there was a lot more of a positive feeling toward the tech
00:57:04.380industry, and that really shifted over time. So there is the possibility of change. The question
00:57:09.360whether whether they're actually going to be open to it yeah hey oh my god i feel like i could just
00:57:14.880like leave and you guys could just like do another hour of this so that was awesome um yeah i um so
00:57:22.640we're actually over time i don't know if either of you have like a pretty hard out i'm good yeah
00:57:28.880okay cool um so maybe we can take a few audience questions if any come up right now we actually
00:57:34.240don't have any so i'll give you guys the opportunity to drop some in the chat um if
00:57:38.480you have any and uh paris supria i'll let you guys uh one at a time uh tell people where they can
00:57:44.880keep up with you joe you go first okay uh i was gonna say i did see someone say uh they wondered
00:57:51.680where where we think uh avi should run uh i have no idea yeah tell people where they can follow
00:57:57.600you first though absolutely yeah and then and then we'll do substance you can find me in the writing
00:58:02.480of uh no um i i'm i'm usually posting on blue sky paris marks over there uh i have a podcast called
00:58:09.440tech won't save us i write a newsletter called disconnect tech won't save us now those video
00:58:13.120episodes which is like blah i hate it but that's it that's the way things are going apparently
00:58:17.920um yeah i don't know that's how you can find me uh i'm on blue sky at supriya i'm on instagram
00:58:26.320at soups davetti i'm on twitter still at supriya davetti and i'm on every monday with ryan jesperson
00:58:36.640on real talk um you can catch me there and i do usually my power and politics day is tuesday
00:58:42.560um on the power panel sick all right um paris you want to take a crack at where uh avi should run i
00:58:49.440don't know where it is to pull it up but uh i literally have i literally have no idea i don't
00:58:55.840know nearly enough about like where ndp support is and all that kind of stuff he clearly shouldn't
00:59:00.400run where he's run before because he clearly can't win it uh but uh i i would assume that like if he
00:59:07.680is really determined to get into parliament quickly it's like asking somebody to step aside and let
00:59:12.560uh him run in their seat uh is kind of the way it would go but in terms of like whether there's a
00:59:17.680clear seat where he should run where he actually has a chance um i don't have nearly the the
00:59:22.880knowledge i saw somebody say that like there's going to be a by-election in the beaches i think
00:59:26.560and maybe he should run there but that just seems ridiculous to me yeah exactly yeah like i don't
00:59:31.680really get that he's not from there he doesn't have roots there obviously you know pierre
00:59:34.880polyev went to some random part of alberta but uh yeah i don't really know yeah uh sapria i don't
00:59:43.120know if you have any i mean anywhere but quebec like i don't know i will say his french is better
00:59:49.680than uh anyone else's but the standard is gibberish that's like the bar we're setting for
00:59:56.400pierre pauliev on like changing yeah yeah yeah yeah no um yeah i i mean i'll say in terms of
01:00:03.360like where he's run in the past my understanding is he ran in the writing that he lived in which
01:00:07.920the ndp his argument is that the ndp's never won there and so he just like ran on principle
01:00:15.040and like never really expected to win i guess um i don't know if that's a compelling argument for
01:00:21.120people but that's the one that he presents um but you know it's it's tough to know because all of
01:00:26.240the places that we thought were ndp strongholds don't seem to be anymore i mean that um the
01:00:31.920industrial sort of area in southern ontario where there were several ndp mps elected the
01:00:36.640conservatives have started eating their lunch there by going after the union vote um quebec
01:00:41.920obviously like is turning on the ndp um and kind of understandably so when you watch that french
01:00:48.560debate um there's the bc writings a lot of vote splitting happened there for where people uh
01:00:55.520thought that voting strategically meant uh voting for the liberal candidate even though
01:01:00.960their writing had been ndp historically so his best bet though is probably somewhere in bc isn't
01:01:06.160it yeah yeah i would imagine like i think that's just where his his roots are like vancouver island
01:01:10.960or something or like downtown vancouver yeah yeah and then especially considering like let's say
01:01:15.600there is you know the pipeline stuff starts moving along and all of a sudden you know
01:01:20.560i the carney government is falling out of favor with progressives um that you know don't want to
01:01:26.480see the orca population decimated or whatever um all of a sudden ndp starts to look a little bit
01:01:32.640better for nbc you know i don't know haven't you heard they're killer whales maybe we should do
01:01:37.040something yeah yeah yeah i hear they're going after the yachts though so maybe that's all right
01:01:41.520that's true they're friends carney might kill them himself because of that uh you know first
01:01:45.120he gets rid of the yacht tax and he's really he's the pro-yacht prime minister um we need one of
01:01:52.240those you know yeah yeah the yacht owning class is really uh is really under hard times in canada
01:01:57.440yeah um there's a question here that i think i could answer if that's yeah it's what the question
01:02:03.120is carney's hesitation to go after these algorithms as trump would go after
01:02:07.360go to the mat for his tech donors and trade negotiations is there a way around this um
01:02:12.960yeah i mean there is it's like to have a backbone and to stand up for what you sort of believe in
01:02:20.160i would also just say though the carney government kind of picks and chooses when they want to use
01:02:24.960trade as like a foil for not doing something because um in a recently tabled legislation
01:02:32.400bill c22 it's their redo of part of bill c2 which was their strong borders act it asks for
01:02:40.640all sorts of nutty things it basically is is um asking for these companies like a platform to
01:02:49.520build a back door for the ability to break encryption and the thing with encryption is
01:02:56.560that once you break it it's broken it's not just it's just not just there for the good guys it's
01:03:00.800there for everybody and what happened in the uk when they did that was that there was a critical
01:03:06.240mass of us you know house and senate republicans as well as well as a bunch of white house officials
01:03:11.840that were basically like what the heck are you guys doing and it stalled trade negotiations it
01:03:16.080It wasn't until Tulsi Gubbard basically stepped in and gave the UK an ultimatum and then the UK pulled back on their silly, you know, backdoor encryption stuff and it went forward.
01:03:26.860So if the Kearney government goes through with this, we should expect to be treated exactly the way the UK was.
01:03:33.440So I don't know. It's just, again, picking and choosing.
01:03:37.600Yeah, I think we've seen that. We kind of saw that very clearly on the digital services tax, right?
01:03:41.780You know, it was positioned as like, and I certainly contributed to this, that like, you know, he gave in to pressure from Trump.
01:03:49.060But it also seemed pretty clear that he wanted to ditch that anyway to, you know, kind of keep the tech industry happy.
01:03:56.400I would also say that maybe this is another place where the NDP has an opportunity.
01:04:01.400You know, the NDP was against NAFTA back in the day, if we think back to it.
01:04:06.240um maybe there's room for a party to say maybe there's a world without uh you know a free trade
01:04:13.240agreement with the united states uh you know what that would look like what that would mean
01:04:17.940how maybe there are benefits to to not being in this kind of arrangement i don't know i'm not
01:04:23.440i don't have a lot of you know uh kind of policy knowledge on the pros and cons of that but
01:04:28.500maybe that is a place for them to to i mean maybe i feel like carney would like just steamroll
01:04:34.600through that though no sure maybe i feel like you would love for the ndp to raise that and then go
01:04:39.400this is how irresponsible it is or people even address it but but at the same time i feel like
01:04:43.800i feel like a month or two ago there was like an active discussion as to like whether we should be
01:04:47.880ready to not have uh an agreement right uh and i feel like an agreement what good is it if this
01:04:53.480guy constantly goes back on his word right so yeah exactly yeah yeah we did have one super chat that
01:04:59.720i'll just quickly pull up um from crotchy um says slogan carney is turning canada into a chat bot
01:05:08.360so there you go i think i think that was one for uh the potential ndp uh front runner because based
01:05:14.680on the time when that was dropped he's certainly trying to turn the government into one uh you
01:05:20.600know like like i mentioned earlier about the cra like the the what is it the auditor general found
01:05:25.160that the chatbot they rolled out was giving false information 66 of the time so it's like
01:05:30.040this is great guys yeah okay guys i think uh i might wrap things up there's there are a few
01:05:37.320more questions in the chat i don't know i feel like we kind of covered most of the the general
01:05:41.880topics though um was there anything that stood out to you guys that you really wanted to to tackle
01:05:47.560or do you think are you feeling satisfied with respect to uh the questions fine someone in the
01:05:53.800the chat was, uh, I think, uh, I think, uh, uh, trying to poke at us or something and ask whether
01:05:58.720we speak French. Uh, yeah, I went to high school in French. I'm from, I'm from, I'm from Quebec.
01:06:03.940Got you. There we go. I love it. Um, okay. Sick. Well, thank you so much everyone for being here.
01:06:14.940Thank you, Sophia. Thank you, Paris. You guys, it's always fun having you on. I learn a ton
01:06:20.360from you guys and uh also have way too much fun which is like you know it's dangerous you guys
01:06:26.720are dangerous to have on so uh thank you for your time hopefully i'll see you again soon thank you
01:06:32.260thank you for listening to this week's episode of bubble pop i'm rachel gilmore your least
01:06:44.360favorite person's least favorite journalist if you enjoyed this episode consider subscribing on
01:06:49.000YouTube, Patreon, Substack, or wherever you like to listen. You can also find me on TikTok,
01:06:54.340Instagram, Twitch, and Blue Sky. I'd like to give a special thank you to Hans Vivian Wenzel for
01:06:59.160making the incredibly groovy music for Bubble Pop. You can find more of his stuff on Spotify
01:07:03.780under the artist's name Hans. That's a lowercase h with an exclamation mark. Thank you again for
01:07:09.580spending this time with me. This is my dream job. I know I say that every week, but that's because
01:07:14.300it's true every week and I couldn't do it for one second without your support. So thank you