A Look Back at 2024 – How Actions Have Consequences

As we close in to the end of the year, we look back at some of the stories that made news throughout 2024.

We are getting close to wrapping up another year here on Freezenet. I can definitely say that it has been quite the roller coaster of a year. At times, though, it has become quite unsettling at times. While 2025 is already looking like it’s going to be one chaotic year, that’s not to say 2024 was necessarily a cake walk either.

The thing is, if I had to pick one way to describe 2024 in a nice enveloping theme, I would probably use the line “actions have consequences”. In fact, this line, along with a companion line, “it was going to happen” felt like lines I have used rather frequently. The reason for this is because I’ve seen over and over again instances where government, people, or even the mainstream media themselves simply looked at a given situation and seemingly concluded that the experts who spent their whole lives analyzing this situation are simply wrong and that they have a good gut feeling that they are simply right and the experts are wrong.

Obviously, ignoring things like how things work in the real world, facts, and history almost never really ends well and when the consequences of said actions come to fruition, the nasty outcomes generally get swept under the rug by supporters. In fact, some go so far as to completely fabricate the outcome they had hoped would happen and pretend that this really is the outcome that really did happen. See? Throwing the lit match into the closet and closing the door to pretend nothing happened didn’t result in the house burning down! Just ignore the charred section of the house and pretend that we never had those rooms in the first place! That makes things all better. Just ignore the cold draft at certain times of the year and we’ll be good to go!

As dumb and head in the sand as all of that sounds, it really felt like this very kind of scenario played out over and over again. Believe me when I say I’ve lost track of how many times I grew frustrated at the pure stupidity of it all. So, without further ado, here is a look back at some of the major stories that happened this year:

Market Abuse By Rogers Plays out Post Rogers/Shaw Merger

One of the things that was anxiety inducing towards the end of 2023 was, of course, the Rogers/Shaw merger. As anyone who pays attention knows, when two major corporations merge into a corporate overlord in a given market, layoffs happen, rising costs happen, and, of course, market abuse happens thanks to an overall lack of competition in a given market.

Indeed, Canadians and experts alike were long warning the Canadian government that if you let this merger go through, it’s going to lead to even more market abuse than there already is. Indeed, 2 + 2 = 4. The problem, of course, was that the Canadian government is close buddies with both Rogers and Shaw, so it wasn’t as though they were going to defy their lobbyist pals.

So, in response to the torrent of warnings and complaints, the Canadian government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to ignore all those pesky little warnings and panicked messages to not do something as stupid as to allow the Rogers/Shaw merger. In approving the Rogers/Shaw merger, they basically declared that black is white, up is down, and that allowing the merger to go ahead would lead to more competition and better consumer experiences within the ISP/carrier markets. This led to a collective facepalm from the overall public at large and many were forced to be resigned to the fact that they were going to be forced to take the market abuse that was most assuredly going to happen at that point.

Well, 2024 rolled around and that market abuse pretty much came to fruition. Rogers didn’t even really bother waiting around for very long shortly after the merger took place and they went ahead and jacked up the rates. This was quickly followed up by massive layoffs, and, of course, parliamentary hearings being forced to happen over price gouging tactics. All of this was a followup to the high profile shut downs and additional layoffs that cropped up towards the end of 2023, so the nightmare scenario that everyone warned about pretty much happened. In fact, I’d argue that it’s going to continue to happen because it’s not like the government is going to step in and make the situation any better on this front. It’s just one giant mess that was created all because the warnings went completely ignored and the government wanted to suck up to one of the largest corporate monopolies in the Canadian tech sector.

Then, towards the end of 2024, the Competition Bureau filed a lawsuit against Rogers, targeting their advertising practices that they alleged is misleading. As far as I can tell, they probably have a strong case given the history of misleading ads in the sector. So, there might yet be some accountability for the monopolistic ISPs in Canada, but that pretty much hinges on the success of that lawsuit. Otherwise, accountability will likely continue to be missing in action.

The Online Streaming Act Has Canadians on Edge

On the lead up to 2024, disaster struck the creative community when the Online Streaming Act became law. The new law would very likely forcibly downrank Canadian creators content in favour of legacy media companies that continue to lose audiences due to low quality content. Of course, screwing over Canadian creators is just one of many ways the Online Streaming Act is a disaster for Canadian consumers.

Another way it completely screws over Canadian consumers is that it places a brand new streaming tax onto existing streaming platforms. If you pay to stream content, get ready to pay an additional tax because the platforms that do choose to stick around are likely going to be passing those costs onto consumers after.

What’s more, platforms that specialize in things like British TV (as is the case with Britbox) or anime (as is the case with Crunchyroll), would likely struggle with some of the other regulations. This is because part of the mandate by the Online Streaming Act is to force the promotion of government certified Canadian content (not Canadian made content, government certified Canadian content). Specialized platforms like the above two mentioned likely would not have the catalogue to do so. As a result, they would be forced to leave the country.

All of this isn’t even getting into some of the other smaller platforms who are already struggling to turn a profit. Many of them can’t necessarily take on the additional tax and would, therefore, be forced to leave the country altogether just on the reasons of an additional tax burdens alone.

Now, all of the above issues were repeatedly relayed to lawmakers when this was a bill. In response, Canadian creators were threatened by lawmakers, told that they are simply wrong and have no case, or were repeatedly gaslit in the process. Platforms, for their part, were generally ignored. Independent experts who confirmed these concerns were accused of being part of some grand conspiracy by “Big Tech” to thwart the legislation and were basically told they had no credibility on the very subject they devoted their whole lives to understanding. As a result, the government took action to pass the legislation with virtually all of the critical flaws intact because the legacy media lobbyists said so.

While the Online Streaming Act is now law, the effects haven’t been felt that much because we are now at the CRTC stage. Part of that involves a series of consultations on implementing the legislation, though those consultations have really had a lot of stops and starts, but in 2024, there was definitely a round of consultations that took place. In those consultations, we heard from, several streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and experts like Michael Geist on the consequences of the Act. Some platforms asked the CRTC to recognize the contributions platforms already make to the Canadian economy and culture sector. Others, like Tubi say that there is no way they can survive under the new Act and would be forced to leave the country altogether.

Legacy media lobbying organizations like ACTRA, meanwhile, kept up their disinformation campaign. In one example, ACTRA insulted Canadian creators and accused them of being little more than “cat videos”. Unifor falsely accused platforms like Netflix of destroying Canadian news. Legacy media giant, the CBC, bizarrely claimed that they contributed $900 million to the creation of Canadian content, then said that this is unsustainable. Canadian telecommunications giant, Telus, brazenly said that rules should be for other people, not them.

While that round of consultations did go ahead, the consultation process came to a complete standstill as the CRTC fell into sudden radio silence and stayed in radio silence for months. While questions continued to be asked about what happened to the CRTC consultation, speculation started appearing that the CRTC was going to blow past their original deadline. That speculation became reality when the CRTC updated their timeline and pushed back their deadline all the way to a fuzzy late 2025.

In the midst of all of that, a study came out and concluded that Canadian content is thriving. The study marked yet another blow to the arguments for the Act which said that Canadian content and culture is dying.

A different argument said that the Canadian government and the CRTC is going to get sued over the Act. That argument proved to be accurate when Google filed a lawsuit against the CRTC. So much for the argument that there would never be any lawsuit over Bill C-11.

A long-standing criticism of the legislative process of the Act was that anyone who would dare express opposition to the legislation are repeatedly attacked and left out of the process. That criticism was proven right, again, when the CRTC held a technical briefing on a decision while promptly locking out any organization that would dare criticize the legislative process. Shortly after, the CRTC released its decision on how funding is distributed through the Act. The decision, in the process, made it clear that consumers were getting left out of the process. To add insult to injury, the legacy media lobbying organizations had the audacity to complain that they aren’t getting enough free money out of the deal. In court, the Canadian government filed a legal brief admitting what they had long denied: Bill C-11 regulates user generated content.

DiMA, for their part, pushed back and pointed out that the Act would worsen the affordability crisis in Canada. This through increased costs from platforms passing the new tax onto consumers. Streaming platforms echoed those concerns.

Shortly after, the CRTC incurred its second lawsuit over the Act by the Motion Picture Association. This was quickly followed up by a third lawsuit from Amazon and Apple.

Music Canada, meanwhile, called the funding decision “confounding” and “disappointing”.

While supporters regularly contend that streaming platforms are completely flush with cash, those accusations hit a brick wall. This was thanks to the massive number of layoffs at Paramount+. Those layoffs would eventually spread to Disney+.

Nevertheless, that didn’t stop the CRTC from finalizing their plan to impose a 5% tax on streaming platforms anyway, undeterred by all of the warnings and analysis about what a horrible disaster that would be. In response, Netflix pulled investment dollars out of Canada. The music industry, for their part, begged the CRTC to not ruin their business models. Spotify, did what they warned would happen and raised the rates on their subscription plans in Canada. Bryan Adams also lent his voice by coming out against the Act. The Heritage Minister, however, lashed out against Adams for daring to criticize the Act. DiMA launched an advertising campaign to scrap the 5% streaming tax.

Meanwhile, the CRTC released a “what we heard” report which made it clear that they were leaving creators and consumers out of the process. This as the National Post made an attempt to inject culture war BS into the debate.

In November, the CRTC finally launched another consultation, this time, on defining what is and is not Canadian content.

In December, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal allowed the lawsuits against the CRTC to move forward, consolidating the lawsuits in the process.

So, ultimately, some of the consequences of passing the Online Streaming Act have already come to fruition. This with more consequences moving forward into the future. This as the CRTC consultation process continues into the new year.

The Disaster of the Online News Act Continues to Unfold

While the consequences of the Online Streaming Act are still unfolding, the disaster that is the Online News Act is more vividly playing out in ways that are much more difficult to ignore. Indeed, going in to 2024, we all saw the bankruptcies, cutbacks, layoffs, slowdowns, and steep losses that have ripped through the entire news sector.

There was little doubt that the Online News Act is the biggest policy blunder of the entire Trudeau Liberal government – with some wondering if it’s the biggest policy blunder of and Canadian government of all time. This is because the very thing that the government and the mainstream media swore up and down would be the biggest saviour of the entire sector became the biggest threat. As a result, mainstream media in Canada became almost entirely dependent on government bailouts thanks to Meta pulling out and Google being allowed to fold existing deals into the $100 million pool when the Canadian government caved. With Meta’s pullout, the sector is said to have lost $120 million per year when all is said and done.

A problem with all of this is that you almost never hear about this in the mainstream media. This is because the mainstream media, throughout the time the law was making its way through the legislative process, were lying their collective asses off about it. They claimed that platforms steal whole articles from their websites and repost them without permission (which was a bald-faced lie), that the platforms are responsible for the mainstream media losses up to that point (also a complete fabrication), that the platforms are somehow stealing the media’s revenues (also a total BS lie), and that the platforms represent a market imbalance within the news sector (which really should go without saying what complete nonsense that claim is given that social media and news are two different markets). What was extraordinary about it all was not just number of lies that were coming out of the mainstream media, but the pure volume at which those lies got repeated over and over again. It infuriated me to no end and made me experience Schadenfreude when trust in the mainstream media completely plummeted among viewers.

Of course, experts like myself have long warned about the consequences of this link tax law. We knew that there was a huge possibility that one, if not, both companies, were not going to go along with giving away free money like that. We knew that the platforms didn’t depend on news links (especially Canadian news links) for their business model thanks to both independent research and the platforms own statements. What’s more, we knew that passing this bill into law would represent a huge moment of the mainstream media shooting themselves in the foot. So, people like us urged the Canadian government not to do it.

What did the Canadian government do? They passed the bill into law anyway. The government told people like myself that we are somehow “shills for Big Tech” and proceeded to ignore our dire warnings in the process – as if doing so was somehow some sort of triumph over an evil plaguing the country. As a result, the consequences of those actions came to ahead and Canadian media companies, both mainstream and independent, are dealing with the consequences.

Going into 2024, you would think that the media would see the writing on the wall and at least acknowledge that mistakes were made. Some members actually did so, but others chose a much different tactic. If lying about the alleged benefits of the Online News Act (to which there are no benefits to be had) got them this far, why stop there with the lies? Why not lie about the consequences? So, some of the dumbasses in the mainstream media hailed the $100 million per year payout from Google as a “victory” and how it was really only a matter of time before Meta was going to cave and do the same thing (LMAO!).

So, the mainstream media began the year by publishing even more lies about the Act. Among the things they said was that the money that was evenly distributed among members of the press (most of it went to the largest outlets), and that Meta is not following the law by refusing to issue payouts (Meta is well within the bounds of the law by refusing to host news links). The dedication to the lies is actually something to behold in a way. Even as the roof comes crashing down and smoke fills the rooms, the media will continue to say the house is still in pristine condition. The point of continuing to lie about the situation remains a mystery given how badly the media sector, as a whole, lost out on this whole sorry affair, but it is impressive to witness nevertheless.

One of the fears about the Online News Act is that outlets would become increasingly dependent on government funding. The bailouts certainly helped support those fears. The question is, would the government then get control over what is and is not said in the outlets they are funding? While that sounds conspiratorial in nature, it turned out, the answer was “yes”. An outlet in Quebec published an article that the government didn’t like. In response, the government threatened to pull the outlets funding while also threatening to sue the outlet for publishing a politically inconvenient story. Yeah, so much for the ego and bravado expressed by outlets saying that people who financially support their outlets don’t control the contents of their reporting.

Later on, some outlets began to admit that the Online News Act was a mistake. So, in response, this initiated calls for more tax breaks among other things.

Of course, with a lions share of the Google $100 million going to the largest outlets, you might think that the money would be invested in good paying journalism jobs. Well, as it turns out, that was not the case for some outlets. Bell media, one of the biggest beneficiaries of both Bill C-11 and bill C-18, responded to the influx of cash by slashing 9% of its workforce. This while paying out higher dividend payments to shareholders. The move completely blew up the image of journalism getting some kind of benefit out of the deal even if it’s simply going to the bigger players. Realizing that they had been completely hoodwinked by the mainstream media, the Canadian government responded by saying how furious they were with the decision. Trudeau publicly called it a garbage decision. The result was a considerable amount of finger pointing, but the fact remained that the $100 million, at least in this instance, didn’t result in more journalism jobs (quite the opposite, actually).

While the CRTC proceeded with hearings on the Online News Act, it seems that the writing is already on the wall that the Act was an abysmal failure. After all, the mainstream media has become such an unsustainable mess, they are wholly dependent on government bailout money at this point. This point was driven home when the mainstream media outlets began begging the provinces for even more bailout money.

Of course, the fallout of the failure of the Online News Act extended internationally when Meta announced that they would not be renewing the publisher deals in Australia, defaulting back to simply blocking news links in that country. This caused plenty of panic within that countries media sector (not to mention panic for the government as well). In fact, Australian media began publishing a wave of disinformation in response. The Australian government, scrambling to come up with solutions, began mulling the idea of including TikTok and YouTube into the link tax law. The plan was panned by experts, but Rod Sims defended the move while he saw his link tax dreams gradually falling apart. At one point, Canadian and Australian officials met to discuss Meta’s moves. It is unclear if anything came out of those talks, but Meta did end their news tab in Australia and the US.

One of the central arguments surrounding the Act was that this was supposed to give funding to journalism at no expense to the Canadian taxpayer. In March, however, that argument was completely killed off when the Canadian government issued a massive media bailout to shore up the losses incurred by the Act. A pretty curious move considering how much the mainstream media loves to saw how “successful” the Act is, really.

At any rate, the pain inflicted onto the media sector by the Act was pretty obvious. The CBC admitted that the have taken a huge traffic hit as a result of the Act. As if to punctuate the point that publishers need platforms farm more than platforms need publishers, Meta came out shortly after to say that users don’t use their services for news.

Well, true to their word, the CRTC opened their consultation on the Act to hear from Canadians. In response, Canadians flooded the consultation to say what a disaster the Act has become.

Funnily enough, as time passed and it became increasingly obvious that Meta was not going to come crawling back to them (as they so widely predicted), the supporters of the Act started becoming divided on how to react to the situation.

Later on, Bell made an appearance before a House of Commons committee to discuss the job cuts that were made after getting the money to “save” journalism jobs. While it was little more than a big show where nothing really came from it, the room was tense, leading to quite the sight of the close allies of the Trudeau government and Bell Media locking horns like they did.

Supporters, still scrambling to come up with anything to try and reverse the course of events that they ultimately inflicted upon themselves, started trying to spitball legal theories. One particularly silly idea was to use anti-discrimination laws to try and find Meta guilty of, well, anything at this point. The discrimination provisions were put into the Act so that Meta wouldn’t favour one media outlet over the other. The hilariously silly idea was basically say that Meta is discriminating against everyone by dropping news links, therefore, pay up. The idea never really made much sense as it makes some pretty wild re-interpretations of what the Act actually does and, unsurprisingly, never really went anywhere.

Things got even more interesting when Google began test blocking news links in California. Lobbyists, in response, demanded an investigation into Google’s perfectly legal test.

Back in Canada, with the damaging implications of the Act in full swing, the Canadian government bailed out the CBC again.

At this point, it seemed like the Canadian government and the mainstream media had no other option left to try and fight back against the consequences of their own policy blunder. Over the course of the Summer, though, Canada experienced another horrific wildfire season in which multiple people were killed. The Liberal government, apparently deciding to play the role of evil suck fucks, turned the tragic wildfires into a political opportunity as they used the wildfires to push their link tax agenda. The general argument being that if news links were permitted on Meta, then people would have gotten the warning notices to leave and people wouldn’t have died. It was a complete fabrication because, for one, the warnings could still be published by officials on Meta platforms. For another, if you are dependent on Meta to get emergency information out, then the problem is on you, not Meta. Seriously, who in their right mind would be completely dependent on Facebook to send out emergency broadcast information anyway?

Regardless, the pain was, in fact, being felt in the news sector as a result of the Act. Shortly after, research concluded that traffic to news outlets were gutted. Australia saw something similar with research concluding that user engagement to news content on Facebook cratering. Despite that, some smaller outlets banded together to vow to not take government bailout money in a bid to preserve user trust in their content. It was quite the contrast to the mainstream media outlets that found themselves fighting over the Google salvage money.

With respect to the Google money, it isn’t Google directly handing the money over to the publishers. Instead, the money is being handed over to a collective for distribution. There were two organizations that were on tap to potentially play that role. One was a collective owned and operated by the mainstream media. The other was an independently run organization. Ultimately, Google chose the independent news organization to at least try to bring some level of fairness to the situation. The mainstream media, realizing they couldn’t so easily corrupt the process, freaked out and called on the CRTC to cut the collectives fees. This seemingly in a bid to sabotage the decision.

As that was going on, worries continued about the independence of the press now that 35% of all pay to journalists are coming from the government. The media’s credibility took another hit later on when the Doug Ford Ontario government suddenly got a whole bunch of positive coverage in the media in exchange for cash promises from the Ontario government. This, once again, blew up any notion of the independence of the press, replacing it with an apparent “positive coverage for cash” program. Once again, so much for the media not being easily swayed by dollars! To the surprise of no one, later research added even more evidence that there is an erosion of trust in the media.

Back at the CRTC, though, the mainstream media threw even more temper tantrums over Google deciding how to spend their money.

As if to repeat Bells mistakes, though, after getting bailout money and chunks of money from the platforms, the CBC decided to shower their CEO with bonuses. Once again, so much for the argument that the money was going to help fund journalism. Coincidentally enough, Bell chose that moment to slash more jobs after getting bailout money themselves. To add further insult to injury, Corus Entertainment joined in on the hacking and slashing fun by slashing 25% of their workforce after getting all that sweet sweet cash from the government and platforms. Yup, the mainstream media sure fooled the government good on those promises for more journalism positions, that’s for sure!

While that was going on, the collective that was chosen by Google to distribute the funding released their governance model. The CRTC also extended the deadline for submissions on the funding model, presenting an opportunity for the mainstream media to make their case against the collective chosen by Google. There would, of course, be fewer voices to hear from as the media consolidation continued.

Shortly after, the mainstream media concocted another legal theory. In that case, the legal theory is that screenshots are somehow “news content” and, therefore, demand that Meta pay up, like, right now… and stuff. They got the Canadian government on board with this brand new legal theory and the government responded by saying that they want to charge Meta for news screenshots. Now, obviously, the Act doesn’t really cover this. In fact, screenshots were never discussed during the legislative process, let alone written into the bill. Instead, the legal theory completely fabricates a whole new warped and twisted reading of the Act in a desperate bid to exact political revenge on Meta. Either way, the CRTC asked for evidence on the matter.

At that point, it was obvious why they were doing this. Engagement, according to research, was continuing to plummet among the mainstream media and they were getting absolutely pummelled by the consequences of their actions. Nevertheless, the mainstream media kept publishing lies about the Act. In fact, the mainstream media took things a step further and began attacking critics for being “shameful and corrosive to democracy”. Chrystia Freeland, in response, praised the media’s lies and attacks while spreading disinformation herself in the process.

Apparently seeing the absolute clusterfuck of a situation going on in Canada, the California government folded to the platforms and agreed to their originally asked for funding model.

This was followed up by another outlet dropping all pretense. In response to the massive consolidation and the bailouts, layoffs hit within Saltwire following the buyout of Postmedia.

In another sign that the mainstream media is more of a legacy business type, the UK joined other countries where the internet overtook traditional TV as the number one source of news and information.

As if to further punctuate why there was an erosion of trust in the media, CTV screwed up a political news story. The Toronto Star, in response, doubled down on the mistake and said the situation was all Google’s fault… somehow. Hilariously, the mainstream media also gaslit the public into trying to get support for a New Zealand link tax despite the absolute dumpster fire that the Canadian version has become.

Back in Canada, in response to the demands by the Canadian government, the CRTC sent a letter to Meta, making a list of demands for ow the company is complying with the Act. The move completely obliterated claims that the regulator operates at arms length and proved that when the government asks the regulator to jump, the regulator responds by asking “how high?”

The Toronto Star, for their part, took another credibility hit after shovelling truckloads of money towards Elon Musk. The paper had published many criticisms of Musk, but somehow, can’t stop funding his platform in the process. At least we know where some of that Canadian bailout money went at least.

The CRTC, for their, part, approved Google’s arrangement with the collective. It appears that the mainstream media’s desperate attempts to thwart that process went down in flames. In response, the mainstream media demanded Meta give them free money… as if they somehow had much say in the matter. The call, like all the other ones went nowhere fast. Ironically enough, after proclaiming for over a year that Meta would come crawling back to Meta, it was the mainstream media that went crawling back to Meta after they resumed their advertising on Meta platforms. One journalist, hilariously, also pointed to the journalism code of ethics… as if that somehow would restore trust in the media (spoiler alert: it didn’t).

While it’s unclear just how much further the screenshot legal theory is going to go, what is clear is that the mainstream media, and the government, spent the year trying to concoct new legal theories and idea’s in a bid to warp and twist the text of the Act. This in a desperate bid to somehow try and get Meta to give the mainstream media outlets free money. An overwhelming majority of these legal theories ultimately went down in flames, but that hasn’t stopped from from dreaming up new, and even more desperate ideas. Still, that hasn’t stopped the situation from being an absolute dumpster fire with the mainstream media resorting to numerous publicity stunts to cover up the industry going up in flames this entire time.

If the situation wasn’t so tragic, it would’ve been downright hilarious. I still wished that the mainstream media would do the right thing in this situation and proudly announce after all of that, “The Aristocrats!”

Canada’s Age Verification Bill Terrorized Canadians

If there was one bill that had absolutely no right to move forward, yet it did (and it hasn’t become law yet), that would be Canada’s age verification bill. Known as Bill S-210, the legislation would put the personal information of an overwhelming majority of Canadian’s at risk, censor legal speech, push ineffective technology onto users, risks blowing up legal fees as web services would likely sue on obvious constitutional grounds, and solve absolutely nothing all because “porn is icky icky ew ew”.

Still, for busy-body power tripping politicians with nothing better to do with their time, it’s the perfect waste of time and resources project because they, in part, always wanted to be in control of the internet… somehow. So, how does a politician with apparently no good ideas push such a terrible, no good, awful bill anyway? Through disinformation campaigns of course!

Early on in 2024, one of the disinformation campaigns was that Bill S-210 would only apply to porn sites. We, of course, fact-checked those claims and they, naturally, turned out to be false because the laws apply to every website – as per the text of the bill itself of course.

The media, of course, as all too happy to join in on the disinformation campaigns. One disinformation campaign involved the claim that Bill S-210 would stop child luring. Obviously, the bill does no such thing. Another disinformation campaign by supporters claimed that the Liberals are out of step with the rest of the world by opposing the legislation. This was also untrue.

Digital rights organization, Open Media, published an FAQ explaining why the legislation is so bad. This while calling on the government to put a stop to the legislation.

Undeterred by those publishing facts on the bill, supporters launched another disinformation campaign through the notorious FAQ page. While claims that the technology to carry out the Act already exist was bad enough, the claim that children are too stupid to understand the internet was really over the top insanity. With her FAQ going down in flames, the Senator behind this terrible bill, Senator Julie Miville-Dechene issued a massive rant, claiming that what people point out is actually in the bill are being “ridiculous”.

Experts then began weighing in on the legislation themselves. David Fraser, AKA the Privacy Lawyer, published his own analysis on the legislation. The analysis confirmed the worst fears of the bill. Another expert, Emil Laidlaw, confirmed those fears as well in her own analysis.

One of the arguments against this legislation is the fact that it is generally unconstitutional because the government is censoring legally protected speech. While supporters routinely denied those claims, an American court ruled that similar laws in the US are, indeed, unconstitutional. The ruling represented yet another blow for those supporting such laws in other countries.

The bill is also politically problematic for the Conservative party. This is because it has resulted in the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre of accusing the Liberal party of pushing censorship legislation (through the Online Streaming Act, Online News Act, and Online Harms Bill) while touting an internet censorship bill of his own.

At any rate, Pornhub openly contemplated blocking Canada in response to the legislation – a move that would be very similar to what they did in several US states. This in an effort to protect the privacy and safety of users.

With facts and reality not going her way, along with analysis done by the Globe and Mail that agrees with the experts, senator Miville-Dechene responded to all these facts and analysis by suffering from a complete and total meltdown on social media, issuing massive profanity filled rants against people daring to question her on the bill. You know, because a barrage of profanity is exactly what you want children to know you by.

Still, international precedent was already taking hold. For instance, in Texas, after passing similar laws, searches for VPNs to circumvent the blocking soared. The response showcased exactly how people are going to react to such internet censorship laws. Pornhub also looked at blocking Florida for passing similar laws.

Of course, one of the claims by supporters is this notion that age verification technology is completely secure. This based on some apparent international precedent. That claim completely self-destructed when an Australian age verification system was hacked, causing 1 million users to have their personal information compromised.

Lawmakers pushing Bill S-210 would later on catch controversy after calling anyone who supports privacy and security rights “shocking” and “disgusting”. This in the midst of their defamatory rants about how Pornhub is supposedly a “crime scene”… somehow. Still, that didn’t stop Open Media from offering a petition to allow Canadian’s to call for lawmakers to put the brakes on the legislation.

Now, one might hope that the Conservative Party would learn from the mistakes of the Liberals disastrous Online News Act and Online Streaming Act dumpster fires, but unfortunately, it seems that they learned the wrong lessons. It seems that the lessons learned by the Conservatives is that you should stop people from offering expert opinion on bad laws, not to reform bad laws. That’s exactly what they did when they blocked all witness testimony for the legislation. You know, because censorship is totally the right answer to defending policies surrounding censorship.

Later on in yet another mental breakdown on social media, senator Miville-Dechene accused critics of never offering solution – a claim that we happily debunked.

Still, despite the meltdowns from lawmakers, it seemed like this legislation had a life of its own and started speedrunning through the legislative steps to becoming law. This took experts and observers off guard who had to refocus on this legislation since it’s the latest up and coming threat to the open internet. All that came to a screeching halt when the summer break hit, delaying the legislation in the process.

While the legislation was delayed for the Summer, reality had other idea’s. Sometime after the delay hit, another ID verification system suffered from a major leak, spilling people’s personal information for more than a year. It represented another blow to the claims that ID verification systems are secure.

If that weren’t enough, another argument for age verification laws saying that such laws are totally constitutional and protects free speech took yet another body blow. This thanks to a separate US court ruling finding that such laws are likely unconstitutional. This as the US Supreme court was set to hear the constitutional nature of age verification laws for at least a second time (the first time around, it was ruled unconstitutional).

Despite the rulings, Pornhub blocked Indiana in response to their age verification laws there. This would be later followed up by Pornhub blocking Nebraska as well for similar laws.

After those developments, supporters of such law made a pretty big admission. That admission being, of course, that age verification laws are not, in fact, the end goal, but rather, a stepping stone to enacting laws banning “pornography” outright. The admission confirmed some of the worst fears of what such laws represent.

Of course, it didn’t take long for some of the worst fears about age verification laws to become reality. One of the fears, of course, is that if age verification allows government to censor so-called “pornographic” content, then what’s stopping government from expanding such laws for other kinds of content? That became reality when Australia pushed for age verification laws on social media as well. In the process of that, ridiculous claims started being made including the claim that Pokemon go is a national security threat (seriously, WTF?).

The EFF, later on, did a writeup on Bill S-210, calling it a dangerous piece of legislation for all the same reasons experts have been calling the legislation a threat. That, of course, didn’t stop Australia from moving ahead with their social media age verification legislation.

A French court, out of the blue, ordered the censorship of multiple porn sites, implementing a non-existent age verification law in that country in the process.

With time beginning to run out, though, there was a very real worry that Bill S-210 could become law by November. Despite all the evidence and warnings, it seemed that nothing was stopping this latest free speech disaster from unfolding in Canada. This as gun makers decided to prove that even they can’t be trusted with such highly sensitive information. Still, multiple sources continued to sound the alarm over the legislation.

As time continued to tick down for the legislation, supporters launched another disinformation campaign to support the legislation.

In the US, Republican’s called for age verification laws to be expanded to app stores as well, confirming yet again that the internet censorship was never going to stop at “porn” sites. In Europe, Meta pushed a similar concept as well.

Back in Canada, there were also efforts to try and expand age verification to social media – at least in Quebec. It proved that such efforts weren’t happening exclusively outside of Canadian borders.

In the US, another lawsuit was filed against age verification laws in Tennessee.

So, what happened with the original age verification bill in Canada? Well, as it turns out, a Conservative filibuster ironically delayed the legislation. November came and went with no passage. December hit and, ultimately, the House rose for the Winter, delaying the legislation, yet again. This time, at least until 2025.

As a result, the legislation is currently in surprising limbo. It’s still possible that it could become law early next year, but with so much legal uncertainty happening in the Canadian political system, it’s very hard to say for sure what’s going to happen moving forward. Still, many point out that if this becomes law, lawsuits are sure to follow, challenging the constitutional nature of the legislation. We are only hear because lawmakers ignored all the warnings, blocked all the evidence, and pushed a bad bill forwards because of lobbying and gut feelings. While the consequences aren’t yet here for that one, there’s a possibility that those consequences for those actions could still happen.

The Moral Panic Over AI Continues

If there was ever one thing that can be put on a list of “people believe the dumbest things, sometimes”, it’s that AI is going to take over the world, eliminate all existing jobs, cause humanity to go extinct, and overall be superior to humans in every single way imaginable. For people that honestly believe that, I generally refer to them as “AI doomers” because they regularly make variations of claims of AI is going to lead to doom! DOOOOOM!!!!

Personally, in a sane world, most people would roll their eyes at their prognostications and move on with their lives without much of a second thought. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a sane world and the craziest of idiocy gets all the airtime in the world on gullible mainstream media outlets who air these freakouts without question. This has led to moral panic being spread across the mainstream media outlets on several occasions and, sometimes, I have to take some time out of my busy schedule of setting other records straight and explain why these stupid predictions are just that, stupid predictions.

Throughout 2023, some of those predictions included that AI is either completely perfected or is very close to perfection. As a result, sometime in 2024, if the work involves writing or art of any kind, or even decision making, AI was on the verge of taking that over and people in those fields would be immediately out of a job. These predictions ranged from sometime in the first quarter of 2024 all the way to sometime in the second half of 2024. So, yup, mark it on your calendars, these predictions are totally rock solid and air tight and no one could possibly question it. It’s just happening.

In fact, some people have been led to believe this thing called the “dead internet theory” where no one on the internet is real and all the content is produced by AI along with all the interactions that content brought in. It’s another eye rolling conspiracy theory because people are out there producing content online. Yes, there are botnets out there, but it’s not as though 99.9% of all content and interactivity is produced by such networks.

Now that 2024 has generally come and gone, well, I’m still writing news articles. An overwhelming majority of journalism produced today is still being produced by humans, artists are still arting, and AI has not taken over the planet as these predictions would have you believe. It was almost as if it was all hype or something crazy like that.

Still, this reality didn’t seem to phase the gullible mainstream media who were relentlessly eating up every word by some of the most absurd bullshit artists around in the world of AI because if you can’t believe people like that, who could you believe anyway? So, ridiculous nonsense gets spread by mainstream media that ranges on the dumbest coverage to outright disinformation. The punchline is that I still have people who honestly believe I’m the one that’s in the wrong in all of this. This despite ample evidence that I’ve provided throughout 2024 that the AI hype is, in fact, just hype. What’s more, it led some people to actually try and create companies based entirely on the premise that all content is produced by AI. The results were hilarious fails – and yes, there were plenty of those this year.

Things got off to quite a fun start when one AI company proudly announced that their AI has proudly made a prediction that the next Nintendo console was, indeed, going to be called the Nintendo Switch 2. What’s more, it’s going to be released in September of 2024. See? Who needs lousy overpaid journalists when you have the totally perfect AI making perfect predictions like that? Circle it on your calendars, book it, done!

Now, you laugh at that prediction, but CEO’s really were believing hype like that. For some, that was just the latest example of AI taking over everything. In a survey, an estimated 35% of CEO’s said that they were replacing journalists with AI. Obviously, the technology is, at best, completely unproven, but it does show that the sales teams at AI companies were really fooling a lot of business leaders out there with this belief that AI is taking over the world.

Probably the only AI story I ever saw this year that had some credibility was the story surrounding Google’s AI Overview. In short, the AI Overview grabs content produced by websites, then summarizes the content and places it at the top of search results before showing actual web results below. The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) implications were obvious because it means that even if you manage to get near the top of all the search results, you’re still being pushed down by the AI answers instead. That would theoretically deprive websites of the click in the search results. Naturally, we had concerns about it. Indeed, we have seen a drop in traffic after this was being implemented, so it wasn’t as though the worry was without merit.

Of course, like pretty much all other AI content producing products out there, Google Overview was plagued by bad answers. Fun examples included recommending to use glue on pizza to keep the cheese from sliding off or recommending users eat rocks. Apparently, leaving the answers to random users on Reddit wasn’t the smartest idea in the world since AI can’t tell the difference between serious comments and sarcasm. So, as it turned out, even Google can’t produce an AI that summarizes existing material accurately which really tells you a lot about what is being asked of these Large Language Modules (LLMs) in the end. Google, regardless, left the AI responses up despite the accuracy problems plaguing it.

For a brief moment in time, though, it seemed like people were starting to finally come to their senses in this whole AI hype story. With people expecting the AI revolution to be practically upon them part way through 2024, that revolution started to become little more than a mirage. As a result, investors in large AI companies started questioning when their return on investments were coming through. When the answers proved less than satisfying, investors began pulling their money from these companies. It marked one of the few times I was actually satisfied by a development in this story.

Others were holding out hope that this slump was just a temporary bump in the road, but as answers continued to elude investors, more began pulling their stock purchases, causing NVidia and other AI stocks to plummet.

September did roll around and we couldn’t help but note that the AI Nintendo prediction went down in flames.

In October, another epic fail hit the world of AI. Hoodline, a company that apparently employs the use of AI for it’s journalism work, erroneously reported that the San Mateo County DA was charged with murder. The theory as to how it could fail so spectacularly is that it parsed a social media post and mixed up a few of the words. Instead, the DA was actually charging someone else for murder, not the DA. It was yet another epic fail on the part of AI that can’t even properly summarize tweets properly. Seriously, this is the kind of AI that’s supposed to be replacing me?

As things continued to get rocky for AI companies, company owners desperately told investors that the revolution was real, please believe them! Please! They further insisted that AI is by no means in a bubble despite all the signs suggesting that.

One of the side moral panics being floated by mainstream media was this idea that AI was going to take over psychology and social work. Specifically, apps are being created based on ChatGPT and people will be turning to that instead of seeking professional help. The fears, much like many other fears surrounding AI, were overblown and research confirmed that access to professional help is a much bigger problem.

So, in an effort to at least bring some level of sanity into the debate on our part, I wrote an analysis on why AI content is legally fair use and fair dealing. The reason I went at this angle is because, for one, I’ve followed the area of copyright for decades now, and two, people seem to honestly believe that AI interpreting other people’s work is classified as copyright infringement. This despite a complete lack of legal basis to say so other than “AI BAD!!!!”

Yet, despite this kind of sensible understanding about how the law works, people seemed to go completely off the rails the moment “AI” is pulled into the debate. For instance, TechCrunch actually wrote a piece trying to make the case that watching free online streams and video is copyright infringement. To my astonishment, I had to actually explain why watching something isn’t an act of copyright infringement, but that’s the level of insanity that we have reached with this debate.

Later on, the absurdity grew with the mainstream media attempting to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement. The crime? Apparently, the AI read their free online articles at one point. It doesn’t take a high level of copyright law knowledge to know that reading is not copyright infringement, yet, that is the legal theory that the mainstream media is running with. Obviously, as I pointed out, the media does not have the law on their side and such legal theories are already being shot down in the courts for being completely out of touch with how the law works, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping the mainstream media from wasting their money on some bogus legal theory and putting that to the courts after.

Yet, people are resorting to these insane arguments because they have somehow come to the conclusion that the AI threat to their livelihoods is really real for realsies. This despite copyright being an abysmally bad tool to somehow “fight” AI in the first place. Amidst all of that, we got to bear witness to yet another AI fail just the other week. In that case, Apple’s AI, Apple Intelligence, falsely summarized a news article and said that UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter, Luigi Mangione, had shot himself. As a result, Apple got to add it’s name to the list of large companies that oversaw an embarrassing AI fail.

While these fails are nothing new (I covered numerous instances of that happening back in 2023), it does highlight nicely why there is a need for a great deal of skepticism when people go running around screaming how AI is going to be the end of all humanity. All these generative AI systems that write text do is simply predict what the next word would likely be if it was written by a human. It may use facts as a basis, but it is by no means superior to humanity in any way. All it cares about is if the words sound authentic even if what it’s actually saying is complete garbage nonsense. Yet, people repeatedly overlook such things and honestly believe that AI is simply perfect in every way or is practically on the verge of being perfect in every way and just needs a few more tweaks to achieve this perfection. It’s dumb, but there are no shortage of people who will religiously believe all of the above anyway despite all the evidence available out there saying otherwise. Because of that, I can only expect the comedy of AI fails to continue.

The Canadian Government Continues to Refuse to Treat Privacy Seriously

When the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, it represented a brand new gold standard for other countries to follow. European digital rights advocates rightfully hailed it as a big moment in ushering a new era for a respect to privacy. It ultimately ran into one major problem: it was far too successful.

Complaints and incidences reported under disclosure requirements meant regulators were quickly overwhelmed with the pure number of cases they were investigating. Regulators immediately knew that they greatly underestimated the gravity of the problem of privacy of ordinary citizens. As a result, officials were left scrambling to fill the ranks sufficiently with people to deal with this massive problem of finally dealing with the issues of personal privacy in an online environment.

While the laws weren’t exactly perfect (with some DPCs being accused of trying to protect offenders more than anything else – especially in Ireland), it still brought in trillions for government coffers. The privacy problems are being dealt with, but it became abundantly clear that this issue had been badly neglected for far FAR too long.

Indeed, privacy reform is something that is supported across all party lines. The need, thanks to headlines of successive breaches and leaks happening in Canada, made the need for privacy reform as obvious as the sun during the day while standing out in an open field of grass. You really can’t miss it. Yet, despite the need being ridiculously obvious, Canadian lawmakers continued to leave privacy reform at the back of the priority queue.

Indeed, in the years leading up to 2024, the Canadian government relentlessly dragged its feet, trying to do everything in their power to delay things as much as humanly possible. When it became impossible to delay things further, the Canadian government finally tabled… a half measure. Even then, they slow walked this half measure in the months since leading up to 2024.

Of course, the real world simply didn’t care as security incidences continued to prove the need for such a law. For instance, back in January, governmental organization, Global Affairs, was hit with a massive data breach. The incident punctuated, yet again, for the countless time, that privacy reform is badly needed. Yet, the governments response was to hit the snooze button and pretend that it’s not an issue to be taken seriously. If you got affected, well, too bad, you’re not a priority for the government.

That sentiment was amplified when the Ticketmaster hack story hit. While the Canadian government may have noticed the story, they quickly smacked the snooze button to try and ignore the issues altogether.

While the government refused to treat privacy seriously, the Canadian Supreme Court had other plans. In a ruling back in March, the court concluded that an IP address is personal information. It was a kind of an obvious conclusion to make, but the good news is that the Supreme Court of Canada agrees with that notion. Still, we’re hoping for even the most minor of positive change on this file, so we’ll take anything at this point. So, the ruling was a good one.

As time continued, developments on this file were virtually non-existent. With a near complete lack of actual progress, we noted that it is looking increasingly likely that the privacy reform, however half baked it is, would likely die on the orderpaper.

Time continued to pass with a complete lack of anything notable on the file, so I did a writeup about why people should be upset about a lack of privacy reform. After all, it’s your personal information that is being swapped around by shady data brokers and criminals and the Canadian government can’t be assed to really do anything about it.

Earlier in December, we did do a general writeup on what an election means for tech policy and bills, but the story is still the same: privacy reform is dying on the orderpaper because the Canadian government couldn’t be bothered to take responsibility and push bills that actually protect Canadian citizens.

Ultimately, the story never really surfaced since. While it didn’t get much coverage due to a lack of anything really going on, it is a huge story for the complete lack of care or bother from the Canadian government. It sends a strong message that if an issue is important for your average Canadian, it simply doesn’t get any sort of priority for the government. Privacy reform is blatantly obvious legislation that everyone supports, but it seems that the Canadian government just doesn’t care about you. The lack of care for privacy reform pretty much proved that quite clearly.

Online Harms: How Canadians Dodged a Huge Bullet

If there was one bill prior to tabling that I was the most nervous about, it would be the Online Harms Bill. Yes, there are very real and serious concerns about the Online Streaming Act, plenty of negative repercussions from the Online News Act, and trade implications with the Digital Services Tax, but those concerns paled in comparison to the concerns brought on by the Online Harms Bill – at least in the prototype/”consultation” stages.

It was at that time that the government made it clear that their intentions was to, among other things, forcibly demand websites to create an anonymous reporting system for anyone to flag any content, for any reason, as “harmful”. The reasoning behind those flags doesn’t matter. If it is considered “harmful” by any anonymous user, it was “harmful”, full stop. Building on that are provisions that would require websites to remove said material within 24 hours. Failure to do so would mean a multi-million dollar fine against the owner. There is no consideration for the size of the website. All websites must carry this out or face these massive fines.

It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to figure out the problem with that. Basically, no website survives this in Canada. Your only choice as a website owner is to either shut down voluntarily or shut down due to multi-million dollar fines being levied against you. That was really the only choice you had. As such, I considered it the Canadian governments “final solution” to the internet – effectively a nuclear bomb on any Canadian website that exists today.

So, in February, when the legislation appeared on the notice paper, I called it “nightmare fuel” for very good reasons. Indeed, when I saw it, my online career was flashing before my eyes. Visions of breaking news on ACTA, reporting on the Sony data breach, successfully aiding the efforts to fend off warrantless wiretapping legislation in Canada, getting a YouTube video to soar past 1,000 views, and a whole lot more. At the time, it really felt like I was reporting on the beginning of the end of my entire online career.

So, in preparation for the doomday scenario for my career, I did a writeup on what I’ll be looking for in the bill itself. In a way, I was writing with the thoughts about how it was all going to be over soon, knowing just how stubborn the Canadian government was with the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act. Then, the day came that the legislation was tabled and I offered a very lengthy multipart analysis of the bill. To my pleasant surprise, the nasty provisions that would wipe out the Canadian internet were removed. When that realization set it, it felt like I actually had a new lease on life as far as my career was concerned. Open Media also shared their positive response to the legislation.

While the problematic digital provisions were mercifully removed, civil rights organizations took issue with some of the criminal provisions – namely the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA). So, by no means was it a perfect bill, but a major improvement over the variation found in the earlier “consultation” process. Canadian Justice Minister, Arif Virani, defended the legislation, but the criticisms of the legislation did persist. Eventually, the Canadian government lost its cool and said that any criticisms against the Online Harms bill was little more than “clickbait“. So, same old government refusing to listen to criticism at all, no matter how valid they may be. Virani tried using bad examples to defend the legislation as well.

In the midst of all of that, the Canadian mainstream media actively shilled for the legislation, even going so far, in one instance, to say that they hate free speech and want to do away with it. As supporters argued that all criticisms towards the legislation is “rage farming”, one lawyer, Christine Van Geyn, fired back, pointing to why there are speech concerns within the bill itself.

In December, there was a development that marked a moment of victory. The bill was getting split with criminal offences getting placed into a separate bill. It helped to remove some of the thornier issues and gave the rest of the legislation a chance to pass.

The Flames Grow Higher for X/Twitter

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, the general consensus among sane people is that the purchase marked the moment for the beginning of the end of Twitter. Throughout 2023, those people were proven right. Advertisers were driven away, hate speech and neo-nazi content exploded on the platform, moderation was severely cut back to the point of being virtually non-existent, and the value of the platform went straight into the ground. The icing on the cake was the devoted Musk cultists who wildly proclaimed that things have never been better on the platform in the first place – even as multiple exoduses of users left the platform.

While X/Twitter was rapidly becoming a dumpster fire of a platform in 2023, those flames kept growing higher throughout 2024. In March, X/Twitter alternative, Mastodon, reportedly reached 15 million users. By that point in time, the phrase “pussy in bio” became the catch-all phrase to describe the out of control spam bot problem on X/Twitter.

Indeed, X/Twitter was becoming increasingly bad to advertise on. Hilariously, though, Musk initially responded to the advertisers leaving by telling them that they can “fuck off”. Well, “fuck off” they did. The problem is, who is paying the bills afterwards? Clearly, Musk didn’t really think that far ahead, only in the heat of the moment. Still, eventually, the plummeting ad revenue proved to be too difficult to ignore. So, once again, in the heat of the moment, Musk decided to respond to the financial crisis of his platform by suing advertisers for failing to advertise on his platform. It was a lawsuit that many observers consider Musk’s dumbest lawsuit yet.

Unfortunately, we live in the real world where bad guys do win. As a result of the lawsuit, advertising standards organization, GARM, shut down in response to the lawsuit. Whether you agree with GARM or not, though, the lawsuit against it should not have had any success associated with it because refusing to spend advertising dollars is not a crime by any means.

Of course, Musk is Musk and he continued doing very Musk-like things. Later on that year, he also fanned the flames of violence in the UK using his prominence to do so. While the mainstream media said that this is a blanket social media problem, we, of course, pointed out that Musk saying stupid things is a Musk problem.

Shortly after, research came out saying that estimated revenues for X/Twitter had further plummeted by an estimated 56%. Things also grew tense when lawmakers started calling for the arrest of Musk as well.

One thing we did notice was how much the mainstream media and politician’s dislike Musk. To be fair, there are plenty of reasons to dislike him. As we pointed out, however, there is a certain degree of hypocrisy that goes along with some being critical of Musk. Specifically, there are plenty of prominent entities that say that Musk is a threat to democracy and society. At the same time, those same entities (yes, there are a very select few that don’t call into that category), that continue to not only insist on using Musk’s platform, but also continue to spend heavily in the form of advertising in the process. Seriously, if you don’t like Musk in any way shape or form, use a different platform. There are multiple viable alternatives these days. If you refuse and continue to rely on Musk’s platform as your main platform, then you are part of the problem.

Of course, who could forget the fiasco with X/Twitter and Brazil? Indeed, there was evidence linking an attempted insurrection in Brazil to Musk and X/Twitter. So, the platform was taken to court to get certain kinds of content removed. Musk, being Musk, refused. In 2024, that eventually lead to a Brazilian judge not only ordering X/Twitter to be banned, but also all the takedown of VPN apps as well. The ruling was very concerning for a lot of people. It’s not because X/Twitter was getting banned (after all, just look at the events that led to that decision), but rather, the assault on VPNs as a technology. It was obviously an overly broad ruling that causes VPN services to suddenly become collateral damage. The ruling was appealed, but the Brazilian Supreme court, in a split decision, upheld that ruling. Eventually, though, Musk surrendered and finally began cooperating, so that’s something at least.

One of the criticisms by mainstream media targeting X/Twitter is the fact that it promotes right wing extremism. There is, of course, a bit of a problem with that criticism. That’s specifically the fact that mainstream media themselves also promote right wing extremism. For instance, USAToday platforms some of this extremism. In one example we brought up, an architect of Project 2025 was using the outlet to make the insane case that Project 2025 is “good for America”. Something something glass houses something something throw stones.

Meanwhile, things continued to get worse and worse for X/Twitter. Another study concluded that X/Twitter lost a whopping 79% of it’s value – an astonishing crash to say the least.

One of the things that Musk cultists love to say is how X/Twitter is basically the freedom of expression platform. It’s the place where free speech thrived. Naturally, it also happened to be the place where Trump can get Musk to suppress a politically inconvenient story as well. Of course, for those who are not part of the Musk cult, this is not really all that surprising. After all, for far right people, it’s only free speech if they happen to agree with it. Anything that they don’t agree with should get censored and/or banned. So, really, that development was pretty par for the course.

Of course, actual users are also finding it increasingly hard to stick around X/Twitter. Many fled to Mastodon while others are actively choosing Bluesky. The exoduses generally go in waves and have been dubbed ‘Musk Events’. Generally, a Musk event is just Musk doing something stupid causing people to leave. 2024 saw a significant one that caused a spike of activity on X/Twitter alternatives. In that case, Musk changed the terms and conditions of his platform to say that by using X/Twitter, you agree to allow your content to be trained by Grok, an AI that is being used to help fuel right wing extremism. For a lot of users, that was the final straw as they started leaving the platform at that point in time.

It’s for the reasons of Musk basically running X/Twitter into the ground that many fear what he is planning to do next. After all, he has become a highly influential unelected person within Trumps team. Many worry that he is going to do a lot to run the entire country of the US into the ground in the same way he ran X/Twitter into the ground.

The Social Media Moral Panic, and TikTok Moral Panic, Grips the Media’s Attention

There are many issues in the world of Tech facing countries like Canada and the US, but so often, the mainstream media comes up with ways of grasping at non-issues and spinning those issues into some sort of national crisis. This through lies and manipulative language rather than facts and reality.

Throughout 2023, the TikTok moral panic was largely a US thing with Canada being spared most of it. Given all the other nonsense going on, the TikTok moral panic is about the last thing Canada needed at that point in time. Sadly, however, that was never going to last and in March of 2024, it became apparent that the TikTok moral panic was coming to Canada.

In a nutshell, the TikTok moral panic revolves around the conspiracy theory that TikTok is a Chinese Communist Party mind controlling device designed to use funny cat videos and dance video’s to hypnotize you into doing the bidding of the Chinese government. This includes using your web camera and microphone to listen into the room and hear everything you say. Obviously, the security community have already gone through the TikTok platform and found that it didn’t do anything that was outside of the norms for your average social media app, but the conspiracy theorists insisted that their theories are totally legit and like such as.

Like any other story, we listen to the evidence and hear out different perspectives to formulate conclusions. Sadly, there was no evidence that was ever presented that showed that TikTok was some sort of unique security and privacy threat. If anything, it was fuel for the argument that maybe a broad federal level privacy reform law was needed to settle things (which would have been the sensible thing to do). Still, when the US national security apparatus stepped forward to present their findings, we thought we would finally get some actual answers as to why TikTok is supposed to be this unique threat to the country. In response, national security officials couldn’t turn up any evidence. Instead, they admitted that the fears they were presenting were purely hypothetical and relied on general theories, but no actual evidence could be used to back up their claims.

That moment represented a massive credibility blow to the TikTok conspiracy theories. It should have represented the moment that the nation rethink their strategy in protecting people. Yet, the complete lack of evidence didn’t even come close to deterring the mainstream media as they continued to push the conspiracy theories by generalizing them as “security concerns” and leaving it at that.

Taking advantage of the mainstream media’s anti-social media disinformation campaign, school boards in Ontario sued social media because kids are, like, acting up, and it’s, like, probably all the fault of social media. I mean, it’s not the parents, teachers, or the kids that are at fault for bad things going on in school, it’s totally social media’s fault, so there! Ultimately, it was little more than a waste of money publicity stunt in the end.

In the US, however, efforts to ban TikTok for the reasons of satisfying xenophobic tendencies moved ahead. While an outright ban bill would have had a lot of problems gaining passage, the ban legislation was paperclipped to aid to Ukraine – so basically must pass legislation. Thanks to this legislative manipulation, it looked like the TikTok ban bill was getting passed even though the merits of such a bill are, at best, piss poor. Obviously, TikTok responded by pointing out that the efforts to ban the platform trample free speech. They weren’t wrong, government censoring a business just for the thrill of it would run into constitutional problems. Either way, though, regardless of how obviously unconstitutional the bill was, US president, Joe Biden, signed the bill anyway.

Smelling blood in the water, Canada’s mainstream media immediately began openly lobbying the government to pass similar ban laws in Canada. This in their effort to try and shut social media, and the wider open internet for that matter, down, so that audiences would be forced to use them instead for news and entertainment. The bias expressed by the mainstream media was palpable, indicating that journalistic integrity is about the last thing these outlets really cared about.

One researcher, through coincidence or careful timing, decided to publish a questionable study proclaiming that social media is inherently harmful to people in general. This by rehashing long debunked claims that social media makes people feel bad about themselves without providing any new evidence to support those claims. That disinformation was quickly picked up by mainstream media and promoted as gospel, fanning those flames of disinformation in the process.

Back in the US, the American mainstream media was publishing rumours as fact by saying that Tiktok is going to sell their American operations. TikTok responded to those claims and said that they are false and that TikTok is not selling. That story died quickly after that.

Of course, evidence also surfaced that foreign interference is not exclusively a TikTok thing. Microsoft research that concluded that there is foreign interference going on on other platforms like Facebook and X/Twitter. The findings represented a significant blow to the conspiracy theory that TikTok represents a unique societal threat. What’s more, the findings were not at all surprising, either, given the past Russian foreign interference on Facebook. Still, it proved to be politically inconvenient, so the research was quickly swept under the rug shortly after.

One of the major core arguments for the TikTok ban is that it represents a privacy risk. In response, politicians say they are oh so very concerned about people’s privacy. Yet, those claims hit a brick wall when those same politicians turned around and renewed Section 702, expanding America’s domestic surveillance programs in the process. Yeah, so much for politician’s caring about your privacy.

Undeterred, some outlets continued to push TikTok conspiracy theories anyway. Some of them were so bad, it didn’t really require much effort at all to debunk. In one instance, Media Matters published a self-debunking article on the matter, leaving us to just quote them afterwards. It was both funny and sad at the same time.

Of course, the most obvious reaction out of all of this happened. TikTok filed a lawsuit to fight the ban, citing freedom of expression for not only their business, but also the millions of American’s that use the platform as well.

As that happened, another blow hit the TikTok conspiracy theories thanks to the European Union initiating a probe into Meta for failure to curb foreign interference.

Back in the US, lawmakers took an incredibly disturbing step to defend their efforts to ban the platform by threatening any organization for the crime of helping TikTok in any way. As many pointed out, the move was WAY out of line for something that is being decided in the courts.

Of course, it wasn’t just TikTok suing. TikTok creators, separately, sued to stop the ban in a bid to protect their livelihoods. It was a pretty obvious move to say the least.

Canadian mainstream media, not wanting to be left out of the TikTok hate campaign, launched another wave of TikTok conspiracy theories on their publications.

The US Surgeon General also got in on the TikTok hate train by amplifying social media disinformation. The effort was frustrating for experts because his comments completely contradicted the offices own evidence. In response, the US Surgeon General quipped that they have a gut feeling that they are right and that it was up to science to agree with him. Not exactly the most scientific strategy to understanding something, but here we are.

Still, that seemingly inspired the Toronto Star to launch another anti-social media disinformation campaign by publishing a facts optional rant against the concept. The article showed just how unprofessional the Toronto Star can be at times.

Of course, it’s not just the Toronto Star that is guilty of this. Several mainstream media outlets screw up these sorts of stories all the time. Things got even worse when the mainstream media completely screwed up coverage of a US Supreme court ruling. They claimed that the court ruled that the Biden administration is allowed to censor speech on social media – which the ruling absolutely did not do. What the ruling actually did was say that if you are going to accuse the government of censoring your social media posts, you know, actually bring real evidence forward to say that. Moderation activity on the platforms part alone is not evidence. How it even made it to the Supreme Court level in the first place was a mystery – even to the Supreme Court justices who were generally perplexed as to how the heck the case made it that far in the first place.

Moving back to Tiktok, one of the arguments for the ban is that if the platform gets banned, then the people who built whole businesses can simply move to other platforms. The problem with that is the fact that different platforms operate differently. What works on one may not work on another. Of course, this isn’t just theory. It actually has played out elsewhere. Specifically, in India where whole chunks of culture were suddenly cut off. Big name creators found themselves being unable to really recover as alternatives were nowhere near suitable for them to continue expanding their business. The effort had very damaging and lasting implications for the people of India and the Indian population struggled to even partly recover from such a cultural blow. The story should represent as a warning for other countries thinking of doing the same thing, but learning from others is about the last thing some countries want to do in the first place.

In October, a study on social media looked into moderation and right wing politics. The conclusions weren’t all that surprising. It generally concluded that right wing extremists get moderated more because they break the rules more. Again, nothing surprising there, but good to have evidence of this anyway.

Later on, the TikTok conspiracy theories were dealt with another massive blow when the Chinese government was busted hacking AT&T, gaining access to the networks for months or longer. The development was a critical blow to not only the conspiracy theories that TikTok represents the sole point of entry for Chinese foreign interference, but also delivered a fatal blow to the security argument that you can build a wiretapping system only used for the “good guys”. This is because the wiretap system was what was compromised by Chinese hackers.

The CBC, for their part, published conspiracy theories about how social media is the cause for ADHD being overdiagnosed. The claims were quite weak to begin with and backed by little to no evidence.

At another point, the CBC even tried to blame social media for human smuggling. In the reports, they largely dismissed all other causes and practically insinuated that if social media were to cease to exist tomorrow, then human smuggling would be a thing of the past. It’s an absurd claim and when they brought on an expert to talk about the issues, the expert became perplexed by the claims and pointed out economic conditions and several other causes that lead to human smuggling. In short, the expert rightfully pointed out that the CBC was barking up the wrong tree.

In response, the CBC zapped what they learned from the human trafficking expert down the memory hole, did a little expert shopping, and brought on air someone else who was willing to blame social media for human smuggling – notably, an expert who wasn’t an expert in human smuggling. So, they redid the story and made a second attempt to blame social media for human smuggling. The claims, of course, didn’t really hold up anyway and the CBC ended up looking even worse for trying to start a moral panic about social media. If anything, it led some to wonder if mainstream media spent their days trying to dream up of new ways of blaming social media for all of societal ills just for the hell of it.

Meanwhile, the conspiracy theories about TikTok were dealt an additional critical blow in Canada when explosive reports surfaced about how the Chinese government broke into Canadian government infrastructure for the better part of 5 years. Go figure, that story also got quickly swept under the rug given how politically inconvenient that one was.

The TikTok story then reached new illogical heights when the Canadian government banned the company and not the app. Experts couldn’t even come close to making sense of the move because why order the shutdown of the business presence in Canada, but allow the platform to continue operating in the country? This especially because the reasoning was because the platform represented a national security threat. One could try and apply some level of logic and reason, but that logic and reason ship has sailed long ago – replaced by conspiracy theory nutjobbery and racism.

Obviously, the stupidity has real world implications for real people. Digital First Canada condemned the move and TikTok vowed to sue over the decision. Pretty obvious reactions given that people’s jobs are at stake there. Still, that didn’t stop one old out of touch Liberal MP to deliver a crazy rant against TikTok.

Of course, it’s one thing to point out why the anti-social media conspiracy theories are wrong, but quite another to actually present evidence of what the real story is. So, we did the heavy lifting and did a writeup on what the evidence really said about social media. In a nutshell, research has repeatedly concluded that social media either had a neutral impact on people or an overall positive impact on people’s lives.

Sadly, we live in a world where research and evidence is routinely dismissed and replaced by gut feelings and personal beliefs. It’s partly why so many sane observers and experts were shocked at the court ruling in December that said that censoring whole platforms protects free speech. It was a stunning and surprising ruling that basically flipped free speech on its head by saying that government censorship is free speech.

Of course, TikTok wasn’t about to let these kinds of decisions stand without a fight. In response, the platform filed a challenge to the Canadian shut down order. What’s more, the TikTok US ban law was appealed to the US Supreme Court where the court agreed to hear the case. In a weird turn of events, Donald Trump also filed a legal document trying to defend TikTok after having a history of trying to ban the platform.

At the end of 2024, the TikTok conspiracy theories were dealt one more massive blow when the Chinese government was accused of hacking the US treasury. The development showed that when it comes to Chinese meddling, TikTok is probably one of the last things the Chinese government would use for foreign interference.

While there is some promise of a resolution to the court cases for 2025, it’s possible that the consequences we saw in India could hit North America as well. This thanks, in part, to a failure to learn from history. Still, the battles have not yet been decided and we look forward to seeing what develops in 2025.

Looming Trade War of the Digital Services Tax

Another major story that cropped up in 2024 was, of course, the Digital Services Tax fiasco. This is one of those things that sound good on paper, but is horrible when put into practice. The sales job summary of this concept is that large online stores like Amazon should be paying more taxes. After all, they are large corporations and they should “pay their fair share”. So, the government moved forward and tabled legislation that included the Digital Services Tax in response to that.

In a vacuum, that sounds like a pretty non-controversial thing. There is, of course, one small problem with that thinking: we live in an international community. That includes the idea that different countries have trade agreements with other countries so one country doesn’t get too out of line with some of the things they want to do. Indeed, there are efforts to formalize a general fair taxation rate for services rendered online not already covered by existing tax norms on the international front. The Canadian government, however, decided that they are above such things and decided to go their own way.

As a result, they moved forward with the digital services tax. The American government, understandably, gave Canada a general “WTF?” response and asked Canada to have a little more patience with the process. After all, these are American companies that we are talking about, so Canada should also follow the rule of law on the international stage. In response, the Canadian government basically sent the message of “fuck the international rule of law, we do things how we like!” and pushed the Digital Services Tax anyway. Not the brightest move by the Canadian government, but a move nevertheless.

In response, the American government said that if Canada moves forward with this, then trade retaliation is going to happen. The Canadian government completely ignored the American’s repeated warnings. Of course, those who know how international trade law works knows what kind of damaging repercussions there are associated with this – and it goes beyond just one country being mad at another. In June, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce warned of the consequences of the Digital Services Tax. Go figure, like all other warnings, those warnings were promptly ignored by the Canadian government.

The US government, for its part, said that it would use all available tools to fight the Digital Services Tax as well, confirming yet again that trade sanctions are certainly on the table. The Canadian government, however, flipped America the bird and implemented the Digital Services Tax shortly after. The move brought a collective facepalm from observers. Seriously, how could the Canadian government be so stupid throughout all of this? That was the question that was on the minds of many at the time.

The United States, in response, gave another “WTF?” response and lawmakers urged a quick and decisive response to Canada’s belligerence.

While trade war seemed like it was more of a matter of “when” rather than “if”, Google wasted no time in confirming what many had already known would happen: they planned on passing those costs onto consumers, worsening the Canadian affordability crisis even further in the process. The move was not surprising at all and was largely expected by those who were paying attention to how things likes this work in the real world.

Some clinged on to the hope that trade retaliation was just bluster and talk, but when the US government announced a round of softwood lumber duties increase, it pretty much shattered that hope.

Mainstream Media Helped Elect A President That Vowed to Destroy Them

For the longest time, I personally believed that pushing link taxes would ultimately be the mainstream media’s biggest blunder on all likelihood. Indeed, with Meta pulling news links in Canada (which caused a string of bankruptcies, losses, and slowdowns) and, for a time, large platforms moving to do similar in the US and elsewhere, it would be unlikely that the stupidity shown could possibly be topped.

Well, apparently, the mainstream media managed to top themselves in extreme stupidity. That had to do with US politics. In 2024, the US had a general election between the current president who has done a flawed, but respectable job, and a convicted felon. The current president wanted to uphold the rule of law while the convicted felon wanted to destroy the media by jailing journalists, revoking broadcast licenses, and otherwise destroying media outlets for the crime of having coverage that he personally didn’t like.

So, who did the mainstream media choose to back? The convicted felon that had vowed to destroy them. I mean, it’s one thing for one mainstream media outlet to back the candidate that wants to destroy them, but for the general mainstream media to collectively do so without really batting an eye? That was just a whole new level of pure stupidity on their part.

Yet, that’s exactly what happened throughout the election. In July, we reported on the mainstream medias refusal to cover Project 2025 – the far right’s manifesto on how they want to take over America that was written by key members of the incoming Trump administration among others. In response, American’s were growing frustrated by the lack over actual coverage of it and turned to the internet to do what the mainstream media should have been doing all this time.

Indeed, even then, there were signs that elements of Project 2025 were already being carried out at the state level. For instance, Alabama tried pushing a law to jail librarians for holding books that might have LGBTQ+ content in them.

Yet, evidence didn’t matter and the mainstream media, while providing maximum political cover for convicted felon, Donald Trump, relentlessly attacked the current president, Joe Biden. At one point, during a presidential debate, Joe Biden mumbled a little and the mainstream media spent months howling about how awful Biden is. This while not even sparing a second thought for all the insane nonsensical, and often senile, rants by Trump.

Ultimately, the mainstream media got what they wanted. In a solemn moment in US politics, Biden announced that he is dropping out of the race. The mainstream media popped the champagne, celebrating their victory over the current president and went on to blame the Democrats for everything that had happened in their typically biased “reporting”.

The moment really raised some serious questions: do facts really matter any more? You can relay facts all you want, but few are willing to listen. Instead, an increasing portion of people out there care less about facts and more about being told that their personal beliefs are right, no matter what. As such, that famous comic about comforting lies vs unpleasant truths really became more relevant than ever before. If the mainstream media is more focused on reporting that gets the most clicks or what they think is in their own collective business interests, rather than the reporting that speaks to the objective truth, it makes one wonder if this decision to abandoned their morals is a market response. If so, it really undermines any value objective reality really has when some of the people who sell themselves as a staunch support of the truth have so publicly rejected it. After all, if facts mattered to people, websites like Freezenet would be raking in the cash by now as a vast majority of people would be turning away from such sources. The simple fact is, very few people have any actual interest in the truth and have voted with their wallets to be told that everything they believe is true no matter what.

In the interim, the Democrats picked vice president, and prosecutor, Kamala Harris to be at the top of the Democratic ticket. It was a scramble to do so, but the party pulled a proverbial rabbit out of a hat and got someone with promise to be president at the last minute. While some in the mainstream media were less aggressive towards Kamala, there were still significant amounts of sane washing going on to give Trump as much political cover as possible. The general term used to describe this activity was, of course, sane washing. Media outlets regularly took insane ramblings of Trump and “summarized” those ramblings into something coherent. This, of course, distorted the truth by portraying Trumps senile moments as little more than normal politics (even though there is nothing normal about it). So, I responded by pointing out that, given Trumps promises to crackdown on the media, this effort to sane wash Trump is going to backfire spectacularly if they succeed.

Now, some might look at my interpretation and say that there is no way things are that bad. After all, if there was a concerted effort to push such biased news, you would see resignations from reporters who have principles. To those thinking that, all I can say is this: that’s exactly what happened. Journalists were resigning from the LA Times in protest of the pro-Trump bias. In that instance, the LA Times staff came together to look at whether the paper was going to make a presidential endorsement. After examining all the facts, the general conclusions was to endorse Harris. Unfortunately, that didn’t sit well with the right wing owners who stepped in and blocked the endorsement. The moment showed very vividly the power the ownership has over the contents of the reporting in the process and how corporate ownership can steer the bias of news reporting to suit their personal beliefs. That alone eviscerates the credibility of any news organization, big or small.

Naturally, this problem wasn’t exclusively associated with the LA Times, either. The Washington Post, famous for the tagline “democracy dies in darkness”, suffered from a similar credibility blow. Like the LA Times, staff at The Washington Post came together to decide on who to endorse for president. The conclusion, unsurprisingly, was to endorse Harris. The problem is, that didn’t sit well with right wing billionaire, Jeff Bezos who, in turn, blocked the endorsement. Instead, the staff was told to figure out the pros and cons of both candidates.

Faced with backlash, Bezos responded to the criticisms of him silencing his journalists. He argued that he has world class journalists on staff, but his news room is left on auto-pilot and it is up to him to steer it in the right direction among other things. The statement was self-contradictory and did little to convince people of anything other than Bezos trying to kiss the ring of Trump even before he got elected president.

At any rate, the mainstream media ultimately got what they were gunning for. They helped to get a convicted felon elected president of the United States. The election result for the media represented a worst case scenario come to life for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and more. As a result, many American’s, and indeed many people around the world, had the same thought: “we’re fucked.” What’s more, to a degree, the mainstream media, in the process, finally caught the car and now they were going to deal with the consequences.

The war on free speech didn’t take long to kick off. Shortly after the election loss for the American people, then potential FCC nominee, Brendan Carr, said that he had plans to kill free speech and put an end to the open internet. Fox “News” would later float the idea of death sentences for anyone who was involved in prosecuting Trump for all the crimes that Trump committed. Right wing terrorism also began sweeping across the country as well through, among other things, text messages. In response, fears for the personal safety of Trump critics grew. This especially after the US Supreme Court ruling that said that all crimes committed by the president is legal so long as it’s considered “an official act“.

One of the things Trump vowed was massive tariffs on other countries, causing fears of spiking prices on everything including electronic goods.

While that was happening, Trump issued a threat to the New York Times and Penguin Random House over content he didn’t personally like. This while tapping Carr to be <href=https://www.freezenet.ca/free-speech-put-on-notice-after-brendan-carr-named-next-fcc-chair/>the new head of the FCC. Many fear that Carr would carry out Trump’s marching orders to go after the media in general and few had reason to believe that Carr wouldn’t do so.

What’s more, Trump demanded his Republican subordinates to kill a bi-partisan supported journalism shield bill – legislation aimed at helping journalists protect their sources.

Yet, even as that was going on, the LA Times caught even more controversy when their ultra wealthy owner began cracking down on free expression. This by demanding that all editorials be run through him so he can make sure the headlines won’t upset anyone in the Trump administration. This is, obviously, not the purpose of a news outlet by any means since it runs completely contrary to the concept of holding power accountable.

The efforts to silence criticisms of the incoming Trump administration continued with Trump FBI pick, Kash Patel. Patel vowed to go after anyone and everyone who would dare criticize Trump and would do what he can to “figure that out”, be it criminally or civilly. In December, he doubled down on the speech crackdown efforts by threatening MSNBC.

In Canada, officials are scrambling to come up with a response to Trump’s 25% tariff. There are multiple trains of thought on that. Some, like the Ontario Premier, suggested trade retaliation. Others, like the Alberta Premier, advocated for surrendering Canada’s interest and just bending over and economically taking it. The Prime Minister, for his part, thinks that by importing several racist policies and doing everything Trump says, that Canada would be spared from the tariffs – even though the chaos is the point for the incoming Trump presidency. A few, interestingly, thought that maybe having another look at Canada’s tech policy, a point of trade tension that has been in place long before the US election kicked off, would be an interesting way to try and smooth things over from the thin-skinned president. At least the latter was an interesting idea anyway.

At any rate, chaos continued to happen with Trump as he filed a lawsuit against a pollster for the crime of being wrong on a poll. Trump accused the pollster of political interference for daring to suggest that a finding found Harris might be going up in the polls. A nonsense legal theory, but honestly, at this point, we are entering a world where any conspiracy theory is valid in a court of law at this point.

Ultimately, the mainstream media chose to back a presidential candidate that vowed to destroy them. There was certainly evidence of editorial interference from the owners of those outlets to make it happen, but nevertheless, the media used bias to help support the Trump campaign despite the obvious threats to their own interests. Now, those actions are followed up by the consequences with threat letters and general threats to the media at large. The message is clear, report on things the US president or his close circles don’t like and you will face the consequences. How truthful and accurate those reports may be does not matter. That is gearing up to be a theme moving forward. Good job mainstream media, you played yourselves.

Conclusions

While this is far from a comprehensive list of things that happened throughout 2024, it does show just how chaotic the real really was. You can see for yourself why I like saying that reality doesn’t care about your personal beliefs, it just does what it does. Over and over again, I often feel like I’m one of the many people pointing out the stove is hot and that you shouldn’t touch it. The problem is, far too many people are responding by saying that people like myself are idiots and not really “experts”. This is followed up by slamming their hands on the stove and burning themselves. Things have gotten so ridiculous, that this is even sometimes followed up by screams of how the stove didn’t burn them after and that the burn marks were magically put on their hand to make them look bad. All we can do is just give an annoyed facepalm to the situation.

As we get further into 2025, all I can do is hope that the chaos and destruction that is seemingly inevitable isn’t going to kill us off in the process. At this point, all we can do is take things one day at a time. Who knows? Maybe there is a possibility that we’ll be writing a look back to 2025 instead of sitting in solitary confinement. You never know.

I wish I could be optimistic about things, but its pretty difficult to do so, all things considered. I’m too realistic to believe that it would be a good idea to bullshit you by saying that everything is going to be fine, dandy, and peachy this year.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.