We here at Freezenet wanted to take a moment away from the news to wish you all happy holiday season.
If I were to say that this has been a happy and pleasant year, I would be lying. These days, it seems that freedom of expression and freedom of the press has been under incredible and increasing strain. Between extremely low revenues from advertising (despite the traffic pulled in to the site), legislative efforts to exert greater controls of what can and cannot be said online, and the incoming Trump administration that is promising to crack down on speech he personally doesn’t like, the thought that I could be writing my last goodbye in the journalism world soon has crossed my mind on more than one occasion. I’d say these thoughts have continued to crop up in my mind to this day.
Yet, I also can’t help but remember that Freezenet has already dodged a couple of bullets. When looking back in the past, I do remember that the Online News Act was very close to being curtains for Freezenet. With Google threatening to drop news links from all of its services in response to the Online News Act, the Canadian government, mercifully, folded, allowing news links to continue to exist in the Google ecosystem.
People with less knowledge on how the internet works might fault this as being a poor design choice to be dependent on Google for your survival, but every Canadian website out there largely depends on Google allowing links to their sites to appear in Google’s services. The likelihood of any website surviving without Google is negligible to say the least. Freezenet far from alone on that one. Yet, thanks to that last minute capitulation on the part of the Canadian government, Freezenet survived.
Another major threat to Freezenet was Canada’s Online Harms bill. Originally, it had provisions that suggested that if you don’t take something deemed “harmful” (which could mean anything) down within 24 hours, you are going to face a multi-million dollar fine. Any anonymous user, under that version, could make a complaint as well. It’s a law concept that no one is surviving including Freezenet. This bill, for a time, represented an existential threat akin to a nuclear warhead wiping out all websites operating in Canada. Again, I was faced with the prospect of shutting down my own website in response to this bill becoming law.
Yet, somehow, when the bill was tabled, those provisions were removed. Yes, there are criticisms still being aimed at this bill, but the worst internet provisions were mercifully removed. I think I can safely say that I was far from the only website owner out there in Canada breathing a huge sigh of relief at that development. Yet again, Freezenet managed to survive yet another major threat.
While Freezenet is far from in the clear after dodging two bullets, I can definitely say that Freezenet is still operating to deliver another Christmas message. I had every reason to believe I wouldn’t make it this far, but somehow, I did. So, this year, I guess the Christmas message is to be grateful for what you have. You never know what the future may hold and what can be taken away on a moments notice.
While I know this is not exactly a typical holiday message, it’s definitely a message from a lived experience. Happy holidays from all of us here on Freezenet.
