Justin
Trudeau, Rachel Notley, every left wing activist in Canada -- they’ve
been trying to stop us at The Rebel for more than two years. And I was
never worried until now.
Because they’ve finally figured out how to do it. And we need your help if we’re going to survive.
On August 1, an ominous blog post from YouTube changed everything.
YouTube is how we get our message out. We have more than 850,000
YouTube subscribers. We’re one of the biggest YouTube news channels in
the world — by far the biggest in Canada.
They
called it “an update to fight terror content online”. It does start out
talking about terrorism, but then it moves to what YouTube calls
“controversial” ideas. That could mean anything. That does mean us.
Because we talk about the controversies of the day. Here’s what YouTube
says they’re going to start doing to YouTube channels like us:
Tougher
standards: We’ll soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that
aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of
our policies on hate speech and violent extremism. If we find that
these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial
religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited
state.
So they’re not just banning terrorist videos. They’re banning things that aren’t illegal, they are just controversial, or potentially
controversial according to some complainer online. Well, all of our
content is “potentially” controversial, especially to thin-skinned
whiners on the left — like Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley, to name a
couple.
And the
very day that YouTube released their new policy about “controversial”
people, they shut down the account of our friend, Prof. Jordan Peterson.
No notice, nothing. Just blocked. They eventually put it back up. But
how long will it be until they take it down for good?
We
don’t know if YouTube decided to attack Jordan Peterson themselves, or
if someone asked them to do so. Like when Justin Trudeau’s office asked
that Google delete search results linking to websites made when Harper
was in office.
And
that’s what worries us. There is no transparency in these decisions.
YouTube just blocked Jordan Peterson one day, and didn’t tell him
anything. And he’ll never know what happened.
Do
you think we have a few years left on YouTube before we’re banned? A
few months? Maybe a few days? It’s only a matter of time. So what then?
OUR PLAN:
So, we’re going to build an "app" — that’s short for an application. What used to be called software.
We’re
going to build an app that we own — not owned by YouTube. An app that
you can use to watch us on your smart phone — we’ll have both an Apple
iPhone and an Android version. And it will work for your laptop, or even
on your TV set, through Roku or Apple TV.
We’ve actually been working on this app for months. We think it will be ready in September.
It will be a free app. You can download it for free. You can watch all our short videos for free. Just like always.
But we’ll own the app. So no-one can have that power over us. No-one can have that power over you.
The
app will have everything in it — not just all our videos that are right
now on YouTube, all 6,500 of them. But it will have our TV shows too —
the paywall stuff, like the daily Ezra Levant Show. And we’re launching
more shows after Labour Day, so the timing is perfect.
The
app will have other things in it too — all the social media right in
it, feeds like Twitter, Facebook, etc. But also special notifications
from us to you — again, something that can never be blocked by an
outside company. No third party company will get in your way of watching
our stuff.
The
app will continue to work with YouTube, until the moment YouTube does a
Professor Peterson on us, and kills our account there. But guess what —
that very moment, we push a button, and we go 100% self-sufficient,
with our own video player. That no-one can take away from us or from
you. The app will do that.
We’re going to stay on YouTube as long as we can
— we like them, even though they hate our guts. But when they finally
come for us, we’ll have another place to go. Where Trudeau’s lobbyist
friends can't touch us or you.
But we don’t have the budget to do this on our own.
We’re not the CBC, that gets $1.5 billion a year from Justin Trudeau,
and acts like it. We’re 100% independent. We can’t afford this. But at
the same time, we can’t afford not to do this.
That’s why we need your help.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Developing
the app is going to cost us a lot of money. $120,000, for it to have
all the functions I mentioned — all the fun notifications, all the
social media, play all the video content.
To integrate it with our video hosting system, and with our payment system, that’s another $19,000.
$90,000
to build a proprietary video player, that runs the videos in the app.
That serves up all the gigabytes worth of videos, on demand, quickly, in
high def, to replace what YouTube gives us now free.
To move our 6,500 videos over from YouTube to the app, now, is about $13,000 — or about two dollars a video.
To upgrade our existing TV apps for Roku and Apple TV is $20,000.
And $40,000 to upgrade our computer software and servers at our headquarters, to make all of this work.
Together, that’s $302,000. I know that’s a lot. It’s the biggest expense we’ve ever had in our history.
That’s
what it costs to make your own conservative alternative to YouTube —
and to make it better, too, so you can take it on the go, in a
beautiful, easy-to-use app on your phone, that seamlessly works at home
on your TV and laptop.
Everything in one place — no more signing in and then signing in again.
That’s a lot of money. But we need to do this, don't you think?
Can
you please help? We need to finish the app — and we need it the sooner
the better. I have no idea if Google plans to come for us like they came
for Professor Peterson — and we won’t know until the moment it happens,
they’re sneaky that way.
Can you please help -- with $5, $50 or even $500?
PERKS FOR DONORS:
We have some perks to encourage you to help us!
Donors who give at least $100 will get their names permanently displayed on a special thank you website.
Donors
who give at least $250 will have their names displayed in a special
thank you video as well as being on the thank you website.
Those who donate $1,000 or more we’ll have their names engraved in brass on a beautiful plaque that is hung in Rebel HQ.
For
the very special people who donate $10,000 or more, Ezra will meet them
for lunch in Toronto or any major city in North America. And they will
also get their names on a plaque.
And
if some amazing guardian angel wants to donate $50,000, then we
will literally name our entire world headquarters for them, for one
year. Ezra will end every show by saying "we’re signing off from the
John Smith world headquarters of The Rebel", or whatever name you like!
Thank you so much!
Ezra and The Rebel team.
SUPPORT US BY MAIL:
You
can contribute by cheque to support our crowd funder too. Please make
it payable to "TheRebel" and add "They Can't Stop Us" to the memo
section, and send it to:
The Rebel
PO Box 61056 Eglinton/Dufferin RO
Toronto, ON M6E 5B2
No comments:
Post a Comment