I'm joined from Thailand by BitShoot founder Reh Vahey. Reh announced last week that BitShoot,
a free speech streaming platform, would cease to stream in the United Kingdom,
citing the UK government's draconian online safety bill as the reason
for pulling out of the country. It's great to have you on the show, Reh.
You've ceased operations in the UK. See, you're an English guy. That must have been a tough
decision. Yeah, actually, when we first launched back in 2017, we were the UK company,
and we've had to pull out the UK entirely. In stages now, we've removed the company from the UK and
based it out of the US, which wasn't something I even wanted to do, but that gets into a whole
another thing about not being able to get banking in the UK, banking services, or even insurance.
I should come back to that later at this time, but I'm here today to talk about
another large government overreach, which is the online safety act.
How does that impact BitShoot in a day-to-day basis? Obviously, if anyone watching this has
read the online safety bill, it's draconian as you like, and it's pretty obviously just
about censorship. But on a day-to-day basis, how would that affect BitShoot?
Right, so there's a few main things. What they require companies to do is up the surveillance of
their users. We're a platform that believes in user privacy, so for us, that's a big no-no,
but also to increase the amount of censorship. It's quite censored in the UK already. America,
of course, has more free speech, but they're greatly increasing the amount of censorship.
The platforms like BitShoot and all platforms would have to apply to UK users. We fundamentally
believe that everyone should have the right to free speech. It's a human right, and it's also
important for holding those in power to account. So it was a red line for us. We're not prepared to
do that. Absolutely. And the thing is as well, even on a real small level, for instance, think about
during the COVID era, the mainstream media was all one way. YouTube and Facebook and Twitter,
as they were then, were all one way. Then you had yourselves, you had your Rumble, your Bandot video.
They were the only people that you could get the truth out. Well, that truth has been shown
to be a truth now. Yet if that online safety bill was in place then, we wouldn't, for instance,
have been able to say any of the things that we were saying on BitShoot about the vaccine,
lockdowns, masking and all of that stuff. You're absolutely right. That's a very important
point that all of those aspects of COVID were once considered dangerous misinformation,
and they were being censored by OFCOM. OFCOM only had powers to censor broadcast media at that time,
but they were already enacting that censorship. And there was a lot of pressure on us to enact
that censorship coming from various governments and various institutions. And we decided that we
would not do that. We'd make a stand for free speech, which is even more important during
situations like that. Because as you've said, things that were said to be dangerous misinformation
turned out to be widely regarded as true now. And the mainstream media even talks about them.
But those things would get your YouTube channel shut down, would get you kicked off Facebook,
would get you kicked off X even even X had very draconian rules about that.
And yeah, it's extremely dangerous. And this is one of my big worries that another event like
this could come along. And we would be legally obliged if we remained in the UK to remove that
content to shut down users channels. And that even scares me more. I mean, this bill has
such huge powers that they could even shut down BitShoot itself if we refuse to comply
the fines are just simply outrageous. I think the reason they do that is because
they don't want companies to exist. They like monopolies. Those work very well with governments.
But if another situation did come along, it's going to be very different. It's going to be
much more difficult to get that information out to people in the UK that will eventually
shown to be true. And could you imagine how different it would have been if that
information hadn't been censored through COVID, if people had been allowed to talk about it freely?
How much quicker we would have come to solutions, better solutions rather than
what happened and, you know, finding out about this stuff in the mainstream years later?
Absolutely. And I think, you know, part of me wonders with the old COVID era,
whether that was a test in the sense of, you know, remember Bill Gates, you know,
the next one will get attention or that kind of stuff. I always remember those words and think
he didn't say that for no reason. That almost the COVID thing was a test of like, right, what do
we need? Okay, okay, right. Well, the alternative media, that's a problem. Right. So let's get
our ducks in a row for the next time. You know, they almost saw what chinks they had in their
armor. Can you see other streaming sites following you guys? Because I know,
I was reading that GAB, I know GABA on a streaming site, they're essentially a social
media site, but they've pulled out of the United Kingdom. Let's talk of that now. Can you see others
doing the same? Well, I hope they do, because I think that this is the right approach to get
the government to change its mind. I think if enough companies pull out, this will be exposed
and they will have no choice but to reverse. But yeah, GAB is another one that's pulled out.
But interestingly, also much smaller platforms that really have nothing controversial on them at all
have been pulling out. So I know the Hamster forum has had to shut down. And that's just because of,
you know, this is a forum where people go to talk about their hamsters. You're not going to get
much controversial news on there. But because the compliance is so difficult and so expensive,
they felt that they had to shut down completely. There's also games, games, I can't remember the
name of one, but it's a game that's been played on the internet for something like 20 years.
And, you know, it's just run by one guy who has a small operation and he's had to shut it down.
So yeah, this is really dangerous to new competition coming into the market. And we
desperately need more competition because these monopolies like Google and Facebook,
they're, you know, even when they say they protect free speech, they don't really,
they really fall in line with everything the government does. And yeah, I hope that
people wake up to the dangers of this and we see more companies walk out.
Absolutely. The UK government's frightened of hamsters. You heard it here first.
Do you think then that, well, I guess you basically answered my next question, which was,
I was going to ask you, do you think it will backfire on the UK government in the sense that more
sites like yourselves pull and then people actually start to go, well, hang on a minute. I can't
access my hamster forum. I can't access this game. That's got nothing to do with misinformation
and hate speech. Hang on. This is government overreach.
Well, I think it will. And I think this regulation overall is misguided. I don't think it works.
I don't think this is how you deal with even legitimate disinformation. I don't think you
should even censor that. I think the best way to deal with bad information is always more
information. That's the only way that the truth has a chance of ever coming out.
So I think the government is really misguided. But the reason you see so many institutions
and governments pushing for this, they've had it very cozy for such a long time with
threshold TV, where they had a very cozy relationship. And those services did very
well from that. But the internet has really turned that on its head. Groups like Iconic
have been able to get massive followings and because they're saying things that the
mainstream media won't. And all of a sudden, the government is very scared as legacy news is
becoming, you know, is hardly trusted at all these days. The trust ratings keep falling and
falling. I think they're scared that they're going to go out of business. Many of them already
are. And the government is scared as well because they've got to find a way to get their propaganda
out to the people that isn't going to be as easy. So I think that's a real danger. And
Andrew remained, I think there's a real danger that we would have slowly slipped into being a
part of that. So, you know, I'm glad we can say we're out. We're not going to be part of that.
Do you think people will just use a VPN? Because I was wondering, like in terms of
bit-shoot, have you seen numbers drop since you left the UK? Or have they kind of remained
the same? And if so, is that do you think maybe just British people going right fine? Well,
I'll just use a VPN and I'll access it that way. It's kind of difficult for me to say because
we've been experiencing massive growth this year. I think in the last two months, we've been getting
over 30% growth on unique visitors to the platform. So in light of that, it's a bit
difficult for us to say what the drop-off might be. I do expect some drop-off and I think
there are workarounds. I've been told by our lawyers I shouldn't tell people what those
workarounds are. But in terms of VPN, I would say to your users, to your viewers,
they're very good privacy tools. They've got a whole range of advantages. They're great for
keeping you safe online, keeping malicious actors away from you who might want to commit fraud,
keeping your privacy secure not only from the government but from feeds.
So I highly recommend VPNs and I think everyone should get one.
I think you're right. I think a lot more people are. I think not even just like you say,
not even people that are into this realm but people are kind of like, well,
I want to protect my family. I want people to know my IP address.
Where do you think, just finally, Ray, this is meant to lead because you made the point
there which I completely agree with, that these people are frightened, that the government
is lashing out because it's frightened, it's losing the narrative and has done
probably over the last decade or so. But where do you think it's meant to
lead? Is it meant to lead to a point where basically no one can see anything that the
state doesn't first approve of? Right. I absolutely do think that.
I think we're heading towards a system similar to what we've seen in China,
which is the great firewall of China. If they don't approve of something
in their centralized government, then it doesn't get through. No one has access to it.
And also, in terms of even private communications, this bill targets those,
I think the government wants to know everything about anything that's happening on the Internet.
So they don't like encryption, they want backdoors. And very frightening, very
scarily, they want to be able to police for, they want to be able to say what is true,
what isn't true. They want to be the Ministry of Truth from 1984, basically.
So I think this could be a very dark future if we don't stand up now. I think
we've never encountered a threat like this, frankly, since the age of the Internet.
And really, we have to resist or we are heading towards something
where we won't even remember what resistance was like.
I think you're right. I think the one positive, because I'm a Derby County fan,
so therefore I have to take positives out of anything I can, is that the more obvious it
becomes, and it has done under this current Labour government. I mean, I left and right,
cheeks are the same backside, but the Labour government have just run at it, haven't they,
to such a point where even people around the world are going, like I went to Mexico
recently and it was literally like, mate, what's happened to your country?
And then I was in Serbia last week, same people from all over the world going,
where are you from? Britain. Oh, mate. So it is getting out there. People are aware.
And if you're not aware, you don't resist, right? So that's a positive.
Right. And there's videos coming out about six coppers turning up to pensioners' homes
because they put something on Facebook that the government doesn't like.
I mean, this is crazy. This is a country that came up with the concept of free speech and
pushed it out to most of the world. And now it's one that those philosophers wouldn't even recognize.
It's going completely the opposite way. And let's hope, I think that's a really positive
step to leave this on, that people are seeing what's going on. And there's got to be a
breaking point where people say, enough is enough. And I hope that soon.
Yeah, I think it's coming, right? Thanks so much for joining us. And thanks for
making a stand as well. Do you know what I mean? You could have quite easily just sat there and
gone, fine, whatever, I'll keep my business in the United Kingdom and I'll just go along with it
and delete that and delete that. The fact that you're not doing it because you genuinely believe
in free speech is admirable, mate. The only thing that scares me more than being shut down by
Ofcom is being co-opted by them. So I'd rather walk away and let that happen.
And thanks for what you do as well. I know you guys do some great work over there,
iconic. Cheers, mate. Appreciate it, mate. Thanks.