April 24, 2025 - David Icke
14:33
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| I'm joined from Thailand by BitChute founder Ray Vahey. | |
| Ray announced last week that BitChute, 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, Ray. | |
| You've ceased operations in the UK. | |
| I see you're an English guy. | |
| That must have been a tough decision. | |
| Yeah, actually. | |
| When we first launched back in 2017, we were a 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 other thing about not being able to get banking in the UK, banking services or even insurance. | |
| We 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 BitChute in a day-to-day basis? | |
| Because 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 BitChute? | |
| Right, so there's a few main things. | |
| So what they require companies to do... | |
| Is up the surveillance of their users. | |
| And, you know, 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 that is already quite censored in the UK already. | |
| America, of course, has more free speech, but they're greatly increasing the amount of censorship that platforms like BitChute and all platforms. | |
| Would have to apply to UK users. | |
| We fundamentally believe that everyone should have the right to free speech. | |
| It's very important. | |
| 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, you know, 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 know, you had your Rumble, your Bandit video. | |
| They were the only people that you could get the truth out. | |
| Well, that truth has been shown to be 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 BitChute about the vaccine, lockdowns, masking and all of that stuff. | |
| You're absolutely right. | |
| And 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. | |
| We decided that we would not do that. | |
| We'd make a stand for free speech, which is, you know, 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. | |
| That even scares me more. | |
| I mean, this bill has such huge powers that they could even shut down BitChute 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. | |
| What 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 be 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 whole COVID era whether that was... | |
| A test in the sense of, you know, remember Bill Gates, you know, the next one will get attention, all 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? | |
| OK, OK, 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 armour. | |
| Can you see other streaming sites following you guys? | |
| Because I know I was reading that Gab, I know Gab aren't a streaming site, they're essentially a social media site, but they've pulled out of the United Kingdom. | |
| There'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 among 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. | |
| Because the compliance is so difficult and so expensive, they felt that they had to shut down completely. | |
| There's also 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. | |
| We desperately need more competition because these monopolies like Google and Facebook, even when they say they protect free speech, they really fall in line with everything the government does. | |
| I hope that people wake up to the dangers of this and we see more companies walk out. | |
| Absolutely. 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 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. | |
| 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, you know, the reason you see so many institutions and governments pushing for this, they've had it very cozy for such a long time with terrestrial TV, where, you know, 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 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. | |
| The government is scared as well because they've got to, you know, find a way to get their propaganda out to the people. | |
| It isn't going to be as easy. | |
| So I think that's a real danger. | |
| And, you know, had we 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 BitChute, 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. | |
| That's great. | |
| 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. | |
| You know, I've been told by 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. | |
| Yeah, 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 centralised government, then it doesn't get through. | |
| It doesn't, you know, 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 support. | |
| 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, Ray. | |
| I think the one positive, because I'm, you know, I'm a Derby County fan, so therefore I have to take positives out of anything I can, is the more obvious it becomes. | |
| And it has done under this current Labour government. | |
| 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... | |
| 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. | |
| Oof. 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. | |
| 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, Ray. | |
| Ray, 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 than let that happen. | |
| And thanks for all you do as well. | |
| I know you guys do some great work over there, Iconic. | |
| Cheers, Ray. | |
| Appreciate it, mate. |
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