Ezra Levant reveals YouTube’s sudden demonetization of Rebel News, threatening a $400K annual revenue loss with no explanation after 15,000 videos and zero strikes. He dismisses claims of spreading misinformation, citing civil liberties and police brutality coverage instead, while accusing Google of political bias—echoing a 2016 memo targeting conservative creators post-Trump’s win. Allegations of U.S./Canadian government pressure, including spying via an Arkansas contractor, and PM Trudeau’s hostility fuel his defiance; Rebel News pivots to BitChute and Rumble, urging subscribers to register at afteryoutube.com. Despite financial strain, Levant refuses censorship or layoffs, vowing independence as supporters rally behind Pastor James Coates’ release, proving YouTube’s crackdown won’t break their platform’s resolve. [Automatically generated summary]
Listen, I love talking about the world, but sometimes we make news too.
YouTube wrote to me last night saying they're fully demonetizing us.
And when I asked why, they wouldn't say.
I'll take you through possible theories and what we're going to do about it.
I think this means YouTube is looking to suspend us altogether.
That would be bad news, but I have a plan to overcome it.
So that's what I'm going to get into in today's show.
By the way, I'd love it if you became a subscriber.
And what I mean by that is subscriber to the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version of the podcast.
Plus shows by David Benzi, Sheila Gunread, Andrew Chapados.
And oh my God, more important than ever, you will support us because YouTube just kicked a $400,000 hole in our company.
I'll tell you more about that in today's podcast.
All right, here's to this show.
Tonight, YouTube comes to kill Rebel News.
It's March 23rd and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government go wild.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Last night at 5.30 p.m., I received this letter from YouTube.
They're cutting off Rebel News.
They're completely canceling all remaining ads on our channel, even from advertisers who specifically request our channel.
And worse, they're banning our 1.45 million YouTube subscribers from voluntarily paying us through what are called live stream super chats.
This is going to cost us about $400,000 a year.
We've got three choices, really.
If we stop criticizing the lockdown, they say we can reapply in 30 days and possibly get our ads back.
But we would have to stop saying what we say.
We have to say what they want us to say.
Or we could gut our company, cut out $400,000 a year in costs.
We've just hired great new folks, new reporters, editors.
We've done so much great civil liberties work.
Cutting $400,000 a year means probably cutting seven staff.
I think that's really what YouTube wants us to do.
Which of those would you choose?
Change our editorial viewpoint or cut $400,000 from our payroll?
Me?
I'll do neither.
Thank you.
I've got a plan.
We're going to get through this.
We're not going to be just like the CBC or CNN.
We're not going to parrot the left.
We're not going to cut our staff.
I have a plan.
Stay with me and I'll tell you about it.
Or if you can't wait, just go to afteryoutube.com and it's all right there.
I need your help to survive this.
I think YouTube is ramping up.
To be honest, I think their next step will be to suspend our channel altogether, just to delete us.
I really don't know how long we've got left on YouTube at all, but I do have a plan and you can see it at afteryoutube.com.
It's a simple plan and today we started to implement it.
Frankly, we were expecting something like this.
We started putting things in motion months ago.
But just quickly, before I get to the plan, you might think that maybe we did something wrong.
YouTube has a three strikes in your out policy for inappropriate videos.
I should tell you, we have zero strikes.
We've published more than 15,000 videos on YouTube, and we've never violated their terms of service.
There was no warning here.
We don't know about any complaint.
We're aware of no video that caused this.
When I got that letter last night, I phoned our YouTube rep. And I asked if there was something in particular that we did wrong.
Was there a video that broke a rule?
I mean, if there was something really bad, maybe we would fix it or even just take it down.
She said, no.
There's no particular video.
I asked if we could appeal the ruling.
She said, no, there's no such thing.
I asked if I could talk to a more senior boss.
She said she'd check.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer.
But let me take one more minute on their email to me last night.
There was a cryptic reference in there.
Do you see that one phrase, harmful or dangerous acts?
That's a list of things you can't do on YouTube.
I read through the whole thing very carefully.
It's mainly a rule against crazy and dangerous things that we've just never done.
Here's an example.
Acts involving high-risk activities, such as skyscraper parkour, or depicting serious injury like skate slam aftermath.
That's an example.
Or pranks relating to suicide, death, terrorism, such as fake bomb scare pranks or threats with lethal weapons, sexually unwanted acts such as forced kissing, groping, sexual abuse, spy cams in dressroom.
These are actual YouTube examples of what they mean by harmful or dangerous acts.
Have you ever seen anything like that on rebel news?
There's a list of things they call medical misinformation, like denying that certain medical conditions exist, such as HIV, COVID-19, and content claiming the vaccine will cause infertility, contain a microchip, or be used to euthanize parts of a population.
Please Help Us Survive00:07:22
Now, we've never said those things.
I don't think anyone actually knows all the facts about the virus or the vaccines yet, but we haven't claimed that COVID doesn't exist or that there's a microchip in the vaccine or anything wild at all like that.
We just talk about the same things everyone else does.
It's the news and we're a news channel.
If you've watched our videos, you know our problem isn't really with the virus itself.
It's the political response to the virus we're worried about.
The lockdowns, the violation of civil liberties, even police brutality.
That's what we talk about every day.
We even put a little warning on the front of our videos about the pandemic, letting people know that we are skeptics of the conventional wisdom.
YouTube told us that that's all we needed to do.
So for no reason, YouTube has just gutted $400,000 from our rebel news budget, and they won't even tell us why.
Is it because we're skeptics of the lockdown?
Is it because of political pressure on them, maybe?
Is it because of what I showed you last week, that the U.S. Navy and the Canadian Armed Forces Special Operations Command paid an Arkansas defense contractor to try to spy on us?
I mean, that was really weird and creepy.
Did those spy agencies pressure YouTube to demonetize us?
It wouldn't surprise me.
I mean, we caught them spying on us.
Or maybe it was Trudeau himself.
Trudeau has ordered police to remove our reporters from his press conferences.
He's banned us from attending public debates, and he even denounced us by name on the floor of Parliament.
It is disappointing to see the conservatives engage in peddling rebel media conspiracy theories.
Was it that?
Or was it the fact that just last week we filed a lawsuit against the heritage minister, Stephen Gilbo, for blocking and censoring us?
I haven't even had a chance to tell you about that lawsuit yet.
Imagine that.
We sue him for censoring us, so he censors us.
Is that what happened?
I don't know.
YouTube won't tell us.
I don't think we'll ever know.
But I know that YouTube, which is owned by Google, is a far-left organization politically that really doesn't like conservatives.
And after Trump won in 2016, they had a staff meeting at Google where they swore they would crack down on any conservative YouTubers.
Well, it took them four years, but it looks like they finally kept their promise.
This is step one.
Their next step could be to shut us down.
To hell with the 1.45 million YouTube subscribers who love our content, who constantly give our videos 99% like to dislike ratios.
So what do we do after YouTube?
We'll be working on our plan B for when the cancel mob comes for us.
We've already set up rebel news channels on smaller rivals to YouTube, like the video website BitChute and Rumble.com.
That's a Canadian-based company that has a free speech orientation.
Dan Bongino and even Donald Trump Jr. use rumble.com for their videos.
Starting today, we'll put all of our videos up on those sites and five other video alternatives too.
And instead of driving traffic to YouTube by linking to YouTube from our Facebook and Twitter accounts, we'll now send our people to those new upstart video channels too.
We'll still keep using YouTube.
We're not going to abandon the 1.45 million people there.
We won't cut them off.
But we're going to let them know in every single video we upload to YouTube that they have to tell us who they are, their name and email address, or else when YouTube finally pulls the plug on us, we just won't be able to contact them anymore.
That's the main purpose for afteryoutube.com so that when YouTube kills us, which I fear they will, our 1.45 million friends know where to find us, and we know where to find them.
Look, YouTube essentially said that if we stop talking about the lockdowns, maybe they'll let us have ads again.
Well, I'll never censor myself or our reporters like that.
But we can't survive with a $400,000 a year hole in our company.
You've seen our new young reporters who are doing great work.
We just hired two new video editors too.
We just hired a full-time lawyer to help us fight the fines cases.
I suppose a normal company would just lay off seven or eight staff.
I mean, that's what the corporate media do.
BuzzFeed just bought the Huffington Post and they immediately laid off their entire Canadian staff.
They just care more about making money.
They don't actually believe anything.
Well, we believe in things here.
I do, and our whole staff does.
Our motto is to tell the other side of the story, not to just repeat the story that YouTube wants us to tell.
So option one is to obey YouTube and become liberal.
No thanks.
Option two is to do what Huffington Post just did.
Just fire everyone to cut costs.
No thanks.
Option three is to do what I'm going to do.
To ask you to help me.
If you love rebel news and you don't want to see us bend to the will of YouTube and you don't want to see us lay off staff, then please help me.
Go to afteryoutube.com and tell me your name and email address so I know how to reach you when I'm finally deleted from YouTube.
You can unsubscribe from our list anytime and we'll never sell our list to anyone.
That's the first thing.
Second, sign up for our alternative video platforms.
You can see that right on the page at afteryoutube.com.
And number three, I have to ask, not for me, but for my team, please help me replace the $400,000 that YouTube just took from us.
Please help me keep our editorial policy independent.
Please help me make payroll for all these new journalists.
And you can do that too right there at afteryoutube.com.
I'm sorry to ask for money, but YouTube knows our pressure points, don't they?
They know we don't take money from Trudeau.
They know we don't take money from a big corporation.
So they know we really, really needed that $400,000 a year from them, which is why they blocked that with no explanation.
Please don't let them win.
Please let us continue our important work.
Please help me replace the $400,000 that YouTube just took from us.
Go to afteryoutube.com to help.
Thank you, my friends.
I promise that if you give us the tools, we'll finish the job.
Well, thank you for letting me tell you the story about YouTube coming for us.
We have been preparing, hardening our systems.
Look, there's no way to say it.
Being booted off YouTube will be bad news for us.
It's the second largest search engine in the world, and it is the largest video platform in the world.
We've got to be on there.
Request For Support00:06:05
But it's not our choice, is it?
So if YouTube is going to kick us off, my goal is to get as many people from YouTube to follow us to other sites and to our own site.
I also have to make up the $400,000 hole in our boat that YouTube's drilling.
That's going to be a little tougher.
But I want to talk to you about something else.
We've been so busy fighting back against YouTube today that I want to, instead of interviewing Sheila, because she's busy and we're busy, I want to play for you a video she recorded about some good news.
Pastor James Coates was finally released from prison where he outrageously spent more than a month in prison for opening his church.
And I should tell you again that the crime, the non-crime he was charged with, if he was convicted of it, it itself would not include a prison term.
That is real police state stuff, and I don't like it one bit.
I'm embarrassed that it's happening in Canada, let alone Alberta, which is supposed to be the freest place.
let me throw to a video that Sheila recorded about this happy day.
It should be in my bags.
I need to just transfer some money to die.
I need to get some money.
I need to get some money.
Sure, yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, no worries.
Well, there is some good news out there.
I think it's still outrageous that he spent that time in the clink, but it's happy that he's out.
I do have some more good news for you.
In fact, I've got a couple of pieces of amazing news.
I don't want to be too depressed about what YouTube is doing to us.
It's not enough to kill us.
It's a hassle.
It's a bother.
It's a stress.
It's trying to silence us, but it will not work.
Good News and Rebellion00:00:41
We are bigger than that.
I want to stay on YouTube as long as possible.
I'd like to have our monetization back, but they're not going to crush us and they sure aren't going to tell us what we can or can't say.
If you can, look, I know we already have your email address if you're watching this because you're a member of our Rebel News Plus.
But for over a million people out there who watch our stuff, we just don't know who they are.
And getting those names and taking them with us is the sure way to beat YouTube.
Anyways, that's our story for today.
Thanks for joining us and thanks as always for your support.
Don't you worry.
We'll get through this.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.