New “government algorithms” out to kill your nonprofit

Scary new Canadian law just the blueprint Washington & US states need to completely wipe out your online fundraising!

Way up here in the Great White North of Canada, there’s a new law which gives politicians and bureaucrats near unlimited power to regulate online streaming and social media platforms.

But it’s even weirder and worse than that. 

The law also gives the feds the power to control the algorithms of these sites (even porno sites!) to make sure they’re “sufficiently Canadian.”

And although this new anti-free speech law is (for now) only aimed at cultural products, I believe it will also be used in the future to regulate citizens’ political speech and the social views of people who aren’t popular with the ruling party.

Time will tell.

But here are 2 things I’m daymn sure about: 

1. I expect this unique system of government censorship of political, social, religious, and commercial speech to spread very quickly throughout the world–including to western countries like the US and western Europe.

And, even more importantly:

1. If your pro-freedom nonprofit depends solely or mostly on social media platforms you are courting potential disaster.

More on #2:

In the past 10 years, individuals and organizations have had their entire livelihoods completely upended by platforms banning users in order to appeal to crazy social media mobs who are too frail to deal with any ideas or opinions that they disagree with.

That was bad and even for many financially devastating.

But at least you could escape to other platforms or even help fund/build new ones that are more favorable to you.

But in Canada, starting soon, that’s gonna be a thing of the past.

So if you’re nonprofit has spent a million hours and a million dollars building a big YouTube audience or Twitter following, if the government wanted your very presence on one or more of these platforms disappeared, all it would have to do is write a vaguely threatening letter or make a phone call to the company’s legal team, and, poof!, you’re gone!

And like I said before, I fully expect Western “democratic” governments like the U.S. to start finding cracks in the law that they can fill in with this “algorithmic domination” to harshly regulate and disappear content they don’t want the public see.

Maybe it won’t be on the same grounds that Canada does it right now, but I could easily see the feds try to regulate “misinformation” or “hate speech” this way in the future, which are concepts that have no real definition other than any ideas, opinions, beliefs, or—quite frankly—people that the powers that be don’t like.

That’s why it’s more important than ever that you to protect your donors and prospects on media lists that YOU control (meaning donor/prospect lists that you can routinely download, export, and backup elsewhere for safe keeping).

To demonstrate just how important this is, I remember a story from the great Ken McCarthy—widely considered to be the “founding father” of internet marketing.

He talked about a marketing client that had created a massive Facebook following that was also very, very financially lucrative for them.

But one day outta the blue, Facebook decided that the user had broken some woke-lefty B.S. terms of service rule that got them booted.

And just like that, years and years of work just went up in “woke smoke”!

But had the client been doing the RIGHT thing and effectively converting all or most of its Facebook over to its email list, then getting kicked off Facebook wouldn’t have mattered!

Now just imagine what will happen when governments (which have no loyalty to customers) start getting involved!? 

Once they decide they don’t like you, that’s it. You’re gone. 

And because these spineless corporate types will do what they’re told—they’ll comply, no questions asked.

So moral of the story:

Like Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick, you should be making a list, and check it [and back up!] twice.

-David