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Bitchute, the canary in the mine?

There are a number of alternatives to YouTube if you're looking to publish your videos online or watch the videos of others.

These alternatives are often the preferred choice of those whose content has been censored by YouTube for being unaligned with that platforms social, eithical, moral and political ideologies. For some time it has been widely accepted that YouTube believes in free speech only if that speech is aligned with its own beliefs.

As a result of this, a number of independent VOD platforms have arisen and most claim to be supporting freedom of speech to a far higher degree, often to the full extent allowed by the law.

At the forefront of this true freedom movement has been Bitchute, a platform that has, as a result, become a hangout for many of those with extremist viewpoints that would never see the light of day on YouTube.

This week Bitchute released a very worrying statement.

Apparently Bitchute will no longer be providing service to users in the UK..

In its statement, Bitchute says:

Bottom line... doing business in the UK is now simply too risky thanks to that country's growing efforts to crack down on freedom of speech where such freedoms may offend someone.

The phrase "harassment, alarm, or distress" is now deeply enshrined in UK law and has become the trigger for a wide range of arrestable offenses, even in the online world.

The decision on whether something constitutes "harassment, alarm, or distress" rests almost entirely with the agrieved party so it's something that can be very much abused for political, social or economic gain by anyone inclined to do so.

Now, under the UK Online Safety Act of 2023, almost anything you publish online can be used against you by those who choose to be offended and it seems that Bitchute has seen the writing on the wall. Given that the content they host has a larger than average percentage of stuff that could contain "hurty words", they've done the only sensible thing and said that they're not going to provide service to the residents of a country that might fine them up to 10 percent of their annual turnover as a result.

Many, many people inside the UK have been voicing concerns over the overly-restrictive role of government when it comes to issues of free speech of late. There have been numerous reports of people being fined or even imprisoned simply for making posts to social media that someone else deemed to be "hurty words" and so lodged a complaint with police.

Yes, it seems that you can shoplift with impunity (up to a certain value) and the police won't even attend but type a few hurty words and they'll send out multiple cars with half a dozen uniformed officers to take you into custody -- or so the claims go.

I have very significant fears for the UK right now. Bitchute really is the canary in the mine and it has just died. One can only wonder what will happen to "Old Blighty" once the number of immigrants who have wildly different ideologies, politics and religion, out number the original Brits. Will the UK become "New Islam"?

There are some who truly believe this will happen.

If the USA decides to bomb the snot out of Iran's nuclear program, will we see a significant number of the young Islamic men of fighting age engage in terror acts across the UK? A huge swathe of four and five-star hotels in the UK have been succonded to act as free accomodation for this invading army of boat-people, the vast majority of which are young single men with ideologies, beliefs and religions that differ markedly from those of the traditional UK population.

I fear we may have all the components of a very nasty situation -- and the canary has died!

Carpe Diem folks!

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