Canada to regulate podcasts

We're not exactly talking about little mom&pop hobby podcasts. If you're bringing in $10M in revenue, you're a major media operation -- podcast being in that case really a kind of marketing label for what's basically a "radio station."

So given how things work in this country it was only a matter of time before the approach that the regulator here takes to major media operation around content would apply.

These laws probably confuse and enrage many Americans -- as they do for many Canadians -- but they've been a thing for decades; in large part they reflect two unique aspects of Canada: 1) its cultural and economic position in regards to being a separate country (believe it or not) adjacent to the US while being on the whole linguistically, economically culturally similar enough that there's a constant struggle to not be completely subsumed 2) The unique position of the French language, French Canadian, and Quebecois culture in confederation. (And, increasingly, indigenous culture)

Canada is in a constant struggle to localize and protect local culture. And in the process there are often dubious monopolistic forces that inject themselves into that process. But the argument (not my argument) is basically that in a "free" and "open competition", the US would basically bury/eliminate Canada.

Finally, Canada is officially "multicultural" rather than "melting pot" by stated ideology; which means that state institutions / regulatory agencies actually have concrete roles in protecting cultural diversity. Again, controversial, but likely a foreign approach to Americans and most Europeans (not all) whose societies operate with the assumption of single unified ethno-linguistic nation state. (This is explicit policy choice made by governments in the 70s/80s in an effort to stop the Canadian state from disintegrating under centrifugal separatist forces.)

I've heard about these regulations with local content quotes (doesn't France also have these?) and I can imagine no scenario where this $10M figure would hit anyone who should not have been regulated before if their only differentiator was if they did video on youtube or audio (somewhere) only. (I don't know enough about the Canadian regulations, so this is a not comment on those, only on "why the exception for podcasts, probably oversight").

The fear is of indirect censorship. As was the case with law enforcement/intelligence informally requesting take downs in the US, Canada will be making this process formal.

If the answer is that these media "hack" the human brain, then I don't think that banning the producers is the right way to go. The root cause is that people are too easily tricked. Banning the producers will only cause other media, such as YouTube or Facebook, to fill the gap.

I would say that the answer to solve this is education, but unfortunately many states have decided that education is the bad thing, instead of blantantly misleading information. Even if you could teach it successfully in school, how many adults are going to go back to school to learn the media they're consuming is bad? If you're an ardent fox news viewer, how will you view that information?

It's not a solve but it's a help.