The Trumpet—Blocked!
On August 11, a Trumpet subscriber sent me a screenshot of the Trumpet’s Facebook page. It read: “People in Canada can’t see this content. In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can’t be viewed in Canada.” Overnight, the Trumpet can no longer reach people in Canada on one of the world’s largest social media sites. With a flick of a digital switch, the truth online can easily be blotted out.
It’s not just the Trumpet. The New York Times, cnn, cbc, the Washington Post and all other news producers are also blocked. Whether you are liberal, conservative, Canadian or foreign, you are blocked. Now one of the most effective means for independent media to compete with mainstream networks is gone.
This is all a reaction to the passing of Bill C-18: the Online News Act. The Trudeau government introduced the legislation under the guise of “enhancing fairness” to Canadian news content, but in reality it enhances the government’s control over Canadian media. This is not an unintended consequence; it was always the intended outcome.
Canada is not the only place where government censorship is targeting the Trumpet. In the United States, Facebook and Twitter have blocked the Trumpet from advertising. There is also ample evidence that both platforms are shadow banning our content. The Trumpet Daily has been censored several times on YouTube, and threatened with worse—maybe even a full ban.
In the European Union, the Digital Services Act is starting to be enforced. This draconian legislation empowers a new EU agency to police social media for disinformation on any platform of more than 45 million European users.
No matter which continent you live on, you cannot escape government censorship. This is a worldwide trend.
For decades, the Trumpet has pointed to a prophecy in Amos 8:11 about the truth becoming inaccessible—scarce like water during a famine. In our information age, it may have seemed impossible for this prophecy to come to pass. Yet across the planet it is inching closer to reality.
Nefarious Agenda
Since coming to power in 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has undertaken a deliberate strategy to influence and control the mainstream media. The government already has a stake in it through state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (cbc). The Trudeau government has also handed out $600 million in subsidies and bailouts to hundreds of news outlets, keeping many of them from going bankrupt—but is also a hefty incentive to cover news favorable to the prime minister.
Independent, subsidy-free news outlets, however, have been able to compete thanks to the reach of social media. Bill C-18 is designed to eliminate independent media from the landscape.
The Online News Act was tabled on April 5, 2022. The premise of the law is that “digital news intermediaries,” such as social media sites or news aggregators, would have to split revenue with Canadian news outlets for sharing their content. For example, if someone shares a link to a ctv News story on Facebook, Facebook would be charged a fee and that money would be given to a Canadian news outlet. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (crtc) is vested with the authority to determine who is subject to these regulations. However, the bill allows the “governor in council”—the prime minister—to direct the crtc on how the bill is implemented. This is in addition to Bill C-11, which gives the crtc power to censor all content on the Canadian web. Now social media sites are forced to make a decision: Start forking over money to Canadian news sites for providing them a service, or remove news content from Canada.
Similarly, the Digital Services Act in the EU came into effect on August 25. Now European bureaucrats will be instructing social media sites and search engines to remove anything they deem as disinformation, fake news or illegal activity. This empowers a small group of technocrats to arbitrate what is truth and what is not. The legislation allows the EU to penalize companies up to 6 percent of their global revenue, which means millions or even billions of dollars. This means content censored by the EU will be reflected globally.
Trudeau and the EU are provoking a war with social media, and social media is willing to fight back.
The Meta War
Meta published on its website on August 1: “Nearly one year ago, we shared our concerns that the Online News Act would force us to consider whether to continue allowing the sharing of news content on our platforms. We have been transparent and have made it clear to the Canadian government that the legislation misrepresents the value news outlets receive when choosing to use our platforms. … The only way we can reasonably comply with this legislation is to end news availability for people in Canada.”
There is no compromise. It is Trudeau’s way or nothing. The government position has become more entrenched with Trudeau’s recent cabinet shuffle. The new heritage minister views C-18 as a hill to die on. “The new heritage minister, Pascale St-Onge, says she will stand her ground against the tech giants, as Facebook prepares to push the button on its plan to block Canadians’ access to news in response to the Online News Act,” wrote the Globe and Mail. “The new minister signaled Thursday that she is not prepared to further soften the government’s line with the tech giants, saying she is ‘deeply committed to ensuring that Canada has a free and independent press, because it’s fundamental to our democracy’” (July 27).
Unless something changes, news content on Meta will be blocked. Google, is also threatening to remove news content from Canada.
While the regulations will generate some revenue for Canadian news content, the real benefit to the Trudeau government is the reaction by social media sites.
Lee Harding at the Western Standard wrote, “This policy, purportedly done to ensure a robust democracy-encouraging domestic media environment, blah blah blah, is really done to ensure that the establishment media can be kept alive as a propaganda wing for the ideology of the government” (July 19). The Facebook ban benefits Trudeau by removing independent media’s ability to reach an audience and generate revenue; it also lowers advertising revenue for Canadian news sites, pushing them toward government bailouts. This translates to increased government influence.
While content moderation is presented under the auspices of fairness and protection, the Online News Act, Digital Services Act and the current consent moderation regime in social media all have an ulterior motive.
The goal is absolute control over information. Whether it is the radical-left regime in Canada, the woke executives in social media, or the bureaucrats in Europe, they all want to control the narrative on what is truth and blot out anything that exposes the truth.
Famine of the Word
The censorship of the Trumpet brings a future prophecy into focus. In Chapter 10 of America Under Attack, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes that Amos 7 shows the key sequence of events in American governance just before Jesus Christ returns. A period of intense government corruption is followed by the return of Donald Trump, typed by King Jeroboam ii in Amos. This dramatic event will happen very soon. During this time, a warning message will continue to go out to the end-time nations of Israel, including the United States, Britain, Canada and other Commonwealth nations.
However, Ezekiel 3:7 says: “But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto me: for all the house of Israel are impudent and hardhearted.” Our sins have made us impudent (or disrespectful) and hard-hearted toward God’s message of loving correction and warning. It is during this time that “the land is not able to bear all his words” (Amos 7:10). Soon these nations will not be able to bear a warning message from the Bible. This is the message going out on theTrumpet.com.
This culminates in the prophecy of Amos 8:11: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.” All of these world events lead to God’s message and truth being completely blotted out and censored. You won’t be able to access it on the Internet, television, radio or in print.
“Soon, people will not be able to find any of these booklets,” writes Mr. Flurry in his booklet The Lion Has Roared (request a free copy). “They won’t be able to find any spiritual food! People will be crying out for someone to ‘drop’ God’s word—His revealed prophecies. But then it will be too late physically.”
Bill C-18 and the blocking of the Trumpet on Facebook in Canada is not the famine of the word, but it gives Canadians a small taste of what a famine of God’s word will be like: You wake up in the morning and can’t find the Trumpet’s message anywhere. This shows how fast the famine can happen.
Are you taking advantage of the Trumpet while it is still available? Are you preparing for the spiritual famine?
If you used social media to read our content and discover it is now blocked or censored, there are a couple things you can do to still find us. First, you can visit our website directly and see the new content posted daily. You can also subscribe to our Trumpet Brief e-mail service. You can choose from a variety of options and have this message sent directly to your inbox so you never miss the most important stories and developments.
This is the age in which we live. Read America Under Attack to learn more about the important events to happen shortly, and act on this truth before it is too late.