How did 6ixBuzz get so influential?

6ixBuzz TV started off as a way to highlight Toronto hip-hop artists, created by two founders from the city who wanted to highlight the culture they saw around them. But in the past few years, the Instagram account has also started highlighting health and political news using controversial headlines. This strategy has amassed them more than two million followers — a large enough reach that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre even participated in a 6ixBuzz Q&A during this year's federal election campaign cycle. 

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with culture critics Matt Amha and Joyita Sengupta to look at the rise of the popular and controversial 6ixBuzz and what it means for Canada's media landscape. 

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: [The] other troubling part of 6ixBuzz, which is the way that it consistently exploited these toxic anti-Asian sentiments for its financial bottom line, especially towards Brampton's South Asian communities. Joyita, can you talk a little bit about that, about the history of how intentional 6ixBuzz was about that?

Joyita: I think we have to acknowledge the fact that none of this is occurring in a vacuum. So the context that we're coming into this with is the fact that anti-immigration sentiment has already been on the rise in Canada for the last couple years. Anti-South Asian hate content online has also been on the rise in the last couple years — and that's globally, not just in Canada. But it's unique when we talk about 6ixBuzz, in the sense that Brampton is considered the epicentre of what people consider to be a "problem" when it comes to over-immigration, over-representation of South Asians in this community — [but] we've always been here. So the tricky thing with the way 6ixBuzz approaches this is this feigned neutrality. They'll post something, like, "Canada's largest cricket dome opening in Brampton." They don't cover cricket. We know what the comments are going to look like.

Elamin: And they go, "What do you think?"

Joyita: "What do you think, guys? Eyes emoji." It's this lobbing to the trolls in the comments that are going to knock it out of the park for them. 

Elamin: It's playing with an undercurrent that's already kind of there.

Joyita: Exactly. So it's one of those things where it's like, are they the only ones doing this? No. But when I talk to — in my reporting — international students, newcomers, other young South Asians, particularly in Brampton, 6ixBuzz came up time and time again. And for people that were in some of the most stressful times of their lives, not knowing whether they were going to be able to stay in this country after spending their life savings to be here, or if they were experiencing racism in real life — being followed, being recorded — they talked about the comments on 6ixBuzz, and they talked the way that this kind of content was being platformed and rewarded by these platforms.

Elamin: Matt, what do you make of that, about the idea that 6ixBuzz has become a central hub for this?

Matt: What strikes me most is that this is really a story of betrayal. This is a great betrayal. And 6ixBuzz was created as a kind of alternative media that was designed to represent the first-generation Toronto and Canadian experience, and the kind of immigrant experience in this country — and particularly the experiences and concerns of us that grew up in this so-called "inner city," that grew up in these underfunded communities. But the page and its owners, it appears, they went through this process of radicalization, or understanding the degree to which a performance of radicalization was lucrative and could be lucrative for them. 

This was a page that was initially a landing spot for Black and brown people, for marginalized people. That same page then turned brown people into racist fodder in a bid to attract a new kind of audience. And that's where this idea of betrayal, I think, comes into play. They built this audience initially by creating these relationships with marginalized people in their city, but they now use those very identities to drive race panic and immigration panic to an audience that they are trying to appeal to. And they're now serving these people to whom they owe their success — in its entirety — on a platter. And they are presenting them as an internal horror, as a scary alien population. I think the logic of that is really troubling. The kind of base premise of 6ixBuzz today is fear. It's crime panic, health panic, immigration panic. 

It is a project that's really indistinguishable from that of Breitbart under Steve Bannon, or even Rebel News. Driving fear and hysteria, the kind of brand that trades on our worst impulses, that uses fear-mongering as a vector for attention and clicks and, ultimately, revenue. And if you are interested in profit, it makes sense, but I think ethically, [it] raises all kinds of questions. 

These are street guys running a fundamentally street enterprise. And I understand more than most that the conditions of life in the inner city and in community housing in Toronto can drive all kinds of desperation and a kind of mania for upward mobility. When the hustler begins to destroy the world that he lifted himself out of, they should be subject to critique. I think, in some way, that's what's happening here.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.