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Comment by Toyentrepreneur | Hacker News Reader

A similar situation is going on in the US.

Right now the most popular rapper (measured by streams)is Tekashi 6ix9ine, a controversial artist who raised concerns recently over being cheated out of the #1 Billboard Hot 100 spot.

It broke the record for most youtube views in a day (43.5 million) and also fastest to reach 100 million (71 Hours).

It also hasn't received ONE radio spin, for comparison every song above it has at least 20 million.

It also has been banned from every major Spotify playlist.

After questioning the credibility of the Hot 100 ranking methodologies multiple top artists have come to Billboards defense (Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, etc.) even causing billboard itself to release a statement.

It's resulting in a Streisand effect of people wanting to see what's this song/artist that the institutions are trying so hard to suppress from the public.

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The 6ix9ine case is just a celebrity throwing a tantrum because his song didn't perform as well as he had hoped. Billboard explained its calculations and his song "Gooba", a typical "fuck the haters" number, simply didn't measure up to the competition.

https://pitchfork.com/news/billboard-responds-to-tekashi-6ix...

6ix9ine's songs are not very radio-friendly, and from a quality standpoint, have been universally panned by critics. The fact that he was convicted of a felony (use of a child in a sexual performance) does not help his commercial appeal.

On the other hand, Kazik Staszewski's "Your Pain Is Better Than Mine" is a song that criticizes Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the largest Polish political party. It was censored by a state-run radio station. The two incidents are not comparable.

> 6ix9ine's songs are not very radio-friendly, and from a quality standpoint, have been universally panned by critics.

Are said critics in his target demographic, or is this just another case of old people not understanding the youth?

Edit:

> I think [his criminal convictions are] enough to not play his music on the radio.

I agree with that.

> The fact that he was convicted of a felony (use of a child in a sexual performance)

I think that alone is enough to not play his music on the radio.

These critics include younger reviewers who are familiar with pop rap and trap rap:

https://www.metacritic.com/music/dummy-boy/6ix9ine

whatever the answer, it has 0 to do with the topic and is just parent comment showing their bias for no real reason.

Sex crime wasn't the half of it. He went to jail for racketeering using his music to fund violent crime, and he's only free to whine publicly about music now because he weaseled out of prison on medical release due to the pandemic. Society owes him nothing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Nine_Trey_Gangs...

We're talking about the commercial appeal of a rapper though, the violent crime is a plus. It's the snitching and the sex crime that actually ruin his appeal.

Your comparison is way off base. Poland's government is actively dismantling independent media and censoring this artist is part of that effort because they were critical of the government. The rapper you mention is a violent criminal and child rapist. We can choose where to draw the free speech line and still uphold the principals of a free and open society.

> We can choose where to draw the free speech line and still uphold the principals of a free and open society.

You really, really can't.

Yes, we can. For instance one of the things that are also in effect in Poland and which I wholeheartedly agree with is that denying holocaust is an active crime. As someone who has lost family in the concentration camps - good, the crime was too great to be denying it.

You might think that's a good thing, but that's not free speech.

There is no absolute free speech in any country on this planet. There is always a line, and the question to which different nations give different answers is where to draw it.

Where's comparable line in US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

Well, US has a problem with obscenities for instance, which are erased from court records, even if everyone in attendance is an adult and should be able to handle some cuss words. I know US really buys into the "land of the free" meme, but like the parent post said - the line exists in every country, the question is - are the people free to move the line? People of Poland have decided that the atrocities of the holocaust were so great that denying them should be a crime - but the key word here is decided, as in - were free to do so. People of America have decided that the line lies elsewhere - but let's not kid ourselves, the line absolutely exists. You might not go to prison for voicing opinions, but there will be backlash for certain ones which would be absolutely fine in other countries. The fact that US ranks 45th in the list of countries ranked by the freedom of press should say something.

> Well, US has a problem with obscenities for instance, which are erased from court records, even if everyone in attendance is an adult and should be able to handle some cuss words.

This is not a universal practice. In fact, I'm inclined to say it's rather rare.

A case that immediately comes to mind is Cohen v. California. It concluded that governments can't ban the use of the word "fuck" in public. The word is not censored in the opinion.

http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep403/usrep403015/usr...

Metaphorical "yelling fire in a crowded theatre"?

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic....

Bad example, has been ruled legal.

So if you shout "Fire!" in the crowded theater, people start running out and someone is trampled to death....you still wouldn't be charged with a crime?

Did it help with keeping fascists out of power in Poland?

If not, then what was the actual purpose of the law?

That's like asking "if there are still racists in the US, what's the point of the constitution - after all it clearly states all men are equal!".

Yes, there are still facists in Poland - does that mean the law was pointless? Of course not.

And of course I don't think I have to point out that you can be a fascist and not deny holocaust, so this law wouldn't do anything in that case.

I didn't ask if there are fascists in Poland, because that is not a problem in and of itself. The problem is that proto-fascists are in power in Poland. And they are actively denying the involvement of many Polish nationals in Anti-Semitic pogroms that were a part of the Holocaust.

But ignoring that, you appear to be saying that it's significantly worse to deny the Holocaust, than to be a fascist, seeing how the law doesn't apply to fascists who "moved on with the times"?

No, that's not what I am saying.

The United States has a limitations on free speech written into the constitution: copyright, trademarks, defamation, and libel laws. Do you believe that these alone mean that there are no principals of a free and open society?

No, because those things are based on fairly objective standards, which is a very important piece of the puzzle. The line is very clear. Don't steal from others, don't deliberately lie or mislead when it provably damages someone else (person/org/the justice system). The basic idea is to follow the golden rule. You're allowed to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm others within your society.

"This guys is a bad hombre and so we should limit his freedom of speech" is clearly not objective. The line is very fuzzy, which is exactly the problem with it. Is the idea that we should limit the speech of all felons, even after they served their time? Or is it just sex offense felons? Or just rappers with face tattoos? Where does one propose we draw a line that can be objectively applied and would limit this guy's freedom of speech?

What about publishing false scientific results? Libel or slander? False advertising? Perjury? Child pornography? Teaching blatant lies to children as a public school teacher? What if the president announced an imminent nuclear strike, just to incite panic for fun?

If you don't consider these "free speech", then you're already drawing a line.

Those things require knowing that what you are saying is false – the damage is in deliberately trying to mislead people, not the source of the information.

That is obviously very different from saying "I don't like this person so we should limit their freedom of speech even though they're not deliberately misleading anyone".

The point is that you should be trying to establish policy that doesn't come back to bite you in the ass when the prevailing winds change. Saying that you're not allowed to say things that 1. you know aren't true and 2. damage others, is a fairly objective standard. "This guy is a felon so we should limit his speech, regardless of what he is saying" is not.

This is a reasonable stance, and I believe that it makes sense in your head, but I promise that if you try to actually write a law, "aren't true" and "damage others" are basically impossible to define. You're gonna have to draw some arbitrary-seeming lines based on how you want society to look, and be open to moving the lines if there are unexpected consequences. You can't write a clean protocol definition of acceptable human communication.

Would you pass a law that makes all lying illegal? Why not? Does speech have to directly damage someone? Financially, emotionally, what? What threshold of damage is punishable? Couldn't one argue that promoting communism "damages others"? The Secretary of Defense announcing a fake foreign invasion should probably be illegal, but a random drunk person claiming "the Chinese are invading" probably shouldn't be. So there's a line somewhere between those two people, where is it?

Literally all of the things you mentioned except Child Pornography (which is more of a production issue than speech issue anyway) meet that standard. So we can clearly write laws about it. No, lying in general isn't limited. Lying that damages other people/things is, however.

It's only perjury if you knowingly lie, which (when under oath) damages the integrity of the justice system. It's only libel if you tell a deliberate falsehood and it damages someone else directly. etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates

> independent media

I thought Trójka is a public (and thus government sponsored and controlled) radio station, no?

It is, but at the same time music was never* the subject of interest of those in power and the crew enjoyed complete freedom in music selection. Some of the staff have weathered every change of power (and by extension the station and media executives) since the communist times up until the current govt. It takes a lot of bad will to force someone out of their job after they've dedicated 30 - 50 years building the place they and their listeners cherished.

* the previous known case of censorship is dated to 1984, on the same list with the same man behind the microphone. The band Maanam has been banned from public media so he played the drum intro of one of their songs ("To tylko tango") looped for the entire length of their hits on the list.

> We can choose where to draw the free speech line and still uphold the principals of a free and open society.

Except the "we" in your statement is defined totally arbitrarily. To you, "we" doesn't include the millions of people who listened to his music and like it. Why don't they get to draw this free speech line?

"we" can stream the music to each other. But not on Spotify.

They do, they have their influence. It's just that a vast majority of radio listeners (entirely unsurprisingly) doesn't support giving screentime to a child rapist.

It's right on target if you consider the goal is to sink the political issue by equating it with something similar but essentially frivolous, a trolling technique known as forum sliding.

> It's right on target if you consider the goal is to sink the political issue by equating it with something similar but essentially frivolous, a trolling technique known as forum sliding.

Forgive me for this aside, but do you know where I can read more about trolling techniques (of the non-fishing variety)?

This classic treatise from 1831 might be a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right (for the full text, use the link to Wikisource at the bottom).

I would better have described it as a trolling objective (to slide the instant topic downwards), since the techniques are secondary. I would nat dare to compete once luminaries like Schopenhauer have taken the field.

>We can choose where to draw the free speech line and still uphold the principals of a free and open society.

Don't you see the irony in this statement? Everyone is free to say what they want except what you or the government deem to be wrongthink. That does not sound like a free or open society to me.

> The rapper you mention is a violent criminal and child rapist.

If that's false, then it's irrelevant. If it's true then the established response is to lock him in concrete box for 25 or more years. In neither case is censorship justified.

Given his history, character, and song content, I can only think it's for the best. If I owned a service, I wouldn't touch his stuff with a 50 ft pole. I think it's in a good spot... it's not outright banned, and people can find it if they want, but kudos to major services for not putting him on a pedestal.

If we go down that path how many famous rockstars were banging underage teens as well? Lots.

And as the allegations are substantiated (such as in court) then they too should be shunned.

Didn't he also plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and armed robbery, among other things?

That's what wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Nine_Trey_Gangste...

Wait til you hear about Jay Z and DMX's rap sheets!

Both seem to fall short of Takeshi's conspiracy to commit murder (though it seems like Jay-Z probably got pretty close to murder with that stabbing.)

Both seem to do a slightly better job evading law enforcement, would be my take.

This person directly funded a violent criminal gang with his music revenues. Not just having sex on the side.

Seems like a good reason to go down that path, to discourage more people from doing it in the future.

well i don't know how many, but if it's two, isn't that two too many?

Except now they are putting him on the biggest pedestal that exists via Streisand effect.

Almost every single new genre of music from hip hop, rock and roll, country etc. went through a stage of condemnation by the previous generation that didn't approve of it before being finally accepted.

Just history repeating itself.

Up to a few decades ago your comment could be referencing a black/gay person instead and no one would bat an eye.

I don't think it has anything to do with the genre or content of his music (which is far from unique), but rather the fact that he's still technically serving a custodial sentence and apparently shot a video violating multiple public health and safety guidelines. I think it's legal for him to engage in commercial activity, but the federal government will probably take most of his profits until his sentence is complete.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/books/curtis-dawkins-gray...

YouTube views are easy to fake. From my observation of the "trending" section it seems that some music producers have figured out how to game the algorithms.

The "trending" section is for paid promotions. No one expects it to reflect view counts at this point. The issue of fake views is separate and probably difficult to do at that scale without being detected. Getting a few thousand fake views past the algorithm is probably easy. Getting 10s of millions is probably close to impossible.

That seems similar enough to bear noticing, I appreciate you mentioning it because I'd not heard of it. That said, there are also some pretty big differences between the two. Not least of which is that Billboard isn't state run, whereas in Poland the state-run broadcaster has blacklisted the song.

Another song feelS s quote relevant in light of this comment thread: "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you".

A racketeering rapist in a different country being delatformed isn't relevant to the President of Poland blocking criticism of his misbehavior from appearing in the media.

It's resulting in a Streisand effect of people wanting to see what's this song/artist that the institutions are trying so hard to suppress from the public.

You sure left out a lot of salient detail in an effort to equate this diss track with a political document.

the name of the song being..... ? The most recent?

one job

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