Are you being ironic? Of course there's something to see: the latest glacial shift in the accretion of content control by tech platforms.
It's weird that folks are pointing to a phenomena that's been going on for generations as if it is something novel. There have always been winners and losers in who controls the message. While tech companies seem to be aggregating control over some of the message, it's not like corporate America hasn't had control for a long, long time.
Whether it was print, radio, television, cinema, blogs, podcasts, music, or some other media, there's a centralization tendency. We've had breakout periods of democratization along the way, and today I think we're more democratized than we were historically. I'd wager that diverse views are more available today than they were in, say, the 80s.
I think the framing that he was somehow unable to succeed without accepting censorship is a little off the mark. He made what appears to be a deliberate choice to limit his speech to make more money. Is that a failure? I dunno. It seems like part of freedom of speech should include the freedom to make the decision to stop talking about some things in exchange for cash.
The current state of social media and online discourse is causing some serious problems, but I am not so convinced we are going about fixing it in the right way.
Large companies are least able to remove someone from public discourse today than at any other time in the past. The internet is wide open for people to shout into, although it requires work and money to host content. But it’s still far cheaper and easier than its ever been to reach basically anyone around the world.
How do you today compares to historical American freedom of discourse? For example, I look at things like the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where stating pro-socialist/pro-communist views might get someone fired or imprisoned in the 40s-50s. [1] Or the 'Comics Code' of the 60s-00s, where comics publishers agreed to self-censor. [2]
Or the Hay's Code from motion pictures in the 20s-60s, where things like 'Ridicule of the Clergy' were strictly forbidden? (The Supreme Court even deciding that Freedom of Speech did not apply to motion pictures in 1915.) [3]
Or the Parents Music Resource Center who applied the 'Parental Advisory' sticker to music? [4]
You could be murdered or beaten for being pro-union in the 1900s-1910s.
I bring out these examples not to try and add some whataboutism, but rather to try and connect the Spotify/Tech company case to a broader historical context. Yes, these things are bad, and it may also be bad that we're seeing that consolidation today. It's important to be educated about historical precedents, about who had the authority and who was silenced, about which groups held power of which others, and about how we should holistically look at the problem of limiting public discourse.
Far too often I see people narrowly focus on the now, focus on specific recent events and say, "This is an unprecedented shut down of discourse." (And to be clear, this comment is not aimed at you, skohan, but more broadly.) Or, "This is not who we are as a nation!". When in fact, looking through the historical record, we've absolutely been disallowing certain discourse in pretty much every decade for at least the last century.
It may be that it's a different group this time, it may feel novel to folks because they are young and haven't experienced it firsthand, it may feel different because the underlying technologies are different, but fundamentally there is a throughline of shutting down discussions when 'the powers that be' dislike it, and we should be, imo, discussion that broader trend as much as the moment now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center
I do think that tech control of discourse is an important thing to watch. I don't yet believe that it's impossible for people with extreme views to find a host; I am right now looking at a Google Podcasts page hosting an unquestionably white supremacist, Holocaust-denying podcast. When I was younger, you had to go find yourself a dingy mimeographed snail mail catalog of books to get a copy of Ragnar Redbeard's book. It's way easier these days.
But yes. Even if you think that the danger of conspiracy theories is such that it warrants restraints on free speech, it is also true that you should be extremely concerned with how those restraints are determined and enforced.
That said, if you're not looking at trends over decades, you are likely to overreact to the short term.
I think a huge factor that separates the current state of media from the pre-web-2.0 era is the rise in algorithmic content feeds. It's not just the fact that Google and Facebook allow extremist content on their platforms, it's the fact that they actively promote it to millions of consumers. Those looking to radicalize can find ways to game the algorithms and get their content put in front of massive numbers of users, often with the endorsement of a friend or family member.
I think this is a problem, but I think the current solution is also not a good one. These same organizations which in some ways created the problem have proposed that the solution should be enforcing unilateral control over which speech should and should not exist on their platforms. And as I have said in other threads, this is especially relevant now because the ability to exist on these 4-5 platforms essentially does amount to existing in public life during the pandemic.
I am not attributing malice to these organizations, but I do think we should work towards defining some rules of the road for online discourse, and that these rules should be defined by the public rather than by unaccountable teams inside corporations.
Since we're talking about the past, in the past centuries we defined a legal framework around libel and slander. We also had laws in the 20th century (which have been substantially weakened) which prevented one entity from owning too high a percentage of the media outlets in a single market. I think it's time for us as a society to think long and hard about what rules should be put in place to make online discourse safer and healthier. I am not saying I know what those rules should be, but I don't think it's a responsibility we should just hand to the organizations which have had the most success in the market.
To make an analogy, the average life expectancy has increased massively since the iron age. That does not mean we should not be worried if we observe a decrease in average life expectancy year over year.
Meanwhile, podcasts generally continue to become dramatically more popular, thus taking more and more media consumption time away from the large networks.
"All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say: 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!'" is as relevant in 2021 as it was the 1970s, apparently.
Spotify is not above criticism, I think it is entirely legitimate and called for to criticize Spotify without overstating your case.
The story here is that Rogan took his show off YouTube and onto Spotify as part of a huge licensing deal. Nothing was stopping him from controlling his work prior to that deal.
The other side of the coin is that everyone is selling out. We're just returning to the patronage (clientela) model where everyone parrots the patrons for a cut of the profit, legal contract and everything - except Joe Rogan isn't at risk of dying destitute if he doesn't comply and his patrons are faceless corporations.
If there's an implicit argument in that question I'm not able to discern it.